On a spring day in the Quebec City area, eight-year-old Alain Carrier was with his friend, 10-year-old Michel Morel. The boys’ lives, filled with the simple adventures of childhood, were irrevocably shattered on May 5, 1963, when they crossed paths with a man named Léopold Dion. He was a predator who had already killed and would kill again, a man who would come to be known as the Monster of Pont-Rouge.
For Alain, a young male, that Sunday would be his last day.
Dion, a man with a long and disturbing criminal record, had a practiced method of luring his victims. Posing as a photographer, he would approach children with an old camera that contained no film, promising to take their picture. He used this same deceptive ploy to entice Alain and Michel into his car. Instead of a photo session, he drove them to a deserted, run-down building in the town of Saint-Raymond-de-Portneuf. There, the boys' final terrifying hours unfolded.
Inside the desolate building, Dion’s sinister game continued. He convinced Alain to play a game of "prisoner" and used the pretense to tie the younger boy up. Once Alain was helpless, Dion turned his attention to Michel. He led the older boy outside, where he strangled him with a garrote. After killing Michel, Dion went back inside the building and smothered Alain. The two friends, who had been together in life, were left together in death, their bodies abandoned by their killer.
The disappearances were part of a string of crimes that terrorized the region in the spring of 1963. Dion had murdered his first victim, 12-year-old Guy Luckenuck, just weeks earlier. His final victim, 13-year-old Pierre Marquis, would be killed on May 26. The day after Marquis's murder, Dion was arrested. His capture was the result of a brave boy who had managed to escape an encounter with him and provided police with a crucial description. Dion, who was on parole at the time of his killing spree, held out for a month in custody before finally confessing to his horrific crimes in detail. He then led investigators to the remote locations where he had buried the bodies of his young victims.
Léopold Dion was a serial killer, rapist, and sex offender responsible for the proven murders of four boys and the sexual abuse of at least 21. His trial brought the full scope of his depravity to light. Despite confessing to all four murders, a lack of evidence led prosecutors to charge him with only the murder of Pierre Marquis. He was convicted of capital murder, rape, and gross indecency. In April 1964, a judge sentenced him to death by hanging.
The death sentence, however, was never carried out. Following a failed appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, his sentence was commuted to life in prison. Dion’s life behind bars was not a quiet one; he was reportedly taunted by fellow inmates. His end came not by the state's hand, but by that of another prisoner. On November 17, 1972, Léopold Dion was stabbed to death by a fellow inmate at the Archambault Institution in Quebec. The man who killed him was later found not guilty by reason of insanity. The brutal chapter that Dion had written in Quebec's history was finally closed, but not before he had stolen the lives and futures of children like Alain Carrier.
