Theresa je ubil?

Cette oddelek vous donne Toute la série originale, Kdo je ubil Theresa? En une strani séparée. Avant de lire l'article quelques Razmišljanja:

Kdo je ubil Theresa? Začeti comme une série de trois nouvelles qui couraient dans le canadien reviji National Post au plus de trois jours consécutifs à l'été 2002. Patricia Pearson Rédigé par les séries 10,000 mot de kriminala était l'histoire qui lance la nouvelle enquête sur la mort de Theresa Allore, et sur la Reflexion peut être considérée comme ayant été pour un provokacija 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 težave, que la mort de ma sœur avait été laissé en suspens depuis tant d'années, et je me suis tourné à une Patricia (avec qui j'avais fréquenté le collège) pour une chronique voyage fait que jai 'revenir à la scène de sa mort 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 sonde autour de l'Estrie - très loin. Comme il est vite devenu očitno que l'Estrie dans l'epoche 1970 eu un Probleme sérieux avec preditors sexuelle, et la possibilité de meurtres série présenté en lui-même l'histoire začne à prendre rapidement une vie propre.

Komentar cette neverjeten tous les moyens est évidente dans le Calendrier. L'histoire été Créé publie pour être à la mi-août. C'est le moment Où la plupart des Canadiens ont pris leur retraite à leur brunarice dormir et pour se détendre. Peut-être certains des lumières de lecture d'été ... quelques recettes? La critique de livre? Et un Mystère de lumière estivale. Quand il est devenu očitno que nous étions prêts à tomber Laisser une "Bomba" dans le National Post rapidement changé c'est la Stratégie. L'histoire été élargi à déployer au mode série au cours de trois jours, avec une partie de chaque journée se terminant dans un hangar falaise. Il déplacé été de l'arrière de Leasure - Oddelek Life à la page de couverture, "nad kratno".

Si j'avais été directement impliqués dans l'ensemble du processus, il fallu attendre la dernière semaine avant la publication que jai 'začne z interagir directement le osebje National Post (Patricia Pearson était au Chalet et donc injoignable!). Je me souviens en chef d'izdelki, nous avons discuté, ce que d'appeler la pièce, et Combien de jouer jusqu'à l'angle tueur en série. Il y avait deux titres, ki je umoril Theresa? et Who Killed Theresa? il été odloči d'aller avec WKT? Sur de la vprašanje Fokalizator sur un serijski morilec, qui été mon appel. Je me souviens de la manchette sur le troisième epizodi était "Točke de Preuve à un Serial Killer" et les rédacteurs National Post voulais m'assurer que j'étais à l'aise avec ça. J'ai été, principalement parce que cela signifierait de nouveaux prebivalcev Lisez y de plus à propos de Theresa.

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

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To poglavje vam celotno originalno serijo, ki je ubil Theresa? V eni ločeni strani. Pred branju članka nekaj misli:

Kdo je ubil Theresa? Začel kot niz treh novice, ki je potekal v Kanadi's National Post časopis v treh zaporednih dneh v poletje 2002. Avtor jih Patricia Pearson 10.000 kaznivih dejanj beseda Serija je bila zgodba, ki je začela ponovno preiskavo smrti of Theresa Allore, in razmislek je razvidno, da so bili zgodnji katalizator za številne socialne pravičnosti in reform v provinci Quebec.

Ideja za zgodbo o Theresa je bila moja, in jaz približal Patricia Pearson napisati to. Sem bil zaskrbljen, da je smrt moja sestra je bila še nerešena toliko let, in sem se obrnil k Patricia (s katerim sem se udeležila kolegija), da chronical potovanje sem vzel nazaj na prizorišče njene smrti v spomladi 2002 iščejo odgovore.

Foul igra ni bila daleč od mojega uma, vendar je zamisel o umoru, ki ga spolno preditor je - v času mojega sondiranje okoli podeželju Quebec - daleč nerealne. Ker je hitro postalo jasno, da Sherbrooke-Lennoxville območja v poznih 1970-ih imeli resne težave s spolno preditors, in možnost serijske umorov se predstavlja zgodbo hitro začele ukrepati na lastno življenje.

Kako neverjetna to vse načine je razvidna iz časa. Zgodba je bila ustanovljena, da se objavijo v sredi avgusta. To je čas, ko najbolj Kanadčani so se umaknil v kočo državo spati in se sprostite. Morda nekaj svetlobe poletno branje ... nekaj receptov? Recenzija? In svetlobo skrivnost Summer. Ko je postalo jasno, da smo bili pripravljeni kaplja Senzacija National Post hitro spremenili strategijo. Zgodba se je razširil na pojavljati v serijski način tekom treh dni, pri čemer vsak dan del, ki se konča v steni obešalnik. Je bil prestavljen iz zadnji Leasure - Life oddelek na sprednji strani, nad krat.

Čeprav je bil sem neposredno vključene v celoten postopek, je bila šele v zadnjem tednu pred objavo, da sem začel neposredno interakcijo withNational Post osebje (Patricia Pearson je bil v koči in tako nedosegljiv!). Spomnim se, da glavni postavke smo razpravljali, kaj naj klic kosu in koliko za igranje do kota serijski morilec. Pojavila sta se dva naslovov, ki je umoril Theresa? in Kdo je ubil Theresa? je bilo odločeno, da gre s WKT? Na vprašanje osredotoča na serijski morilec, ki je bil moj klic. Spomnim se naslov za tretji obrok je bil "Dokazila opozarja na serijski morilec" in urednike Post želel prepričati, da sem bil prijetno s tem. Bil sem predvsem zato, ker sem nova, da bi to pomenilo več ljudi, bi brali o Theresa.

Prvi obrok je bil objavljen na 10. avgust 2002, mamin rojstni dan. Po obravnavi je oče mojega wryly kaže, "dobro smo vselej vedeli, da nekega dne, da bi Nekako Theresa sprednji strani dokumentov".

Kdo je ubil Theresa
Patricia Pearson, National Post

10. avgust 2002

Ko je 19-year-old Theresa Allore went odsoten iz šole, potem pa je do mrtvih na cesti osamljen državo, Quebec policija privedla do njene družine je verjeti, da je umrl zaradi prevelikega odmerka drog. Zdaj, 23 let kasneje, njen brat John Allore in National Post novinar Patricia Pearson je preživel pet mesecev preiskuje izginotje Terezije. V treh del serije se začne danes, Pearson razkriva zgodbo o smrti Terezije, ki je bil skoraj zagotovo umor, ki ga serijski morilec, ki se lahko še vedno na prostosti.

Mi ponavadi razmišljati o nerešenih skrivnosti kot družabne igre. Ampak to ne velja za vsakogar. Za nekatere, kot so John Allore, zakladnica upravitelja mesta Durham, NC, skrivnost ne more rešiti, je tista, ki ohranja njegovo srce s krpanjem.

Dvajset-tri leta, ko je bilo njegovo sestro obraz-down v potoku v vzhodni Quebec's zabavni parki, dampinški tam kot smeti, ki jih tujci, ki še nikoli niso bile ujete, ne more izkopala skrivnost njene smrti. Nekdo, nekje, ve, kaj se je zgodilo z Theresa Allore, svetel 19-year-old Cégep študent, ki se je udeležil regionalnega Champlain College v Lennoxville. In da se nekdo ne bi smela lastne skrivnost, kot je ta, kar je bilo dekle zadnje besede, ali je bila prestrašena, ali na bolečine. To je skrivnost, ki pripada ljudem, ki jo ljubim, in so tisti, ki ne poznajo.

Ko so živeli z Neodgovorljiv in Lomljava vprašanje, od 14 let, kot je Allore, obstaja več taktiko si lahko. Lahko ostati blizu prizorišče kaznivega dejanja, kot je John brata, Andre, je, živi v Montrealu, po francoskem jeziku, papir za vsako namig, da bi površine, requestioning original preiskovalci.

Lahko nežno zapreti knjigo, saj veste odgovor ne bo prinesel sladek vaš otrok nazaj, kar je tisto, kar njegova starša storila.

Ali boste lahko zagnali. John Allore odločil postaviti na daljavo, tudi državne meje, med njim in preteklosti. Kasneje se je preselil v New York, nato Houston, na Los Angeles in končno v Chapel Hill, NC, poroki ženska v ZDA, ki še nikoli ni slišal za Lennoxville, Que. In še nikoli ni videl izraz na obrazu svojega očeta, ko je identificiran Terezije ostaja.

Toda življenje je način dohitevanja withyou, in ga dohitel Allorein način, tako močno, da je na meji komična. Imel je službo, ki so blagajniški upravitelj mesta Durham, on in njegova žena, Elisabeth, je imel dve hčeri, in čutil rešujejo dovolj za nakup svojega prvega doma, "fiksirne-zgornji" na zelo gozdnatih pasu. Nekega dne, manj kot dva meseca po tem preselili v tej državi preiskovalni urad, občine šerif in dve forenzični ekip prispelo na njihovem pragu s posebej usposobljenimi psi. Iskali so organ lokalne žensk imenom Deborah Key, ki so osumljene so bili ubiti v hiši, ki jih prejšnji lastnik.

Allores opazovala kot policija razstaviti svoje greznico iskanju delov telesa, medtem ko hounds omejene okrog lastnine. En pes na koncu pobral vonj v crawl prostor pod hišo. Bilo je sled ženske, dovolj za vzbujanje pes, ki je začel pacing in praskanje v bogato glino Carolina. Raziskovalci wormed poti pod tla in začel kopati. Imajo približno pol metra navzdol, preden so spoznali, čeprav je bila tam, je mrtev odvlekel njen zarobljava po izgubi od downtown Chapel Hill, ona pa mora biti od takrat prestavljen. Vse ostalo, da je bil njen duh.

"No, to je le krvavo velik," John je dejal, da mordantly Elisabeth. Hiša je bila sedaj strašijo, kot njegov lastnik.

V mesecih sledila, so preiskovalci doggedly sproti iskanju Deborah Key, čeprav prinaša več kot psihična z njo nezaslišano, samo-v-televizije Ameriki posadke v vleko, John začel počutiti pozval k dejanjem.

Kakšna policija delala za Deborah Key, se je zavedel, on ni nikoli naredila za svojo sestro. Njegov brat, Andre, je preizkušen, in vse, ampak ji je odrekel. Nihče drug, nikoli, je šlo za preiskovanje kriminala, ki je bila njena smrt. Imel je poskusiti.

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Marca, 2001, John me je klical v Torontu. Imeli smo bili v stiku off in od univerze, je bil srednji šoli in nato Sweethearts previdni prijatelji. Sem nazadnje videla v Los Angelesu leta 1995, sem bil raziskati serijski primer umor, za knjigo sem pisal, in sem angažiral njegovo pomoč. Vozila sva okoli Van Nuys, medtem ko sem preveril apartmajih in bari, kjer ženska imenom Carole Bundy in njen fant Doug Clark je bilo ugrabljenih in umorjenih več žensk. Usoda pa ljubezen ironijo.

Zdaj je na vrsti za njegov pozove me za pomoč. "Kaj se spomniš kaj se je zgodilo z mojo sestro?", Je upati.

Vržem nazaj v moje srce jeseni leta 1979, ko sem prišel v internat v Rothesay, NB, in se srečal John za prvič. Njegova družina se je preselil v New Brunswick iz Montreala v poletje '78, zaradi česar Theresa in njen brat Andre zadaj do konca različico Quebec razredov 12 in 13 na Cégep v Lennoxville.

Spomnim se, da je rekel, Therese izginile iz njenega kampus, in ugotovila, da šest mesecev pozneje enmeshed v odmrzovanje ledu na potoku zraven koruznega polja, se izloča navzdol ji modrc in hlačke.

Naslednje jeseni, sem upal na področje uničil družine s tipično Brezskrbnost za 15-year-old. Še vedno sram zaradi tega, vseh teh letih, sem opazil, kako tiho v hiši, vendar ni res razumejo. Spominjam se slike Terezije, z njo Kestenjast kodrasti lasje in temne, zabaval oči. Njena osebnost - inteligentne, neodvisne, duhoviti - sijalo skozi slike. Spominjam se spanje v svoji sobi, ko sem prejel "vikend dopustu" iz šole, in opazil njen pohodniški čevlji prekrit z lepo omaro vrata.

Spomnim se, John štetje mi svojo zgodbo: kako preiskovalci Allores svetujemo, da njihova hči, neustrašna deklica, ki se povzpela rock-in-dived nebo, je morda prevelik odmerek na področju drog, in bili od nje domu do potoka, ki jih panika prijatelji. Govorilo se je z njo dušijo na bruhanje, ali ima morda alergijsko reakcijo. Dva meseca, ko je bilo njeno telo, Sûreté du Québec poslali svoje osebne predmete - njeno denarnico, jo gledajo in uhane - za družino. Očitno je, kolikor je to, zadeva Sûretéwas, čeprav je bila slabega zdravja v skladu s riptide of '70s stranke kulture.

"Prej ali slej bo nekdo govoril," preiskovalcev zagotovljena njih.

Ampak za 23 let, nihče ni rekel besede.

Od North Carolina, John me je prosil, če lahko pišem članek, ki nekako spodbuja tiste otroke - tudi tiste, petami, srednjega razreda kanadski otroci, ki so dampinškega njihov prijatelj je truplo - bi prekinili zaroto molka so očitno opaziti od leta 1978, ter podala račun zadnjega Terezije noč.

Mislil sem, da o tem, vendar iz drugačne perspektive, kot bi jaz imel pri starosti 15, ko se vse odrasle rekel je bilo res.

"I ne kupujejo teorija, John. To ni smiselno, da mi, "sem upal. "Zakaj bi se vzlet njene obleke?" On ni vedel. Leta 1997, njegov brat, Andre, obrnila nekaj prijateljev Terezije v iskanju resnice, in nihče ni mogel pomagati.

Vprašanja zavrtel okrog v mojih mislih, saj so imeli tako v Andre in John's: "Zakaj Viraj njeno telo v potok, ko ni bila njihova krivda, da je umrla? Vidim jih poskušajo distancirati od njene smrti, toda zakaj skriti njo? Zakaj ne bi ji za bolnišnico in jo pustil na travniku, ali vsaj zapustiti na travniku za prebivanje, kjer je živela? "

"Njena denarnico je bilo ugotovljeno, nekaj kilometrov stran od svojega telesa,« je ponudil, po moj vlak misli.

"Torej, Svukoše ji oblačil in ID?" Oni so prijatelja, ki je prevelik odmerek o drogah in hladno, sistematično obrnila v Jane Doe.

Zakaj?

John je bil montažo datoteke različnih bankovcev in uradnih dokumentov, vključno s podnebnimi poročila iz Kanade okolje za november 1978. On me je poslal fotokopije. Ko je paket prispel, sem sedela na mojem jedilnica miza s skodelico kave.

Sem pogledal poročilo mrliškega oglednika v Montrealu. Obdukcija je maddeningly sumljiva: "nasilne smrti nedoločljivega narave," mrliškega oglednika so bili dolžni skleniti. Z telo v stanju naprednih razkroj, se lahko patolog izključiti bludgeoning, zbadajoče, streljanje in organske bolezni. Ne veliko drugega. Ni bilo mogoče ugotoviti, ali so bile posiljene ona. Rezultati toksikologije dela-up na telesno Terezije so bili negativni: nobenega dokaza, bodisi na recept ali prepovedanih drog, je bilo ugotovljeno, v njej jetrih, pljučih in drugih tkivih.

Zakaj je hipoteza prevelikega odmerka drog? Kaj je dokaz? Sedel sem nazaj v svoj stol, musing. Preiskovalci niso zaprta primeru Terezije Allore, toliko kot so zapustili žalujem družine v New Brunswick s hipotezo, da učinkovito osramotili njih.

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John Allore in sem srečal v Sherbrooke, Que., Marec, 2002. Naš načrt je bil, da pregleda policijskih Terezije datoteke - shranjevati v oddaljenosti in nabira prah na policijski postaji Sherbrooke.

Sem pričakoval, da bo John živčna razvalina, vendar je bilo prav nasprotno. Bil je visok človek, vitek, zelo energična. Bil je tekmovanje v teku okrog dan Sherbrookeall brez dlake kljub mrazu, oblečen samo svetlo modra bombažna jopica. Prišlo je celo jauntiness o njem, kot da bi čutil ogromen olajšav, ki je bil na koncu s katerimi se sooča svoje demone. Njegova hotelski sobi je bil steljo withpapers, novice izrezke, prenosni računalniki, luči naročju-top Treptanje zraven kavo.

Imel je presenečenje zame. "Bil sem malo več kot na Champlain College v pogovoru z Gerald Rezanje,« je dejal, ki se nanašajo na direktorja Cégep, ki je bil na novo imenovan za direktorja študentskih storitev v jeseni izginotja Terezije. "Skrajšanje mi je povedal, da Sûreté tako misli nazaj v '79, da je bila umorjena Theresa."

Moja čeljust padla. Zdelo se je nepredstavljivo, da Sûreté je glavni preiskovalec, Roka Gaudreault bi, so zapustili družino Allore s vtis, da je njihova hči je bila smrt nesreče, ko je bil sam preganjal osumljencev in v pogovoru z Cutting-preiskovalca, s katerimi je šel na srednjo šolo -- O svojih teorijah prekršaj igra. Zakaj je bila družina ni obveščena?

Štirinajst let po njegovi smrti sestre, Andre Allore je sledil upokojeni Gaudreault navzdol za kratek pogovor in brezplodne telefon. Gaudreault ponovil teorijo prevelikega odmerka drog, sicer pa ni nič za povedati. "Dobil sem vtis," Andre zapisal v svojo beležko, "da Gaudreault ni mogel razumeti, zakaj je bilo to še vedno moti me."

Ko sem prispel v Sherbrooke, John že na uradu Sûreté du Québec. Desetar Robert Theoret, čeden, kodrasti las človeka, ki niso miss trik, je odvijalo na topel in budnim kot John pored več delov kriminala Terezije datoteko za sedem ur. Theoret je izločiti iz spisa - kot smo kasneje določen - popis dokazov, fotografije zločina, nekatere izjave prič, Gaudreault končno poročilo, in vse okoli notacije osumljencev, ki ostanejo zaupne v skladu z zakoni o zasebnosti Kanade.

Ko je najprej napisal, da jim iz Chapel Hilla v zgodnjem poletju 2001, Sûreté je ponudil John širši dostop do dokumentacije, vendar so do marca 2002, so bili omejitev, kar je lahko videl. Morda so bili obrambni občutek, ali morda je to standardni protokol. Prav gotovo niso bili zaskrbljeni ogrozili njihove preiskave. John Theoret vprašal, če bi bil raziskati, saj razodetje iz Rezanje, da je njegova sestra je bil verjetno umorjen. Kot je opozarja, Theoret je bila gladka in Zmagovit pa jasno pokazale, malo zanimanja, poudarila, da je bil kratek osebjem. "Imam veliko primerov," je dejal. "Zakaj bi moral raziskati tem primeru?"

V redu, je dejal John. "Želim, da razišče to sebi, potem. Kaj je bilo končno Roka Gaudreault je zaključek? "

Te informacije je privilegiran, desetar Theoret odgovoril.

OK. Kaj je forenzične dokaze? Če je bilo Terezije modrček in spodnje perilo, ki bi lahko morda test DNK?

"Mi smo jih vrgel ven," je dejal Theoret. (Drugi detektivov smo se pogovarjali, da bi lahko ponudili nobene razumne razlage za uničenje dokazov v nerešenih kriminala.)

"Ali imaš številko Gaudreault's?" John vztrajala, v naslednjih telefonski klic, da Theoret. On je hotel vprašanje pokoju raziskovalca.

"Ne želim govoriti z vami," je odgovoril Theoret, kot če bi bile Allore nadležen novinar iz nacionalnega prosilcu.

"Sûreté ne maram postavljati pod vprašaj," kazenskega pregona vir kasneje pojasnil. In izpodbijajo so. John obdržati odvetnika in vložila Freedom of Information Request. Odziva počasi wended svojo pot nazaj iz pokrajinskih uradnikov: Videl izjavo svojega brata Andre je od novembra 1978. To je bilo vse.

Če rečemo, da je menil, John Allore stymied je podcenjevanje. Kdo je lastnik skrivnosti, da mlade ženske smrti? Policaji in roparji, očitno.

Nosy družinske člane: Butt ven.

Imeli smo Dilem. Sûreté je nenaklonjena temu, da razišče smrt Terezije, vendar ne bi širil svoje ugotovitve s 23 leti. Brez dostopa do ključnih delov spisa, John ni vedel, kje naj začnem. Bil je samo človek - računovodja, - ki je živel več sto kilometrov stran. Sem bil nekdanji novinar kriminal. Oba sva imela majhne otroke, delovna mesta, živi ...

Sedeli smo v hotelskem baru, da noč z Johnom brat, Andre, in se odločila, da združijo svoje vire: Andre pred raziskavo in natančna ugotavlja, da je redil, moj zločin novinarstva ozadje, John talent za prodornejši analizo. "Lahko smo to naredili," mi povedali med seboj.

Ta vikend obisk Sherbrookemarkedthe začetku petmesečno preiskavo umora.

Naslednje jutro, John in sem preplezal v najem avto in odpeljala iz jugovzhodu Sherbrooke do Lennoxville, 15-minutni spuščajo Rue Belvidere in več kot 143 na avtocesti, ki smo ga kasneje odkrili bi bil kritičen del sestavljanke.

Lennoxville je zal mesto v jahanje Jean Charest, napolnjena withgabled, Klapa hiše in mamo-in-pop trgovinah. Champlain College sedi na obrobju zraven starejši in še veliko statelier Bishop's University, od najemnin, ki jih nekatere objekte. Sredi gričev vzhodne zabavni parki in bujna okoliških kmetijskih zemljišč, Cégep - ki je bila ustanovljena leta 1967 - bi bilo lepo, da se udeleži enega kraja v zadnjih letih srednje šole.

Razen, kot Theresa Allore, eden se je zgodilo, da pridejo v konec avgusta leta 1978. V prejšnjem desetletju, vpis Champlain College je narasla na več kot 1000 študentov. Uradniki sooča stanovanjske krize. Načrti so bili v teku za izgradnjo drugega spalnice, vendar v tem času, kot začasen ukrep, če bi bilo prenagljeno dve stavbi, zakupljenih v majhnih vasi gojenje Compton, 20 kilometrov od šole.

Razdalja dorms že sprožila polemike med študenti, kot je John in sem se naučila z branjem Champlain's študentski časopis iz tega obdobja, Touchstone. Študenti so bili pritoževati približno avtobusi, ki so bili predloženi kot svoje le prevozna sredstva in iz dorms. Če so zamudili avtobus iz Lennoxville, so dolžni, da bodisi plača za 20 km vožnje s taksijem, ali hitchhike. Študent Priročnik zagotovil kratek seznam hitchhiking dos in don'ts.

Vozila sva južno navzdol Highway 143 in nato vodi proti vzhodu do Compton navzdol 147, dvo-lane črno-top, da je tudi sedaj neosvetljenih, podeželskih Sporedan pot navijanje pot skozi hrib in dale v bogu za hrbtom. Imeti mora počutil zastrašujoč za najstnike, ki živijo proč od doma, za prvič. V februarju leta 1978, pred zimo Theresa prišel, Touchstone poročali, da študent Champlain je bila žrtev poskusa posilstva. Več drugih napadov so poročali, da semester. Študenti so bili neprijetno. Ženska študente izjavilo, da so strah hoditi sam, in strah hitchhike. "Bo nekdo moral dobiti posiljena," je zapisal eno dekle, "pred policijo postaje shrugging off problem?"

Novo stalno prebivališče, zgrajena bliže kampusu padla zaostanku, vendar pa, in Champlain osebje napovedano v spomladi leta 1978, da bi morali "Compton teči znova." Editors na Touchstone so Razočaran. "Bil sem razjezil," je zapisal eden, "s Samozadovoljan način, kako so usode dveh sto novih študentov tako lahko pošiljajo."

Več kot polovica študentov na četrtine, v Compton bilo mlajših od 18 let. Imeli so dva uslužbenca na kraju samem, 25-year-old imenom Jeanne Eddisford, in nekdanji osnovni šoli glavni imenovan Stuart Peacock. Oba spala v King's Hall, bujno viktorijanski dvorec, ki je nekoč služila kot dekle v internat. Niti naseljeno Gillard House, čepenje, co-ed opeko spalnice soseda. Nihče ne izvaja preglede sobo. Študentje so bili spodbuja, da v svoje obroke in da se kot neodvisni možnem času.

To je bil optimističen poskus v prostem živijo, toda kaj je to v bistvu pomenilo, da je bil visok 240 dijakov so živeli na osamljenih, slabo osvetljeno območje brez ustreznega prevozom ali učinkovitega nadzora. "Tam je zagotovo nekaj narobe v Compton," Touchstone editorialized. "Stuart Peacock je zelo redko videti na Gillard House, ki je novo imenovani direktor."

Rezultat je bil popolnoma predvidljiva. "Za večino fantov in deklet, je svoj prvi čas od doma," one Compton rezident povedal Touchstone. "Ni omejitev, ne curfews, in predvsem brez staršev. Ti gredo divje. "

Co-ed strani featuring pivo, travo in LSD-ja so bili pogosto dovolj, da rasla Nočni čuvaj za dorms Compton naveličani. Ko se sooča Peacock o "problem drog," je bilo vse zaman, je nehal v gnus, v skladu z izjavo, se je kasneje dal Sûreté du Québec. Dve šolski uradniki, Doug Macauleyjevo, direktor študentske storitev, in Joe Gallagher, pomočnik direktorja študentskih storitve in svetovanje, nenadno odstopil od Champlain okoli tega časa. Gallagher je dejal le, da je njegov položaj postal "strukturno neprimerni," zaradi česar je nemogoče, da mu "izpolniti svoje cilje." Gallagher še povedal, Touchstone je upal težav je videl na kampusu bi lahko rešili, in da so ti v položaju, da ravnati po njih vedel, kaj so.

Ali so bile povezane s prebivališča Compton, ki se je zdel grozi predenje izpod nadzora?

John in sem stala v preddverju of King's Hall, viktorijanski dvorec, v katerem Peacock in Eddisfordslept, in kjer je moja mama nekoč prebival kot vkrcanje-šola študent v 1940. To je zdaj gostilna, z gosti hitela sem in tja mimo recepcije hrasta, kot smo pogledal okrog sebe, od kraja in od časa, razmišljajo preprogo Theresa Allore stopnišče, kjer je bil nazadnje videli.

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Petek, 3. november, 1978, je praznoval blago za pozno jeseni v vzhodni zabavni parki. Theresa zapustil njeno sobo na drugem nadstropju hiše Gillard zgodaj zjutraj in šel čez travnik na dolgo, pulover bež-plašč, nosil pomanjševalnica par kitajskih copat, brez nogavic in teče zeleni šal, da je njena mati, ki jo za svoj 19. rojstni dan.

Ji je pridružila kolegicam, Jo-Anne in Caroline Laurie Greenwood, v precej jedilnica na King's Hall, kjer je sonce skozi pretočno francoska vrata. Ona je sama toast, morda, ali umešana jajca. Klepetali so o svojih načrtih konec tedna, nato pa tri deklice vkrcala svoje shuttle bus in razdeljena na načine, glavni kampusu da prisostvujejo petek razredov.

Theresa je bil odličen študent, radovedni, kreativni in ostre, vleče navzdol straight-Tako kot v umetnosti, kot tudi fizike. Bila je ni toliko nagnjena k "gredo divje," po njeni prijatelji, saj je imela že živela proč od doma za leto, ki delajo v smučarskih tovarni, medtem ko je skupno stanovanje z kolegicam v PointeClaire, Que. Bila je srečna, da je treba ponovno vključitev jo hitro mislih. Plačala malo pozornosti kampus oseb, ki je bila v ljubezni withayoung človeka, ki je šla iz zahoda na delo. Ona je govorila z njim na telefonski spalnico z uporabo pesti četrti. Predstavljam si jo s svojimi nogami navzgor proti steni, sukanje prste na telefonski kabel, tako sem rabil, žuborenje in nasmejan.

Theresa je spregovoril tudi pogosto, da starši, ki je imela nazadnje videli manj kot mesec pred tem, na vikend zahvalni dan, ko so praznovali njen 19. rojstni dan v svoji novi hiši v Saint John. Megla v valjanih od zalivu Fundy na dan, ona in Andre bi letel nazaj v Montreal. Marilyn Allore se spominja svojih let, da se prekličejo. Ona in njen mož odpeljal, da železniške postaje namesto tega, za otroke pa so si prizadevali, da se vrnem v šolo za izpite.

"Spominjam se je pano v oglaševanju železniške postaje Mehika," Marilyn mi je povedal, "in sem rekel, da Theresa" Karkoli narediš, ne odplakne v Mehiko. Ker pa dobimo aretiran zaradi drog tam, in da takšne stvari. " Spominjam se, da. "Ona je zamrznjena, kar kaže. "Spomnim se, da Theresa hrani sestopu z vlaka. Ona mora imeti odlepi, da vlaka petkrat, v objem nas posloviti. "

"Je to nenavadno za njo?"

"Zelo." Ona zasmejal. "Spominjam se dogaja doma in občutek resnično srečni, in še razmišljanje je nekaj ni v redu. Je težko razložiti. Stal sem na Sudopera gledala skozi okno, in sem imel občutek, da je občutek sreče, in občutek, da je nekaj na tem, da spremeniti. "

Seveda se spomni te podatke: Moje srce odmori poslušate jo na telefon, njen glas svetlobe miren, vendar pripravljena, previdni, ker ima sama steeled za mešanje teh vodah. Ona spominja meglo, panoja, poslovili, vse, ker je bil zadnji čas je kdaj videl otroka.

- - --

Theresa načrtovano, da preživijo konec tedna od 3. november pripravlja knjigo poročilo o zen budizmu za njeno psihologijo razred. Je zavrnil povabilo, da gre za družinsko prijateljico Caroline Greenwood's farm. Pri večerji času, znanec tekel v njo v jedilnici dvorani na kampusu Champlain. Theresa bummed cigareto, in dekleta dogovorili, da se sestanejo pozneje v Gillard House poslušati nove albume. (Kaj je igral to leto? Genesis, Alan Parsons Project. Kaj Theresa poslušal, njen mali brat, John, pobral na in kasneje uveden, da me.)

Theresa zamudil 6:15 avtobusom. Še enega ni bilo predvideno, da bo učence na Compton do 11 Ali je položaj sama na robu gravelled Highway 143, osvetljeni z uličnih svetilk, pomoliti ven in ji palec? Bila je neustrašen o hitchhiking, kot bi bila pri tej starosti. Grow up ljubil, in mislim najboljši na svetu.

Kdo je pobral jo gor? Nihče ni nikoli prišel naprej reči, da petite rdečelaske v bež pulover obloga plezal v svoj avto. Ona je prišla nazaj na vasi Compton. Prijatelja z imenom Sharon Buzzee zagledal na stopnicah, v dvorani King's - kjer študenti gledal televizijo, določen prigrizki in domnevno študiral - okrog 9 o noči 3. november, tik preden je nameraval čez glavo, da Gillard House in poslušati dokumentacije.

Morda je bila na poti do drugega nadstropja, da obiščete njen brat Andre, ki ni bil v. Ali je spust, da osrednje stopnišče spet sprehod skozi Trem in ven na travnik? Ali je vrnitev v svojo sobo v Gillard House? Ali pa drug način, in sprehoditi po krožni dovoz in pobota po avtocesti 147 proti Compton Village?

Ta vprašanja Bob gor in dol v mislih, kot so konji na vrtiljaku, pa ne samo zato, ker še vedno policija izgubila interes. To poletje, Marilyn Allore hodil od Hall King's ob gravelled strani avtoceste, dokler je pobral pločniku v Compton, ki poteka vel Klapa hiše z ljudmi sumljivo gledala skozi okna, nekaj trgovin, sprehod vzdolž v tišini, tiho , Dobrohotan ženska, ki sem se vedno slika z njo bujne črne lase swept v Polna. «Molče z navedbo možne poti, da njena hči se je v njej le malo kitajskih copat, športnih, da je dolg, ki izhajajo šal, kot Isadora Duncan, preden izgubi potem v temo.

Champlain College, se zdi, ni opazil, da eden od njegovih učencev je manjkalo za skoraj teden dni. 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.

Hladno mesecu, ki je sledila je bila ena izmed mnogih na sceno staršev najhujša nočna mora. Malo ljudi ponudil pomoč 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.

Both Dr. Matson and Detective Hamell implied that Buzzee's statement wasn't credible, as Buzzee told John Allore this year. Hamellhadalready speculated in the local press that Theresa may have headed off to Vermont, and in December, one month after she disappeared, he began to speculate that she had been involved in drugs. Sherbrookewas rife withdrug dealers at that time. It just took a gargantuan leap in logic to conclude that a studious girl who had arrived in the area six weeks earlier had been whacked by a drug associate.

So why were the police thinking in this way? Was it a function of the times, to implicate a young woman in her own disappearance? Or were other factors at play?

Interestingly, we discovered that earlier in the year of Theresa's disappearance, a young man was found dead of exposure on a golf course, having laid there, apparently for several months, after wandering off drunk from the Bishop's University pub. Private Investigator Beullac had determined that on November 3rd, 1978, two Gillard House students were taken to hospital after imbibing an intoxicating blend of LSD and booze.

One was found face-down on the lawn after midnight, and ferried to Sherbrooke by the disgruntled night watchman.

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.

Zakaj?

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.