One of the paintings by Sydney Teerhuis-Moar posted on the Can Art Coast To Coast website. (Can Art Coast To Coast website)

Manitoba's Justice Department is investigating a website that says it has paintings for sale by a man serving a life sentence for beheading and carving up another man at a Winnipeg hotel.

The government is trying to determine whether the Can Art Coast To Coast website violates a provincial law forbidding people from profiting from crime.

"We're going to be making inquiries into whether or not that particular website, or the activities they're trying to do, would be in violation of the legislation … but at this stage, it's early in the investigation," Al Cameron, manager of the department's public safety investigation unit, told The Canadian Press on Wednesday.

Can Art Coast To Coast, which is based in Winnipeg, says it sells paintings by different artists, especially homeless or incarcerated people, and gives a portion of each sale to charity. Its website dedicates a page to the artwork of Sydney Teerhuis-Moar alongside newspaper articles about his gruesome case.

Teerhuis-Moar, 40, was found guilty last December in the second-degree murder of Robin Greene. Court was told Teerhuis-Moar met Greene at a bar and took him to a hotel room, where he cut off his head and penis, removed his internal organs and cut his torso into several pieces.

Phone numbers not in service

The phone numbers listed on Can Art's website have been disconnected. Email queries led to a telephone reply from the Winnipeg Remand Centre and a man who identified himself as Travis Adam Findlay. He said he was Teerhuis-Moar's cellmate at the Headingley Correctional Centre for a few weeks prior to the trial.

"I was going up on a large number of fraud (charges), quite large," the man said. "I have four of his paintings. I have them up for an exorbitant amount — $45,000 to $50,000. That's low end."

The man said he was given the paintings by Teerhuis-Moar in exchange for a suit he bought for Teerhuis-Moar to wear in court.

"(They are) some of the first ones he painted after the offence. His brain was in a position where it was like, when it poured out of him, it poured out."

'As the investigation unfolds, we'll have a much clearer picture of whether or not, in fact, this activity does fall under that act.'—Al Cameron, Manitoba Justice

Manitoba court records show that a Travis Adam Findlay was sentenced to 16 months for numerous fraud and counterfeiting charges in May 2008 and is now awaiting trial on drug-related charges.

It's not clear whether the sale of any paintings would run afoul of Manitoba's Profits of Criminal Notoriety Act, which was passed in 2005 but has not yet been tested in the courts.

The law forbids people from profiting from their own crimes through the sale of memoirs or memorabilia. It also forbids a criminal's "agents" — usually relatives or official representatives — from profiting.

"As the investigation unfolds, we'll have a much clearer picture of whether or not, in fact, this activity does fall under that act," Cameron said.

The Saskatchewan government recently tabled similar legislation after news that Colin Thatcher is planning to write a book. Thatcher, a former provincial cabinet minister, spent 22 years in prison after he was convicted of killing his former wife, JoAnn Wilson, in the family's garage in 1983.