Lise Brisebois

At 23 years old, Lise Brisebois was looking forward to her first trip by airplane, an escape to Florida with a friend to get away from the lingering Quebec winter. She lived with her parents in a home on Paquette Street in Brossard, a suburb south of Montreal. The family also provided a foster home for two teenage boys. Friends and family remembered a happy young woman on the cusp of a new adventure.

In the early hours of Saturday, March 10, 1990, Lise returned home from a night out with her friend Sophie and a new boyfriend, Gaétan. They had been at the Super 9 nightclub in Saint-Mathias-sur-Richelieu. She arrived home around 4:00 a.m. Her parents were away at their cottage for the weekend, but the two foster youths, aged 13 and 16, were asleep in the basement. At 4:10 a.m., Gaétan called to make sure she had gotten home safely. They spoke for about 15 minutes until Lise told him she heard someone at the front door and hung up to see who it was. She was never heard from again.

Around 5:00 a.m., a neighbor across the street, unable to sleep, heard a noise from the Brisebois house. A few minutes later, she saw an unfamiliar car leaving the property with its headlights turned off. When Lise failed to show up for a dinner date with Gaétan that evening, the family was alerted and the police were called. A search of the home on Sunday morning uncovered broken artificial fingernails near the entrance, suggesting a struggle had occurred.

For eight months, Lise's family waited for answers, her sister Marie-Andrée publicly criticizing the Brossard police for a lack of progress and communication. The family was outraged to learn that a handbag found on the banks of the St. Lawrence River was dismissed by investigators without consulting them. "They should have never stopped the investigation," Marie-Andrée told a reporter. "Now it’s up to us to find her."

On November 17, 1990, the search came to a tragic end. A Hydro-Québec worker clearing brush in a wooded area off rang Gingras in Rainville, a rural area now part of Farnham, discovered scattered human bones. Police from the Sûreté du Québec searched the scene but found no clothing or jewelry. They did, however, recover hair and red vinyl nails. Ten days later, using dental records and the distinctive nails, the remains were identified as those of Lise Brisebois. A coroner's investigation ruled her death a violent homicide.

The investigation, which was transferred from Brossard police to the Sûreté du Québec's Estrie Investigations Bureau, developed two main theories. The first, supported by the broken nails and the neighbor's account, was that Lise was attacked and abducted from her home shortly after hanging up the phone. Her own car was later found abandoned in the parking lot of the nearby Champlain Mall, possibly left there to mislead investigators.

A second theory emerged from conflicting witness statements. One of the teenage boys living in the home believed he saw Lise on the morning of Saturday, March 10, and that she left the house around noon wearing the same black suede skirt and beige suede coat from the night before. A manager of a store at the Champlain Mall also believed she saw Lise trying on and buying clothes around 2:00 p.m. that day. This scenario suggested Lise was not taken from her home, but was abducted later from the shopping center. However, no receipt for her purchases could be found, and it is possible the witnesses were mistaken about the day.

Decades have passed, but the murder of Lise Brisebois remains unsolved, leaving her family with unanswered questions. As of February 2023, no suspects have ever been publicly named or charged in her killing. The Sûreté du Québec continues to seek information from the public. Anyone with information related to the homicide of Lise Brisebois can contact the Sûreté du Québec info-crime line anonymously at 1-800-659-4264.