Who Killed Theresa?: 04/01/2009

Sunday, April 26, 2009

A Friend found Roch Gaudreault's original business card

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Julissa Brisman

Love this comment posted at the New York Daily News concerning the murder of Julissa Brisman:

Hailegh Apr 19, 2009 6:44:35 AM
"Now that the picture of the killer has come out to the public, why hasn't he been found? Ms. Brisman was very attractive and all these women deserve swift justice."

Yes, it's because she was attractive that justice should be served.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Police use profilers in search for Ontario girl

I know who I suspect:

Monday, April 13, 2009 9:50 AM ET
CBC News
Investigators have brought in behavioural experts to help in the search for an eight-year-old southwestern Ontario girl who has not been seen since last week.

Victoria (Tori) Stafford was last seen leaving her school on Wednesday afternoon. (Photo provided by Woodstock police)Specialists from the Ontario Provincial Police are now working the case to create a profile of someone who might be involved in Victoria Stafford's disappearance in Woodstock.

Surveillance video showed the Grade 3 student, known to her friends as Tori, walking with an unidentified woman as she left school Wednesday afternoon in the city of 35,000 east of London.
Investigators, who have called the woman a "person of interest," are poring through dozens of tips from the public about her identity.

The woman in the video is described by police as between 19 and 25 years old, between 120 and 125 pounds, with straight long black hair in a ponytail. She was wearing a white coat and black jeans.

Police said they have no reason at this time to suspect foul play, but the search for Victoria has continued around the clock with more than 200 volunteers from the community helping police.

Family has 'no answers'
The search continued Monday after about 1,000 people joined the girl's relatives for a candlelight vigil in Woodstock on Sunday night.

Stafford's parents, Tara McDonald and Rodney Stafford, separated last December. The father, who described the relationship as "an ongoing struggle," said he doesn't believe any of Victoria's relatives are behind her disappearance.

"I have no answers," the missing girl's mother said at the vigil. "Nobody can even begin to imagine what our family is going through."

Surrounded by his family at the vigil, Rodney Stafford thanked the hundreds of people who have helped search for his daughter.

"To me it is a dream, and I wish someone would slap me and wake me up, and preferably it be Tori," her father said.

Anyone with information can call police at (519) 537-2323 or contact Crime Stoppers anonymously at 1-800-222-TIPS.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

April 13th, 1979

Well it was 30 years ago Monday that Theresa's body was found so I thought I'd do a little commentary of the following photo essay:

The missing person notice signed by Lennoxville Police Chief Leo Hamel

Lennoxville as it looked 30 years ago

Le Pire

Crime scene photo 1

Crime scene photo 2

Roch Gaudreault & Jacques Quirion search through a garbage bag of women's clothing found near the crime scene (later determined not to be Theresa's)

The French Press got it right

Theresa's wallet found 10 miles from the crime scene...

photos obviously staged...

meaning police crime photographers got their DNA all over the wallet.

The Haunting Murder of Theresa Allore

Simon Fraser Book Takes did a mini-review of Kim's book:

Kim Rossmo (MA’87, PhD’96) takes a serious but fascinating look at some of the reasons why police work doesn’t always succeed. The reasons fall into three broad categories: cognitive biases, including perception, intuition, and tunnel vision; organizational traps, including groupthink, rumour, and ego; and errors in probability, including chance and randomness in forensics and profiling.

The cases used as illustrations of Rossmo’s thesis range from well-known miscarriages of justice (David Milgaard, Donald Marshall, and Guy Paul Morin) to investigations that didn’t begin early enough (the murders of women in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside), to unsolved cases (most particularly the haunting murder of Theresa Allore in the Eastern Townships of Quebec in 1978).

The book concludes with specific recommendations to help police departments avoid some of the investigative pitfalls Rossmo has identified, thus minimizing the chance of wrongful conviction and improving detective work.

Rossmo holds the University Endowed Chair in Criminology and is the director of the Centre for Geospatial Intelligence and Investigation in the Department of Criminal Justice at Texas State University. He is also an adjunct professor at SFU. Contributors to the book include Neil Boyd, SFU criminology professor, and Doug A. LePard (BA’01), deputy chief constable commanding the investigative division of the Vancouver Police Department.

Friday, April 10, 2009

Oh God, Remember these bozos?

Bridge protesters found guilty of mischief

Span closed for 21/2 hours; Defendants claim courts are biased against fathers in custody disputes

BY IRWIN BLOCK, THE GAZETTE
APRIL 10, 2009

Two divorced fathers whose publicity stunt four years ago shut down the Jacques Cartier Bridge for 21/2 hours were found guilty yesterday of mischief and other charges.

Quebec Court Judge Gilles Cadieux rejected the argument of necessity Benoît Leroux and Gilles Dumas invoked to justify breaking the law with their stunt on the bridge.

Dressed in a Robin outfit and carrying a placard calling for parental equality, Leroux scaled the bridge's ironworks on May 23, 2005, with Dumas coordinating from the ground.

Because of the danger, the Sûreté du Québec closed the span to traffic in both directions.

Cadieux ruled the two men, activists in Fathers 4 Justice - an international organization that fights for fathers' rights in child-custody cases - did not require illegal methods to make known their claims to the public or media.

Both men contend family law courts are stacked against fathers in custody disputes.

Leroux said outside the court he's been barred from visiting his 8-year-old daughter in the U.S. for the past six years because his estranged wife won a civil protection order after he failed to make child support payments.

Leroux and Dumas were convicted of mischief and conspiracy. Dumas was also convicted of interfering with police in the exercise of their duties.

Leroux asked the court for an unconditional discharge so he does not get a criminal record that could prevent him from visiting the U.S. to see his daughter or affect his standing with the Order of Engineers.

Cadieux asked him to consult a lawyer or do his own research to determine the consequences of having a criminal record.

Dumas objected to introducing his previous convictions into the court record. He he is to make legal arguments on that issue and his sentence on May 5.

Friday, April 03, 2009

My First Best Friend Laura Martens

This is an ode to my first best friend, Laura Martens. Laura and I were neighbors and grew up together in a West-Island suburb of Montreal called Pierrefonds. At the early age of 3-4 I was lucky to have two "girl" friends, Laura and Mary-Lee Champ, but Mary-Lee moved away and that left Laura:

Laura and I were inseparable. Our favorite thing to do was to sit in the ditch in front of her house and sort all the colors in my bottle cap collection (as you know I am a packrat and still have this collection):

We also loved playing TV-tag, dress-up (which usually involved me dressing in drag), playing board games, and watching Star Trek. Here is a photo of Laura and me on her front lawn (That's not her hair: she is wearing a "Beatle-wig", a novelty that was quite fashionable at the time):

Laura and I experienced the sixties, the moon shot, puberty. I recall one awkward moment in my garage when we kissed, but it just felt weird: we knew we were just good friends.

Laura's sister, her father, and Laura

Eventually I moved away to New Brunswick. We wrote for a time. About music, New Wave. This new band, The Cars... Do you think they're any good?

Then we lost touch.

Years later I would learn that Laura died at too young an age of a terminal disease.

I bring this up because I have noticed something peculiar about the dead. Many of us think of them as living. I get many emails from Theresa's friends and am quite touched when they tell me they think of her every day. I can't really believe it.

Laura before she died in 1990

But I have thought about Laura at least once a week for the last 40 years, and it has nothing to do with her dying. She is part of me. A wonderful, sweet memory that I will keep forever. The dead touch us, inform us, guide us. They teach us. I think what they teach us most is tolerance of uncertainty, and a desire for serenity and peace.

Irwin Block on the SQ Probes into the Construction Industry

I'm not sure it sits right with me that the head of a newspaper union is telling us that now is not the time for public inquiries into the construction union:

Construction raids recall '70s corruption
Time for another cliche probe?; SQ investigating suspected sales-tax fraud

BY IRWIN BLOCK, THE GAZETTE APRIL 3, 2009

Some 35 years ago, a union goon named Yvon Duhamel mounted a bulldozer and smashed generators at the LG-2 site of the James Bay

hydroelectric project, causing $33 million in damages.

That sparked a year-long inquiry into construction industry violence under Judge Robert Cliche, which revealed widespread corruption among building trade unions affiliated with the Quebec Federation of Labour.

Its drive for a monopoly on James Bay and other lucrative job sites, to the exclusion of workers affiliated with the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN), was run like a take-no-prisoners war.

A recent series of police raids, including 18 yesterday targeting construction companies suspected of sales-tax fraud, has led some to ask whether Quebec needs a new Cliche commission.

Those who oppose a public inquiry say the Sûreté du Québec is actively investigating signs of corrupt activities among employers, in parallel with strong investigative reports by Radio-Canada and La Presse. Some say the signs are far removed from the situation back in the construction boom of the early 1970s.

Lucien Bouchard, who was chief counsel at the commission, described its findings in his autobiography, On the Record: "Union loan sharks lending members money at 256 per cent interest, recycled wrestlers and boxers on union staffs, habitual criminals doing union business with baseball bats, revolvers and sub-machine guns."

André (Dédé) Desjardins, then the boss of the Building Trades Council, was forced to resign, then was later gunned down in a professional hit on Metropolitan Blvd.

This time, the Sûreté du Québec is not waiting for matters to deteriorate.

As one seasoned observer, who insisted he not be quoted by name, suggested, the police probe is surely linked to the fact that much of the construction investment over the next years - including billions for two superhospitals and infra-structure upgrades - is by the public sector, and Quebec is wary of cost overruns.

Last year, $41.3 billion was invested in construction in Quebec, says the Association de la construction du Québec, representing 15,000 employers. Events are moving swiftly on the investigative front.

Tuesday, the SQ raided 12 construction firms in several cities, including the headquarters of Guay Inc., the crane rental giant, in connection with money laundering by biker gangs. It is alleged that some workers had to take overtime in cash, rather than by cheque, which allowed dirty money to enter the clean-money stream.

Last fall, Jocelyn Dupuis was fired as general manager of the building trades council over his racking up $125,000 in expenses over six months. Dupuis's name also came up in the money-laundering probe. He is an alleged friend of Normand Marvin (Casper) Ouimet, a Hells Angels member. La Presse said Ouimet's Trois Rivières home was searched on Tuesday. Dupuis's former boss, Jean Lavallée, has also been canned as head of the Building Trades Council, and he's back in his former job as Quebec director of the Fraternité Interprovincial des Ouvriers en Electricité.

Dupuis had worked as a business agent for the Union of Operating Engineers, and represented crane operators at Guay Inc. Coincidentally, or not, the union was among four placed under trusteeship, later lifted, as a result of the Cliche recommendations.

Michel Grant, who teaches labour relations at Université du Québec à Montréal, notes big differences between the Cliche commission, aimed at uncovering corrupt and violent union practices, and now.

"These probes are not about union practices, they are about management practices and money laundering and even infiltration of Hells Angels members," he said.

In these money-laundering cases, union officials might have been "secondary players," while in the Cliche probe union officials were prime targets.

At some point there might be grounds for an inquiry into the construction industry as a whole, but not on union practices, Grant said.

Pierre Hamel, in charge of government and legal affairs for the construction associaton, said a public inquiry now would be premature.

iblock@thegazette.canwest.com

Thursday, April 02, 2009

Slapshot Hanson Bros.' son signs with Leafs!

Oh sweet nourishing life imitating art:

Updated: March 31, 2009, 4:45 PM ET
Hanson signs with Leafs

TORONTO -- The son of one of the notorious Hanson brothers from the movie "Slap Shot" has joined the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Christian Hanson, the son of Dave from "Slap Shot" movie fame, signed a two-year, entry-level deal with the team Tuesday. He recently completed his college career at Notre Dame and was an undrafted free agent.

Hanson is 6-foot-4 center who weighs 228 pounds.

Hanson had a 16 goals and 15 assists in 37 games for the Fighting Irish this season. The native of Venetia, Pa., spent four years at the school.

Toronto Subway Attacks

I went to college in Toronto. Lived at the Museum and Dufferin subway stops. Frequented Osgoode and Spadina. I never had a problem with violence. Never ever felt threatened in Toronto.

I don't know what has become of this city, but this, and the announcement of 125 arrests this AM related to gang violence tells me that T.O. is in very rough shape. That's been true of the outer skin for years, but now - even more - it's penetrating the central core.

Wouldn't wanna be ya...

SUBWAY CRIME
Attack in Museum station was another random act of violence
KATE HAMMER
April 2, 2009

It has been a rough year for those who ride the subway, who might be looking over their shoulders after an attack at Museum station was determined yesterday to be yet another random act of violence underground.

The attack happened only six weeks after three boys were shoved by a stranger at Dufferin station, two of them falling into the path of an oncoming train. Just weeks before that, a gunman opened fire on a platform at Osgoode station soon after unwitting commuters stepped off the train.

The latest attack comes almost a year to the day after an 18-year-old woman was shot in the leg as a train pulled into Spadina station. And it comes exactly a month before 38 new officers begin patrolling subway cars, streetcars and stations.

In the most recent attack, a 57-year-old woman was struck in the head as she disembarked from a northbound train at Museum station, shortly before 1:15 p.m. Monday.

She was able to stumble upstairs to inform transit employees of the attack and was taken to hospital with serious but non life-threatening injuries. Police found a knife discarded in the station.

Transit employees recognized the attacker as a regular at Museum station, and police reviewed surveillance camera footage in order to help identify him.

Despite the recent rash of random violence within the subway system, Toronto Transit Commission chairman Adam Giambrone maintained that commuters are safe underground.

"The numbers go up and down unfortunately every year, but most of 1.6 million people who ride the system every day have a safe trip," he said.

Ridership is up 3 per cent in the first 10 weeks of this year compared to 2008, but crime data won't be available until midyear, he said.

Edward Owase, 30, was arrested Monday night in connection with the Museum station attack. He has been charged with aggravated assault, assault with a weapon and failing to comply with recognizance.

Who Killed Theresa?