The horrible way Oliver Tweed tried to make 400 bucks

Michel Dery

Melanie Decamps

 Michel Dery decided one day to kidnap a six-year-old girl named Melanie Decamps, part of an ugly story that has an even uglier twist.
   Dery was later determined to have the brainpower of someone aged between five and 12 and deemed too crazy for jail.
 Here's what he did: on July 9, 1983 Dery tied the little girl to a tree near where the family was camping and only on August 23 was she found dead and decomposed, as Dery had just left her there.
   Dery, then 24, was a tiny little guy, barely five feet tall and the son of divorced parents who never contacted him after beating him throughout his youth, smashing his head on the concrete floor and so forth. He lived alone and had no friends and tended to ride his bike around into the forest.
   When questioned Dery seemed to be under the impression that he had been part of the good guys, trying to help find the little girl.
    Dery showed up at his first court appearance wearing pants with a hole in the crotch.
    Dery was eventually found not guilty by reason of insanity and placed in the Pinel Institute, where he may still.
   Or perhaps he has been released back into the world, as most people there eventually are as explained in this excellent article from 1984 by David Johnston. However we think he's still there as Dery would eventually escape from Pinel in 2001 but was caught 48 hours later because somebody recognized him.
  What makes this unthinkably horrible story even more horrible, as hard as that could be to imagine, is that, prior to authorities finding the young body,
   Snowdon resident Oliver Tweed, or Oliver Sylvester Tweed, (then 27) called parents Jacqueline Descamps and Daniel Descamps pretending to have kidnapped the child and told them that he'd let them know where she was if they gave him $400.
   Tweed was busted and charged with extortion.
   Wonder where he is now.