René Gouin, 62, the father of ten children, was a long-time driver for Taxi Central in Drummondville. At about 2 a.m. on Saturday, March 14, 1981, Mr. Gouin was dispatched to pick up two males at the corner of Demers and Celanese streets. A staff member at a nearby hotel had made telephone call for them. Later Saturday morning, when Mr. Gouin did not return home, his wife called the Taxi Central dispatcher and learned that Mr. Gouin had not reported back from an out-of-town trip. She immediately called the police. Officers from the St. Hyacinthe detachment of the Sureté du Québec discovered Mr. Gouin's abandoned cab at the side of Route 20 in Ste. Rosalie. The meter and radio were both missing. In any case, Mr. Gouin was out of radio range so he would not have been heard if he called for help. The same afternoon two teenagers who were taking part in a motocross event discovered Mr. Gouin's body lying in a ditch near Range 12, St. Théodore d'Acton. He had been strangled to death. The killers then drove the taxi over his body. Arrests came quickly. The SQ took a 17-year-old juvenile into custody on Saturday evening and a 22-year-old man on Sunday morning. The 22-year-old was convicted of murder in May, 1981 and sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole for 14 years.

Snowflakes fall as pallbearers carry René Gouin's casket to the waiting hearse. (Source: Sherbrooke Tribune, March 20, 1981, p. A6. Photo by Richard Jean, via Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec.) At the time of the killer's conviction, proceedings against the 17-year-old were still under consideration. About 40 taxis, some from as far away as Montréal and Windsor, took part in the funeral procession.