'Nobody will forget the face of Claire Lortie' - that jaw-dropping murder case from 1983

 

 If you were caught sawing up your lover's body and burying those mangled remains in your backyard, you might assume that you'd be slam-dunk for a homicide conviction.
  But one case in Quebec might alter your assumptions.
  Claire Lortie, 33, sparked a jaw-dropping case in 1983 as a lawyer living at 95 Boyer in St. Sauveur,
  Lortie, who came from a prominent Montreal family, ordered a freezer from Sears in St. Jerome on June 27.
   She wanted it pronto, however, so she opted instead for one from Eaton's in Montreal, which promised speedier delivery.
  On July 13 she met up with her on-again, off-again boyfriend Rodolphe Rousseau, 37. He was a handyman who had some expertise in swimming pools and personal money challenges.
   It would appear that no photos of him have ever been published. And no family members have ever chimed in about his drastic fate.
  July 17 Lortie hired a local contractor to dig a hole at her home.
  Contractor Gérald Pagé came and Lortie explained to him that the hole was for a sewer. He knew it was untrue but dug it to her specifications nonetheless. He remarked to himself that the hole looked like a grave.
   Hole-digger Pagé suspected that Lortie might want to bury stolen items, as a gallery she was connected to had lost some paintings several months earlier.
   Pagé then noticed on July 21 that the hole had already been filled.
   Pagé told his police officer brother Jean about the hole. Jean, in turn, obtained a search warrant to dig up the hole, thinking they'd find stolen goods.
   Instead Lortie's spanking-new Eaton Viking freezer emerged, containing the naked, mutilated body of Lortie's lover Rousseau.
   Rousseau's exact time of death was indeterminable but the cause was several blows to the head with a blunt object, possibly with the head of an ax. Lortie told the court that she disposed of a bloody ax at the scene.
   Police arrested Claire Lortie and charged her with murder.
   Lortie pleaded not guilty, claiming that she had left Rousseau alone for an "urgent and important meeting" and when she returned she found him dead
   So she chopped Rosseau's arm off with a circular saw (it was still attached held together by skin) and dumped the body in the freezer.
   Lortie then hired some local workmen to haul the freezer into a van. She made them promise not to look inside. (One, aged just 34, died a few weeks later of a heart attack during the time of the trial).
   She somehow managed to move the large freezer from the van into the pit all by herself, using just a crowbar.
   "I acted in a moment of panic to protect my family and avoid publicity. No one can say how they would have acted in the same circumstances," she said later.
   In court Lortie's lawyer Gabriel Lapointe attempted ti deride the victim, claiming he was drunk, broke and unreliable, but the judge would not allow that line of argument, as it remains reserved only for cases of legitimate defence.
   The freezer was placed in the courtroom for the duration of the trial, from Oct 3 - 15.
   Lortie's sister-in-law said that Lortie had been planning to buy a freezer for some time, so Lortie didn't purchase it specifically for the body.
   Judge Boilard told prosecutors that he didn't believe Lortie on bit. He remained impartial, however, in his directives to the jury.
   A jury of eight men and four women deliberated for two days and on Oct. 17, 1983 found Lortie not guilty of murder.
   On Oct. 28 Lortie pleaded guilty to lesser charges of obstruction of justice, mutilation of a dead body and cheque fraud. She was sentenced to a mere two years in prison.
   Lortie told an interviewer that she was happy "because I didn't commit this murder. But I know that my life has been marked for good. I've lost all dignity. The whole province followed my story, people know that I did something terrible all the same. Nobody will forget the face of Claire Lortie, the accused."
   Upon her release she fought for the right to return to practicing law but the Bar would not permit her reinstatement and there has been no news of her since.

   According to a book by crime news veteran Claude Poirier, Lortie's lawyer Gabriel Lapointe later confessed to him over dinner that he had won because someone in police circles owned him a favour from when he was the batonnier of Quebec. Lapointe died in 1999 at the age of 70. 

*With notes from Eric Veillette's Historiquement Logique.