Sunday Jan 23: 1972: Third place Habs tie Penguins in the last game before All Star Break...19 die in weekend Quebec road accidents ..Polish Ball and a charity fundraiser at the Ritz... Bond flick Diamonds are Forever fills seats.. and office managers think about the Telex operator and stenography positions they need to fill.The worm turned as usual when Monday rolled around.
But not for a Riviere des Prairies resident who strapped on the boots and coat at 10:30 a.m. to cross through a frozen wooded area at 39th and 3rd.
The resident trudged a path through the snowy scrubland on the -5 degree Celsius morning and spotted a shocking and grotesque figure at the base of a tree.
The naked body of a young blonde beauty lay amid twigs and dead leaves stuck between a few saplings.The scene of the woman and the tragic solitude of her final resting resembled a hiemal Canadian Ophelia, John William Waterhouses' portrait of a motionless woman floating down a river, a a soul navigating through eternity.
Carole Matte, 24, was no more.
Grim-looking police investigators scribbled into notebooks.A police helicopter floated noisily above trying to spot the victim's belongings in the snow.
Matte's body was bagged, put on a stretcher and dragged down the same path away from the scene. .
She had been killed by a.38 calibre, four shots to the head.
Matte, it was later said, had worked as a topless dancer, a claim hotly denied by her sister Anne who described Carole as timid, principled and ambitious, and was trained in stenography, secretarial skills.
She had at least one rough friend, unfortunately.
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The killer, Anne suggested, might have been criminal ex-boyfriend Adelard Vallee.
Vallee had been released from prison at the end of January and was staying at a halfway home. He swiftly visited Matte, inviting her for a drive. He brought her to a laneway near Frontenac and Marie Anne.
Both were seated in the front seat of the car when he put four bullets in her head.
Perhaps the chart-topping Don McLean saga Bye Bye Miss American Pie played on his car radio as he drove east to ditch her body.Police searched for Vallee and eventually located him holed out with friends in Rimouski.
Vallee was involved in a bank robbery in Rimouski and was sentenced to 14 years in prison.
The murder charge was added on.
His lawyer pleaded the equivalent of "guilty but too high on drugs to know what I was doing."The murder charge was added on.
Indeed one day during his September trial Vallee called in "too stoned," and the trial was postponed a day.
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| Vallee |
"My client was a rug addict when he killed the young girl of 24. He never had the intention of killing Carole Matte, I'm convinced. What is true and tragic in this whole affair is that Vallee was under the influence of drugs at the time of the killing," said Vallee's lawyer Robert LaHaye.
Prosecutors agreed to lower the charges to manslaughter and judge Jacques Ducros sentenced him to 25 years on Nov. 10 1972.
Fourteen years later Vallee, 40, was given another conditional release and he was put into a halfway house where he hooked up with Robert Maningham, 35.
The duo were allowed out for the day and stole a car and committed a hold up. Officer Robert Baril pulled them over to give them a ticket at Sherbrooke and Joliette.
Officer Baril was unaware that the duo were criminals. .
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| Anne Matte |
Vallee fought Baril, took his gun and shot the police officer Baril dead.
Vallee was arrested a month later and sentenced to another 25 years in prison.
The beautiful Matte, 1948-1972, is surely now a fading memory for those who knew and mourn her.
Her heartless killer Vallee would now be about 70 if he he's still among us.
Surviving sister Anne Matte, sadly, committed suicide in September 1984.
Thank you once again for another fascinating story! What caught my eye is "19 died in Quebec car accidents that weekend" Unheard of these days, those numbers were very common back then for several reasons. Although cars were much bigger, they did not have air bags, crumple zones to absorb the impact, the use of seat-belts were next to nil, and drinking and driving were common. There was no emergency 9-1-1 number, and cell phones were not yet invented! When help finally arrived, Ambulances were literally "meat wagons", staffed by Police officers with little more than a basic first aid course in a regular roof station wagon where you were left alone in the back. Off island, things were even worst, with very long response times, combination cars that doubled as hearses owned by funeral homes with drivers that had little or no training and were directed often to transport the dead before the living was common... Things were no better once you arrived at a hospital, as there was no formal trauma system. Today, with better drinking and driving laws, and public education, with millions of more safer carson Quebec roads with air bags, cell phones, 9-1-1, First Responders, Paramedics, trauma centers, there are never more than a few deaths, and often none on our roads on weekends!
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