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| Johnnie Benson, murdered on Mt. Royal |
The geography was not kind to Victor Benson (1900-1972) and his wife nor their children: Bernard, (1920-1944) Johnnie, (1936-1945), Janet, (b. 1935), Phoebe (b. 1939) and Barbara (b. c. 1922).
Within a decade of moving to the home in 1939, three of the five kids died and father would be seriously burnt, in four separate calamities.
Benson, who worked at the Montreal Locomotive Works in the power house, saw the first heartbreak when eldest son Bernard, 24, was killed in battle at the Invasion of Normandy in June 1944. The young soldier was cited for valor.
Eight months later John, aged just nine years old, was murdered in one of the city's most shocking deaths, bleeding to death after being sexually molested and stabbed and buried in the snow on the Park Ave. side of Mount Royal on February 24, 1945.
The boy loved the mountain and knew his way around it well. On that afternoon he left his home on De Grandpre at around 2 p.m. to ski on the mountain and visit the grave of his uncle who had died a week earlier.
John Benson then came across Roland Charles Chassé, 43, an unemployed homeless man living at the Meurling Shelter.
Chassé had a habit of photographing children and then luring them back at a later date with prints of the photos he took. The killer took the young man's life, at about 3 p.m. and moved the body to a gully but failed to cover it fully with snow.
John was
found dead, having bled to death from a wound near the groin caused by a small knife or nail file. He was sporting his Habs sweater. He had been bound, stabbed and buried in the snow. Guy Cardinal, another young skiier, spotted the blood on the snow and bright red sweater and discovered the gruesome murder scene a couple of hours later.Edward Collins, 38, confessed to the crime but he was not deemed credible and was transferred to an insane asylum.
Police interviewed about 150 people before receiving a tip fingering Chassé on an anonymous postcard sent from the shelter.
They could not find the potential witness who sent the card in spite of a $100 reward.
Chassé - who had previously been arrested for loitering - was woken at the refuge and arrested by officers Allain and Fitzpatrick on April 18, 1945.
They showed him photos of the event, then turned off the lights and one of the officers imitated the boy crying. He denied any involvement. This lasted about six hours.
About 36 hours after being arrested Chassé was questioned anew, on a very empty stomach and he finally confessed to the crime after overhearing the officers threaten to bring him to a certain "Dr. Plouffe."
According to his confession, Chassé – who had enlisted for the war effort but was released due to his physical condition – complimented the boy on his skis and then walked with him to the second gully on the mountainside, (about half a mile from Park Ave.) then tripped him, kicked him in the face, stabbed him in the groin with a pocketknife (the fatal wound) and then sexually assaulted the boy as he bled to death.
Chassé, 43, was one of a family of 21 children from the Beauce and was sent to New Hampshire at the age of 13 to be raised by relatives. He ended up in reform school and did time in Alcatraz for theft from 1923.
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| Bernard Benson, killed in battle |
He enlisted both in the Canadian and US armies and molested at least three boys in Boston in 1937 alone.
He confessed that the sight of blood aroused him and that he would probaby kill one day. U.S. authorities deported him to Canada. His psychologist urged that he only be released if Canadian authorities kept him locked up. He returned to Montreal in 1939 and was sent to the St. Jean de Dieu mental hospital but was released for reasons unknown.
After the murder Chassé wrote out a confession.
The sun was out. It was a nice day. I was watching the skiiers. I stayed about 15 minutes and then the boy came across. I shouted and stopped him. I asked how he enjoyed skiing and I was making conversation. Then I tripped him up and then I put my heel on his face and he started shouting and I put a knife into his stomach and held my hand on his mouth until he went limp and I didn't hear much noise. I carried him about 10 yards away. He was limp and I stabbed him. After that I seen he was fading fast and I buried his head in the snow and I sodomized him. I packed the body in a snowback and I left quick. Do you think I will hang?
Chassé, a thin, greying and balding ex-con, later said that he only confessed because he feared that he would be beaten.
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| Child murderer Chassé |
Barbara, 25, now living with her aunt Victoria Fiset at 2192 Center Street in the Point, died the next year, in early November 1946, at the Royal Victoria Hospital after suffering a botched abortion several weeks earlier. She told polie that she suffered the injury at the hands of "an old man on St. Denis Street" who police failed to identify. She had initially refused to see a doctor and her condition worsened.
And finally on January 8, 1948 Victor, 51, suffered life-threatening wounds, including damaged eyes, a broken jaw and perforated chest at his workplace Locomotive Works at 5781 Notre Dame East. Eleven others were also injured. His wife, as well as his daughter Jeanette, 13 and Phoebe, 9, prayed for his recovery.
Victor survived until 1972, dying as a grandfather to eight, at the age of 72, in Preston, Ontario.
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| Phoebe Benson staffer at the Mount Royal Hotel in 1958 |
According to the Gazette article of April 30, 1974, page 3, the prime suspect Roland Chasse talked in his sleep, blurting out details of the boy's murder which were overheard by an undercover cop. Chasse later confessed, claiming he was drunk when he committed the crime.
ReplyDeleteUnless the address sequence arrangement of Rue de Grandpre has been altered in the intervening years since the crime took place in 1945, 4833 de Grandpre still exists. See the Google map link below and zoom in at the door above the trunk of the small car in the centre of the photo.
https://www.google.ca/maps/@45.5251524,-73.586805,3a,88.2y,33.7h,91.65t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1s56JsgKT8E9YNTG5eZSKYYg!2e0!6m1!1e1
I remember doing my own cursory research of this story a few months ago and wonder if the wooded area to the south of where our winter tobogganers slide is still referred to by police as "The Third Gully Jungle" or simply "The Jungle", still a creepy part of Mount Royal.
Thanks UL, I had misread the addresses, all has been adjusted now.
ReplyDeleteExcellent work, as always, Kristian.
ReplyDeleteThen there was the case of 38-year-old Andre Ochsner, a well-heeled Swiss jewellery importer and business owner who was stabbed and then suffocated to death on January 15, 1956 at 3235 Ridgewood, #406, his reportedly luxurious Crestview Apartments home.
ReplyDeleteHis body was discovered a few days later by a cousin who had come to visit and who after receiving no answer, gained entry with the building's caretaker.
See article:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1946&dat=19560118&id=7X4tAAAAIBAJ&sjid=D5kFAAAAIBAJ&pg=7044,2857690
Apparently, on that fateful evening Ochsner had met in a downtown bar with a certain sailor using the alias "John Cameron" (real name William Joseph Callaghan, age 32), and who, after returning home to Ridgewood with Callaghan--both feeling good from the effects of alcohol--ended up in a violent argument which was overheard by neighbours after which Callaghan murdered Ochsner in the aforementioned manner and then left after having stolen several valuable items.
Callaghan evidently pawned some of these in Montreal and then disappeared for almost ten years before turning himself in at the Milwaukee, Wisconsin FBI office where he confessed to the murder and was later returned to Montreal to face justice.
During the intervening years, however, Callaghan had in fact been identified by name as the prime suspect by investigators, an "all-points-bulletin" issued for his arrest, and an artist's rendition of his face posted worldwide as well as published in newspapers.
See:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1946&dat=19570410&id=j5gtAAAAIBAJ&sjid=9JgFAAAAIBAJ&pg=6811,1948911
Finally, in 1965, a Montreal pawn shop dealer positively identified Callaghan to police as the man who had, a few days after the murder, sold him an antique alarm clock for one dollar--the same clock which had been stolen from Ochsner's apartment.
See:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1946&dat=19650922&id=cqUtAAAAIBAJ&sjid=h58FAAAAIBAJ&pg=4121,4634650
Callaghan was sent to a jury trial, however I have yet to determine when the trial took place, what the resulting verdict was, nor the punishment received.
Incidently, Callaghan's Montreal address (presumably temporary!) was given as 1056 Cathedral Street, which in 1956 was listed as Palace Rooms, a building that no longer exists.
* * *
Kristian, it quickly becomes obvious that unless a crime has achieved a high level of notoriety it is often annoyingly difficult to tie up all of the loose ends via newspaper research alone.
One would think that tracking down such basic information as trial dates and verdicts in that way would be a simple process, but unfortunately it is not. Furthermore, when and if such information is ever published, it is usually buried in the back pages next to the obituaries and the classifieds.
Another issue I have is with those so-called online "Canadian Criminal Databases" which are worse than useless since many of them link into U.S. websites which are unlikely to list Canadian data.
Try the site below and others similar in Google to see how quickly you get nowhere. One wonders why these sites even exist to waste everyone's time or are they simply scams to collect spam email targets?
http://www.rapidfinder.ca/web?ts=go&q=public+criminal+records+canada
I suppose it stands to reason that serious researchers will obtain more satisfactory results by personally visiting archival centres and other relevant entities where court records are kept. However, not everyone is capable of doing this since their visiting hours may be restricted.
This state of affairs needs to be improved.
No rest for the weary? Miles to go before I sleep?
Worthy of note: this recent horrific murder of a U.K. schoolteacher. It was committed by a minor who has since been convicted and whose name has been made public by the judge.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-29930444
Hi Kristian! Johnny Benson was my father's cousin. My uncle was supposed to go skying on the mountain with Johnny that day... This story was often told in our family when I was a kid. I was always scared to go on the mountain because of this story.
ReplyDeleteHi Kristian,
ReplyDeleteMy aunt kept an old article where it says that Johnny had been beaten, sodomised, cut into pieces and shoved inside a garbage bag and the bag was thrown under a balcony somewhere in Montreal.
my grandmother is one of the surviving daughters, the family never recovered from the death of john. it was especially hard on his sister, my aunt jen, who suffered great guilt over not joining her brother that day.
ReplyDeleteThe Montreal Star for April 18, 1945, pages 3 and 15 detail Roland Charles Chasse's confession and related evidence found regarding his murder of 9-year-old Johnny Benson on Mount Royal the previous February.
ReplyDeleteApparently, the 43-year-old Chasse had lived most of his life in the U.S. and had been incarcerated in both Alcatraz and Leavenworth for various crimes. He was later deported to Canada.
Following up on the William Joseph Callaghan case, further newspaper archive research has unearthed the following data:
ReplyDeleteThe Gazette, Feb. 22, 1966, page 8 "Accused Unfit to Stand Trial".
The Montreal Star, Dec. 5, 1969, page 3 (with photo) "Murder Suspect Asks Help for re-entry into Canada".
As per the latter article, Callaghan had been deported back to the U.S. at a Boston minimum-security state institution from where he easily walked out after which he then phoned the Montreal Star to plead his case to be permitted to return to Canada--specifically to Bordeaux Prison where he claimed he had been better treated while there.
Further research has yet to reveal what Callaghan's fate was after 1969 and if he is indeed still alive. If so, he would be age 88 or 89 in 2022.