Goodbye,

J Allore

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Ce site est du meurtre non résolu de Theresa Allore qui a été trouvé dans Compton, Québec le 13 Avril, 1979.

Si vous avez n’importe quelles informations à propos de la mort de Theresa et à propos de l’investigation contactent son frère John Allore: johnallore(@)gmail(dot)com. Merci.

This site is about the unsolved murder of Theresa Allore who died November 3, 1978 in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. If you have any information please contact her brother John Allore, johnallore(at)gmail (dot)com

Body of woman found in Pacific Spirit Park, site of Ladner-Beaudry murder

In a chilling replay of the scene at Vancouver’s Pacific Spirit Park just over a year ago when 53-year-old Wendy Ladner-Beaudry was found murdered on a running trail, police combed the park again this weekend searching for clues to how and why the body of an unidentified woman had ended up there.

RCMP were called to 33rd Avenue and Camosun Street in the park near UBC, on the city’s west side, around 8:30 p.m. Saturday. They confirmed the following morning that the body of an adult female had been found, but cautioned people not to leap to conclusions based on the park’s history.

“I would ask the community not to make any assumptions based on the incidents that have happened in this park before. It is not clear what the cause of death may have been or what led up to this death,” said spokesman Sgt. Peter Thiessen. While he did not provide the victim’s age, he referred to her as a “young” woman.

Ladner-Beaudry, an avid runner, had just entered the park near 41st Avenue and Camosun Street — eight blocks from where police are now searching — on Friday, April 3, 2009, when she was attacked. Her body was discovered by a hiker on the park trail the same afternoon.

Her killer remains at large.

The crime — a savage, seemingly random attack in broad daylight — shocked the community to its core, spurring a “Take Back the Park” walk in honour of Ladner-Beaudry, who was co-chair of the BC Games Society and was particularly involved in promoting sport and physical activity among women in B.C.

The victim was the sister of former Vancouver councillor and mayoral candidate Peter Ladner, and had two daughters with her husband, Michel Beaudry.

“She was a loving wife, a dedicated mother, a consummate professional and a source of joy, love, and inspiration to everyone she met,” Beaudry said in the days following her murder.

On Sunday, Thiessen described the Ladner-Beaudry investigation, which initially involved up to 70 officers, as “still very active.” This April, one year after her body was discovered, police released a video on YouTube asking for the public’s help in solving the crime.

Police will release more details about this latest death as they become available, Thiessen said. He said there are now a “couple of dozen” investigators assigned to the case and that the number will probably change depending on findings. The RCMP’s Integrated Homicide Investigation Team is leading the investigation.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do in there,” said Thiessen, motioning towards the woods. Police will be removing the body later in the day, he said.

In the meantime he advised that anyone wanting to hike, bike or run in the park go north of 16th Avenue to gain entry.

Joggers and cyclists paused to check out the scene Sunday, where police had cordoned off several blocks of Camosun Street. They noted it was hard not to make connections with the Ladner-Beaudry case, given the proximity of the two crime scenes.

Rachael Ruus, who was running in the area with friends, said she had avoided the park’s more secluded jogging trails following the discovery of Ladner-Beaudry’s body, and had only recently started returning to the area.

“I definitely won’t be running in there alone again,” said Ruus.

BY BARRY SAUNDERS – STAFF WRITER

Say, Chief. I understand why you didn’t call me back. Really, I do. Heck, nobody could blame you if you chose never to speak to another reporter again – not after what you allegedly said to the one from that national magazine.

Here’s the deal. In a story in this month’s GQ magazine about 11 missing and murdered women in Rocky Mount, that city’s police chief, John Manley, was quoted as saying the families of the victims bore some responsibility for the slow or inadequate police response. The bodies of several women were found within the same area before police realized they might have a serial killer on their hands.

So, what responsibility do family members bear, you ask?

“They’ve got to stay on law enforcement,” Chief Manley was quoted as saying. “They have to stay on us. Let us know that you’re not going away until you know we’ve done everything we possibly could do. Because if you don’t care, I don’t know why we should.”

Great day in the morning! How about you should care because those were real human beings who were murdered. So are the survivors who – despite their and the victims’ lack of social status – are grieving. How about because it’s your job, and justice demands that you care. Finally, how about because the death of any woman – even a strung-out streetwalker who spends her nights getting into cars with and taking off her clothes for strange men – diminishes each of us.

Since reading the chief’s comments, I’ve called his office several times, not to excoriate him, but to give him the opportunity to say that the national fashion rag misquoted him or took his comments out of context. (You’re right: It is hard to imagine any context where it would be appropriate for the city’s top cop to say, “Because if you don’t care, I don’t know why we should.”)

Andre Knight, president of the NAACP in Rocky Mount and a city councilman, doubts that Manley, who is black, would’ve denied it even had he called back. The story, Knight said, “pretty much told it like it was. The police have been rather hostile from the beginning” when it came to aggressively pursuing leads in the case or reassuring residents that the case was a priority. “They should’ve told us, ‘We’ve got Seven Bridges Road [the area where some of the bodies were found] under surveillance’ or, ‘We’ve got men on the street.’”

Cops have a tough job – no, the toughest – and they’re never going to satisfy everyone. That’s why I’ll always try to give them the benefit of the doubt and why I don’t want to believe they ignored the obvious evil lurking among some of their citizens until it couldn’t be ignored any more.

Last year, though, when several hundred Rocky Mount residents gathered at Martin Luther King Jr. Park for a candlelight vigil to pray for the disappearances and killings to stop, I asked a top police official why none of them appeared or spoke at the event. In a remarkable display of candor, she admitted that they didn’t even know about it.

Oy. Double Oy when you consider that the park is mere blocks from the police station – where I’d stopped to ask directions.

You know how they say any publicity is good publicity? Don’t tell that to Rocky Mount Mayor David Combs. “I’m certainly not happy with the way the writer portrayed Rocky Mount. I think he took this situation as an opportunity to come to our area” to bolster a book he’s writing on race in America. “He painted it as ‘east side’ and ‘west side.’ We’re all Rocky Mount, and I’m the mayor of the wholecity. Overall, it was an unfair portrayal. He tried to make it totally a race issue. I don’t agree.”

In the magazine, Mayor Combs was quoted as saying, “I don’t want everybody in town just to focus on the murders. … Because life has to go on … and we’ve got a lot of great things here. And I don’t want everyone that thinks about Rocky Mount to think that, well, that’s where those murders occurred.”

Combs told me he became aware of the possible connection of the six-year series of murders and disappearances only in June 2009. “People assume the mayor knows everything that’s going on in thecity,” he said. “We had all these ‘missing person’ cases until the bodies started turning up. We should have had some press conferences after that, but when we decided to, the SBI told us to hold off.”

The one time the mayor, usually an even-tempered fellow, sounded livid was when he talked about the GQ article’s implication that Antwan Maurice Pittman was not the real killer but merely a scapegoat arrested to get the city and police off the hook. “He [the writer] made it look like police just went out and arrested somebody,” he said. “We have a very good D.A. who wouldn’t do that.”

Of the anonymous sources upon whom the writer relied for some information, Combs said, “If this cabdriver knew so much, maybe he should’ve gone to the police.”

So far, Pittman has been charged only with the murder of Taraha Shenice Nicholson. But Knight, the city councilman, said he and other residents fear the cases of the murdered Rocky Mount women might become “like the Atlanta child murders.” Nearly three decades after Wayne Williams was convicted of the deaths of two black males in Atlanta and police closed the remaining 25 cases, many people still feel that Williams was a convenient scapegoat who was responsible for few, if any, of the deaths.

Despite its unflattering national portrayal of his hometown, Knight said, “I think we’re getting more momentum since the GQ article came out. I still think more could’ve been done, that more resources could’ve been put to this case, but I think we’re of one accord now.”

If you go looking for the GQ issue with the story on “The Lost Girls of Rocky Mount,” it’s the one with a nearly naked model on the cover seductively taking off her Victoria’s Secret bra for strange men.

Daniel Faucher, Eastman
Cyberpresse

Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu, qui a malheureusement accepté de devenir sénateur il y a quelques mois, vient de nous faire une éclatante démonstration du dévoiement de la pensée à laquelle l’arène politique peut parfois mener un homme intelligent et sensible.

Pour défendre l’abolition du registre canadien des armes à feu, il vient de nous servir l’argument suivant: il faut libéraliser l’accès aux armes de chasse, car il y a prolifération de chevreuils à cause de la baisse importante du nombre de chasseurs. Ces chevreuils sautent en plus grand nombre sur les routes et sont ainsi source d’une augmentation du nombre d’accidents mortels.

À supposer que la prolifération de chevreuils soit réelle, je ne peux pas dire que la solution tordue préconisée par cet ex-haut fonctionnaire du ministère du Loisir, de la Chasse et de la Pêche soit d’une luminosité scientifique remarquable!

Ce qui est encore plus renversant dans l’argumentaire de M. Boisvenu, c’est qu’il impute la baisse du nombre de chasseurs à l’augmentation du nombre de femmes monoparentales qui élèvent seules leurs enfants. Comment cela? Parce que la «tradition» de la chasse se transmet de père en fils et que, si le père n’est pas présent dans l’éducation de ses fils…

Là encore, pas très fort comme raisonnement! Si je comprends bien M. Boisvenu, Marc Lépine, l’auteur de la tuerie de Polytechnique en 1989, est un accident de l’histoire, car sa mère était monoparentale et pourtant il avait bien assimilé la «tradition» de la chasse. Quelle bêtise!

Enfin, si on suit plus loin le raisonnement de M. Boisvenu, faudra-t-il qu’on impose aussi aux immigrants des cours d’initiation à la chasse afin de contrôler la population des chevreuils tout en introduisant dans les contrats de mariage une clause interdisant la séparation ou le divorce avant que les enfants aient atteint l’âge de 15 ou 18 ans? Enfin, faudra-t-il contraindre à l’avortement toute femme enceinte d’un garçon, mais dont le père n’a pas signé un engagement de présence continue dans l’éducation du fils? La politique chinoise de limitation des naissances, mais à l’inverse, quoi!

Bravo, M. Boisvenu! Votre apport au sénat canadien est vraiment impressionnant!

QUEBEC CITY – Quebec prisons mistakenly released a record number of inmates in 2009-2010, a situation that the government has yet to explain.

Thirty-seven prisoners were prematurely released during the government’s last fiscal year (April 1, 2009 to March 31, 2010), according to documents recently released as part of a Ministry of Public Security study.

According to the documents, a copy of which was obtained by QMI Agency, detention centres in Rivieres-des-Prairies (eight prisoners), Quebec City (eight, including six men and two women), Hull (six prisoners) and Saint-Jerome (five prisoners) were the worst offenders when it came to releasing inmates early.

The documents also revealed that three of the 37 mistakenly released prisoners had not been re-captured as of March 31, and sent back to prison to serve the remainder of their sentences.

However, Minister Jacques Dupuis told QMI Agency that one of the “lucky”

inmates had since been arrested.

The prisoners spent, on average, three weeks on the run before being caught again. In one case, police in Sorel, Que., needed 75 days to find one prisoner.

Quebec’s prisons mistakenly released twice as many prisoners as it did in 2006-2007.

In 2005-2006, 25 prisoners were released too early, 27 were released in 2007-2008 and 25 were cut loose the following year.

An embarrassed Dupuis said last February that he would be asking for an internal investigation to shed light on a situation he called “outrageous.”

More than three months later, however, the minister’s office indicated he still hasn’t received the answers he is looking for.

“The investigation is almost complete,” said the minister’s spokesperson, Mario Vaillancourt. “A report including recommendations will be written and given to the minister.”

The spokesperson added that “as soon as we discover a case, a warning is immediately sent to police so that we can re-incarcerate these prisoners as quickly as possible. The information is also past along to the prisoner’s victims, if applicable.

The compiled data also showed that some of the worst-offending prisons were also the most overcrowded of the province’s 18 detention centres.

In 2009-2010, Saint-Jerome was at 114% capacity, followed by Rivieres-des-Prairies (109%), Hull (108%) and Quebec City (99%).

MONTREAL – A construction worker has found human remains near the Mercier Bridge construction site.

The Mohawk Peacekeepers were called in to investigate Monday afternoon after a skull and other remains were found in a wooded area on the Highway 138 service road, near the bridge.

The remains have been sent to a provincial crime lab for analysis and identification, said Jody Diabo, assistant chief of the Kahnawake Peacekeepers.

Diabo said she had no idea whether the remains are those of Tiffany Morrison, a 25-year-old Mohawk women who went missing in June 2006. Morrison had been in a bar in LaSalle when she shared a taxi ride back to Kahnawake with a man from the community.

She has not been heard from since.

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: May 27, 2010
LONDON — In a grisly case that British newspapers have compared to the Yorkshire Ripper murders of the 1970s, the police on Thursday charged a 40-year-old man pursuing a Ph.D. in 19th-century homicides with the murders of three women identified by the police as prostitutes.

One victim was caught on closed-circuit television last week being killed with a crossbow shot to the head before her dismembered body was dumped in a nearby river.
The man charged with the killings, Stephen Griffiths, is a former van driver with a psychology degree who was enrolled in a postgraduate course in criminology. The Times of London reported that he had told a neighbor in Bradford, the rundown industrial city in West Yorkshire where he lived until his arrest on Monday, that he was studying for “a Ph.D. in murder and Jack the Ripper,” the pseudonym given to the unidentified serial killer of prostitutes in London’s Whitechapel slum district in the 1880s.

But it was the resonance of another serial murder case involving a man from the Bradford area that helped make the latest killings a newspaper sensation. In a case that terrorized much of northern England and led to years of inquiries about police investigative failures, Peter Sutcliffe, the so-called Yorkshire Ripper, was convicted in 1981 of murdering 13 women, including several prostitutes, and of attempting to murder 7 others.
He was given 20 concurrent life sentences and has been held for nearly 30 years in the Broadmoor high-security psychiatric hospital west of London. After a legal battle to be considered for parole, he was told by officials this year that he would never be released.

With the country’s voracious tabloid papers competing in a frenzy over the latest killings, the police sealed off the third-floor walk-up on the edge of Bradford’s red-light district where Mr. Griffiths lived alone for more than a decade.

Neighbors were quoted in leading British newspapers as calling him an oddball and “a bit of a Goth,” obsessed with prostitutes and given to wearing a long black leather coat and dark glasses. One said he was known as “the lizard man” for his habit of taking his two pet monitor lizards, one of them four feet long, for walks on leashes around the apartment block where he lived, and feeding them captive mice.
The BBC and other news organizations said the police were investigating possible links to the killings of two other prostitutes in the same area of West Yorkshire in the past 20 years, and the disappearance of a third.
Mr. Griffiths was arrested after the police investigating the disappearance of the three women he is accused of killing reviewed closed-circuit video footage from security cameras outside his apartment. The Times of London quoted officers as saying the video showed one of the missing women, Suzanne Blamires, 36, a former nursing trainee who friends said had taken up prostitution to pay for an addiction to drugs and alcohol, being chased down a corridor by a man who knocked her to the ground. Moments later, the officers said, the man returned with a crossbow and shot Ms. Blamires in the head.

These accounts said the video later showed the same man taking several plastic garbage bags away from the property. After Mr. Griffiths was arrested on Monday, parts of Ms. Blamires’s body were found floating in the River Aire near Shipley, a town a few miles north of Bradford, and a woman’s head was found in a rucksack by the riverbank. The bodies of the two other women Mr. Griffiths is charged with murdering, Shelley Armitage, 31, and Susan Rushworth, 43, both said to be friends of Ms. Blamires, have not been found.

The Times said that according to neighbors, Mr. Griffiths was hauled from his apartment by the police and made to lie facedown at gunpoint before being led away, showing no emotion. “As he was taken away, he had the usual cold expression on his face,” one neighbor was quoted as saying. “There was no shock, surprise or emotion. The only thing he was bothered about was the police locking his door properly.”

What a treat and great pleasure to have Bill Widman come to Eurydice this evening!

Bill runs his own blog about the missing Debbie Key, is a frequent contributor here, and has lived in Carrboro with me for over 10 years:

We’ve never met!

When he and Joy walked back stage I had no idea who he was; my first reaction was “who’s this guy? He looks cool and weird!”

Attaboy Bill, thanks for coming.

The Nasty Interesting Man (I do have a life outside this blog, you know.) Kelly Farrow made the grass suit, which is devine.

This is where I’ve been in the last two months:

• Played Don Pedro in a touring company of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.
• Continued obligations to assemble City of Durham’s budget.
• Keep playing music… here and here.
• Spoke on victims issues in Vancouver.
• Currently playing Nasty Interesting Man /  Lord of the Underworld in Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice.

What a wild ride.

By JAMES DAO and DAN FROSCH