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| Elizabeth Kugiel, 1968 |
But behind the glamorous façade lay a thick layer of poor-little-rich-girl family dysfunction that led her and her mom to undertake a shockingly ruthless and diabolical scheme.
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| Israel Kugiel |
The Kugiel family moved to Montreal in 1960 and kept up the high life. "I only regret one thing, having too much too soon because afterwards you always hope that it keeps going but we're never sure that it will," Elizabeth said in 1968.
It remains unknown how Kugiel made his fortune - supposedly worth $10 million.
Israel left his wife Denise (b.1917) in 1964 and moved in with Gertrude Prucha (b. 1934), a former Austrian ballerina who'd been his mistress for a dozen years and gave him a son in 1959.
Israel purchased the LaSalle Hotel on Drummond Street on 29 April 1965 and also owned a couple of homes in Montreal and a cottage in Ste. Agathe.
Kugiel sent $250 per month in alimony but suddenly stopped in January 1967.
Denise was not happy, nor were the glamourous party girl daughter Elizabeth and the serious son George.
Denise, the ex, and daughter Elizabeth then brainstormed ways to get the tap flowing again. They sought out someone who could take Israel's money by force.
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| Gertrude and son |
Denise contacted Ronald Bourgon, 36, a private detective living on Gouin W. He, in turn, rounded up henchmen Jean Paul Leveille, 27, a labourer from the south shore and Fred Grant, 41, of Ontario Street.
They hatched a plan for a home invasion and in the evening of 3 August 1967 Elizabeth went on a downtown blitz, downing up to 10 double whiskeys before bringing the three masked, heavily-armed men to her dad's house in St. Agathe where Israel was sleeping, as was his wife and young son.
The gang proved astoundingly brutal and tied and bound the three inside. They taped Israel's mouth and threatened him to shoot and stab him and threatened to kidnap his seven-year-old son Robert Louis for $250,000 ransom. They poured gasoline over Gertrude's head, threatening to light her up. They shredded valuable rugs worth $12,000.
The bandits took a large sum of cash and valuables and then headed to his city home on 12069 James Morrice St. and robbed that place too and then returned to the cottage to harass the embattled victims again. The gang took over $50,000 in cash and over $80,000 in other goods.
Elizabeth had suspected that her loving father would not report the attack to the police but she was wrong and the gang was rounded up and charged, as was Denise, 50, who was tried separately.
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| The three thugs |
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Incredibly, Israel Kugiel was also at the center of two other high-profile scandals around the same time.
One was an apparently banal affair which saw him send a colour TV as a gift to the home of police director Jean-Jacques Saulnier on 30 December 1966.
Kugiel had befriended Saulnier while he was still on the morality squad. Saulnier had helped out with an affair of employee theft and threats which Kugiel had received.
The TV gift became public in February 1967 and fed countless investigations and newspaper articles, as Saulnier claimed that he didn't solicit the gift and tried repeatedly to get it taken back, which it finally was. But the TV would cost Saulnier his career as he was forced to resign in mid-1972
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Prior to being targeted by his family's home invation, Israel Kugiel also found himself wrapped up in complicated financial issues which led to him declaring bankruptcy on 29 April 1967 two years to the day after he purchased the LaSalle Hotel.
Kugiel trusted his notaries, Samuel and Nathan Caplan, who proposed a complicated deal to deal with the siutation that would see him acquire a $3 million piece of land on Cote de Liesse. He signed four blank sheets for his notaries to write contracts around to finalize the deal.
By June 1968 Kugiel complained that the Caplans had defrauded him of $6 million.
Kugiel told a court: "I lost my hotel. I lost my Expo profits of more than $3 million and an additional loss of three million dollars of the Cote de Liesse property."
Prosecutors charged the Caplans with defrauding Kugiel but dropped the case after the two sides apparently reached some sort of settlement.
The Caplans still faced a lengthy set of other fraud charges based on other customer complaints but that's a story for another time.
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On 1 April 1969 Judge Armand Sylvestre acquitted Elizabeth on all charges.
Sylvestre sentenced the three thugs to one single day in jail.
Denise was found guilty of possessing stolen goods and given a suspended sentence.
The Crown appealed the sentences and the new judge sentenced the three men to five to seven years each.
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| Elizabeth |
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Perhaps most tragically of all, Israel Kugiel, 47, died on 16 November 1969.
The cause of death was never revealed and the Quebec coroner made no report on his death.
One might speculate that several parties might have had an interest in seeing him dead but it seems highly unlikely that someone murdered him.
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Elizabeth's name popped up in newspapers many times since the craziness, mostly in the small print of formal announcements, suggesting that she ran businesses that went bankrupt. She was named in a car fraud complaint in 1978. Her name does not appear after 1994 so it's unknown what became of her.
Her brother George, who played no role in any of the misdeeds, ran a discotheque for a while in the 1970s and now seems to own a furniture store on St. Lawrence.
Another interesting article…a family feud this time..thank you..
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