How Quebec serial killer Nelson Lechasseur was betrayed by his DNA

John Deliva

 In August 1984 a Longueuil resident walking with his dog in the woods found the body of John Deliva, reported missing two months previously.
   The body had been tied to a tree. Deliva, 33, was killed by two bullets in the head.
   Deliva had been missing for some time after disappearing from his life as a Bell Canada phone installer.
   What it more tragic is that his brother, suffering from leukiemia, was relying on John to provide him some bone narrow. Luckily another sister matched and saved the day.
   The investigation revealed that the Deliva, who stood 5'7" and weighted 170 lbs,  had been kidnapped in Montreal and brought to the South Shore.
   According to police, Deliva owed a debt of under $200. His vehicle was found burnt a few day after his disappearance and DNA samples were taken from the car.
   However John Deliva, a friend tells Coolopolis, was a straight arrow and was not involved with drugs
    One of his six brothers (the family had 13 kids) was involved in drugs, so it might have been a case of mistaken identity.
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  In a seemingly unrelated case nine years later in November 1993, firefighters were called to a blaze at 6300 Lennox apartment 205 in Outremont.

Officials transport Ferron's body

 
The calcified body of a woman named Claude F. Ferron, 55, were found on the bed. Two metal wires were attached to the head, one the mouth and another at the neck.
   She had been strangled and set alight.
   The autopsy revealed that Ferron, who is believed to have been working as a sex trade worker, had been strangled to death.
   The pathologist found sperm in the victim. The victim's boyfriend was investigated as police suspected that the lover - now dead - had tired of the woman and ordered her murdered.
   At the time the DNA identification hadn’t been perfected. Labs needed a large sample to make the test.
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   In 1985 Britain’s Alex Jeffereys invented a new method to identify genes of each person from the DNA.
   Techniques improved and the old samples - in both cases - linked Nelson Lechasseur to the grisly deeds.
    Police arrested Nelson Lechasseur on an assault charge 2003 and they had the presence of mind to analyze a knife he had with him for DNA.
  Incredibly, they found the DNA of Ferron from a decade earlier.
   And rather fortuitously, police had kept evidence from Deliva's murder in the form of cigarette butts taken from the ashtray of Deliva's 1981 white AMC Spirit found parked outside a tavern at Mount Royal and Iberville.
   The DNA on those dried out cigarettes matched Nelson Lechasseur.
   Lechasseur, who committed his first murder at the age of 16, was betrayed by his double helix DNA spirals.
   The Baie Comeau native, who live in Drummondville faced charges on two murders, one committed in 1984 of a drug dealer and the other 1993 of a high class hooker. Other tests could link him to a third murder.
   Lechasseur had also been arrested tried and convicted in front of a jury in 1994 of pimping a 17-year-old girl. He was sentenced to four years. His DNA apparently did not get the test in that instance.
   He was sentenced  to life in prison without chance of release until 2028, he will be 65 years of age.