Member-only story
In 1967, Montreal was booming. People from all over the country had traveled to Montreal for the 1967 Expo. In 1969 was the year of a violent race-related riot at Sir George Williams University, where students accused staff of unfair grading due to the race of the students. It resulted in nearly 100 people arrested after students set fire to the university’s computer and burned documents and punch cards.
This was the backdrop at the time a predator named Wayne Boden, also known as the Vampire Rapist, stalked the young women of Montreal. In the late 60s, Montreal had about 1 homicide per week. Wayne Boden was counting on his victims to blend in with the other murders happening around the city at the time.
Unfortunately, the civilian attention span when it came to the murders in Montreal was fairly short. It almost became like just statistics and not the reality that these were real people.
In July 1968 Norma Vaillancourt, a 21-year-old teacher was found dead in her apartment after she had failed to show up for work. She had been strangled and raped, and her body bore vicious bite marks on her breast. The police decided not to release the information on the bite marks to the public. Unfortunately, all persons of interest were ruled out and investigators hit a dead end.
In October of 1969, a woman named Shirley Audette was found dead at the rear of an apartment complex. In the alley that went from the side of the apartment to the rear of the building, her fully clothed body was found at the bottom of the fire escape. The manner of death wasn’t readily apparent to the first on the scene.
When a reporter on the scene asked about a little bit of blood around her nostrils, one of the detectives informed him that it was a common result of being strangled. It was later confirmed to be true. Shirley had been strangled and raped and had savage bite marks on her breasts. Also noted was that Shirley did not have any bloody skin under her fingernails, leading some investigators to believe that Shirley may have known her attacker. At least enough that when the attack happened it was such a surprise that she was unable to effectively defend herself.
Shirley had mentioned something ominous to a friend earlier. Shirley said that she was “getting into something dangerous”, but didn’t explain anything more than that. An ex-boyfriend of Shirley’s told police that he thought Shirley might have gotten romantically involved with a…
