In January 1922 Raoul Delorme's bullet-riddled body was found at Snowdon and Coolbrook.The 24 year old owned many lucrative buildings.
He lived with his half brother Adelard Delorme, a priest, 37, who also has been administering Raoul's properties without handing much of the profits over. They lived on St. Hubert near Dorchester.
The priest conducted a service for his brother. There were no suspects nor motives.
Police eventually found a gun in the priest's possessions. He reported that he never used it and had owned it for many years. But the gun turned out to be newly-purchased. Ballistics was a new science and police learned that the priest's gun had shot the murderous bullets.
Delorme was set to inherit much of Raoul's property, including buildings on Amherst just north of St. Catherine. Delorme plead insanity. Eventually he was forced to face trial though. The last of the trials resulted in a hung jury. Here's a recount of the tale.
Ah, yes. Back then, juries would not believe that a priest could kill someone...
ReplyDeleteFucking religious brainwashing.
Interestingly, Farah-Lajoie, the detective on the case was born in Lebanon, so we've had lebanese people immigrate here for far longer than we thought.
I saw a list of movie theatres and their owners in the 1920s in Montreal and recall seeing at least one name that I thought was Lebanese, thought maybe Lawand? Or perhaps it was another. So yeah you're right.
ReplyDeleteImmigration comes in waves, often the original small wave dislikes their slobbering brethren when come to the shores looking a lot more uncouth and underminining what they saw as their progress for acceptance. This was certainly the case with the Jewish community, I'm not really the case of the Lebs however.
What I find most remarquable for the era is that a lebanese immigrant managed to get hired in the police farce and manage to become a detective.
ReplyDelete