The jury in the trial of Marie-Anne Houde decided “Guilty!” on April 22, 1920 after a 15-minute deliberation.
Judge LP Pelletier delivers the verdict: “Next October 1st at eight in the morning […]you will be hung by your neck until you die.”
Aurore Gagnon’s mother-in-law is actually responsible for the death of the 10-year-old Fortierville child as a result of abuse.
In the dock, the 30-year-old woman screams and cries loudly as she slumps in her seat.
This ends the most sensational trial of the 20th century in French Canada. Marie-Anne Houde will see her sentence commuted to life imprisonment, as will her partner Télesphore Gagnon, Aurore’s father, who turned a blind eye to the atrocities happening under his roof.
Famous thing
Novels and several feature films will recreate this family drama that took place in the Bécancour region, south of Trois-Rivières.
“The Aurore-Gagnon affair caused a great stir at the time because of the seriousness of the actions of Aurore’s adoptive mother, who was nicknamed child martyr,” mentions historian Simon Dubé, deputy director of the Quebec Judicial Sciences and Legal Medicine Laboratory.
When the trial began, the forensic lab had only been in existence for six years. Founded by forensic pathologist Wilfrid Derome (see below), this Department of Justice unit aims to provide scientific expertise to investigations into violent or suspicious deaths that all too often remain unsolved.
“Let her die!”
Little Aurore was found lifeless on February 12, 1920 and underwent an autopsy that revealed 54 injuries. We notice the traces of blows and infections due to poorly treated wounds.
Télesphore Gagnon’s second wife literally tortured the little girl by burning her feet with a red-hot poker or her hands with an iron. Evidence seized from Fortierville’s home included a baton and a garcette, a lead bullet at the end of a leather cord.
This handmade braided leather garchette with a lead bullet is one of the pieces of evidence seized during the investigation into the murder of Aurore Gagnon. It is kept at the Musée de la Sûreté du Québec. Source: Heritage Collection of the Sûreté du Québec
This cast iron was confiscated from the house where the child died and presented as evidence at trial. Source: Heritage Collection of the Sûreté du Québec
Three days before Aurore’s death, a neighbor was concerned about the child’s health and wanted to alert her mother-in-law.
“Let her die and I will not shed a tear,” replied the stepmother, saying that she would not send for the doctor. Back then, patients paid medical costs out of their own pockets.
Plea for insanity
At the trial, which took place in the Montreal courthouse in the following weeks, the defendant’s lawyer tried to exonerate his client with claims of insanity. Because Article 19 of the Criminal Code states that a person cannot be held responsible for an act if he or she has no reason for it.
Called in as an expert, confirmed Dr. Wilfrid Derome that Ms Houde could actually stand trial. In his opinion, she was “aware of the consequences of her actions” and could therefore be held responsible for them.
As for the causes of his cruelty, the mystery remains unsolved even a century later.
It was in this house in Fortierville, about a hundred kilometers south of Quebec, that Aurore Gagnon suffered the injuries that led to her death at the age of ten. Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
The murderer will not be hanged
On March 18, 1920, the police court brought murder charges against Marie-Anne Houde and her husband Télesphore Gagnon. The following April 21, Houde was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death, while Gagnon pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced to life in prison.
But a few days before her hanging, Marie-Anne Houde learned that her life would be saved by a “reformist campaign for the abolition of the death penalty,” according to the Sûreté du Québec.
Then, 15 years after the events, on July 3, 1935, Marie-Anne Houde was released from prison. She’s probably suffering from cancer. She died on May 12, 1936.
Télesphore Gagnon was released in 1925 for good behavior. He died on August 30, 1961 at the age of 78.
For the SQ, this issue became “a turning point in the development of justice for children in Quebec.”
Marie-Anne Houde, Aurore Gagnon’s mother-in-law, was accused of murder and sentenced to death in April 1920. This sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Le Soleil, April 27, 1920, p. 14. Digital collection, BAnQ.
novels, films, theatre
Aurore, the child martyr (1921)by Henri Rollin and Léon Petitjean.
The work was a great success and was performed more than 6,000 times in 25 years. The play was revived in 1984 with a production by René Richard Cyr.
The little Aurore, the child martyr (1952)by Jean-Yves Bigras, was released in cinemas on April 25, 1952. The film was an unprecedented box office success for a Quebec film and was translated into eight languages.
dusk (2005)by Luc Dionne, picks up the story and the film is a huge success, grossing a million dollars in its first weekend, unprecedented earnings for a Quebec film.
DR Wilfrid Derome, the doctor who inspired the FBI
On June 26, 1914, Dr. Wilfrid Derome (1877-1931) founded his forensic research laboratory on Craig Street in Montreal. The forensic doctor and ballistics expert provided Quebec with a state-of-the-art scientific analysis center – the first in America and the third in the world after Lyon and Paris – which remains a model for gender relations a century later.
Dr. Wilfrid Derome University of Montreal
When the American FBI wants to open its forensic science laboratory, it will be the one in Montreal that will serve as a model.
The Ouébec Laboratory of Judicial Sciences and Forensic Medicine, now located on Rue Parthenais in the Wilfrid Derome building, autopsied the body of Pierre Laporte, executed by the FLQ in 1970 and victim of the Order of the Temple Solar massacre in 1994 dismembered body of Jun Lin in 2012.
We also studied victims of rail disasters, like the one that decimated Lac-Mégantic in 2013, or fires, like the one that decimated L’Isle-Verte in 2014.
Not Dr. Derome is entrusted with the autopsy of the little Aurore, but his colleague Dr. Alfred Marois. However, he will play a role in the study by conducting a state-of-the-art toxicology analysis. “The stepmother was suspected of poisoning the child. Demonstrating this required collaboration with a chemist, and Dr. It was Derome who carried out this analysis. Because the conclusions were not clear, they were not used in the trial,” says Simon Dubé.
The affair nevertheless made it possible to bring the laboratory into the public eye and at the same time set a scientific direction that would develop further in the following years.
Dr. Derome is described as “the thinking brain of the police” according to his biographer Jacques Côté (Boréal, 2003). He teaches forensic medicine and toxicology at the University of Montreal and directs a laboratory at Notre Dame Hospital. His team will make several scientific breakthroughs, including a technique for measuring alcohol levels in the blood and in forensic dentistry.
Dr. Wilfrid Derome, in 1915, in the first year of operation of the forensic research laboratory at 179 Craig East in Montreal. Canada’s History