tko je ubio Theresa?

Cette dio vous donne Toute la série originale, Tko je ubio Theresa? En une stranici séparée. Avant de lire l'article quelques réflexions:

Tko je ubio Theresa? Započeti comme une série de trois nouvelles couraient que dans le journal Canadien National Post au plus de trois jours consécutifs à l'été 2002. Rédigé par Patricia Pearson les 10,000 Séries Mot de l'histoire était kriminal Qui kopljem la nouvelle Enquete sur la mort de Tereza Allore, et sur la reflexion peut être considérée comme ayant été un provokacija pour de nombreuses réformes sociales et la justice dans la province de Québec.

L'idée pour un article sur Thérèse était la mienne, et je m'approchai de Patricia Pearson pour l'écrire. J'avais été nevolje, que la mort de ma Soeur avait été laissé depuis suspens en tant d'années, et je me suis tourné à une Patricia (avec qui j'avais fréquenté le collège) pour une chronique voyage J'ai fait que revenir à la mort de Sa Scène Au Printemps 2002 cherchent des Réponses.

Foul Play n'était pas loin de mon esprit, mais l'idée d'un assassiner par un Preditor sexuelle été - Au moment de ma sonda autour de l'Estrie - très loin. Comme il est vite devenu evidentno que l'Estrie dans l'epoche 1970-eu un problème sérieux avec preditors sexuelle et la possibilité de meurtres en série Presente lui-même l'histoire započeti rapidement à prendre une vie propre.

Komentar cette nevjerojatan tous les moyens évidente est dans le Calendrier. L'histoire pour être Cree été publié à la mi-mai. C'est le moment où la plupart des Canadiens leur ont pris retraite à leur CHALET et pour dormir se détendre. Peut-être de certains des lumières predavanje d'été ... quelques recettes? La critique de livre? Et un Mystère de Lumière estivale. Quand il est devenu evidentno que nous étions prêts à laisser une tomber "bomba" dans le National Post rapidement promjene c'est la Strategije. L'histoire élargi été à déployer au modu série Au cours de trois jours, avec une partie de chaque Journée se terminant dans un hangaru falaise. Il de l'été déplacé arrière de Leasure - Sekcija život la page de couverture, "iznad tor".

Si j'avais été directement impliqués dans l'ensemble du napredak, il fallu attendre la dernière Semaine avant la que objavljivanje J'ai započeti interagir directement à le osoblje National Post (Patricia Pearson était donc et au CHALET injoignable!). Je me souviens d'articles en chef, nous avons discuté, ce que d'appeler la komad, et Combien de jouer jusqu'à l'angle tueur en série. Il y avait deux titres; Terezije, koji je ubio? et Who Killed Tereza? il odlučuje été avec d'aller WKT? Sur la pitanje de fokalizator sur un serijski ubojica, qui mon été appel. Je me souviens de la manchette sur le troisième Epizoda était "Points de preuve à un Serial Killer" et les rédacteurs National Post voulais m'assurer que j'étais à ça avec l'aise. J'ai été, principalement parce que cela signifierait de Nouveaux stanovnici de plus y Lisez à propos de Terezije.

Le premier versement été publié le 10 août 2002, l'anniversaire de ma mère. Après l'avoir lu mon père avec une ironie désabusée réfléchi ", nous avons toujours bien Su qu'un jour, Theresa ferait la Première page des journaux" .

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Ovo poglavlje daje vam cijeli originalne serije, Tko je ubio Theresa? U jednoj zasebnoj stranici. Prije čitanja članak neke misli:

Tko je ubio Terezije? Počeo kao serija od tri vijesti koje early in Canada's National Post novina tijekom tri uzastopna dana u ljeto 2002. Autor / la Patricia Pearson od 10.000 riječi u krimi seriji je bila priča da je ponovno pokrenuo istragu smrti Therese Allore, a na razmišljanje može se vidjeti da je rano katalizator za mnoge socijalne pravde i reforme u pokrajini Quebec.

Ideja za priču o Tereza bila moja, a ja sam prišao Patricia Pearson to napisati. Imao sam bio uznemiren da smrt moja sestra je ostala neriješena za toliko godina, pa sam okrenuo Patricia (s kojim sam pohađao koledž) do kroničnih put sam uzeo natrag na scenu svoje smrti u proljeće 2002 tražite odgovore.

Faul nije bio daleko od mog uma, ali ideja o ubojstvu od strane seksualna preditor je - u vrijeme moje sondiranje oko Quebec selo - daleko preuzeta. Kao što je ubrzo postalo jasno da Sherbrooke-Lennoxville području u kasnim 1970-ih imala ozbiljan problem sa seksualnom preditors, te mogućnost serijskih ubojstava predstavio sama priča brzo počeo da se na svojim životom.

Kako to sve nevjerojatnije načine očituje se u vrijeme. Priča je podešene na biti objavljeni sredinom kolovoza. Ovo je vrijeme kada većina Kanađani su u mirovini da vikend zemlji spavati i opustiti. Možda neki lagani ljetni čitanja ... neke recepte? Recenziji knjige? I svjetlo Summer misterija. Kada je postalo jasno da smo bili spremni da ispadne bomba National Post brzo promijenio strategiju. Priča je bila proširena da djeluju u serijske modne tijekom tri dana, i svaki dan je dio završio u litici vješalica. To je bio premješten iz stražnje Leasure - Život sekcija na naslovnoj strani, iznad puta.

Iako sam bio izravno uključeni u cijeli proces, nije bilo sve do konačnog tjedan dana prije objavljivanja da sam počeo djelovati međusobno izravno withNational Post osoblje (Patricia Pearson je bio na vikend i tako nedostižne!). Sjećam se glavni stavke mi je objašnjeno, kako nazvati komad, i koliko igrati se serijski ubojica kut. Postojale su dvije titule, koji je ubio Theresa? i Tko je ubio Tereza? odlučeno je da ide s WKT? Na pitanje da se fokusirate na serijskog ubojicu, koji je bio moj poziv. Sjećam naslov za treći nastavak je "dokazi ukazuju na serijskog ubojicu" i post urednici htjeli napraviti siguran da sam bio ugodno s tim. Bio sam, prije svega zato što sam novi to bi značilo bi više ljudi pročitati o Terezije.

Prva rata bio je objavljen 10. kolovoza, 2002, moja majka je rođendan. Nakon što je to čitanje moj otac wryly ogleda, "dobro smo znali da jednog dana, nekako Terezija bi naslovnici radova".

Tko je ubio Theresa
Patricia Pearson, National Post

10 kolovoz 2002

Kada 19-year-old Terezije Allore nestala iz škole, a zatim se okrenuo mrtav na zemlju usamljeni ceste, Quebec policija dovela obitelji vjeruju da je umrla od prekomjerne doze droge. Sada, 23 godina poslije, njezin brat Ivan Allore i National Post novinar Patricia Pearson sam proveo pet mjeseci istražuje Terezije nestanak. U tri dijela serije početak danas, Pearson otkriva priču o Terezije smrti, što je gotovo sigurno ubojstvo od strane serijski ubojica koji svibanj biti još uvijek na slobodi.

Mi smo skloni razmišljati o neriješenih misterija kao salon igru. No, to nije slučaj za svakoga. Za neke, poput John Allore, direktor riznice grada Durham, NC, tajna da se ne mogu riješiti je onaj koji čuva svoje srce iz popravak.

Dvadeset i tri godine nakon što je njegova sestra pronađena licem prema dolje u potoku u Quebecu u istočnoj gradića, kao što je tamo odbačeno smeće mimo stranac koji nikada nisu bili uhvaćeni, on ne može otkriti tajnu smrti. Netko, negdje, ne zna što se dogodilo Tereza Allore, sjajan 19-year-old CEGEP student koji je nazočio Regionalni Champlain College u Lennoxville. I da netko ne bi trebao posjedovati tajni tako, ono što djevojke zadnje riječi bile su, je li bila uplašena, ili u boli. To je tajna da pripada ljudima koji ju vole, i oni su oni koji ne znaju.

Kada ste živjeli s neodgovoran i drobljenje pitanje od 14 godina, kao što je Allore, postoji nekoliko taktika koje možete poduzeti. Možete ostati blizu sceni zločina, kao i Ivan brat, Andre, je, živi u Montrealu, nakon francuskom jeziku radova za bilo koji savjet koji bi mogli površina, requestioning originalni istraživači.

Možete lagano može zatvoriti knjigu jer znate odgovor neće donijeti tvoje dijete natrag, što je ono što su učinili njegovi roditelji.

Ili ga možete pokrenuti. Ivan Allore odlučio staviti udaljenosti, čak i nacionalne granice između sebe i prošlosti. On je preselio u New York, zatim u Houston, na Los Angeles, a na kraju i do Chapel Hill, NC, SAD oženio ženom koja nikad nije čuo za Lennoxville, Que., I nikada nije vidio pogled na njegova oca lice kada je identificiran Terezije ostaje.

Ali život je način lov withyou gore, i to je uhvaćen gore sa Allorein način toliko potpun da graniči na šaljiv. On je uzeo posao kao riznica menadžer u gradu Durhamu, a on i njegova supruga, Elisabeth, je imao dvije kćeri, a naselili osjetio dovoljno kupiti svoju prvu kuću, "gornjoj popravljač-" na prilično šumovitim putić. Jednog dana, manje od dva mjeseca nakon što su se preselili u, Državni ured za istrage, županijskih šerif i dva forenzičkih timova stigla im se na vratima s njuškalo psi. Oni su u potrazi za tijelo lokalne žene po imenu Debora Key, koji sumnja da su bili ubijeni u kući na prethodni vlasnik.

Allores promatrala kao policija skinut njihove septičke jame u potrazi za dijelovima tijela, a psi omeđeno oko imovine. Jedan pas napokon pokupila miris u puzati prostora ispod kuće. Bio je to trag žena, dovoljno da uzbuđuju pas, koji je započeo tempo i grebanje u bogatoj Karolina gline. Istražitelji wormed njihov put ispod podova i počelo kopanje. Oni su dobili oko pola metra prema dolje prije nego su shvatili je ona bila tamo, tamo mrtva vukao po njoj zarobljivač nakon nestajanja od centra grada Chapel Hill, ali ona mora imati jer je premješten. Svi koji je ostao je bio njen duh.

"Pa, to je samo velika krvava", rekao je Ivan mordantly Elizabeti. Kuća je sada kao uklet poput njihovih vlasnika.

Preko nadolazećim mjesecima, jer istražitelji čuvaju svoje tvrdoglavo traži za Debora Ključ, čak i dovođenje psihičkom s njom besmislen, samo u Americi televizijska ekipa u tow, John je počeo osjećati pozvani na akciju.

Što policija radili za Debora Ključ, shvatio je, on nikada nije učinio za svoju sestru. Njegov brat, Andre, je pokušao, i sve, ali i odustao. Nitko, nikada, ide istražiti zločin koji je njezine smrti. On je morao probati.

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U ožujku 2001, Ivan zovu me u Torontu. Mi smo bili u kontaktu off i on od sveučilišta, koji su srednju školu, a zatim Sweethearts oprezan prijatelji. Zadnje sam ga vidio u Los Angeles u 1995, bio sam istražuje serijska ubojstva slučaj za knjigu sam pisao, a ja naveo njegovu pomoć. Odvezli smo se oko Van Nuys dok Provjerio sam stanova i barova gdje se žena po imenu Carole Bundy i njenog dečka Doug Clark je oteo i ubio nekoliko žena. Sudbinu ne ljubav ironije.

Sad je bio njegov red da me zvati za pomoć. "Što da li vi sjećati se o tome što se dogodilo da mi je sestra?" On usudio.

I cast my mind natrag na jesen 1979, kada sam stigao u internat u Rothesay, NB, i upoznao John po prvi put. Njegova obitelj je preselila u New Brunswicku iz Montreala u ljeto '78, ostavljajući Terezije i njezin brat Andre iza završiti Quebec verziju razreda 12 i 13 na CEGEP u Lennoxville.

Sjećam se javi Terezije nestao iz njezina kampusa, te je pronađeno šest mjeseci kasnije u enmeshed topi led potoku pokraj polja kukuruza, prugast dolje joj grudnjak i gaćice.

Sljedeće jeseni, ja odvažio na područje ruševna obitelji s tipičnim bezbrižnost od 15-year-old. Ja još uvijek osjećam posramljen zbog toga, sve ove godine kasnije, koliko sam primijetio tišinu u kući, ali nije stvarno ih razumijem. Sjećam se slike Terezije, s njom Auburn kovrčavu kosu i tamne, zabavljeni oči. Njena osobnost - inteligentni, samostalni, duhovito - zasja kroz slike. Sjećam se spava u svojoj spavaćoj sobi kada sam dobio "vikend otići" iz škole, i primjećujući njezin planinarske čizme uredno poredanih po vratima ormara.

Sjećam Ivan mi govori svoju priču: kako je istražiteljima savjetovali Allores da je njihova kćer, neustrašivi djevojka koja se popeo i rock-nebo-preronjenjen, vjerojatno je predoziran na droge, a preuzete su od nje spavaonica do potoka po PANIČAN prijatelji. Bilo je govoriti o njoj gušenje na povraćanje, ili možda imaju alergične reakcije. Dva mjeseca nakon što je pronađeno njezino tijelo, Sûreté du Québec poslali svoje osobne stvari - joj novčanik, njoj gledati i naušnice - za obitelj. Čini se da, koliko Sûretéwas tiče, ona je bila pod izdvajali od riptide od 70-ih stranke kulture.

"Prije ili kasnije, netko će razgovarati", istražitelji ih je osiguran.

Ali za 23 godina, nitko nije rekao ni riječi.

Iz Sjeverne Karoline, John je pitao mene ako bih mogao napisati članak, nekako potaknuti da ta djeca - one imućan, srednje klase Kanadski djeca koja su bačena njihov prijatelj je leš - razbiti zavjere šutnje su navodno imali promatrane od 1978, i iznijeti račun Terezije sinoć.

Mislio sam o tome, ali iz drugačije perspektive nego što bi imao u 15 godina, kada sve odrasle rekao je istina.

"Ja ne kupuju teorije, Ivan. To nema smisla da mi je: "Ja sam se usudila. "Zašto bi oni skinu svoju odjeću?" On nije znao. U 1997, njegov brat, Andre, je kontaktirao nekoliko Terezije prijatelja u potrazi za istinom, a nitko nije bio u mogućnosti da mu pomogne.

Pitanja preden okolo u mom umu, kao što su u oba Andre i Ivana: "Zašto viraj joj tijelo u potoku, kada je nisu oni krivi da je umrla? Vidim ih pokušava da se distanciraju od njezine smrti, ali zašto joj sakriti? Zašto se ne joj se u bolnicu i ostavi na travnjak, ili da barem ostavi na travnjak i stanovanja, gdje je živjela? "

"Njena je novčanik pronađeno je nekoliko kilometara udaljen od njenog tijela", rekao je ponudio, slijedeći moj vlak misli.

"Dakle, oduzeta su joj odjeće i ID?" Oni su prijatelja koji je predoziran na droge i hladnokrvno, sustavno je pretvorena u Jane Doe.

Zašto?

Ivan je bio okupljanje datoteka razni bilješke i službene dokumente, uključujući i klimatske izvješća iz Kanade okoliš za Studeni, 1978. On me je poslao fotokopije. Kada je paket stigao, sjeo sam za mojim stolom blagovaonica s šalicu kave.

Pogledao sam izvještaj iz istražni sudac u Montrealu. Autopsija je maddeningly neuvjerljiv: "nasilne smrti neutvrđen prirode", mrtvozornik je obvezan zaključiti. Uz tijelo u stanju napredne razgradnje, patolog može isključiti bludgeoning, ubadanje, snimanje i organskih bolesti. Nije puno drukčije. Nije bilo moguće utvrditi da li je silovana. Rezultati toksikologija rad na gore i Terezije tijelo bili su negativni: nema dokaza ni recept ili nezakonitih droga je pronađena u njoj jetre, pluća ili drugih tkiva.

Zašto je hipoteza prekomjerne doze droge? Što je dokaz? Sjedio sam natrag u svoju stolicu, Musing. Istražitelji nisu zatvorena slučaju Terezije Allore, toliko su napustili tugovanje obitelji u New Brunswick uz hipotezu da učinkovito ih shamed.

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Ivan Allore i sam upoznao u Sherbrooke, Que., U ožujku 2002. Naš plan je bio da pregledate Terezije policije datoteka - pohranjeni daleko i skupljanje prašine u uredu Sherbrooke policije.

Sam očekivao da će Ivan nervozan olupina, ali on je sasvim suprotno. On je visok čovjek, vitko, visoko energičan. On je bio trčanje okolo Sherbrookeall dan bez kaput bez obzira na hladno, nosi samo svjetlo-plava pamučna džemper. Bilo je čak i jauntiness o njemu, kao da je osjetio ogroman olakšanje da je on konačno bio suočavanje njegovih demona. Njegov hotelska soba je bila puna withpapers, vijest isječci, prijenosna računala, svjetla i njegov krug-top miganje uz aparat za kavu.

On je iznenađenje za mene. "Bio sam samo tamo kod Champlain College razgovarate Gerald Cutting", rekao je, misleći na direktora CEGEP, koji je novoimenovani direktor studentske službe u jesen Terezije nestanak. "Rezanje mi je rekao da misli Sûreté put leđa in '79 koji je bio ubijen Terezije."

Moj čeljust odbačene. Izgledalo je nezamislivo da Sûreté glavni istraživač, Roka Gaudreault, mogli su napustili Allore obitelj sa dojam da je njihova kći je smrt bila nesretan slučaj, kad je on sam bio gonjenje osumnjičenih i razgovoru s Rezanje, s kojima istraživač je otišao u srednjoj školi -- o njegovoj teorije faul. Zašto je obitelj nije obaviješten?

Četrnaest godina nakon što je njegova sestra umrla, Andre Allore imao evidentirane umirovljeni Gaudreault dolje za kratko i neplodnim telefonski razgovor. Gaudreault ponovio teorije prekomjerne doze droge, ali inače je imao ništa za reći. "Imam utisak," Andre napisao u svoju bilježnicu, "da Gaudreault nisu mogli shvatiti zašto je to još uvijek gnjavi."

Kada sam stigao u Sherbrooke, Ivan je već bio u uredu Sûreté du Québec. Tjelesno Robert Theoret, zgodan, kovrčavu kose čovjek koji nisu propustili trik, bio je srdačan i budnim kao John pored nad dijelovima Terezije kriminala datoteke za sedam sati. Theoret je ukloniti iz datoteke - kao što smo kasnije utvrditi - popis dokaza, fotografija zločina, određene izjave svjedoka, Gaudreault završnom izvješću, i sve notacije o osumnjičenika, koji ostaju povjerljivi pod Kanade zakona o privatnosti.

Kada je prvi put da ih je napisao iz Chapel Hill u rano ljeto 2001, Sûreté ponudila Ivana širi pristup datoteci, već do ožujka, 2002, oni su se ograniči ono što je mogao vidjeti. Možda su bili osjećaj obrambeni, ili možda to bila standardna protokola. Oni sigurno nisu bili zabrinuti ugrožavanja njihovih istragu. John Theoret pitao ako on bi istražiti, s obzirom na objavu od rezanja da je njegova sestra je vjerojatno ubijen. Kako je istaknuo, Theoret je bila glatka i ljubazan, ali evinced malo interesa, ističući da je kratko-osoblje. "Imam mnogo slučajeva", rekao je on. "Zašto bih trebao istražiti ovaj slučaj?"

U redu, rekao je John. "Želim da ga istražiti sebe, onda. Što je Roka Gaudreault je konačan zaključak? "

Informacija je povlašten, Redarstvenik Theoret odgovorio.

U redu. Što o forenzičkih dokaza? Gdje su bili Terezije, grudnjak i gaćice, koje smo možda mogli testirati za DNA?

"Mi smo ih izbacila", rekao je Theoret. (Ostale detektivi smo govorili da ne bi mogla ponuditi razumne objašnjenje za uklanjanje dokaza u neriješenih zločina.)

"Imate li Gaudreault broj?" John ustrajao je, u kasnijim telefonski poziv Theoret. Želio je pitanje umirovljeni istražitelj.

"On ne želi razgovarati s tobom", odgovorio je Theoret, kao da su bili Allore dosadan novinar iz National Enquirer.

"Sûreté ne vole biti izuzet," provedbe zakona kasnije objasnio je izvor. I oni su bili osporio. John zadržao pravnik i dokumentirane Freedom of Information Zahtjev. Odgovor tromo wended putu natrag iz pokrajinskih dužnosnika: On je mogao vidjeti njegov brat Andre izjavu od studenog, 1978. To je bilo sve.

Reći da je osjetio teškom položaju Ivan Allore je nepotpuno. Tko posjeduje tajne za mlade žene smrti? Policajaca i razbojnici, navodno.

Nosonja članovi obitelji: Butt out.

Mi smo imali neprilika. Sûreté je nenaklonjen istražiti Terezije smrti, ali ne bi otkriti svoje nalaze od prije 23 godine. Bez pristupa ključnim dijelovima svoje datoteke, Ivan nije znao gdje početi. On je bio samo jedan tip - računovođa - koji su živjeli stotinama kilometara daleko. Bio sam bivši novinar zločin. Oboje smo imali male djece, posao, život ...

Sjedili smo u hotelskom baru te noći sa John brata, Andre, i odlučile ujediniti naše resurse: Andre prethodne istrage i pedantan primjećuje da je čuva, moj zločin novinarstvo pozadini, John talent za sječe analizu. "Mi možemo učiniti", rekao mi jedni druge.

Taj posjet tijekom vikenda kako bi Sherbrookemarkedthe početka pet mjeseci istrage ubojstva.

Sljedećeg jutra, Ivan i ja se popeo u najam automobila i odvezli iz Sherbrooke jugoistoku do Lennoxville, 15 minuta trknuti Rue Belvidere i na to Highway 143, koje smo kasnije će otkriti je bio kritičan dio puzzle.

Lennoxville je prilično grada u vožnji od Jean Charest, punjene withgabled, klapa kuće i mama-i-pop trgovine. Champlain College sjedi na njenom rubu pored starijeg i mnogo statelier Bishop's University, iz kojeg se iznajmljuje nekim objektima. Usred brežuljaka istočne gradića i bujna okolnih poljoprivrednih površina, CEGEP - koji je osnovan 1967 - bio bi lijep da prisustvuju mjesto svoje konačne godine u srednjoj školi.

Osim ako, kao što je Theresa Allore, jednom se dogodilo da će doći u krajem kolovoza 1978. Tijekom prethodnih desetljeća, Champlain College's upis popeo na više od 1000 studenata. Dužnosnici su suočeni stambene krize. Planovi su u tijeku za izgradnju drugog spavaonica, ali u međuvremenu, kao stop-gap mjera, dvije zgrade su naprasito iznajmljenih u maleni uzgoj selu Compton, 20 kilometara od škole.

Udaljenosti od domu je već izazvalo kontroverzu među studentima, kao i Ivan i ja naučio čitajući Champlain student novine iz tog doba, Touchstone. Učenici su bili gunđanje o shuttle autobuse koji su bili pod uvjetom kao jedino sredstvo za prijevoz do i od dorms. Ako su propustili autobusom iz Lennoxville, oni su bili dužni platiti za bilo 20 km vožnje taksijem, ili stopirati. Studentski priručnik pruža kratak popis hitchhiking dos i Don'ts.

Odvezli smo se dolje jug Autocesta na 143, a zatim krenuli prema istoku do Compton dolje 147, dva traka crna-top da je čak i sada je neosvijetljen, ruralni sporedan put navijanje svoj put preko brda i dolina u sredini nigdje. Ona mora imati klobučina zastrašujuće za tinejdžere koji žive daleko od doma za prvi put. U veljači 1978, prije zimu Terezije stigao, Touchstone je izvijestio da Champlain student bio žrtva pokušaja silovanja. Nekoliko drugih napada su izvijestili da je semestar. Učenici su bili uznemiren. Female students, rekao je da su se bojali da hodaju sami, i prepala se stopirati. "Hoće li netko imati da bi silovao", jedna djevojka je napisao, "prije nego policija zaustavi shrugging off problem?"

Nova rezidencija se gradi bliže kampus pala kasni, međutim, i Champlain osoblje najavio je u proljeće 1978 da će morati "pokrenuti Compton opet." Urednici u Touchstone je užasnut. "Bio sam bijesan," jedan je napisao, "po samozadovoljan način na koji sudbina više od dvije stotine novih studenata bilo tako lako šalju."

Više od polovice studenata raščetvoren u Compton bile mlađe od 18 godina. Imali su dvoje članove osoblja na mjestu, 25-year-old imenom Jeanne Eddisford, a bivši osnovne škole pod nazivom Stuart paun. Obje spavao u King's Hall, razbacan Victorian Mansion koji je nekoć služio kao djevojke boarding school. Ni naseljen Gillard Kuća, čučanj, co-ed cigla spavaonicu pokraj vrata. Nitko provedena provjera sobu. Studenti su bili potaknuti da svoje obroke i da se kao nezavisni moguće.

To je bio optimističan eksperiment u slobodan život, ali što to znači, u biti, bilo je 240 učenika srednjih škola su živjeli u izoliranim, slabo osvijetljenim prostor bez adekvatnog prijevoza ili djelotvoran nadzor. "Tu je definitivno nešto krivo u Compton," Touchstone editorialized. "Stuart Paun je vrlo rijetko vidjeti na Gillard kuća, od kojih je novoimenovani direktor."

Rezultat je potpuno predvidljiva. "Za većinu dječaka i djevojčica, to je prvi put daleko od kuće," jedan stanovnik Comptona rekao Touchstone. "Ne postoje ograničenja, bez curfews, a pogotovo ne roditelji. Oni idu divlje ".

Co-ed stranaka featuring pivo, lonac i LSD-a bili su česti dovoljno da noćni stražar za Compton domu odrasli hranjen gore. Nakon što se suočava Paun o "problem droga", bez uspjeha, on je napustio u gađenje, navodi se u priopćenju koje je kasnije dao Sûreté du Québec. Dvije škole dužnosnici, Doug Macauley, direktor studentske službe, i Joe Gallagher, pomoćnik direktora studentskih službi i savjetovanje, iznenada je podnio ostavku iz Champlain oko tog vremena. Gallagher je rekao samo da je njegova pozicija postala "strukturalno manom", što ga čini nemogućim za njega: "ostvariti svoje ciljeve." Gallagher dalje rekao Touchstone se nada problema vidio na kampusu će se riješiti, a da su oni u poziciji da djelovati na njih znao što su.

Jesu oni se odnose na Compton stanovanja, što činiti u opasnosti od predenje izvan kontrole?

John i ja stajali u foajeu King's Hall, Victorian ljetnikovac u kojem paun i Eddisfordslept, a gdje je moja majka nekad boravio kao škola-učenik u 1940. To je sada gostionica, s gostima scurrying leđa i naprijed prošlost stol hrast prijem kao što smo gledali okolo, izvan mjesta i izvan vremena, razmatrajući carpeted stubište gdje je Tereza Allore je zadnji put vidio.

- - -----------------------

Petak 3. studenoga, 1978, bio je slavno blago za kasnu jesen u istočnoj gradića. Theresa ostavila je soba na drugom katu Gillard Kuća rano tog jutra i pešice travnjak u dugim, bež džemper-kaput, nosio deminutiv kineski par papuča, čarapa i ne teče zeleni šal da je njezina majka ju je dao za njezin 19. rođendan.

Pridružila joj prijateljice, Jo-Anne Laurie i Caroline Greenwood, u prilično blagovaonicom na King's Hall, gdje se sunce prenosi kroz francuski vrata. Ona je sama tost, možda, ili kajgana. Oni čavrljao o njihovim planovima vikend, a onda tri djevojke se ukrcali na njihov shuttle bus i razdijeliše načine na glavnom kampusu da prisustvuju njihovim petak nastavu.

Theresa je bio odličan učenik, znatiželjni, kreativni i oštri, rušenje ravno-Kao što se u umjetnosti, kao i fizika. Ona nije bila toliko sklon da "idu divlje", prema svojim prijateljima, jer već je živio daleko od kuće za godinu dana, radeći u tvornici, a ona je skijaški dijeli stan s djevojke u PointeClaire, Que. Ona je bila sretna da se ponovno uključenje joj brz um. Ona je plaćena malo pozornost na kampus stranaka, jer je ona bila u ljubavi withayoung čovjeka koji bijaše izišao Zapad za rad. Govorila mu na telefon koristeći spavaonica je nekoliko kvartala. Ja sam je zamisliti s njom noge uza zid, uvijanje joj prste u telefonski kabel, način na koji sam naviknut, murmuring i nasmijan.

Theresa je često govorio da joj roditelji, kojeg je zadnji vidio manje od mjesec dana prije dana zahvalnosti vikenda, kada se proslavila je svoj 19. rođendan u njihovoj novoj kući u Saint John. Valjanog u magle iz zaljeva Fundy na dan ona i Andre su da lete natrag u Montrealu. Marilyn Allore sjeća se njihov let otkazan. Ona i njezin suprug ih je dovezao do željezničke stanice, umjesto, kako za djecu bili su zabrinuti da se vratim u školu za ispite.

"Sjećam se da je jumbo plakat u željezničke stanice oglašavanje Mexico", Marilyn mi je rekao, "i rekao sam Terezije," Što god učinili, ne pobjeći u Meksiko. Budući da možete dobiti uhićen zbog droge ima i takve stvari. " Sjećam se da je. "Zastala je, što se odrazilo. "I sjećam se da su sišli Terezije zadržao vlak. Ona mora imati ispasti da vlak pet puta, da nam se grle zbogom. "

"Da li je to neobično za nju?"

"Jako." She chuckled. "Sjećam se ide doma i osjećaj jako sretni, i još razmišljam nešto nije pravo. To je teško objasniti. Bio sam stajala na sudopera gleda kroz prozor, a ja sam samo imao osjećaj, taj osjećaj sreće, te osjećaj da se nešto oko je za promjenu. "

Naravno, ona pamti te detalje: Moje srce pauze slušajući ju na telefon, njezin glas mirno svjetlo, ali staložen, oprezan, jer ona je sama steeled za podsticanje tih voda. Sjeća se magla, panoa, zbogom, sve, jer je to posljednji put je ikad vidjela svoje dijete.

- - --

Theresa je planirao provesti vikend od 3. studenoga radi na knjizi izvješće o zen budizma za nju psihologije klasa. Ona je odbio poziv za odlazak na njena prijateljica Caroline Greenwood's family farm. U vrijeme večere, poznanik naletio na nju u dvorani blagavaonom Champlain na kampusu. Terezija bummed cigaretu, a djevojke pristao sastati se naknadno u Gillard Kuća za preslušavanje novog albuma. (Što je igranje te godine? Postanak, Alan Parsons Project. Što Terezije slušao, svog malog brata, Ivana, pokupila na i kasnije upoznao mene.)

Terezija propustili 6:15 shuttle bus. Drugi jedan nije bio zakazan za studente vanjska strana to Compton do 11 Da li je ona sama pozicija na rubu šljunčana Highway 143, osvijetljen street lamp, a isplaziti palcu? Ona je neustrašivi o hitchhiking, kao što bih bio u toj dobi. Odrasti voljena i da je najbolji na svijetu.

Tko je ubran gore? Dosad nitko nije došao naprijed reći da petite riđokos u bež džemper-kaput popeo na njihov automobil. Ona nije došao natrag na selu Compton. Prijatelj po imenu Sharon Buzzee je vidio na stepenicama u King's Hall - u kojoj učenici gledali televiziju, fiksne grickalice i navodno studirao - oko 9 sati na noć od 3 studenog, kratko prije nego što je planira nad glavom Gillard Kuća i slušati evidenciji.

Perhaps she was on her way up to the second floor to visit her brother Andre, who wasn't in. Did she descend that central staircase once again, walk through the vestibule and out onto the lawn? Did she return to her room in Gillard House? Or turn the other way, and walk down the circular driveway and set off along Highway 147 toward Compton Village?

These questions bob up and down in the mind like horses on a carousel, they do not still just because the police lost interest. This summer, Marilyn Allore walked from King's Hall along the gravelled side of the highway until she picked up the sidewalk in Compton, passing the faded clapboard houses with people staring suspiciously out of windows, the handful of stores, walking along in silence, a quiet, graceful woman whom I shall always picture with her luxuriant black hair swept into a chignon. Wordlessly retracing a possible route that her daughter took in her little Chinese slippers, sporting that long flowing scarf like Isadora Duncan, before vanishing thereafter into darkness.

Champlain College, it appears, did not notice that one of its students was missing for close to a week. Theresa's friends began to worry much sooner — as they returned from their respective weekend adventures, and knocked on her door to gossip with her, only to find her absent. None of them were confident enough to raise an alarm. “Theresa didn't need anyone to worry about her,” Greenwood later stated. “She always told us not to be her parents,” Laurie said. They didn't wish to seem nosy or neurotic. But when she still hadn't appeared on Tuesday, they kept checking around, telephoning friends of hers in Montreal, poking through her room for clues. Laurie and her boyfriend, Ian Catteril, opened Theresa's locker and tried to glean from its unassuming contents where she had gone.

On Friday, Nov. 10, her brother overcame his own fear of “checking up on Theresa,” and called home. His parents were more confident in their judgement. They immediately notified the Lennoxville Police, and jumped into their car to drive westward from Saint John.

The cold month that followed was one scene among many in a parent's worst nightmare. Few people offered to help the Allores. This was not like the recent searches for Chandra Levy in Washington, DC, or Elizabeth Smart in Salt Lake City, Utah. It was more nearly the experience of the thousands of families in NorthAmerica whose missing children are neither famous enough nor young enough to compel wide sympathetic attention. No one organized a search of the farmland and woods surrounding Compton, where Theresa would lie one kilometre from Gillard House through the winter. Robert Allore went knocking on doors, a desperate, frantic father, asking everyone everywhere, in shops and houses and farms and rectories throughout the Eastern Townships, if they had seen his daughter. People merely shook their heads and shrugged.

The police were reluctant to expend much effort on a probable runaway, who they imagined had hitchhiked directly from Lennoxville to points unknown. Still, Detective Leo Hamell of the Lennoxvillepolicetook a picture of Theresa to show border guards in Vermont. He checked with her old roommates in Montreal. He gathered statements from students in Compton but didn't search the premises.

Marilyn Allorerecallsthat he was compassionate, but she thought he might be somehow out of his depth. Corporal Roch Gaudreault of the Sûreté, who would later become the lead investigator, told Robert Allore that there was little they could do, that Theresa's body would probably turn up when the snow melted. The comment, Allore said later, was like “a nail between the eyes.”

Meanwhile, at Champlain College, Stuart Peacock, Director of Residence, did not make himself known to the Allores. Comptroller Jean Luc Gregoire continued to bill the Allores for Theresa's tuition and board, with interest and penalties accruing.

Campus Director Bill Matson suggested to the family that Theresa may have had problems.

"Dr. Matson,” Robert Allore wrote in notes he made at the time, “gave me the theory that Theresa may have had lesbian tendencies. He said Theresa, if found, would need psychiatric treatment, by court order if necessary. He asked us if Theresa was an adopted child.” (A question that Leo Hamell reiterated.) “He said he had indications that Theresa may have gone somewhere where disturbed people go (and) advised us to go back to New Brunswick, get back to normal and wait for something to happen.”

Instead, the Allores hired a private detective.

Robert Beullac of the Bureau D'Investigation Metropol arrived on the scene in late November, and immediately searched for physical evidence at GillardandKing's Hall. He noted that Theresa's purse was still in her room, as were her hiking boots, which she invariably took with her when she left the village overnight. He uncovered the fact that Sharon Buzzee had seen Theresa at King's Hall, thus unravelling Matson'stheorythat she had hitchhiked off into the wild-blue yonder to pursue her lesbian tendencies with disturbed people.

Oba Dr. Matson i detektiv Hamell podrazumijeva da Buzzee izjava nije vjerodostojna, kao što je rekao Buzzee Ivan Allore ove godine. Hamellhadalready nagađali u lokalnim medijima kako Terezije svibanj imati na čelu off to Vermont, te u prosincu, jedan mjesec nakon što je nestala, počeo je nagađati da je bila uključena u droga. Sherbrookewas obilat withdrug dilera u to vrijeme. To je samo ogroman skok u logici zaključiti da je studiozan djevojka koji je stigao u području šest tjedna ranije je bio udaren od strane droga suradnik.

Pa zašto je policija razmišlja na taj način? Da li je funkcija vremena, kako bi obuhvatiti mlade žene u svojoj nestanak? Ili su bili drugi faktori u igri?

Zanimljivo je da smo otkrili da je ranije u godini Terezije nestanka, mladić je pronađen mrtav od izlaganja na golf teren, nakon što je postavio tamo, navodno, za nekoliko mjeseci, nakon lutanja off pijan od biskupa's University pub. Private Investigator Beullac je utvrdio da u 3. studenog 1978, dvije Gillard Kuća studenata odvedeni su u bolnicu nakon što imbibing opojan spoj LSD i napiti.

Jedno je postaviti licem prema dolje na travnjak poslije ponoći, a prevozio do Sherbrooke strane nezadovoljnih noćnog čuvara.

Added to the reported sexual assaults of the previous year, the shuttle controversy and a housing crisis, and rumoured affairs between teachers and students, one would be naïve to think that Champlain had no concerns about its reputation. Gerald Cutting wrote a letter to John Allorethissummer, stating that the college had done all it could to assist with the search for his sister.

Perhaps it had, but Suzanne DeRome, who was on the College board, recalls that the disappearance and death of Theresa Allore was not discussed board meetings. And Sharon Buzzee remained unaware that Theresa was dead until someone mentioned it to her in the 1990s. Another woman I spoke with whose husband taught at Champlain in those years was shocked to learn – in 2002 – that a student had died.

No one from Champlain sent the Allores a note of condolence, as John Allore pointed out in a letter to Cutting. There were no candle-light vigils and no posters. It was almost as though Theresa had vanished without a trace.

Sitting in my office late one night, leafing through Robert Allore's notebook from that time, I came upon a page where he'd jotted down what Sharon Buzzee saw at King's Hall. It was dated December 4th, 1978. The notation was terse: “Bottom of main stair case. One foot on bottom step. Going up.”

Beneath this he added, with heart-sinking poignancy, “7:15 pm — Broke down.”

My God, of course. I have a daughter now. I understand the hunger for that foot on the stair, the hunger to reach for it, to pull it to safety, and to know about where it stepped next.

Unsatisfied with the way the police and the college were handling the case, the Allores hired a private investigator, Robert Beullac, of Bureau Metropol. Mr. Beullacmanagedto retrace Theresa's movements a week before she went missing. She had gone hiking with the assistant director of her residence, Jeanne Eddisford. She had gone to a Halloween party on the Lennoxvillecampusat Champlain College, and to a birthday party for her brother Andre. She had hitchhiked to Montreal to stay overnight with her friends. She had attended all of her classes. She was neither depressed nor stressed out. Life was normal.

In the absence of any other evidence, however, the police knew that on the night she disappeared, some students at GillardHouse, an off-campus residence in nearby Compton where Theresa lived, had taken LSD. What if the kids doing acid had invited Theresa to join them? the police speculated. What if she had had an allergic reaction, or the acid had been laced with something more toxic? What if she had overdosed? Would the kids have panicked and hidden her body, terrified of being caught out?

But it was all speculation. Theresa liked testing her limits. “She was into extreme sports before they became a trend,” as her brother John put it. But she wasn't the type to get whoo-whoo drunk, or party overboard. In a statement to the Sûreté du Québec, her friend Jo-Anne Laurie said that Theresa occasionally smoked pot, but “wasn't into drugs.”

Other students echoed this view. The students who had done acid insisted, in their statements, that they hadn't even seen her that night.

Still, you never knew about these things. What if she had yielded to a sudden impulse and dropped acid that night? The possibility wormed its way into the Allores' mind. You never know what your kids are really like. They remain miraculously strange — of you, but not of you.

This was particularly true for parents who had grown up in the Forties and Fifties and were then faced with the alien landscape of sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll. And it was reinforced by things the Champlain College officials suggested to the Allores. Kids today. Deviant. Lesbian. Into drugs. You never knew.

Or did you?

Christmas came and went with no news of Theresa.

Officials at the college, it appeared, had a hard time coping with the disappearance. In January, the director of Gillard House, where Theresa lived, quietly resigned, citing “personal reasons.” His replacement, Jeanne Eddisford, later confessed to John Allorethatshe had felt overwhelmed and alone in her job that winter, with240 adolescents almost hysterical with anxiety over the missing student. In January, she called in the Lennoxville Police and a number of students were carted away for marijuana possession. At the same time, a neighbouring residence, King's Hall, was shut down, and all the students — including Theresa's brother Andre — were herded over to the dorm where Theresa had lived. Rumours and anxieties flared.

On Valentine's Day, 1979, Robert and Marilyn Allore and their younger son, John, were having dinner around their pretty glass dining table at their house in Saint John, NB, knives and forks clattering gently, the conversation quiet, when a piece of plaster suddenly loosed itself from the ceiling, and fell to the table in the shape of a heart. I remember John telling me about this when I later sat at the same table for dinner. We had met at boarding school and had begun to date, and John told me how he knew then — how they all knew, in that instant — that Theresa wasn't missing. She was dead.

Her body was found on Good Friday, April 13, 1979. To this date, her death remains unexplained.

- – —————————————————————————-

Twenty-three years later, John Allore, who was now living in North Carolina and working as treasury manager of the city of Durham, called to enlist my help in trying to get to the bottom of his sister's death. In March of this year, we met in Sherbrooke to review the evidence. One morning, we pulled out of the driveway at Gillard House, where Theresa had lived for six weeks before she disappeared and, for a minute or two, followed Hwy. 147 leading out of Compton before turning south on Compton Station, a local concession road — unpaved and unlit in the '70s — that cuts south between acres of corn fields in the direction of Vermont.

In early spring, the corn fields are dark and stubbled, still covered in tattered strips of snow. The landscape would have looked virtually identical on the day that a muskrat trapper, walking along the edge of the road, saw Theresa's body, partially submerged in ice and caught in the forked branch of a tree.

We slowed the car and pulled over to the shoulder on the right. Here was a very small creek, flowing toward the road and then away from it in a U shape, necessitating a small bridge where the water trickled underneath before seeping into the field on the other side of the road. The water was so shallow that the creek bed would be dry in high summer. In the autumn, it would have been little more than a ditch.

We stepped into the mud and matted corn stalks, and followed the creek away from the car. John stopped where the creek curved. He pointed. “You could drive to this point in November, no problem. There are no street lights on that road, no houses around. Nothing. You could leave her right here.” He was gesturing calmly toward the ground. “The farmer who owned this land told the Sûreté that the water rose eight to 10 feet that spring. She got caught in the spring runoff and floated toward the bridge.”

John stood there in his cheerful blue cotton sweater, musing. Did his big sister come here, to this bend in the creek, in her bra and underwear? Walking barefoot through the corn? Or was she hauled out of a car that turned off the road and juddered along the bank of the creek, driven by someone who knew exactly where he was, how invisible he would be?

Where were her clothes? Where were those Chinese slippers? Why had the police found women's clothing in a garbage bag 300 feet from the body, clothes that didn't belong to Theresa?

If she died here, why weren't her clothes here?

We stood there staring for the longest time, as if the earth itself would reveal a memory, as if we could will ourselves to see what happened in this quiet place of mud and corn stalks.

Later, John e-mailed me: “I keep seeing her walking barefoot across the corn stubble.”

He sees other things too, as his family does. They are haunted by dreams, and images. John was shaken to the core by the drowning face in water that he saw in the movie Night of the Hunter.

He remembers hitchhiking with Theresa along the freeways through Montreal. He envies his older brother, Andre, who has more memories of her, more moments to retrieve and to contemplate: a peculiar kind of sibling rivalry. Once, he went to hear James Ellroy read from My Dark Places, the famous crime author's memoir of never knowing how his own mother was killed. Afterward, the two of them talked, bonding in the rarity of their misery.

- – -

For a time, John and I chased the ghosts of whispered suspects, pondering the teachers at Champlain (a possible affair?), considering the students, as Andre and Robert Allore had done. We tracked the movements of a sex murderer newly arrested on Montreal's South Shore. We were committing the classic mistake of novice investigators. “Work from the evidence,” a homicide detective I know advised me. “Never work from the suspects.”

I phoned an acquaintance in Washington, DC, a profiler named Kim Rossmo who directs research at a criminological think-tank called the Police Foundation. Originally from Vancouver, Rossmo was a beat cop who earned his doctorate from Simon Fraser University by pioneering a technique called geoprofiling, that maps the local pathways of serial offenders. His technique –and the software he developed — is now used by the RCMP, the FBI, and Scotland Yard.

Rossmo became famous in Canada for arguing a serial killer was behind the disappearances of dozens of prostitutes in BC long before his superiors conceded those vanishings were linked. His arguments ultimately led police to undertake the ghoulish dig at a pig farm in Port Coquitlam, BC, which allegedly continues to yield human remains to this day.

I described to Rossmo what had happened to Theresa, how she had been found, and the theory of her death the police had proposed — the overdose and the panicking friends. He questioned me carefully and then said: “The theory doesn't fit.”

“Why not?”

“Because she was found in her bra and panties. What you've described appears to be a sex murder.”

“But the pathologist didn't find any evidence of rape.”

“That doesn't mean anything. He could have used a condom. He could have had a deviance that didn't include intercourse.”

I nodded, and followed his logic. Perhaps the assailant had forced her into oral sex. I thought about something I read in the autopsy report, how Theresa still had 300 centimetres of “stomach contents” when she died, meaning that she had not thrown up. Yet traces of vomit had been found in her throat.

Had she gagged? On what? On the man who was assaulting her, or because of the way she was dying?

John sent Theresa's autopsy report to a pathologist, and had it re-analyzed. Was it possible that she had been strangled, we wanted to know?

“Yes,” he said, “it is possible.” This was the kind of case, he added, where police work was vital to solving the crime.

- – -

If Theresa Allorewasmurdered on the night she vanished, on Nov. 3, 1978, the question that her brother John and I asked ourselves now was: where? How, we wondered, could Theresa have been killed at her student residence without anybody noticing? This was a problem with all of the theories.

How could she have died of a drug overdose without any witnesses? There were students milling about everywhere that evening. There was a night watchman outside. How could someone have laboriously stuffed her body into a car and dumped her one kilometre away?

We re-examined the buildings, and then we re-read the original statements. Then, suddenly, I got it. Theresa had bummed a smoke from Josie Stephenhorst, a fellow student, at 6 pm on the evening of Nov. 3.

The week before, according to private investigator Beullac, she had turned up at the Entre Deux restaurant in Compton to buy Player's Light cigarettes from the vending machine. I phoned Andre Allore to ask if Theresa was a regular smoker. She was, he said.

The restaurant was a quarter of a mile down Hwy. 147 from her residence. A quick walk on a warm, dark night. Maybe she left her residence and went to the restaurant in Compton to buy cigarettes before meeting up with her friends to listen to records.

That's why no one heard her scream. She went out on to the unlit highway with nothing but her wallet, and on the dark stretch of road before the sidewalks of Compton village begin, she met someone who stole her away.

That someone was driving. And with Theresa in the car, he doubled back, past her residence, and turned left onto the concession road at Compton Station where he left her.

Once we had established the possibility that Theresa was out on the highway, we could think about the assailant's route. Panicking students, for instance, would have returned to Gillard House where Theresa lived, or perhaps to a student residence in Lennoxville. But Theresa's wallet was found on a road that leads directly into the city of Sherbrooke. The Sûreté du Québec, actually, had never mentioned to the Allores that a farmer found the wallet on his property one week after Theresa's body turned up, on the southside of Macdonald Road, a kilometer north of where she disappeared. They had simply handed it back to the family two months later, on the afternoon that Roch Gaudreault, the chief investigator in the case, had told Robert Allore that someone, eventually, would talk.

It was Andre Allore who later determined where his sister's wallet was found. As someone who had lived in the area and completed his schooling in Sherbrooke, Andre knew Chemin Macdonald was a back door route into Sherbrooke — a concession road that locals used to bypass Lennoxville if they were heading north from the villages in Compton and Stanstead Counties.

Chemin Macdonald comes off Hwy. 143 before you get to Lennoxville, and runs steeply uphill past a few houses and farms before becoming Rue Belvidere, a boulevard that takes you straight into south Sherbrooke. Whoever left Theresa Alloreon the side of Compton Station did not return to Compton, or head into Lennoxville. They drove up to Sherbrooke.

Zašto?

If you follow Rue Belvidere into the city, you come within a block of the intersection of two streets in a working-class neighbourhood of south Sherbrooke: Rue Union and Rue Craig. And it was at this intersection, John Allore and I learned, that a 10-year-old girl named Manon Dubé had vanished on a Friday evening in January, 1978. That was just nine months before Theresa disappeared.

Manon had been walking with her eight-year-old sister, Chantal, to their little house on nearby Bienville Street. Chantal ran ahead, because she was cold.

She last saw Manon in a salmon-pink toque and blue snowsuit, walking behind her across the icy yard of Saint-Joseph Elementary School. The girls were within 500 yards of their house, but Manon did not make it home. Her body was found on Good Friday, 1978, lying face-down in a creek near Kingscroft Road in the village of Ayer's Cliff, dumped six kilometres east of where Theresa Allore's body was found at Compton Station.

To get to the creek from where Manon was last seen, you would drive down Rue Belvidere, across Chemin Macdonald, and south on Hwy. 143 — the exact route that Allore's assailant took when he disposed of her wallet.

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Manon Dubé's autopsy, like Theresa Allore's, revealed no determinate cause of death, for she was equally decomposed and there was no lasting evidence of trauma: no bone fractures or bullet wounds. Except for a superficial gash in her forehead, which may have occurred post-mortem as she was transported in the trunk of a car or rolled into the creek, the reason for Manon's death remained a mystery.

The Sherbrooke Municipal Police theorized Manon had been struck by a car and the panicked driver drove her body to the creek. The case was never solved.

I explained the hit-and-run theory to Kim Rossmo, an expert in serial crime and the pioneer of a technique called geographical profiling. Rossmo, formerly of Vancouver and now head of a criminological think-tank in Washington, DC, called the theory bizarre, and reminded me of the “least-effort principle” in criminology.

Criminals minimize their effort. If they hit, they run. They do not stop, gather up the body, lift it into their vehicle, drive it several kilometres, drag it through the woods in deep snow and dump it in a creek. That would be what you call “most effort.”

Last year, Chantal Dubé, now an adult, demanded that her sister's case be reinvestigated. The detective who took on the job, Patrick Villmeuin of Sherbrooke Municipal Police, was appalled to discover the evidence — as in the Allore case — had been tossed out.

John and I began to look more closely at newspaper stories. The family's hired private detective, Robert Beullac, who had remained bothered by his inability to solve Theresa's death, sent us a clipping about the case of Louise Camirand — the third unsolved death of a petite, dark-haired female near Sherbrookewithin an 18-month period.

Camirand was 20 years old in 1977, and worked part-time in the archives of a Sherbrooke hospital on Portland Street while she prepared for her wedding in May. On the evening of March 19, she left her home on Bryant Street — several blocks north from where Manon Dubé disappeared — and headed to the variety store at the intersection of Rue King and Jacques Cartier Boulevard. Then she vanished.

On Friday, March 24, Camirand's nude body was found in a snowdrift along McDonald Road, a dead-end street in the countryside near the village of Magog.

This time, because the body had barely decomposed, the pathologist was easily able to determine the cause of death. Camirandhad been raped and strangled. A military boot lace had been tied around her neck. Her pants and suedejacket were left beside her body, but there was no sign of her blouse or undergarments. Her purse was never recovered. According to an uncle, Camirand was a member of the Army Reserves.

Eighteen months after her murder, and two days after Theresa Allore disappeared, two young men walking along a wooded road between Magog and Austin came across a pair of woman's slacks and a shirt, draped across a log. When Theresa was reported missing some days later, the men called Detective Leo Hamell, who went over to investigate. The clothes could no longer be found.

I checked Hamell's notes, which John had copied from his sister's file, and studied my map of the Eastern Townships. The road where the young men had seen the women's slacks and shirt was Rue Giguere. It is the only road that intersects the narrow McDonald Road, where Camirand was dumped.

I telephoned Kim Rossmo with a burgeoning suspicion.

Experience has taught Rossmo to be prudent and highly skeptical. “First, you have to confirm that it's a cluster of homicides,” he said. “You need to know how many female stranger murders there are, on average, in the Sherbrooke area. You need to confirm this as an unusual cluster.”

I telephoned around. I hit the books. Murder in the Sherbrookeregion is — not surprisingly — quite rare. This small city and its rural environs have an average of two homicides every year, withoccasional spikes to four or five, largely due to the presence of bike gangs. In 1978, there were 42 murders in all of Quebec. Of these, only a tiny fraction were sex murders. Not that they didn't grab headlines, but ironically, it was the US cases the Canadian media sensationalized that year. In 1978, the Hillside Stranglers were murdering young women in Los Angeles, while John Wayne Gacy was arrested in Chicago for the killings of 33 boys, and Ted Bundy was preying upon young co-eds in Seattle.

In Canada, over the period from 1974 to 1986, sexual homicides accounted for 4% of all homicides. Fifty-seven of these murders occurred in Quebec, or roughly four per year. Montreal and its south and north shores accounted for the lion's share, as one would expect. I'm talking about a lion's share of four.

Three dead females dumped on roadsides in the Sherbrooke region within 18 months of one another may, unaccountably, have failed to generate headlines. But in the context of those Quebec statistics, it was almost certainly “a cluster.”

Rossmo was sufficiently suspicious to have me draw up a map, marking the sites of the abductions and the bodies. He wanted to see what the geographic connections were. I sent my map to Washington and while I awaited his report I ruminated about Theresa's wallet.

The wallet bothered me. I found it weirdly coincidental that the wallet would be found one week after the body, even though climate reports told me snow didn't fall in Sherbrooke that year until December. Why did it lie undetected through November and why was it found where it was on April 20, 1979?

John Allore went home to New Brunswick and at my urging examined the wallet.

It was a Buxtonwallet, cherry-red, which his parents had given to Theresa one Christmas. Apart from some salt stains and a touch of mildew, it was in fine condition. I checked with some leather craftsmen.

A wallet that has been left outside for six months in rain followed by snow followed by rain, will turn uniformly darker and also stiffen.

Why not this wallet? Why weren't its contents damaged by water? Was it left on Chemin MacDonald after Theresa's body turned up, as a statement of some kind?

Inside the wallet, police had found Theresa's driver's licence, her healthcard and a ticket stub for a play in Montreal, dated Friday, Nov. 7, 1975. John watched a home movie and noted, with hair rising on his neck, that he and his siblings opened their Christmas presents of Buxton wallets in 1977, Theresa's last Christmas. The ticket predated the wallet by two years and Theresa's vanishing by exactly three.

It was a ticket to a play called Crime and Punishment.

I was in the process of double-checking our geography for the crime map when we came across a clue to this mystery. The man who found the wallet on his property told John that his daughter had also been attacked. On Oct. 3, 1978, she was an 18-year-old student at the local French-language Cégep, a petite brunette with dark eyes — like the other victims.

That evening, she had taken her dog for a walk along Chemin MacDonald. Across the road and slightly behind her, a man suddenly jumped out of his car and began running at her on a diagonal across the two-lane black-top, like an animal sprinting toward its prey.

Instantly, she understood her life was in danger. She had been approached before by cruising men, had been heckled, lured. “Baby, baby. Wanna party?” The woman wanted John to know — when he called her — that this was not that. She was immediately terrified. She ran into her father's apple orchard, thinking, “I can outwit him, I know the area better, I've got my dog.” The man followed, chasing her through the shadows.

She felt as if she'd fallen out of her life and into a horror movie.

In a remarkable stroke of good fortune, a police car belonging to the Coaticook Detachment of the Sûreté du Québec came down the steep hilly road. The officers saw the man and grasped at once that his behaviour was alarming, even though they didn't see his intended victim. They leapt out of their cruiser and rounded him up. She was so terrified that she remained hidden in the orchard, scarcely daring to breathe.

The next morning, her mother coaxed her into phoning the police to describe what had happened. The officers told her they had run a check on the man. He had convictions for sex offences in Manitoba. Since no crime had taken place, they had let him go. All she can remember about him now is that he was small. A small man with a prior conviction and a feverish appetite for predation.

One month later, Theresa went out at the same time of night and was never seen alive again.

It needs to be said that the police investigating the Allore case were a different group than these officers in Coaticook, who were, in turn, different than the investigators for Dubé, who were distinct from the ones looking at Camirand. These were not co-operative men. As one source in Sherbrooke's complicated and rivalrous law enforcement system told me: “Back then, it was terre de chasseur. Hunter's turf. We didn't talk, we didn't share files. We were the greens and they were the blues.”

Adds private investigator Beullac: “When I went down to Sherbrooke from Montreal in that period, I used to call it my Chinatown.” The scene was unruly, all of my sources agree. Every one had their turf. “We were making the rules of investigation up as we went along,” says one cop.

Ironically, this was the year in which the Canadian Police Association ran an ad in Montreal's The Gazette to protest the repealing of the death penalty. “Too Many People In Canada Are Getting Away with Murder,” the ad said. Indeed they were. In Quebec in 1978, 23 homicides went unsolved.

Kim Rossmo studied my map of the abductions and dump sites, using his expertise in geoprofiling, a criminological technique that can link crimes, or localize the areas in which a serial rapist or killer lives, by analyzing the geography of the attacks. There are several premises behind geoprofiling, which Rossmo pioneered for his doctoral thesis at Simon Fraser. One is that predators will operate along routine pathways in their work and home lives. They seldom stray into unfamiliar areas to attack. On the contrary, they will often have passed the same victim — or type of victim — dozens of times at a bus stop or a parking garage near their work, before they summon the nerve to attack.

Where victims disappear and where their bodies are found are significant clues in geoprofiling. For one thing, they can tell you whether three disparate murders are linked. Rossmo sent me this formal report:

“Each of these incidents involve multiple locations that, when combined, form a persuasive pattern,” he wrote “Camirand disappeared in Sherbrooke, close to where Dubé went missing. She was later found in Magog, near what may have been Allore's clothes. Dubé, in turn, was found a few miles from Allore'sbody outside Compton, just off a route linking Compton to Magog. Allore'swallet was found just southof the area where both Camirand and Dubé disappeared, very near an attack on a fourth woman. The last link is that Allore's wallet was recovered near the place where Dubé's body was found, by Hwy. 143, which leads back to Lennoxville and Sherbrooke.

“The locations associated with these three deaths are intertwined, woven together in the landscape south of Sherbrooke. Three murders of low-risk young women in a 19-month period, in such a tight geographic cluster, is highly suspicious, and not likely to be a chance occurrence. These cases should be fed into ViCLAS (Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System), and re-examined as a group of potentially linked sex murders. Serial murderers typically live closer to the victim encounter sites than body disposal locations.

“This offender was most likely based in Lennoxville or south Sherbrooke during the period from 1977 to 1978.”

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We are, as you read this, turning our investigation over to detectives withthe SherbrookeMunicipal Police. We have identified two likely suspects, both of whom are now in custody for sex murder. Both are unusually short, as our witness described, and have family addresses in the area that Rossmoidentified as a likely base. One of them was in the Canadian Forces at the time. Louise Camirandwas a member of the Reserve Forces, and was found strangled with a military-issue boot lace. That suspect, described to me as “highly impulsive” by a criminologist who has interviewed him, was convicted for a rape and attempted strangulation in Quebec in early 1980s. He went on to rape and strangle a waitress in the West, for which he is now serving a life sentence.

In the last year, for the first time since this cluster in the late 1970s, four women have gone missing from the Sherbrooke area. One of them was found in July, strangled, wearing nothing but her bra, lying face-down in a creek.

We can only hope that homicide investigators in the Eastern Townships have improved their approach in the last two decades, and will not leave friends and family members to investigate a murder on their own.

To Corporal Robert Theoret of the Sherbrooke District of the Surete: you asked John Allore why the case of his sister, Theresa, should be reopened.

The culprit was likely a serial killer. We need to know who he is and where he is now. That is why.