Arthur Desjardins
Montréal, QC / December 11, 1966
On Dec. 11, 1966, a 17-year-old was released from prison on a day pass to visit his family in preparation for his parole scheduled for December 24. He and an 18-year-old former convict spent several hours drinking in East End Montréal bars after which they hailed a taxi driven by Arthur Desjardins at the corner of St. Catherines and Clark streets. Desjardins was about 48 years old.
The pair attacked Desjardins near Clark and Vitre streets, beating him so badly with a .22 calibre pistol that the plastic handgrip was shattered. The 17-year-old then shot the taxi driver to death with a single gunshot to the head and robbed him of $28. The taxi was found at the intersection about 11:30 p.m. with the headlights on and the engine running. A door was wide open and the bullet had gone through the windshield. Desjardins was slumped over the steering wheel.
After killing Desjardins the pair held up a motorist at gunpoint and robbed him of $1.25. The motorist gave descriptions to the police who quickly tracked down the 18-year-old. The 17-year-old was picked up at the Berthelet Correctional Centre where he had quietly returned to await his forthcoming parole.
The 17-year-old was charged with capital murder and the prosecution asked for the death penalty, but since capital punishment did not apply to offenders under 18 years of age he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Beginning in 1971 he was given temporary leaves to visit his family, but parole was refused in 1974. On August 15, 1974 the killer, now 24, was given a weekend pass but he failed to return on August 18. On November 2 he teamed up with two other young men to rob a Montréal restaurant. When Dr. Gaston Perrault tried to intervene the killer shot him in cold blood. The killer also fatally wounded a pursuing police officer, Constable Aimé Pelletier, as the trio fled the restaurant.
While still at large he sent a 16-page "open letter" to the Montreal Star blaming the justice system for turning him into a murderer. He excused the murders of Dr. Perrault ("He should have known that a citizen should not intervene during an armed robbery") and Constable Pelletier ("It was either him or me") and referred to Desjardins ("My first murder") simply as "a taxi driver".
Of Desjardins the killer wrote, "It was following this drinking bout that I killed a taxi driver. I was really drunk and so was my accomplice. I didn't want to kill anyone and when I woke up in the morning I thought perhaps I had not killed anyone because I wasn't sure that the taxi driver had been hit by the shots."
A month after the restaurant murders the killer committed suicide.
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