Life isn't fair, justice is blind and dysfunctional, and some cops aren't smart
and dedicated. Like on television this is Who Killed Teresa. We've written a
big lumpus story in music, and we'd like to play the whole thing for
you tonight. I have some follow up thoughts on the nineteen eighty five murder
of Francine da Silva, but in order to get there, I need to
revisit two other unsolved murders we've covered, the nineteen seventy nine death of Nicole
Gudreaux and the seventy five strangulation and incineration of zim Tibo. Solving for acts
involves bringing an unknown variable to one side, then seeing how other elements line
up with that variable, and that's kind of what we're going to do here
and reconsider some variables. Shine, a refresher Tibau, was found in a
vacant lot at the corner of Saint Dominique Street and Dorchester Boulevard today known as
Rene Leveck Boulevard in downtown Montreal. If the area that we're talking about,
if you know, Montreal is kind of on the border of Chinatown, nestled
between the complex Desjarde and Old Montreal. So that's that's where we're going right
now. So this kid riding past on his bike at four thirty in the
morning, and he tells the story about why he was riding at four in
the morning. His parents, I think were recently separated and he was kind
of left to his own devices. So sixteen year old, he's a six
year old kid named Jean Bressant, and he noticed a fire in the vacant
lot on Saturday morning, August second, August second, nineteen seventy five.
And when he approached the fire, which was in danger of igniting a nearby
abandoned house, he saw legs, person's legs a body and him imediately notified
the police. When Montreal police detectives wa and Lemieux arrived, they found the
still smoldering body of twenty five year old Dan Tebow dyed jet black hair,
pale skin, naked from the waist down, wearing a partially burned blue sweater
with yellow stripes, and a piece of burning wood embedded in her vagina.
Dan Tibo had been beaten to death, strangled, then set on fire,
and his police report agent Vera noted the victim was sexually assaulted. Deanzibo was
a denizen of the main Lower Depths enclave in downtown Montreal, known for drugs
and prostitution. Near the body, police floppy hat, two scattered shoes,
a comb, and a purse containing twenty six dollars and forty cents in cash,
the equivalent of more than one hundred and twenty five dollars in today's today's
money, so clearly this was the robbery was not the objective of this overkill.
Tibaut was petite four foot nine inches, weighing approximately eighty two pounds.
Her assailant could have manhandled her like a rag doll. According to the newspaper
Alo Police, Tibaut frequented local flophouses their word, and was known to hang
out at the bars along a Saint Laura Shafrefa Capital Brasserie Alouette, and the
Rialto. She also had lots of quote friends along the main. Given her
lifestyle, police were none too aggressive in solving the murder. It wasn't until
three years later, in nineteen seventy eight, that they began to focus on
a suspect. Roger Moreau met Sibol at his mother's rooming house. Four weeks
before her death, his mother introduced Diane as her tenant. Coincidentally, three
days later, Moreau was drinking with his brother in law, Edmund Turcott,
when Turcott asked him if he knew Dianne Tibou because he got her pregnant and
if he ever saw her again, he was going to give her a beating.
She'll remember it for the rest of her life. Shortly before her murder,
Moreau observed Turcott and Tibout in a bar near Saint Zotique Street. The
two were drinking beer and making out, so he presumed the couple had reconciled
after the murder. When Moreau saw photos of in Alo police, he immediately
called the police and said, if you're looking for Dan, look for Edmund
Turcott, then hung up. LA Press reporter Nicola Berube covered this story in
two eighteen, and if you go to the website terselor dot com th h
E R E s A A L l O r A point com and find
this story, there's links to Nicola's story and there's lots of links here,
so lots of information, lots of photos with this particular one, So check
out the website. So Nicola Barube interviewed former detective Sergeant Jacques Dasheroul, who
was assigned to the case in nineteen seventy five. Dashno later became director of
the Montreal Police, then a member of Parliament for Saint Jerome, Tibo's hometown
from two thousand twelve until twenty fourteen. And when he was asked to explain
by Baruwa why it took police three years to follow up on the lead provided
by Moreau the phone call, Deschaneau explained, we were pretty busy. Edmund
Turcott was working as a cook at the New Spireau restaurant on Peel Street when
police arrested him in November nineteen seventy eight, and he was taken to the
stabac's headquarters on Parthenay Street and subjected to a polygraph test. After a lengthy
interrogation, Turcott confessed to Dian Tibo's murder. The confession, lengthy and grizzly
in detail, is the subject of a podcast I did in also in twenty
eighteen, and it was the basis that story for the Lapress article for today,
I'd like you to focus dates and geography of this case. The morning
of the murder August second, nineteen seventy five, Turcott and Tebow were drinking
at Cabaret Rodeo on Saint Laurent Boulevard. The Rodeo, also known as the
Lodeo, is quite famous. It's where Quebec playwright Michelle Tremblay set his play
about Montreal's underbelly, Saint Carmen of the Main, in nineteen seventy six.
Saint Carmena the Main is a play about a woman of this environment who travels
to Nashville to learn how to yodel and same country music and returns returns to
Montreal Shortly thereafter, false falls under the influence of a ne'er do well character
named Toothpick. Toothpick, you can look, you can look, you can
research to the arts ira on Michelle Trumpley and Saint Carmen of the Main.
But but the Rodeo, the Ladeo is quite quite was quite famous at the
time. Um So after they're drinking there, Tibo and Turcott moved to a
rooming house near Saint Catharine Street, where Turcott beat, raped and strangled Dan
Tibo. But he did not leave her there. He dragged her, half
dead to the vacant lot on Saint Dominique in Dorchester where he set her on
fire and he left her for dead. And there's a map for this.
There's lots of maps this time around. I got a map coded for each
of the victims. Tibo is in blue, Goudreaux is in a red and
DaSilva finally is in green. And for Tibou, there like three plot points.
There's a located to the lodeo of the where the motel would have been
approximately on Saint Catherine, and then finally that dumpsite at Reni Leveck and Saint
Dominique, which would have been quite run down in that era in the seventies.
Today it's all built up, right, it's all. It's all and
what do you call it? Commercial and gentrified. As this case moved to
trial, the police assumed because of the confession, they had a slam dunk
win on their hands. The corner had ruled that quote Diantibo died a violent
death on August second, nineteen seventy five, death for which you, Edmund
Turcott must be held criminally responsible. That's not the way things turned out.
Turcott went to trial in late November nineteen seventy eight Lapress tells us that his
lawyer was a defense attorney named Rayal Charbonneau. That's sort of true. More
on that later. Nicola Berube spoke to Charbonneau in twenty eighteen for his article
Incredibly he was still practicing law. Charboneau remembered the case and the quote incredible
chance he experienced during the trial. The judge was Andrea Buron, a good
judge, but a young judge. Though he does not directly say it,
Charbonneau clearly felt Buron could be easily manipulated. Charboneau was permitted to introduce the
testimony of a psychiatrist who suggested that Edmund Turcott was quote slightly deficient mentally.
In doing so, Biron became convinced that Turcott's confession could not have been given
voluntarily and would not admit the confession as evidence. Charbonneau offered this final cold
assessment of the case's dismissal. That's it life, huh. I do not
think that the police put eight investigators to find another accused after that he was
acquitted. He was acquitted. If it had been another judge who had not
had that experience, he might have had a different attitude. On the perception
of facts. All this is chance is providence. The Lapress reporter and Nicola
Barube tried to track down Edmund Turcott, who today would be seventy four years
of age, by following his police record. Turcott's then most recent offense was
from nineteen seven, a charge of theft in Juliette, for which the decision
was withdrawn. At the time, Turcott had been living in nearby Saying Julienne.
When Burubay visited his former residence, he found a well kept mobile home
and children's toys, but no Edmund Turcott. I think I know why Buruba
never found Edmund Turcott. To understand that, you have to know a little
bit more about Turcott's attorney, Raal Charbonneau, Edmund Turcott was not slightly deficient.
He had enough of his mental faculties to hold down a job as a
line cook. He could order drinks at a bar and turn on the charm
with the ladies. He was not coerced into a confession, as his lawyer
rail Charbonneau had suggested to look at his confession transcript, Turcott was ordered and
methodical in his thoughts. He asked for a cup of coffee, So his
police interrogators ordered coffee, and he was quite clear in his motive. Dian
Tebow, according to him, was a nothing and a cow, and therefore
presumably deserved to die according to Turcott's chauvinistic worldview. The one thing police detectives
didn't do during Turcott's interrogation was allow him to see his lawyers. More than
anything, that probably led to his eventual acquittal. Real Charbonneau's career as a
Montreal defense attorney was colorful, to say the least. In nineteen eighty,
he was charged with contempt of court for failing to show up in court to
represent his client, a man accused of kidnapping and rape of a thirteen year
old. Charbonneau alleged that the error was due to a mix up between him
and his legal associate, Frank Shuffy. Charbonneau and Shuffy often worked on cases
together in this era, and in this case, Shuffy decided that Charbonneau would
represent the case of the pedophile solo. The one problem was Shuffy had failed
to notify Charbonneau that he had drawn the shortest straw in this affair. A
word on Frank Shuffy, who we've talked about before numerous times. Like one
of his best friends, Jean Pierre Roncoorps, we've also talked about, Shuffi
was known as a mob lawyer. Roncorps writes a glowing chapter about his legal
counterpart in his autobiography Le Confracist Less, known for his work as a negotiator
in the recovery of brother Andre's heart. That's true, and we'll be here
all day if we have to go down the rabbit hole of creepy Quebec Catholicism.
Shufi's more known for representing Montreal gangster Richard Blass, later gunned down by
Quebec police for the murder of Italian mobster Paul Violi. On October fifteenth,
nineteen eighty five, Shufy himself was murdered in the hallway outside his fifth floor
law office at one zero three zero Charier, across from Park La Fontaine in
the Plateau. Remember my heating about dates and places. The other point to
track here is that Shuffy and Charbonneau had a long association as legal comrades,
documented in the public record over a decade from about nineteen seventy five until Shufi's
murder in nineteen eighty five. By nineteen eighty two, Rayl Charbonneau was in
trouble again when he was banned from a coroner's inquest by Roche Cherrau, then
failed to show up for his court appearance on obstruction of justice charges. What
exactly Charbonneau did in the coroner's inquest is unknown, but he was immediately the
target of an arrest warrant. By nineteen eighty four, the matter was settled,
with Charbonneau ordered to contribute five thousand dollars towards a center for drug addicts.
Remember when biker's bodies started popping up in the Saint Lawrence River in nineteen
eighty five, Charbonneau was in the middle of that too. Charbonneau represented Laurent
l'anglais Vieaux and Guy Brutus Jeffriel, both gunned down in a Hell's Angels clubhouse,
a purging incident that would become infamously known as the Lennoxville Massacre. Among
Charbonneau's transgressions representing the Hells, he was accused of encouraging a client to sign
a false affidavid about the bombing of an apartment building Onto Mason of Boulevard in
nineteen eighty four that killed four people. In nineteen eighty seven, Charbonneau was
sentenced to eighteen months in prison in the case of that apartment bombing. He
appealed and in nineteen ninety three was granted a new trial. By nineteen ninety
seven, Charbonneau was acquitted and never served a day behind bars. In two
thousand and three, Rail Charbonneau was in the news again, tossed from a
Hell's Angels mega trial for repeatedly arguing with the judge. When he was called
to trial for the contempt case, Charbonneau was again a no show. The
matter was finally sorted out in two thousand and six. By this time Alison
Haynes doing the reporting for the Gazette. So we've passed decades and Charbonneau was
slapped with rebuke by the Quebec Bar Association and nineteen eighty six Gazette reporter William
Marsden interviewed another noted criminal lawyer, quite a famous one, named Sidney Leithman,
who at that time was becoming the air apparent to the then recently gunned
down Frank Shufi. Among Leithman's clients were Italian mob kingpin Frank Catroni, the
East End gangs Claude Dubois and West End gang leader Billy McAllister. Leathman told
Marsden how he started building his business representing clients in quote whorehouses and gambling establishments,
and Leathman's words, quote the small little client today can provide you with
the big case tomorrow. This begs the question that Leathman sort of answers,
why do guys like Charbonneau represent apparent lowlifes like Edmund Turcott, or for that
matter, why would a Jean Pierre Roncorps represent a Ferdinand Laplant in the case
we've covered before, And I would say because they know they are in some
fashion connected to money. Leathman was once asked to take on a client who
did not appear well healed, so he inquired with a police source, do
you think this guy has any money? The police officer replied, well,
Sydney, the charge is drug dealing. Charbonneau and Leathman were cut from the
same cloth. In fact, in the matter of the phony Affidavid Charbonneau claimed
it was Leathman who d through up that document. Charbonneau would not have taken
on a client like Edmund Turcott. If you were just some low life,
petty criminal who murdered a whorehouse prostitute. Charbonneau represented Turcott because he was connected
to money and was more than likely an earner for some Montreal mob outfit.
This is who killed Teresa. So that's part one of a we'll do.
We'll do a two parter and called this Solving for X. And when we
come back next time, which will be shortly, I won't make you wait
two weeks or anything like that. We'll continue with this and go on to
the cases of Nicole Gudreau from seven nine and then ultimately Francine da Silva in
nineteen eighty five. If you like the podcast, you can follow us on
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has been Who Killed Teresa. I'm your host, John Allure. Have yourselves
a great, great day. I've been in trouble since I don't know when
I'm in trouble now, and I know I'm alone. Of good, I'm
never alone. Every night I get one step closer through the danger. Come
come, don't better? Don boyd bar why boy my mind? Why why
boy? I'm why I'm any where wind bar