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| René Vaillant and Ovila Vaillant |
René Vaillant was a 28-year-old taxi driver living on De Courcelles near Notre Dame in St. Henry in 1950 when he recruited his brother and two minors to kidnap and sexually assault women in Montreal between December 1949 and December 1950.
René's brother Ovila was two years younger and their two henchmen were minors aged 17 and 16, the younger one weighing 230 pounds and described as having the mind of a 10-year-old.
René would drive his taxi around with two partners hiding in the back seat. He'd find victims by luring solitary female pedestrians into his cab or having one of the henchmen to pull them in.
Rene Vaillant's gang first attacked on 2 December 1949 at 10 p.m. at Van Horne and Darlington. He pointed a gun at a 53-year-old woman who had just come from her son's birthday party.
He then grabbed her arm and pushed her into the front seat. Two hidden men emerged from the back and pulled her into the back with them as she attempted to reason, negotiate and plead with her attackers while furiously resisting. They ultimately dumped her at a deserted roadside in Lachine.
A little later the gang repeated the same vicious crime with another woman who pleaded with them, telling them her husband was sick, she had kids but one of them simply replied, "we don't care about any of that." They left her stranded in Lachine.
Their next episode of villainous barbary occurred many months later, on a rainy evening of 24 October 1950, in Westmount where Rene drove up to a housecleaner waiting for a tram at the corner of Westmount Ave. and Cote des Neiges (the two streets don't intersect, so it's not clear exactly where this occurred). Rene offered her refuge from the rain and persuaded the woman to sit in the front where she could dry her feet under the heater.
She gave her address but Rene drove off in the wrong direction. She attempted to leap from the vehicle but the men in in the back appeared out of nowhere to constrain her escape. She resisted ferociously and scratched and clawed. "Toss her in the canal!", one suggested.
They assaulted her and stole her purse with $20 and her watch and left her in Ville St. Pierre. She asked them at least for a tram ticket. They obliged her with 25 cents and her house keys.
Then on 1 December 1950 Rene approached a woman near the Verdun Hospital and her for directions to the Douglas Hospital She told him that she's going to the same place and got in. But Vaillant drove in the wrong direction and attempted to kiss her. Once again, the hands emerged from the back seat to pull her to the back of the car. Rene raped her while the others molested her and took her purse, glasses and watch.
The next day they grabbed a waitress leaving her work at 1 a.m. from the sidewalk at Iberville and Rosemont and dumped her off in the east side.
On 13 December Rene approached a 24-year-old woman at Van Horne and Cote des Neiges and the gang sexually assaulted her for 30 minutes before taking her cash and leaving her at Kent and Lemieux, making sure - as always - to prevent the victim from seeing the car license plate.
Police initially thought the attack were unrelated but then went to the trouble of getting a couple of officers to dress up as women to see if they might get approached. The plan failed.
But Rene, who had been a police informant in the past, stopped by a station and asked questions about the investigation, thereby tipping cops off of his guilt.
He eventually confessed. Police rounded the four up and slapped them with 75 charges.
Rene faced 33 charges, including seven rapes, four attempted rapes and 11 thefts. Ovide was charged with three rapes, three attempted rapes and six thefts.
Judge Wilfrid Lazure declared Rene to be "the worst criminal who has appeared in this court since I sat here," and sentenced him to life in prison with 16 lashes, the highest total ever ordered in Quebec. while Ovide was also slapped with a life term.
Lazure said that he would have sentenced them both to death had he been permitted to under the law.