Alice Paré was a 14-year-old female living with her parents in Drummondville, Quebec, when she disappeared on February 17, 1971. That evening, her father drove her to a flute lesson at the Gilles Fortin music pavilion at 466 Saint-Jean Street. The lesson was scheduled from 5:30 to 6:00 p.m., but Alice arrived about ten minutes late. Her instructor, Marcel Saint-Jacques, had already left.
With her father gone, Alice borrowed a total of ten cents from two people at the pavilion and crossed the street intending to telephone her mother for a ride. The public telephone was reportedly not working, so she returned to the pavilion and told her friend Louise Larocque that she planned to walk home. At approximately 5:50 p.m., Alice left carrying her flute and headed toward her family's home on Boulevard Mercure, a walk that would have taken her along Saint-Jean Street, Lindsay Street and Boulevard Mercure. She never arrived.
When Alice failed to return home, her family quickly became concerned. Her mother drove to the music pavilion and learned that Alice had left on foot. As the disappearance continued, her family became convinced that she had not voluntarily run away and feared she had been abducted. The search produced no immediate trace of her. The Sûreté du Québec later remained responsible for the case, which is still listed among the province's unresolved investigations under file number 115-710218-001.
Sixty-eight days after Alice vanished, three farm workers traveling along the 3rd Rang in Sainte-Clotilde-de-Horton, near Victoriaville, noticed what appeared to be white boots in a field roughly 60 feet from the gravel road. On April 26, they approached and discovered Alice's body beneath a tree. She was still wearing much of her Jeanne-Mance school uniform. Investigators found her red coat and a green wool jacket removed from her body and lying nearby. Her remains had been affected by decomposition and animal activity during the weeks she had been missing. A school locker key was found in a jacket pocket, but the flute and its case that Alice had been carrying when she disappeared were not initially at the scene.
An autopsy was performed by Dr. Jean-Paul Valcourt on April 27. The examination determined that Alice had died from strangulation. Bruising was reportedly found on her thigh and elsewhere on her body, but the examination did not reveal evidence of sexual assault. The available public record does not establish a more precise time of death, although February 17 is treated by investigators and later case accounts as the date associated with her disappearance and killing.
The missing flute eventually provided another piece of the investigation. After police appealed to the public, a man contacted investigators on April 29 and said that he had found a flute and its case several days earlier, on April 24, near Route 20 between Saint-Albert and Sainte-Clotilde. That location was about a ten-minute drive from the area where Alice's body was discovered. Investigators therefore had evidence suggesting that at least some of Alice's belongings had been separated from her and left at another location.
Police pursued numerous possibilities. More than 150 people were reportedly questioned, and cabins along the Saint-François River were searched. One reported witness account indicated that someone resembling Alice had been seen entering a black, two-door 1970 Chevrolet on the evening she disappeared. The vehicle lead did not result in an arrest. Years later, an October 1975 report indicated that investigators believed there were people who might know the identity of Alice's killer and hoped someone would come forward, but the renewed attention still did not produce a publicly announced resolution.
No person has been publicly identified by the Sûreté du Québec as the person responsible for Alice's killing, and available official records show no arrest, criminal charge, trial or conviction in connection with her death. More than five decades later, the case remains classified as unsolved, and the Sûreté du Québec continues to seek information capable of identifying whoever abducted and strangled Alice after she began the short walk home from her music lesson that February evening.
