Edmond Turcotte confessed to killing Diane Thibault on 2 August 1975, later providing police his motive, the details and location of the crime.But then, amazingly, a Montreal judge tossed the case out because the alleged killer had a low IQ.
Judge André Biron had defended the mentally deficient some years before as a lawyer and still felt protective of them, he said.
The judge also noted some police formality irregularities during the questioning.
The amazing story is told in a recent article by La Presse's Nicolas Berube, who got the story moving with help from super sleuth John Allore.
Berube, in his article, digs up defence lawyer Réal Charbonneau who remains jubilant decades later
about the court victory, noting that the judge seemed unexpectedly receptive to his argument of mentally deficiency.
The judge, in his previous efforts as a lawyer, had prosecuted nightclub shows that featured often-disoriented people who suffered with mental problems, one of the hundreds of nightclub stories told in Montreal 375 Tales.
Coolopolis played a tiny role in getting the ball rolling on the Thibault story.
Coolopolis interns were leafing through old crime tabloids a few weeks back when one of them came across a small detail in an Allo Police story mentioning that a woman, Thibault, was found dead and on fire in a parking lot at the corner of St. Dominique and Dorchester.
The eye catcher was that she had tree branches stuffed into her vagina.
This awful information corresponded with Debbie Buck who was killed in Mirabel 15 months later. Coolopolis was curious to see if there was any link between the two cases so we passed this information along to Allore.
Allore, as he notes in his excellent podcast, ordered the coroner's report and was astonished at the high cost of the usually-cheap reports.
Turns out the file was much thicker than the average case and told a fascinating story.
After Allore reported on it, tireless researcher Annie Richard dug up the information explaining why the accused was never charged.
Berube was alerted and moved the chains forward by telling the same story but with many more interviews, including with Jacques Duchesneau, who was in the cop squad at the time and the defence lawyer. Berube even drove out into the rural countryside to see if he could find the released suspect at an address from 18 years ago. He couldn't.
It's possible that Turcotte didn't kill Thibault. But if he didn't, then who did?