Jacques Côté was murdered by the same killer who murdered Gilbert Pépin on December 5, 1961. Mr. Côté, 22, worked for Victoriaville Taxi in Victoriaville, 162 km (101 miles) northeast of Montréal. The company was owned by his father, Aimé. On the night of Monday-Tuesday, October 30-31, 1961 a call apparently from a phone booth asked for a taxi at the corner of Jutra Boulevard East and Perrault Street. Jacques Côté picked up the caller and radioed that he was going to Sainte-Hélène de Chester, about 30 km (20 miles) east of Victoriaville. When there was no further word from his son Aimé Côté became worried and drove to Sainte-Hélène de Chester but was unable to find any trace of him. On his return to Victoriaville he spotted Jacques Côté's 1962 Ford Galaxie parked behind the Huron Hotel. When he saw that the cab's microphone had been ripped out Aimé Côté called police. They opened the trunk and found Jacques Côté's body inside. He had been shot in the stomach and head with .22 calibre bullets. The police interrogated eight suspects but all were cleared of involvement and released. On Wednesday, November 2, a bankbook and identification papers belonging to Jacques Côté were found on a rural road a short distance east of Victoriaville and well off the main route to Sainte-Hélène de Chester. This was evidently the murder scene. On the ground was a large stain left by a pool of blood three feet (one metre) in diameter. There the case stood for a little over a month. Then, sometime after 9:30 p.m. on Monday, December 4, 1961, Victoriaville police received a frantic call from a woman who reported being savagely attacked with a hammer by her brother-in-law after refusing to loan him ten dollars. The woman was rushed to hospital where she remained in critical condition with a fractured skull and fractures to her arms and hands from fending off additional blows. As police searched for the brother-in-law a second taxi driver, Gilbert Pépin, was found shot to death in a ditch near St. Celestin, about 48 km (30 miles) northwest of Victoriaville. The discovery was made about noon on Tuesday. Police learned that Mr. Pépin had been seen talking to a man who answered the brother-in-law's description at about 8:30 p.m. on Monday. At about 12:30 the same night he left the Diamond Taxi stand to pick up an unknown caller at a garage in Victoriaville. Later, Mr. Pépin's taxi was found at the Sainte-Angèle ferry crossing on the St. Lawrence River opposite Trois-Rivières. [Next column]

Jacques Côté (Source: L'Union des Cantons de L'est, August 7, 1968, p. 6, via Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec) When police discovered that the brother-in-law's wife was hospitalized in Trois-Rivières, awaiting the birth of their first child, they went there to interview her, arriving at about 9 p.m. Tuesday. The killer's wife reported that he had visited her earlier that day and confessed to attacking his sister-in-law and killing Mr. Pépin. Police traced the 32-year-old killer to a tavern adjacent to the hotel at which he had registered under an assumed name. He offered no resistance. "OK, it's me," he said. "My rifle is up in my hotel room. Be careful, it's loaded." He confessed to murdering both Gilbert Pépin and Jacques Côté. On December 14, 1961 a coroner's jury found the killer criminally responsible for the deaths of the two taxi drivers. However he was deemed mentally unfit to stand trial and was ordered imprisoned in the Philippe Pinel Institute, the psychiatric wing of Bordeaux Jail. Eight years later the order was rescinded and he went to trial. In March, 1969, a jury found him not guilty of murder by reason of insanity and he was returned to Bordeaux. In February, 1970 the killer was seen back in Victoriaville. He had been granted supervised leave for 15 days.