Gérald Lapierre, a White/Caucasian male in his fifties, was found dead on January 16, 1980, after police officers on patrol discovered his completely frozen body along Montée Saint-Victor in Saint-Janvier, Quebec. He was still fully clothed when he was found. Investigators determined that Lapierre had been shot to death, turning the discovery into a homicide investigation.
In the period before his death, Lapierre was known to frequent a number of licensed establishments in Montréal.
One place specifically connected to the investigation was the Barachais. Police learned that the last known person to have seen Lapierre alive was a waitress who worked at that establishment. Public accounts of the case have not disclosed the waitress's identity or provided details about exactly when Lapierre was seen there, when he left, whether anyone accompanied him, or how he eventually came to be at the location where his body was discovered.
The limited information released publicly has left a significant gap between Lapierre's last known movements in Montréal and the discovery of his body. Authorities have not publicly disclosed a motive for the shooting or identified the circumstances that led Lapierre to Montée Saint-Victor. There has also been no publicly reported explanation of whether investigators believe he was killed at the location where his body was found or whether his body was taken there after the shooting.
Nearly four decades after the killing, the Sûreté du Québec brought renewed attention to Lapierre's case. In December 2018, it was included among 16 mysterious homicide and disappearance investigations that police publicized again in an effort to generate new information. The case has continued to be identified as an unsolved cold case, with Sûreté du Québec file number 179-800116-002 associated with the investigation.
No suspect has been publicly identified in Gérald Lapierre's killing, and available case information does not report any arrest, criminal charge, trial, or conviction connected to his death. Decades after his frozen body was discovered during that police patrol, the unanswered question of who shot him—and what happened between his last known sighting at the Montréal bar and the discovery of his body—remains at the center of an unresolved Quebec homicide investigation.
