Croteau Redux

An interesting piece in yesterday's Gazette about a Longueuil women who thinks guy Croteau might have raped her in 1977.

Yes, I know Big-Bad-Guy isn't responsible for every sex crime in the '70s and '80s, but indulge me for a moment (my comments in italics):

Sexual attacker hands pedestrian a life sentence

JAMES MENNIE 
The Gazette 

Sunday, February 22, 2004

She says it was nearly 27 years ago, and so she's had to trade off some details in the recollection of it. 

For example, she can remember the colour of the building where she first saw him standing, looking at her, but she's never been sure if he was wearing a checked lumberjack's jacket or an army fatigue coat.

"A checked lumberjack's jacket" matches the clothing worn by one of the suspects in the Manon Dube case.

Jeanette is 53 now, has a husband and works as a teacher and freelance writer, but most of what happened that autumn evening in 1977 remains crystal clear, the details as sharply defined as the shock in the man's eyes when she turned around and defended herself.

1977: this would put Croteau at approximately 21 years of age. A young serial killer in the making?

"I was coming back from the Longueuil métro station to where I live," she said. "I decided to walk rather than take the bus. It was about a 15-minute walk."

It was also a walk that took her from the subway across an overpass that spans Taschereau Blvd. and, as she paced across the bridge in the twilight, Jeanette looked back and noticed what appeared to be the figure of a man standing by a blue glass building. She resumed walking and was about three-quarters across the overpass when she sensed "a very light touch ... like a draft."

"So I whipped around and this guy had his hand right up the back of my skirt. ... I was just enraged to see him. I started showering abuse on him ... and then bashing him. I had a very heavy purse and I swung at his head.

"After I yelled at him, the strangest thing is he looked as if he was going to cry. ... He turned around and began to run. I began to chase him."

She chased him?

"I don't know. I was just so mad."

A woman reported to me a similar encounter with a man on the streets of Sherbrooke, Quebec in 1980. The man confronted her, she challenged him, he looked like he might cry, then she chased him. 

Jeanette says he looked like someone who had just walked out of the woods - a beard, fairly long hair. "But it was his eyes that stood out the most. He had the most spectacular eyes."

Her assailant got away and Jeanette went home and filed a police report. She was visited by two officers who kept looking around her apartment, asked if she was single, if she lived alone, why she was walking alone at night. They left her feeling as if she was somehow responsible for the attack. It was the '70s. 

It was the '70s? Oh come-on, James, do you think women are treated with any greater respect today?

The police said they'd come back with mug shots. They never did, Jeanette says.

This is an often described scenerio. I can't tell you the number of women who have contacted me about sexual assaults from 1977 - 1980. In almost every case the police very quickly dismissed their cause

Jeanette put the incident behind her for eight years, even though she'd shake when she talked about it, until an 18-year-old girl was found raped and killed in a ditch that runs parallel to the overpass.

Nathalie Boucher's body was found less than 300 metres from her Longueuil home. As of yesterday, her killing remained unsolved. "I always felt it was the same guy who did it," Jeanette says. "That he decided to get it right this time."

Nathalie Boucher is a new one on me. Yes, there are many people who could be responsible for her death. But one thing to keep in mind; Guy Croteau is the only "serial killer" I know of who to date is responsible for only one murder. He will serve a life sentence for the death of Sophie Landry: this is good. But who else did he kill? Remember, this is not stuff from my imagination; it is the Surete du Quebec who have publically labeled Croteau as a multiple murderer. 

Ok, SQ, we're waiting for the other murders. It was dumb luck that you were able to link Croteau to Landry. Now it's time to go to work and solve some crimes.

And then, two years ago, she was in a coffee shop when she saw a newspaper front page covered with a series of photographs under a headline that read: "The Many Faces of a Serial Rapist." It was story about Guy Croteau, a school janitor who had been arrested for a murder and a string of sexual assaults on the South Shore.

The police published the 10, startlingly different photos after Croteau, then 45, was charged with nine sexual assaults that occurred between 1995 and 2000 and the 1987 murder of a 16-year-old girl who had been raped and stabbed 173 times.

Jeanette recognized the eyes.

She called the Sûreté du Québec's toll-free number and told them about the incident on the overpass. They took the information and never called back.

Oh boy! Like I'm not familiar with this story!

Jeanette, I called the same toll-free number, and guess what? They didn't call me back either. For a police force relying on the public to solve crimes, they sure weren't eager to put any effort into it. In short, it took embarrassing the SQ in the newspapers before they would even consider looking at my sister's murder in relation to Croteau. 

FYI: Croteau had ties to the Eastern Townships.

Now, at this point it has to be said that the greater Montreal area has more than enough murderers and rapists to go around, and the area around the Longueuil métro, the place where Nathalie Boucher was murdered, where Croteau's 16-year-old victim was last seen alive, has known its share of crime scenes.

Ya, ya , ya... so this is an excuse not to look into these things?

Ask Jeanette what she'd do if the cops told her tomorrow that they knew for an absolute fact the man who tried to attack her wasn't Guy Croteau and she pauses for the longest time.

They can't say that. They don't know that.

"It's possible. ... It's possible I've talked myself into this." But Jeanette feels that even if it wasn't Croteau, "the guy who came up behind me (27 years ago) meant business."

And that's when you know that in the end, it really doesn't matter who it was who stood by a blue glass building on an autumn night in 1977, whether he wore a checked jacket or a drab olive coat, whether he's going to sit in a cell for the next quarter century or whether he's still out there. 

We tell ourselves that justice has been done, that a school janitor convicted for the rape and murder of a teenage girl in 1987 has been given a life sentence for his crime. Even if he's convicted of anything else, society cannot do more to Guy Croteau than it already has.

So society should close the chapter on Croteau? Nathalie Boucher's murder remains unsolved. The Surete du Quebec has stated publicly that Guy Croteau is a serial killer - though inexplicably they can only tab him for one murder. 

Doesn’t the SQ have an obligation to society to determine what other murders Croteau committed? In doing that, we just might learn from past mistakes. And I don't think it was women who made the mistake of walking where they shouldn't late at night. 

But everything - including justice - is relative. Because a 27-year-old woman one autumn night decided to do nothing more sinister than walk home from the métro, a 53-year-old woman still wonders a quarter of a century after the fact whether she defended herself against a murderer in the making.

And that, some might argue, is a life sentence in itself.

I will leave the last word to another victim, Marc Lapierre who so eloquently stated:

"Life Sentence - it's the victims that receive it."

Sophie Landry / Guy Croteau

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2004

Sophie Landry



This site experienced a surge of visits yesterday. Checking my Site Meter, I found out why. In the wake of Guy Croteau's murder conviction, people were looking for more information on the case. But they weren't coming here for me, they weren't searching for Croteau. The words people kept Googling over and over were "Sophie Landry".

We've been accustomed to thinking that the offender holds all the interest and fascination. It is heartening, in this instance at least, that people want to learn more about the victim. I can't tell you anything about Sophie Landry. I didn't know her. But it's nice to know people are still thinking about her, that they care about her.

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MONDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2004

Croteau Attempts Suicide

the judge said five to ten
but I say double that again...

Moments after being convicted of the murder of Sophie Landry, Guy Croteau tries to slit his wrists in front of crowded courtroom.

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UPDATE:

Croteau gets 25 year life sentence with no chance of parole.

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Guy The Knife Could Walk



In a move I can only describe as, well... stupid... jurors in the Guy Croteau murder trial have asked to review the tapes of the closing arguments for each lawyer.

Recall that Croteau (irony of ironies: did I mention that "croteau" means "cut" in French) is charged with the 1987 death of 16-year-old Sophie Landry who was stabbed 173 times.

Hey jury! Let me make it easy for you...

SHE WAS STABBED 173 TIMES!!!!

So what could be holding up the jury? That's easy: utter confusion courtesy of the Judge. It turns out that - thanks to Superior Court Justice James Brunton - jurors are unaware that Croteau is awaiting trial on multiple charges of sexual assault, forcible confinement and robbery involving 10 other females age 10 to 18. 

Brunton deemed this information prejudicial to the defendant.

Oy vey! With judges like this, who needs criminals!

Also, Justice Brunton disallowed testimony from profiler, Marc Lepine (No, not that Marc Lepine, in another irony, the Surete profiler shares the name of one of Quebec's most prolific murderers).

So what does the jury have to go on? Not much. That a girl was found stabbed to death with the defendant's sperm inside her. Defending attorney, Marc Labelle, has argued that Croteau might have raped her, but it doesn't mean he killed her. This might make sense except for the fact that in the matter of the other assaults:

- All of the victims were teenagers.

- All of the victims were assaulted on the South Shore of Montreal

- They were all found in isolated areas

- A knife was used in each incident.

Also, Croteau's m.o. is well established: he works alone; his pick-up line is usually of the, "hey, kid, can you help me find my lost puppy?" ilk. If Croteau raped Landry, then he most likely killed her too; there wouldn't have been a buddy around to blame.

Despite these points, Justice Brunton ruled there was not enough proof of a connection between the Landry murder and the sexual assaults.

Justice Brunton: that's French for knucklehead.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 09, 2004

I Don't Get It



The trial of Guy Croteau begins with more questions than answers

After languishing in a Quebec jail cell for nearly two years, Guy Croteau has finally gone to trial for the 1987 murder of Sophie Landry.

The arrest of Croteau is a text book example of the Surete du Quebec's ability to do good police work - when they are motivated to do so. Laundry's semi-nude body was found face up in a cornfield near St. Roch L'Achigan, about 25 km North of Montreal. She had been stabbed 173 times.

Let me say that again,

She had been stabbed one hundred and seventy-three times.

As if that wasn't overkill, her assailant apparently drove over her body repeatedly with an automobile.

Someone had some issues.

The 16-year-old Landry had also been raped. Sperm samples were taken from her body during her autopsy. 

Now here's the good police work part; unlike some Surete investigators who have a preponderance for disposing of evidence (see Allore or Dube), detectives assigned to the Landry case remarkably kept the samples of sperm for 14 years.

Forteen-years later police picked up Guy Croteau for a series of abductions and sexual assaults in the Longueuil area of Montreal. From his m.o. Croteau appeared to be nothing more than a serial rapists with a remote possiblilty of developing into a more violent criminal. Nevertherless, when investigators ran Croteau's DNA through a check with samples on file for past crimes, Croteau came up as a match on the unsolved Landry case. He was subsequently arrested on February 13th 2002 for 14-year-old murder.

Now for the troubling part.

Croteau stands accused of just one murder. After the Landry trial he will go to court for the series of Longueuil rapes. That's it. No more murders.

I have a hard time believing Croteau committed only one murder: he stabbed someone 173 times, it is unusually for someone to begin to kill at such an heightened level of violence. At the same time, what's to explain Croteau's behaviour after the Landry murder? His actions would suggests that after committing such an excessive crime he settled into the life of a rather ho-hum serial rapist. I don't get it?

Apparently neither do the police. In a 2002 article in the Journal de Montreal about the Surete du Quebec's profiling unit, investigators referred to Guy Croteau as a bona fide serial killer, comparing him to the likes of William Fyfe and Angelo Colalillo. Now looks are deceiving, but the 47-year-old Croteau's appearance is down right spooky. Take a look at these 10 photos from the Surete du Quebec's website; the guy has that Bundy-esque shape-shiftiness down cold.

There is little doubt the Surete du Qubec believe Croteau is responsible for other murders; the post on their website is an out-and-out call for victims to come forward and start pointing fingers. But in the nearly two years Croteau was sitting in prison apparenty investigators couldn't make anything stick. 

So there you have it: Guy Croteau - the serial killer without any series. Stay tuned, I'm sure we'll be hearing more from this one.