Familicide: Quebec's most grisly cases - warning, not for the faint of heart

Victims dead: 8
 At 3:40 am on December 16, 1929 Andrew Day, 39, axed his seven sons and pregnant wife before slitting his own throat at 13 Laurier in Trois Rivieres. Only the maniac survived.
   The dead were: wife Agatha Coughlin Day, Jimmy, 13; Billy, 8, Freddy, 7, Andrew, 6, Daniel, Emmett 3 and Peter.

  Day savagely chopped up his wife and seven sons as they slept. His wife was pregnant at the time.
   One report noted that he had lost his life savings on the stock market and hadn't slept in a week.
   His arrest photo shows him with a bandage on his neck placed on after he attempted to slit his own throat after the grisly deed.
   Day worked at St. Lawrence Paper Mills for $10 a day. The family had lived in Trois Rivieres for four years and might have lived in New Brunswick prior to that.
   He was kept in the psychiatric wing of Bordeaux Prison in Montreal thereafter. Had the seven boys (and eighth upcoming child) survived, hundreds of ancestors would have subsequently been with us today.

Victims dead: 5

On 13 Feb 1956 accountant Romeo Drapeau, 35, walked in on his pregnant wife Carmen Boudreau as she was feeding her 11-month-old daughter Syvlie in her baby chair, with son Michel, 3, waiting patiently for his mom at their home on 7th Ave. in Sherbrooke. Drapeau had quit his job at Marquis Tire quite unexpectedly a few weeks before and had been complaining of exhaustion. His boss attempted to persuade him to take a vacation in Florida. He declined and was eventually rehired. On that fateful day the family visited sick relatives in East Angus and when they got home he exited his bedroom clad in his pajamas hauling an axe. He first killed wife Sylvie with three sharp blows, then Michele, the boys attempted to flee and barricade the door. Pierre and Claude were killed near their schoolbags in their bedroom. After Claude, 7, Pierre, 6, Michelle, 3, and Sylvie, 11 months were dead he finished off his wife with a knife and torched the house but the fire didn't catch. He fled in a taxi to the St. Benoit du Lac church 38 miles away and had breakfast in a restaurawnt. He then talked to the priest Herman Hebert and confessed. Hebert alerted Abbe Leon Drapeau, the killer's brother who ran a large seminary in Sherbrooke. Police came and arrested him and it's assumed that he spent the rest of his days in a psych ward.

Victims dead 5

   On September 18, 2001, John Bauer, 51, shot his wife and three sons at his home at 85 Alta Vista in

Kirkland. Dead were wife Helen, 50, sons Jonathan Bauer, 22, Wesley Bauer, 19 and Justin Bauer, 13. Before killing himself he also lured business associate Lucio Beccherini, 44, a into the home and shot him in the back of the head, the same way he killed the others. He also killed father-in-law Elmer Carroll,75 in NDG.  The killer mailed out a letters to relatives outside the province explaining that he wanted them together in heaven, probably not the greatest moment in the history of religion.




Dead victims: 3

Patricia Rosenstone killed son Maxwell and daughters Joye and Maya, aged between 11 months and five years (another report lists their ages as 2, 5 and 10) at 690 13th Ave. N. in Sherbrooke on Jan. 3 1978.  She cut their throats, killing all three, before cutting her own wrists. She had been hospitalized for mental issues but was greenlighted to return to care for her kids. Later that year she was permitted to return to live with her parents in Florida.






Dead victims: 2

Cardiologist Guy Turcotte, murdered his two children in Prevost, Quebec on February 21, 2009. He stabbed his 5-year-old son 27 times and his 3-year-old daughter 19 times as they slept in their bedrooms. He made a halfhearted suicide attempt. He was tried and acquitted on the grounds of mental illness and was then retried and convicted.

Adele Sorella, Mafia wife of Ponytail De Vito, who was long in hiding, killed her two daughters 8 and 9 on March 31, 2009.

Martin Houle, 37, killed his two kids on May 2 2011 by setting his truck on fire in Maple Grove near Drummondville. A third child survived with burns and bad memories.