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| Ill-fated Donna Andrade and Teddy Thompson in court, 1975 |
Donna Andrade was a fashion model and Teddy Thompson toiled as a fashion designer. The lovers had lived together for two years at 1250 St. Matthew, corner Tupper.
Teddy had previously fathered three children with Diane Juteau, 25, who was living nearby at the high-rise at 1444 Mackay.
Donna and Teddy engaged in an argument in the middle of the night on Wednesday 25 July 1974. Donna objected to Teddy's relationship with his ex, Juteau, which she considered too cozy.
Donna told Teddy that she was going to leave him. Teddy threatened to kill himself with a .357 Magnum he was wielding. Thompson had apparently purchased the gun for protection against unidentified people he felt were a threat to him.
"I told him that I loved him but had to leave him because our relationship wasn't working out and I was very unhappy. Teddy asked me not to leave him and said if I didn't stay with him he would blow his brains out," Donna Andrade later said.
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| Donna Andrade |
Donna then called Teddy's ex wife Diane Juteau to ask her to come by and talk to Teddy.
Diane Juteau left her home soon after 5 a.m. and embarked on the brief six-minute walk from Mackay to St. Matthew.
Diane Juteau entered the apartment and engaged in a discussion with Teddy Thompson while Donna Andrade left the room. Donna returned to put a record on in an attempt to ease the mood.
Thompson, standing about three feet from Diane Juteau, once again threatened to shoot himself. He sounded more serious this time. Donna, by this point, was standing about a foot away from Teddy when he stepped back and lost his balance. Teddy's gun went off and Diane Juteau was struck with a bullet.
Thompson, shocked that he had just unintentionally shot the mother of his children, attempted mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Two police offiers patrolling from the nearby Station 10 heard the gunshot and pushed the door open.
"I'm sorry! I didn't mean it! It's an accident! Don't let her die on me!" Thompson screamed.
"He was hysterical" a police officer later said.
Police initially charged Teddy Thompson with murder but his lawyer Sidney Leithman entered a not-guilty plea and a prosecutor then lessened the charge to manslaughter.
Teddy's father posted his $15,000 bail and Teddy pled guilty. On 20 January 1975 a judge sentenced Teddy Thompson to three years for manslaughter.
In mid-1976 Donna Andrade moved to a 3 1/2 apartment on the fifth floor of Haddon Hall, a relatively upscale older apartment building at 2150 Sherbrooke just east of Atwater.
Andrade kept busy modelling and doing other gigs, such as teaching people to disco dance The Hustle at Eaton's department store on Saturdays. She visited to New York City that year and was out dining with her friend Ivana when Donald Trump sent champagne to their table. Trump introduced himself. Donald Trump later married Ivanka.
Thompson was released from prison in the autumn of 1976 and moved in with Donna Andrade. He was in the process of opening a tailor shop and renovating a commercial space on St. Antoine near Greene known as thePeek a Boo, where he planned to market his clothing brand A Touch of Thompson.
On Tuesday 1 February 1977 at about 11:30 pm, Thompson, now 31, and Andrade, now 29, were at home with guest Antonio Sorgente, 29.
Antonio Sorgente was the eldest of a large 11-child Little Burgundy family led by father Palmerino, a well-known Italian immigrant known as an offbeat artist and local oddball character.
Antonio Sorgente, while praised and loved by his siblings, had also served time in prison at the age of 18 for partaking in armed a gang that held up several commercial establishments.
Sorgente was not a biker but he was close friends with biker Rod McLeod, President of Montreal's Satan's Choice. He and his family were also close to the criminal Nino "Tony" Gianforte, more on him below.
Antonio Sorgente and Teddy Thompson had met in the Leclerc Institute and remained friends after their release. Tony Sorgente accepted Thompson's invitation to visit his place, 11 days after he was released.
Sorgente accepted and urged his brother Luigi, five years his junior, to accompany him but Luigi declined, citing a headache.
Antonio Sorgente bought a bottle of wine, borrowed his father's car and went to his philosophy class at Dawson College. Afterwards he ventured over to Haddon Hall to visit with Thompson.
Sorgente was talking on the phone with his girlfriend in the parlor near the entry door to the apartment when a gunman walked in and shot him dead, one shot to the head.
The shooter then proceeded towards the bedroom where he came across Teddy Thompson, who had come out of the bathroom to investigate the noise of the gunshot.
The gunman shot Thompson dead and then entered the bedroom and found Donna Andrade, who was sleeping in her bed. He shot her dead multiple times.
One unconfirmed report has it that the gunman shot Sorgente only once but shot Thompson and Andrade multiple times.
The victims were found dead about 12 hours later when Sorgente's brother Luigi came to the apartment after Antonio's girlfriend told him she heard the shooting while talking to Antonio on the phone.
Police told reporters that they believed the triple murder was a "settling of accounts." Police never solved the case and no more reports appeared about it in print following the initial reporting.
One possible explanation would be that friends or relatives of the initial victim, Diane Juteau, might have been behind the shooting, with the motive being revenge for the 1974 incident.
That explanation, however, suffers from one flaw: by killing Thompson, the gunman also hurt Juteau's children, as they both became parentless orphans.
It's also possible that the three were killed for some other unrelated reason, such as a drug debt or something else along those lines.
Two of Sorgente's family members interviewed for this article report that his death caused profound sadness and suffering among his family. The same can be assumed for all of those close to all four of the victims.
Luigi suggests the murders were part of a drug burn
Luigi Sorgente told the Montreal Star of the results of his personal investigation, in an article published 7 March 1977.
Luigi said that his brother Tony told him there was $100,000 of hashish and mescaline in the apartment. The entire stash was gone - presumably stolen by the killer gunman - when Luigi entered with his brother-in-law Marvin Cain and saw the dead bodies.
Thompson was a well-connected drug dealer who frequently offered to sell Luigi hashish.
A week prior to being murdered, someone smashed the windows of Thompson's boutique, known as the Pee-A_Boo on St. Antoine and beat Thompson.
Three days prior to the murders, Tony went to Teddy Thompson and bought a 1/4 pound of hash for $500, part of a six pound stash Thompson was holding, along with some mescaline.
On the fateful night, Tony was planning to buy some mescaline for his girlfriend Denise.
Early on in the evening of the triple murder, a man known as Pierre dropped by to visit Thompson to borrow a spray gun to paint his boutique. Pierre said that someone called the apartment to say that he'd be visiting later. This was likely the killer, as Thompson kept the door locked to everybody who wasn't known to him.
Donna went to sleep early, as she was exhausted. She was still in a sleeping position when found dead, which suggests that she didn't wake up from the gunshots.
Luigi, when he entered, found four wine glasses on the table. One, he theorized, belonged to Pierre, from his earlier visit, two others were used by Tony and Thompson. The fourth was possibly used by the killer.
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| Gianforte |
Nino Gianforte, who stood 5'4" and weighed 195 lbs, was a close friend of the Sorgente family as well as a frequent violent criminal.
Gianforte lived next door to the Sorgente's and loved guns and kept a scary, vicious dog in his yard.
Sorgente's mother was later sufficiently suspicious to confront Gianforte directly about his possible role in her son's death. Gianforte steadfastly denied any involvement.
Gianforte (1948-2005) first hit the news in December 1969 when charged with assaulting a rival in a bar. He was kept behind bars for a month as his lawyer Sidney Leithman urged the court to allow him out to undergo psych evaluations.
Four years later, police sought Gianforte in connection with a double murder on 24 December 1972, which saw Carole Regimbald, 21 and Bernard Barriault, 23, stabbed and shot dead at 260 Greene Ave. Police questioned but did not charge Gianforte in connection with the double murder, which remains unsolved. Later that year police sought Gianforte on charges of rape.
Then in September 1974 Gianforte, now 37, narrowly escaped death after a police officer shot him in a scuffle at Harvard and St. James in NDG. The bullet hit a leg artery and Gianforte survived.
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| Barriault |
(Such shooting mayhem wasn't rare in that area, as Sorgente's venerable old mother, an Italian immigrant, was once shot in the basement of her Little Burgundy home next door by an errant bullet from outside. She survived with a bullet lodged near her heard for four decades. Additionally, next-door neighbor John Deliva, 33, was murdered in August 1984, apparently over a $200 drug debt, possibly owed by his brother. That murder was solved 19 years later through DNA testing )
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| Dixon |
Gianforte took a $1,500 payment from Attilio Leone, 48, and and Abbas Sheik, 30, to execute the grisly deed but Gianforte had a change of heart and reported the affair to police, who arrested and charged the duo. Gianforte died of a drug overdose in Edmonton in June 2004.
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| Leone |
So in 1977 Gianforte would likely be a known contract killer and he had significant information on the situation involving Sorgente, Thompson and Andrade.
The Sorgente family believes that Gianforte was not behind the triple slaying, particularly since he had no apparent motive to kill his friend Sorgente.
They now believe that people close to Diane Juteau were behind the killing and likely hired a professional hit man to commit the grisly deed.
Montreal was home to a large number of prolific killers at the time, including Donald Lavoie, Gerald Gallant, Jackie McLaughlin and Dickie Lavoie.
I am often skeptical about what the participants of such crimes later claim to the police about "what actually happened". Violent events often occur so quickly that observers and suspects can be confused or their minds go blank (apparently a common phenomenon), not to mention deliberately fabricating who was responsible in order to reduce their own culpability. "I tripped and the gun went off." "The person fell and died after hitting their head.", and so on.
ReplyDeleteRegarding a Bank of Nova Scotia robbery at their 4785 Van Horne Avenue branch (since closed) sometime during the 1980s (I forget the exact date) where the thieves broke through the wall of an adjacent business to ransack the safe deposit boxes, I don't remember if this crime was ever solved--unless you have more facts to present.
I’d never heard of this story back in the day…..interesting…thank you
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