In 1976 Lorenzo Emond, 59, was a taxi owner-driver in Rivière-du-Loup, 431 km (270 miles) northeast of Montréal. Mr. Emond owned a fleet of 10 taxis as well as several commercial and residential properties in the area. He was known to be in the habit of carrying large sums of cash, amounting to $10,000 or more, for the purpose of making quick deals on cars or real estate. This made him a target. At about 6 p.m. on Friday, February 20, 1976 Mr. Emond answered a call for a pickup at the Hôtel du Domaine in Rivière-du-Loup. The call was evidently made from a phone booth outside the hotel. Mr. Emond's family was not immediately alarmed when he failed to come home by the next morning, assuming that he had accepted an out-of-town trip. Eventually they began a search in and around Rivière-du-Loup and found Mr. Emond's Cadillac on a dead-end road south of town. The car was undamaged but the keys were not in the ignition. The discovery was reported to the police who opened the trunk and found Mr. Emond's body. An autopsy revealed no marks of violence. It appeared that Mr. Emond died of a heart attack brought on by the ordeal of being trapped in the trunk of his car for hours. The $11,000 that he had been carrying was gone. A week later police had two men in custody, one aged 30, from Montréal and the other aged 27, from Valleyfield. Both quickly confessed to the crime. According to their testimony the robbery was planned by the older man who recruited the 27-year-old as a driver. They picked a spot to carry out the robbery on a road leading to a bog a few miles south of Rivière-du-Loup. They also selected another spot a short distance away where the getaway car would be parked. While the 27-year-old waited at the wheel of the getaway car the 30-year-old made the call to Mr. Emond and had him drive to the bog. There he robbed the taxi driver at gunpoint and forced him into the trunk. The gun was an air pistol that his 20-year-old girlfriend purchased earlier at a Woolco store in Valleyfield. Meanwhile the 27-year-old saw another taxi suddenly appear at the rendezvous point followed by a police car with flashing lights. Fearing a trap he panicked and drove off, leaving his accomplice behind. Minutes later the 30-year-old arrived and saw the taxi and police car. It turned out to be a traffic stop but he also assumed that it was a trap and that the 27-year-old was already arrested. He escaped on foot down a snowmobile trail and later caught a bus to Montréal. [Next column]

"Start of a snowmobile race in Rivière-du-Loup on January 14, 1967, with Hôtel du Domaine in the background [detail]. Photo by René Marmen. Source: Musée du Bas St-Laurent, Rivière du Loup. " The 30-year-old claimed that he intended to telephone the police and tell them where Mr. Emond could be found but the police car at the rendezvous point convinced him that Mr. Emond had escaped from the trunk. He assumed that Mr. Emond had somehow managed to call the police despite the robber having ripped out the taxi's radio microphone. The two men met the next morning at a hotel in Montréal. In the presence of the girlfriend they split eleven $1,000 bills between them, five for the 27-year-old and six for the 30-year-old. They later met accidentally at Blue Bonnets race track where both of them took their $1,000 bills to exchange for smaller denominations. Both men were surprised when they learned about Mr. Emond's death from a newspaper report. Both were convicted of manslaughter. The 30-year-old was sentenced to 14 years in prison and the 27-year-old to seven years.