Maxime Gélinas
Etienne des Gres, QC / Oct. 10, 1951
Gélinas, 67, was partly disabled (he walked with a limp) but worked as a taxi driver and part-time mailman in Etienne des Gres. He was a popular resident of the community. He and his wife had two children.
On October 10, 1951, two men came to Gélinas's home and asked to be driven to Trois Rivières. When he failed to return that night his wife informed the police. Three days later, on October 13, his taxi was found in a ditch at Yamachiche, 20 miles west of Trois Rivières.
A week after the taxi was discovered a hunter stumbled across Gélinas's remains in a wooded area about 20 miles east of Louisville on the Montréal-Québec highway. A postmortem examination found the cause of death to be a fractured skull, but Gélinas had also suffered eight broken ribs and internal injuries apparently caused by a blunt instrument.
A man confessed to the murder but police found so many discrepancies in his story that they discounted the confession. Nevertheless they jailed the man on a vagrancy charge for his own protection after residents of Etienne des Gres threatened to lynch him.
Eventually two brothers from Trois Rivières, aged 26 and 32 were convicted of the murder. They were hanged at Bordeaux Jail on March 14, 1952.
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