On the morning of Monday, July 24, Steve Desjardins, 23, picked up two men in front of a restaurant in Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, just west of Montréal. He drove the men to St. Calixte, about 20 miles north. Here the men ordered him do drive down an isolated road called Montée Bécaud and then along a trail about 50 metres into the bush. At this point the men robbed Mr. Desjardins of about $30. They then knocked him out, doused him and his cab with gasoline and set them on fire. Mr. Desjardins regained consciousness and managed to put out his flaming clothes by rolling on the ground. He then dragged himself back to Montée Bécaud where he was found shortly afterward by passersby at about 11 a.m. Mr. Desjardins suffered second- and third-degree burns to 95 percent of his body. He was able to talk to police briefly but died in Montréal's Hotel-Dieu hospital at about noon the next day. Police believed that Mr. Desjardin's killers had tried to mask the robbery as a settling of accounts by criminal acquaintances. However, Mr. Desjardins himself had no criminal record and there was no suspicion of him being involved in any crimes. "Steve grew up here. Lived here all his life. He used to come in here all the time," said one employee of the restaurant in Ste.-Anne-des-Plaines. "He never seemed to have any problems. Never drank, no drugs or anything like that." [Next column]

Ste-Anne-des-Plaines is the location of Archambault Institution, a federal penitentiary with minimum and medium security units. (Source: "Archambault prison's bloody, brutal history," Coolopolis Blogspot.) Police examined the charred remains of the taxi but were left with no suspects and no leads. An investigator from the Sureté du Québec's major crimes squad noted that Mr. Desjardins was the only taxi driver in Ste.-Anne-des-Plaines, the site of a maximum-security [sic] prison, and "could have picked up anybody." An anonymous donor put up a $2,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the killers. The same donor had posted a similar reward when a young gas station attendant in Montréal was doused with gasoline and set afire by robbers. The young man survived the attack.