On the crisp autumn morning of October 3, 1969, the body of 20-year-old Shirley Audette, a female, was discovered behind her apartment complex in downtown Montreal, Quebec. Though she was found fully clothed, an autopsy would later reveal she had been raped and strangled. The discovery marked the beginning of a reign of terror that would grip the city and eventually spread across the country, as Shirley was the first of four women to be killed by one of Canada's most infamous serial killers.
Shirley lived in the Dorchester Boulevard apartment building with her friend, Kenneth Ehlert. On the night she was killed, Kenneth was working a night shift. Shirley often felt nervous and lonely when he was away and had a habit of sitting outside the building to ease her anxiety. It was during one of these solitary moments, in the early hours of October 3rd, that she tragically crossed paths with her new next-door neighbor, a man named Wayne Clifford Boden. In a final phone call to Kenneth at 3 a.m., Shirley mentioned she had met someone. It was the last time anyone would hear from her.
Investigators at the scene noted the savage bite marks on Shirley's breasts, a gruesome signature that would later link her murder to others. Despite the violence of the attack, there were no signs of a struggle, leading police to believe she may not have initially resisted her attacker. A former boyfriend told police that Shirley had recently mentioned being involved with a dominant and attractive man she described as "dangerous," though she never revealed his name. The investigation into her death began, but with few leads, the case quickly grew cold.
Over the next two years, the killer struck again and again. Marielle Archambault, 20, was found raped and strangled in her Montreal apartment on November 23, 1969. Jean Wray, 24, was murdered in her home on January 16, 1970. Both women had been bitten in the same manner as Shirley. The killer, who sometimes used the alias "Bill," seemed to vanish from Montreal, leaving a city on edge. He resurfaced in Calgary, Alberta, in 1971, when 33-year-old teacher Elizabeth Anne Porteous was found raped and strangled in her apartment, bearing the same horrific bite marks.
The investigation into Elizabeth's murder provided the crucial break police needed. A broken cufflink was found at the scene, and friends mentioned she had been dating a man named "Bill" who drove a distinctive blue Mercedes. Police located the car near the crime scene and arrested its owner, Wayne Clifford Boden, a charming former model and traveling salesman. When presented with the cufflink, he admitted it was his. Boden had moved from Montreal to Calgary a year earlier.
The most groundbreaking evidence against Boden came from forensic odontology. A forensic orthodontist named Dr. Gordon Swann was able to create a cast of Boden's teeth and demonstrate 29 points of similarity between the cast and the bite marks left on Elizabeth Porteous's body. It was the first time in North American legal history that this type of forensic evidence was used to secure a murder conviction. The unique and violent signature left on his victims, which earned him the moniker "The Vampire Rapist," ultimately led to his downfall.
Faced with the irrefutable scientific evidence, Wayne Clifford Boden was convicted for the murder of Elizabeth Porteous and sentenced to life in prison. He was then returned to Montreal, where he confessed to the murders of Shirley Audette, Marielle Archambault, and Jean Wray. He received three additional life sentences for these crimes, bringing the total to four counts of non-capital murder. Boden was imprisoned on February 16, 1972, and died of skin cancer in Kingston General Hospital on March 27, 2006. While justice was eventually served, it could not undo the profound loss of Shirley Audette and the other young women whose lives were stolen.
