WHO KILLED THERESA?
Life isn’t fair. Justice is blind… and some cops aren’t smart and dedicated like on television.
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How we know Regis Lachance was a police informant
In April 2020, we were putting the finishing touches on Wish You Were Here. I had newly made the acquaintance of Jean-Pierre Rancourt, the lawyer who had defended Fernand Laplante, and I was eager to include his words about the case in the final draft of the book. Jean-Pierre had graciously mailed me a copy of his book, Confessions d’un Criminaliste, but it hadn’t arrived yet. Through telephone conversations, Rancourt told me what he had written in the book about the trial; how it was a set up, and how at the last minute the Crown called a police informant to the…
Comment savons-nous que Régis Lachance était un stooler
En avril 2020, nous mettions la touche finale à Wish You Were Here. Je venais de faire la connaissance de Jean-Pierre Rancourt, l’avocat qui avait défendu Fernand Laplante, et j’avais hâte d’inclure ses propos sur l’affaire dans la version finale du livre. Jean-Pierre m’avait gracieusement envoyé un exemplaire de son livre, Confessions d’un Criminaliste,…
The Trial of Fernand Laplante
The first degree murder trial of Fernand Laplante opened the week after Theresa Allore’s body was found in a Compton, Quebec culvert on Good Friday April 13, 1979. Many officers of the Surete du Quebec called to testify were the same officers doing the grunt-work on Theresa’s case; knock-and-talks, preliminary interviews, filing…
Book
WISH YOU WERE HERE
A Murdered Girl, a Brother’s Quest and the Hunt for a Serial Killer
As compelling as Michelle McNamara’s I’ll Be Gone in the Dark or James Ellroy’s My Dark Places, this is the story of a brother’s lifelong determination to find the truth about his sister’s death, a police force that was ignoring the cases of missing and murdered women, and, to the surprise of everyone involved, a previously undiscovered serial killer.
In the fall of 1978 teenager Theresa Allore went missing near Sherbrooke, Quebec. She wasn’t seen again until the spring thaw revealed her body in a creek only a few kilometers away. Shrugging off her death as a result of 1970s drug culture, police didn’t investigate.
Patricia Pearson started dating Theresa’s brother John during the aftermath of Theresa’s death. Though the two teens would go their separate ways, the family’s grief, obsession with justice and desire for the truth never left Patricia. Little did she know, the shockwaves of Theresa’s death would return to her life repeatedly over the next forty years.
In 2001, John had just moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with his wife and young children, when the cops came to the door. They had determined that a young girl had been murdered and buried in the basement. John wondered: If these cops could look for this young girl, why had nobody even tried to find out what happened to Theresa? Unable to rest without closure, he reached out to Patricia, by now an accomplished crime journalist and author, and together they found answers far bigger and more alarming than they could have imagined–and a legacy of violence that refused to end.
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About John Allore
John Allore has worked in victims advocacy since 2002. His website, Who Killed Theresa is one of the first crime blogs on the internet, which began as an investigation into the unsolved murder of his sister, Theresa Allore.
John was a founding board member of AFPAD, Quebec’s Association des Familles de Personnes Assassinees ou Disparues. Currently he is the board vice-chair for Long-Term Inmates Now in the Community (LINC) in Mission, B.C. a non-profit whose project, Emma’s Acres helps former offenders and victims re-integrate into the community.
John is a graduate of Trinity College, the University of Toronto, and holds a Masters in Public Administration with a specialization in Justice Administration from North Carolina State University.
In 2017 John started the podcast, Who Killed Theresa which focuses on unsolved murders in Quebec, as well as other issues of criminal and social justice. In 2018, John was awarded the Senate of Canada’s Sesquicentennial Medal for his work in victims advocacy. He has written for a variety of publications including Canada’s National Post newspaper, The Montreal Gazette, The Sherbrooke Record, and Quillette.
John lives in the United States, though he spends significant time in Quebec. Wish You Were Here, about unsolved murders in Canada was published by Penguin Random House in September 2020. He is currently writing his second book.