Maxime Gélinas, 67, was partly disabled (he walked with a limp) but he worked as a taxi driver and part-time mailman in Saint-Étienne-des-Grès, 215 km (135 miles) northwest of Trois-Rivières. A popular resident of the community, he was a bachelor and lived alone. At about 2 o'clock on the afternoon of Wednesday, October 10, 1951 Mr. Gelinas was washing his blue Studebaker sedan while chatting with his 83-year-old neighbour, Joseph Beaudoin. Two men approached and asked Mr. Gélinas to drive them to Saint-Boniface-de-Shawinigan, about 10 km (6 miles) north, offering to pay him in advance. Mr. Beaudoin watched Mr. Gélinas drive away with his two passengers at 2:10 p.m. Nothing more was heard of the taxi driver until his body was found nine days later. The two passengers were brothers from Trois-Rivières aged 26 and 32, both with long histories as petty criminals. The brothers combined ruthless brutality with bungling ineptitude. They made the decision to rob a bank in Saint-Boniface two days earlier, on Monday, October 8. That night the younger brother went out to steal a revolver for the purpose but there were too many police patrols about and he lost his nerve. On Tuesday, October 9 they took a bus from Trois-Rivières to Louiseville, 36 km (20 miles) to the west. Their intention was to rob a jewelry store by cutting through the front window and scooping up the items on display. They purchased a 35-cent glass cutter for the job but when they got to the store after closing time they were surprised to find that the the display items had been removed and locked up for the night. Undeterred, the brothers managed to carry off a locked cash register from the Chateau Louise hotel at 2 a.m. and were rewarded with $59 when they pried it open. They were back in Trois-Rivières by 6:30 a.m. on October 10. It was later that morning that they set out for Saint-Boniface by bus, but they learned too late that it only went as far as St. Étienne. After having soft drinks at the village cafe and pondering what to do next, they spotted Mr. Gélinas washing his car and decided to ask him for a lift. As they approached him they saw from its "T" license plate that his car was a taxi. Mr. Gélinas had only driven about three kilometres (two miles) from St. Étienne when the younger brother told the older one, who was evidently sitting in the front passenger seat, to grab the car keys. The older brother punched Mr. Gélinas in the eye and the wound bled so profusely that the younger brother, afraid of attracting attention, warned the older brother to stop the bleeding before they got to Saint-Boniface. The brothers drove off with the younger one at the wheel and Mr. Gélinas on the front seat between them. A witness later reported seeing the taxi with three men in the front seat. An older man was in the middle with a bandage over his eyes. As they got to Saint-Boniface the younger brother had another idea. He drove through Saint-Boniface, passed other villages and then drove down a narrow trail into a wooded area near Saint-Paulin. As he brought the taxi to a stop the younger brother told the older one, "You know what to do." With that the older brother told Mr. Gélinas to get out of the car and forced him to walk three or four "arpents" (180 to 240 metres or yards) into into the woods. At this point Mr. Gélinas allegedly picked up a piece of wood and attacked the older brother who punched him in the back of the neck and knocked him unconscious. The older brother returned to the car and the pair drove off, but a few minutes later the younger brother discovered that the older one had failed to retrieve Mr. Gélinas's wallet. They drove back into the woods and found the victim still unconscious. The brothers took turns kicking him in the stomach and chest and then the younger brother jumped up and down on him several times. Finally the older brother picked up a large rock and threw it down on his head, twice. Mr. Gélinas suffered eleven fractured ribs and punctured lungs but a fractured skull and a brain hemhorage were the immediate cause of his death. After murdering Mr. Gélinas the brothers forgot about robbing the bank in Saint-Boniface and took his taxi on a three-day, 1,160 km (750 mile) joy ride. First they drove the taxi 130 km (80 miles) southwest to Montréal, arriving shortly before 6 p.m. Here they tried to sell the car and, like the brothers who murdered Sam Delibasich two years earlier, they learned to their dismay that the market value of a used taxi was next to nil. They left Montréal about 9:30 p.m., heading for Chicoutimi, 450 km (280 miles) to the northeast. A park ranger made a note of the taxi license plate as they drove through the Barrière-de-Stoneham, an entrance to the Laurnetides forest reserve, at 3 o'clock on the morning of October 11. They reached Chicoutimi before noon and made another unsuccessful attempt to sell the taxi, this time to a car dealer who retained a vivid impression of them. In the afteroon they were at Chute-à-la-Savane, 98 km (60 miles) northwest of Chicoutimi where they picked up their girlfriends. The foursome continued on to Peribonka, 24 km (15 miles) to the west where they spent the night at a hotel. On the morning of October 12 the killers arrived at Barrière-de-Laterrière, another entrance to the forest reserve 130 km (80 miles) from Peribonka. Here they attracted the scrutiny of park ranger Lionel Meunier by stopping for several minutes about 300 metres (yards) outside the park gate. Mr. Meunier assumed they were drinking their supply of alcohol because bringing liquor into the park was illegal. At about 3:30 in the afternoon Frank Floreault, a safety engineer for the district of Trois-Rivières, caught up with the taxi on Highway 2 near Saint-Barthelemy. The car was weaving from side to side and Mr. Floreault concluded that there was either something wrong with its steering or the driver was drunk. Near Louiseville the taxi veered to the left twice as Mr. Floreault attempted to pass it. On his third attempt the taxi veered left again and Mr. Floreault had to swerve onto the opposite shoulder to avoid a collision. He succeeded in passing but soon afterward the taxi took a nose dive into the eight foot deep (2.5 metre) ditch. Mr. Floreault drove back to give assistance and was suprised to see the brothers climb out of the wreck uninjured. Mr. Floreault offered to take the brothers to the Doyon garage in Yamachiche, but they asked to go to Trois-Rivières instead. He dropped them off at another garage on the outskirts of town, but having no intention of reporting the accident, the killers simply returned to their homes as though nothing had happened. Police were notified about the abandoned taxi on Saturday, October 13, and had Alphonse Doyon tow it to his garage in Yamachiche. Police examined and photographed the taxi the next day. Fingerprints retrieved from the taxi were eventually traced to the younger of the two brothers. This gave police a suspect and a name. Meanwhile, Mr. Gélinas's failure to return from his trip caused immediate anxiety among his friends and neighbours who joined police in searching for him throughout the district. After five days without word from him most people assumed that the taxi driver must be dead. [Next column]

Saint-Étienne Church (1868) in Saint-Étienne-des-Grès, Québec. (Photo by Bernard Gagnon, Wikipedia Commons) At about 4:20 a.m. on Sunday, October 14, two police officers found an 18-year-old vagrant in a garage on the edge of Shawinigan. Their suspicions were aroused by deep scratches on his face, his torn and dirty clothes with spots of what looked like blood, his unsatisfactory answers to questions and his overall bad boy demeanor ("allure louche"). When they searched him they found a large knife resembling a bayonet. He was arrested and interrogated for several hours. Later that day the police took the man to Saint-Étienne but witnesses there confirmed that he was not one of Mr. Gélinas's passengers. Nevertheless, as news of the arrest spread through the village, others took if for granted that the prisoner must be Mr. Gélinas's killer. Now convinced that the young vagrant had nothing to do with Mr. Gélinas's disappearance, the police were on the verge of releasing him. However, when they heard reports of people threatening to lynch him they decided to keep their prisoner in custody for his own safety. The abandoned taxi made it clear that something terrible had happened to Mr. Gélinas. This was confirmed when his body was disovered on October 19. The discovery was a remarkable stroke of luck. Aimé Provost, a 22-year-old musician, was staying at the Windsor Hotel in Louiseville where he was performing. On the morning of October 19 he drove to the woods near St. Paulin to shoot partridge on the recommendation of someone who told him that the hunting was good there. Had the killers bothered to conceal Mr. Gélinas's body it might never have been found, but they left it in a clearing not far from the path Mr. Provost took through the woods. He saw it from a distance and, assuming that Mr. Gélinas was asleep, called to him two or three times. When he got closer it became obvious that the taxi driver was dead. The time was about 9:30 a.m. On his way back down the same path Mr. Provost ran into two local men who took him to a telephone. Cool weather since the murder kept the body in good condition so it was not difficult to determine the cause of death. A blood-stained rock was found near the body. The police spent the next three weeks tracing the itinerary of the two brothers between the time Mr. Gélinas picked them up and the time the Mr. Floreault dropped them off in Trois-Rivières. The arrests took place on November 8 and 10. The older brother was taken into custody as he left work in Trois-Rivières. The younger one was located at a lumber camp north of Sanmaur, 280 km (175 miles) north of Trois-Rivières. Under questioning both killers quickly made detailed confessions which they never recanted, although the older brother claimed that the younger brother carried out the murder alone. The coroner's inquest was scheduled for the evening of November 12 in Louiseville. The hearing was to take place at the Syndicats Catholiques Nationaux, a small wooden building in a narrow street facing the parish church. Fearful that some of the spectators might still have lynching on their minds, the provincial police assigned a squad of 20 officers to guard the door and help escort the brothers into the building. However, by the time the suspects were due to arrive a crowd of about 2,000 people jammed the street outside. As the police car containing the brothers drove up dozens of angry people pressed around it. Without stopping, the police officer at the wheel turned on the siren, nudged through the crowd and sped off down a side street. Several of the onlookers chased after the police car and when a cry went up that it was heading for the parish hall a large part of the crowd surged in that direction. The police in the car, however, were ordered to take the brothers to the Collège-Saint-Louis-de-Gonzague, run by the Frères de l'Instruction Chrétienne (Brothers of Christian Instruction). The College had evidently been designated as an alternate venue. The police car zigzagged through town to throw off any pursuers and by the time the crowd learned where the hearing had been moved a second squad of police officers was guarding the College entrance and the accused were safely inside. The College's assembly hall seated 1,200 people, accommodating a large part of the crowd. The change of venue therefore avoided the ugly scene that might have occurred if a thousand people had tried to squeeze into the much smaller Syndicats Catholiques Nationaux. Nevertheless the Frères were noticeably uneasy as their uninvited guests poured into the assembly hall, especially when a noisy squabble broke out over seating, but everyone quickly settled down after Crown prosecutor Lucien Comeau threatened to clear the room. If the brothers had deliberately tried to make themselves conspicuous during their road trip in Mr. Gélinas's taxi they could hardly have attracted more attention. The Crown was able to marshall 20 witnesses whose testimony documented every stage of their journey. At the end of the inquest the six-man coroner's jury deliberated for barely one minute before returning their verdict. Mr. Gélinas had died as a result of a crime, and the brothers were criminally responsible. The brothers were tried separately in Trois-Rivières in December, 1951. Both were found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. They were hanged together at Bordeaux Jail, Montreal, a half-hour after midnight on March 14, 1952.