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By Anna Skinner
Associate News Editor
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A white supremacist YouTube personality is making his opinions about women known over three months after his girlfriend disappeared.
Last Friday, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) requested the public's assistance in locating Élora Patoine, a 30-year-old woman who was last seen on June 19. Two days earlier, her boyfriend, Jean-Francois Gariépy, dropped her off at a gas station for a trip she had been planning for years, according to him.
Patoine was seen on June 17 in the Prince Edward Island town of Borden-Carleton and was spotted again on June 19 in Moncton, New Brunswick, the RCMP said in a Facebook post.
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A spokesperson for RCMP told Newsweek, "As this is an ongoing investigation, the RCMP cannot discuss specific details of this case for the integrity of the investigation. Any evidence pertinent to this legal matter will be presented as part of the court process."
Gariépy—who has hosted white supremacist figures on his YouTube channel and has called for a "white ethnostate" according to a report by the Daily Beast—maintains that Patoine has gone on a trip and that she had expressed interest in off-the-grid living. Gariépy said Patoine, whom he calls Mama JF, left behind her credit cards and cell phone when she went on the trip.
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'Electronically Disappeared'
On October 4, Gariépy posted about the situation on X, formerly Twitter.
"The police in Canada is looking for Mama JF because in true Mama JF fashion, she has left our home in June and has disappeared from the map. I am sure that Mama JF is fine, I know she has been safe for at least 2 days after I dropped her where she wanted in June," Gariépy wrote.
"Mama JF left our home entirely voluntarily to go live a life of adventure, wherever it would bring her. But since, she has electronically disappeared, not connecting to her cell phone or updating me or her family. I ask anyone who would have encountered her to just notify the police so that they can know she is safe. And I ask her, if she wants, to leave a note to the police, me, or her family to ensure everyone of her safety."
Patoine has gone on such trips before, according to Gariépy. When Patoine returned from a previous trip, he said in a YouTube interview the Daily Beast cited, she told Gariépy that she thought he had wanted her to leave.
"That is sometimes the state of delusion in the female mind and I can't do anything about this. I have zero control over this," Gariépy said in a video made earlier this month. "If we were in the society, the Christian society of 1920, maybe I could file some report and say 'Hey, my wife is a little crazy, she's a little out there. Can I control—can I own her, basically?'"
Missing Person
However, the RCMP are concerned for Patoine, who they identified as a missing person. She was reported missing the first week of October, nearly three months after she had been last seen.
Gariépy has shared many updates on Patoine's case on social media including on his YouTube channel since Patoine was reported missing. In one post, he mentioned that Patoine had been "planning for this trip for years."
Some people on social media, however, expressed suspicions about Gariépy's actions, particularly after he said in a YouTube video that he deep cleaned his house after Patoine left.
"He supposedly dropped her off in the middle of nowhere, with no credit cards, not bank cards, nobody's seen her since, and he immediately disinfected his entire house the day after..." wrote one user on social media.
Another asked Gariépy: "Who drops off their wife in the middle of nowhere and does nothing after not hearing about it for four months."
"I don't care what a bunch of low-intelligence people think about my innocence," Gariépy told Newsweek.
In one post, Gariépy said that it was "pretty wild" that some people on social media questioned his actions when it came to Patoine's disappearance. He later added that he didn't expect to become a suspect in her disappearance.
"Society will not improve as long as people prefer to attribute guilt to innocent men rather than conceive of the possibility that poor female decision-making does, in fact, exist," Gariépy wrote. "It is pretty wild to see people attacking me with the wildest, impossible theories rather than accept the simple reality that our society has a problem of poor female decision-making that it refuses to face."
Many of Gariépy's fans came to his defense, stating that "murder" was beneath him. Others urged him to stay off social media while the investigation pans out.
"It's kind of sad how everyone accused this guy of murder because he cleaned his house after his girlfriend left him which seems like a normal psychological response," one follower wrote.
'Cost of Female Liberty'
At one point, Gariépy appeared in a video where he read the replies to one of his posts about Patoine.
One user said that his partner also "lost her s***" this summer when she went "full post-partum bonkers in August."
"And I said, 'That's the cost of female liberty: 50,000 policemen, full-time salary, nationwide searches. We could feed the homeless a billion times.' Just take our society and just allow some degree of control by husbands unto their wives," Gariépy said, according to the Daily Beast report.
"Just basic control of some little financial aspects, like no, you won't travel to Peru and so I'm going to decide for you that you won't travel to Peru. Just allow some form of control of husbands over their wives and you're not gonna get events like the Mama JF craziness here."
Update 10/12/23, 1:39 p.m. ET: This story was updated to include a comment from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Update 10/13/2023, 7:32 a.m. ET: This story was updated to include a comment from Jean-Francois Gariépy.
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