Murders at Bridge and Wellington

This empty lot at Bridge and Wellington was where 625 Bridge sat. It's where John Monastyrski - aka Monastersky -  moved in 1929 from Bukovina to live with his old girlfriend Tekla, with whom he had been sweet most of his life.
   Monastyrski, described as a Polish steelworker was to go on a murderous rampage that shocked the city. 

   She had moved there five years earlier and was waiting for him so they could be together. 

   Except Tekla, 29, had married Wasyl Sportana, 39, (aka Vasil Sportana) and the duo had a three year old together. 

   John took this surprisingly well and moved in with the couple and became best friends with Wasyl. 

   John worked at a steel mill but when Tekla had her second child with Wasyl in 1931 John moved out and started drinking heavily. 

   On Monday June 8 he tried to visit but Tekla refused to allow him in because he was drunk. 

   The next morning, a Tuesday, at 9:45 a.m., John returned with knives taped to his wrists and knocked on the door of the home and slashed Sportana, who later died of his injuries.      
  Tekkla tried to stop the attack. 
   "I tried to hold Monastersky by the tail of hit coat but he turned around and struck me with the knife he held in his hand. My husband collapsed to hte floor unconscious. I rushed out on the street and shouteld for help and as I did so Monastersky ran down Bridge street," she said.
   The killer was confronted by rookie cop Paul-Emile Beaucage, 27, and veteran Camil Liboiron, 49. 

   John stabbed Liboiron deeply in the chest but he would later recover. 

   Beaucage died three months after getting slashed, he succumbed to infection. On his way to court to be tried for the two grisly murders in October, John Monastyrski fought off two police escorts and jumped over a balcony but fell a dozen feet and broke both ankles. 

   He spent the rest of his life in the Bordeaux Hospital for the Criminally Insane. 

   The police officer Beaucage died just as his 19 year old wife Hilda was giving birth to his son Paul, who grow up and join the very same city police force. And his wife Hilda also joined the force in the 1940s and solved a high profile case, making them a rather unique mother-son due of Montreal police officers.