Stéphane Gauthier was a 12-year-old White/Caucasian male living in Montreal, Quebec, when he disappeared just days before Christmas in 1982. On December 21, Stéphane spent part of the afternoon with friends, including François Bombardier, and went shopping for a Christmas present. According to accounts given after the disappearance, the children became concerned that a vehicle was following them as they returned toward the Messier Street area.
One account described a brown taxi, while another later account referred to three individuals in a white van. They hurried back to the home where they were spending the evening.
Later that evening, Stéphane left the residence intending to meet his mother and stepfather, who were visiting friends on Saint-Hubert Street. He never reached them. When he failed to arrive, what initially appeared to be a relatively short walk through the Plateau area became a disappearance investigation. The reports differ on the precise time he left the residence, but agree that December 21 was the last time he was known to have been seen alive.
Two days later, on December 23, Stéphane's body was discovered in an isolated field in the industrial area of Anjou, several miles from where he had last been seen. He had been sexually assaulted and strangled. One account states that his own gray turtleneck sweater had been used to strangle him. His pocket money was reportedly still with him, suggesting robbery was not an apparent motive. The discovery transformed the search for a missing child into a homicide investigation.
Investigators never publicly identified an official suspect in Stéphane's murder. His family has considered the possibility that whoever took him may have been someone he knew, rather than a complete stranger. His half-sister later said there had been people around the family whom she considered troubling, and two of Stéphane's uncles were subsequently convicted of sexual offenses. Police reportedly examined that avenue, but it did not produce a charge or establish responsibility for Stéphane's killing. The reports of the brown taxi and white van also remained pieces of unresolved evidence rather than leads that resulted in an identified offender.
The case remained unsolved as the decades passed. Stéphane's relatives continued seeking information, particularly as forensic technology improved. His half-sister said investigators had at one point compared crime-scene DNA with a potential suspect, but the DNA did not match that person. More recent advocates for the investigation have said biological evidence remains in the case and have urged authorities to consider newer techniques such as investigative genetic genealogy, which can sometimes identify unknown offenders through relatives whose DNA appears in accessible genealogy databases. As recently as 2025, reports indicated that genetic genealogy had not been used in Stéphane's case despite the reported existence of DNA evidence.
No one has been arrested, charged, tried, or convicted for Stéphane Gauthier's abduction, sexual assault, and murder. More than four decades after he vanished from Montreal's Plateau neighborhood, the identity of the person responsible remains unknown, and the case continues to be regarded as an unsolved Montreal homicide.
