Practically Perfect

by Dale Brawn

  Two weeks after Viau’s funeral the body of the woodcutter was exhumed and an autopsy performed to determine what caused his death. It did not take long to learn what happened — in the dead man’s stomach the medical examiner found enough strychnine to kill half a dozen people. Beaulne and Lefebvre were promptly taken into custody and charged with murder. Six months after Viau died in excruciating pain, the murder trial of his killers got underway. Neither denied they committed the crime, and after initially blaming each other, accepted responsibility for what they did. Although Beaulne administered the poison that killed her husband, the judge presiding over his trial blamed Lefebvre for the crime. It was he and he alone who provided both the motive and the means to carry out the murder. Worse, Zephyr Viau was given only two or three days between being poisoned and dying, hardly sufficient time to make peace with God. Lefebvre, said the visibly upset jurist, would have two months. And with that the judge told the lovers that they were to be hanged on August 23, 1929.

  It soon became apparent to Beaulne’s lawyers that although the widow had neighbours, no one was her friend. After their client was sentenced to hang, the two young barristers who defended her started to circulate a petition for clemency. Over the next few weeks not a single person signed it. The lawyers persevered, however, perhaps because they saw in her case the chance to be thought of as something other than the youngest and most inexperienced members of the Hull bar. It is not known why they did not appeal their client’s verdict, but what they lacked in experience, they made up for in enthusiasm. Because both Beaulne and Lefebvre confessed to poisoning Viau, there was no point in arguing law when they filed their petition for clemency. Instead, they advanced seventeen social and moral reasons for commuting the death sentences. For one thing, the killers were raised in a community where moral and religious training were almost unheard of, a claim that likely did not go over well with the Reverend Father Major. Their ignorance, it was argued, made it impossible for them to appreciate the enormity of what they had done. The lawyers also suggested that when the trial judge asked if there was any reason why sentence should not be imposed on them, neither Beaulne nor Philibert were intellectually aware of what his words meant, or of the consequence of the sentence imposed.

  As a kind of backup plan, the lawyers continued in their efforts to persuade members of the condemned couple’s parish to sign a petition in support of clemency. After several attempts, they finally had some success. In the weeks immediately preceding the scheduled execution they obtained five hundred signatures, including those of the priest whose suspicions resulted in the apprehension of Beaulne and Lefebvre, the father of the murdered man, and the father of the victim’s wife. Three days before the murderers’ date with the hangman the federal cabinet rejected their application for clemency. That same day carpenters began constructing the scaffold on which the two condemned prisoners were to die.

  After their verdict was announced, the couple was transported to Montreal. They were held there until the day before their execution, when they were transferred back to Hull. Beaulne spent her time in the Fullum Street Prison for Women. When Lefebvre saw his cell in the infamous Bordeaux Jail, the First World War veteran broke down in tears. Over the next two months, he seemed to have banished from his mind the possibility he might be executed. On August 22, however, he finally realized that the possibility was about to become a reality, and was unable to keep his emotions in check. One thing he was sure about, though: he wanted no part of a last minute visit with Beaulne.

  Reporters were denied access to the execution, but one newsman was able to sneak past guards and into the jail proper. He was discovered just before midnight, when the executions were originally scheduled to be carried out, and escorted from the prison. Just about the time he was ejected, Arthur Ellis, the country’s unofficial chief executioner, was advised by provincial officials that the executions were to be postponed until dawn the next morning. When the day broke, it was pouring in rain, and the sky was full of lightning, making an execution dangerous even for those who were not going to be hanged. The sheriff decided to put things off until 8:00 a.m.

  Neither prisoner knew the order in which they were to be put to death, but officials decided shortly after the couple were sentenced that the honour should go to the tall, lanky woodcutter. Just before Ellis arrived at his cell, Lefebvre composed himself long enough to write a letter to his father, in which he begged forgiveness for the disgrace and heartbreak he brought to his family. But even Lefebvre’s spiritual adviser could do little to calm the condemned man, and after his arms were pinioned behind his back, guards had to carry the prostrate poisoner from his cell to the prison yard. Ellis was distraught and fidgety all morning, and with all this carrying-on he had to make a visible effort to calm himself. By the time Lefebvre reached the huge, red scaffold, however, everything was under control. At exactly the appointed hour, the trap doors were released. To ensure that no one outside the jail, or prisoners inside, could catch a glimpse of what was going on, black curtains surrounded the platform on which Ellis and his victim stood, and boards covered the space between the platform and the pit into which the bodies were to drop.

  A quarter of an hour later Beaulne began her walk to the gallows, straining for a glimpse of her lover. She was much more composed than Lefebvre had been, and required neither spiritual nor physical assistance from anyone. In the hours preceding her execution she wrote a letter to each of her eight children, and to her mother and assorted other relatives. The effort seemed to calm her, and when her death walk began she showed no emotion, and seemed oblivious to the noise made by the hundreds of people who milled around in front of the jail, awaiting news of the executions.

  Although the body of Philibert was claimed by his father an hour after it was removed from the gallows, no one wanted the corpse of Beaulne. That was something not anticipated by the provincial government, as it had made no arrangements for her burial. The longer the woman’s body lay in the Hull jail, the more anxious prison officials became, and it was hours before they received word that she was to be buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave in Hull’s Notre Dame cemetery. The only official told to attend was the sheriff.

  Newspapers across Canada reported the double execution, but made little other comment. That was not the case with a paper in Salt Lake City, Utah. The attitude of its editor likely reflected the beliefs of the paper’s Mormon readers, but the article seemed a little inappropriate in light of the key role Beaulne played in the murder of her husband:

  Both deserved death, except that a woman in “the dangerous age” is often not responsible. But the eight children must live as “the children of a woman hanged for murder.” These children had committed no crime. Why not hang the trapper and let the woman work to support her children the rest of her life?[8]

  Marie Louise Cloutier and Achille Grondin: Married Too Soon

  The story of Marie and Achille started eighteen years after Marie married Vilmond Brochu. The short, stout bride was very much the intellectual superior of her husband, but outwardly appeared content to labour alongside him on their small farm near Ste. Methode, Quebec, south of the St. Lawrence River. By 1934 the couple had achieved a semblance of financial security, and Brochu decided to purchase a taxi. For the next two years he divided his time between farming, peddling the meat he butchered, and driving his cab. Brochu was away a lot, and most of the work done on the farm now became Cloutier’s responsibility. She began to feel a little hard done by. So much so that she gave her husband an ultimatum — help out more, or she was leaving. The compromise they worked out was that Brochu would hire someone to help her on the farm. That is when Achille Grondin entered the picture. Within a few months of starting work he and his boss’s wife began an affair, although it was never anything exclusive. Marie was a fiercely independent woman, and made little effort to hide her relationship with other men.

  One of those others was Adolphe Gilbert, who farmed near the Brochu’s. He and Grondin g
ot along well, and through sharing the affections of the same woman, actually became friends. Neither was sophisticated in the ways of the world, and each allowed himself to be manipulated by Cloutier. Their solution when Cloutier spoke to them about getting rid of her husband was to send away for a book of spells and incantations. Using it, they put a hex on Brochu. In the firm belief it would work, the men met to discuss which of them would become the widow-to-be’s next husband. Grondin won the honour by default. When it came down to the crunch, Gilbert decided he had too many children from his first marriage to take on any more responsibilities. The problem for Grondin and Cloutier, however, was that the spells did not work, and Brochu continued to drive his cab around southern Quebec, sewing his own wild oats.

  By late 1936 Brochu was tired of Grondin’s continued presence around Cloutier, and fired him. Not only that, he hired a lawyer to sue his former hired man for alienating the affection of his wife, a lawsuit he felt was worth $500. As soon as Grondin left the farm, so too did Cloutier. She spent about a month at the home of a friend who lived in a town east and a little south of Ste. Methode. From there she kept in touch with her lover, and between the lines of the letters the couple wrote they began planning a future without Brochu. The problem was that Grondin could neither read nor write. As a consequence, he asked a friend to compose his letters, and to tell him what Cloutier wrote in hers. The letter writing became common knowledge in the small community, principally because the postmistress could hardly avoid noticing who was writing whom.

  Marie Cloutier may not have looked like a femme fatale, but she certainly had considerable influence over several of the men residing in her rural Quebec village. She spent the afternoon before her marriage in the bed of her accomplice’s friend. Unlike her new husband, she needed no help walking to the scaffold on which she was put to death.

  Courtesy of Library and Archives Canada.

  Brochu made a number of trips to Magog, where his wayward wife was staying. Over and over he pleaded with her to return, and he even enlisted the support of the couple’s parish priest. Cloutier eventually agreed to come back, on three conditions: her husband was to discontinue his law suit against Grondin; they were to live in the village; and Brochu was not to complain about her ongoing relationship with their hired man. Brochu agreed to everything, and in the waning months of 1936 the pair was reunited. That was not a good thing for Brochu. Cloutier wanted to be close to her husband for one reason — to do him in.

  It is difficult to know if Cloutier really loved Grondin, keeping in mind her hectic social schedule. He was certainly no catch. Barely intelligent enough to function on his own, he had little sense of the ways of the world. That made it easy for Cloutier to talk him into using something more than a curse to do away with her husband. The method she chose was poison, perhaps because arsenic was something she knew a little about, having used it to grow her vegetables. Cloutier did not want to be seen buying the poison herself, since that would make everyone suspicious if her husband were to die suddenly, so she opted for subtlety — she had her lover purchase it. Subtlety, however, was not part of Grondin’s character. When he was told to get a little arsenic, he bought a kilogram of it.

  Cloutier began poisoning her husband sometime in November 1936, but it was not until New Year’s Day that Brochu first complained of stomach pain. He recovered though, and for the next six months showed no ill effects. That changed on June 21, when his discomfort became so acute that his wife was forced to drive him to a hospital. The diagnosis was indigestion. A month later Brochu ended up in a different hospital, and this time he was kept five days for observation. Denied the poison his wife had been sprinkling on his food, he recovered his health, and was released back into Cloutier’s care. It was at this point that the conspirators tired of Brochu’s unwillingness to die. Cloutier upped his dosage, and to be on the safe side, Grondin and Gilbert put another curse on their rival. The double-barrelled approach worked, and on August 16, 1937, Brochu became ill for the last time. When a friend dropped by to see how he was feeling, the man suggested that since Brochu would not be farming any time soon, he might consider selling him some uncut hay. Brochu refused; he was going to give it away. Cloutier heard the conversation, and told the friend to come back in two or three days. By then, she said, her husband would be dead, and she would sell him the hay. She was right. Three days later Brochu died.[9]

  At this juncture Cloutier and Grondin may have gotten away with murder had they been a little more patient and a lot less greedy. The day after her husband died, Cloutier applied for the proceeds of his life insurance policy. No one said anything, but neighbours thought she was moving a little too quickly. Two or three days later Grondin moved in with the widow. After this the dead man’s friends and family grew suspicious about the haste. The community’s sense of discomfort gave way to something more than nagging suspicion when villagers learned that less than a week after Brochu’s funeral Cloutier and her lover asked their parish priest for permission to marry. Rather than refuse it, he merely put them off, and when they came back a few weeks later, he gave in. Before the ceremony Gilbert showed up at the couple’s home, ostensibly to pick up something he bought at an auction. His real purpose was to spend a last afternoon in the bed of the bride-to-be. Neighbours likely noticed his visit, but no one said anything; Cloutier was now Grondin’s problem. Less than two months after helping murder the man he once worked for, Grondin had his house, his property, and his wife. That was too much for Brochu’s sister.

  While her former sister-in-law and her new husband were honeymooning, she took the train to Montreal and spoke to the chief of the Quebec Provincial Police. After she filled him in on all that had transpired over the past several months, he too became suspicious, and he decided to have his force dig into things, including the grave so recently occupied by Vilmond Brochu. Within days his body was exhumed, and a provincial pathologist provided the police with his report: Brochu did not die of indigestion, as his attending physician indicated on the dead man’s death certificate.

  The wheels of justice in the province of Quebec may sometimes grind slowly, but they move inexorably forward. Cloutier and Grondin were taken into custody pending the results of a coroner’s inquest, and on November 29, 1937, it concluded that they were almost certainly responsible for the death of Brochu. Six days later a magistrate agreed, and he bound the couple over for trial. Cloutier went first. From the day her trial began in September 1938, Quebeckers read daily accounts with more than a little morbid interest. The star of the show looked very much like a grieving widow, although by this time she had remarried. Dressed completely in black and wearing a silver crucifix, she was the person everyone wanted to see. That included prisoners in the jail attached to the courthouse, who spent hours each day peering through the bars of their cells, trying to catch a glimpse of the accused killer.

  The testimony of one of the first witnesses called by the Crown set the stage for what was to come. The young man was an assistant undertaker, and he told the court that Cloutier was his mother’s friend. While visiting one day she asked him to explain how the embalming process worked. He did not think anything about it until Cloutier told his mother about a recent visit she had with a fortune teller. His mother said that when the fortune teller informed Cloutier that she would soon be in mourning, Cloutier replied, “Instead of wearing black I’ll put on my red dress.”[10] Only later did the mother and son start wondering why Cloutier was so preoccupied with death.

  It turned out that the accused was also a little obsessed with putting on a red dress. A friend of the prisoner told the court that when Cloutier was leaving the cemetery following her husband’s interment she was approached by Brochu’s sister. Her former sister-in-law told Cloutier that Brochu was better off in the ground than with her. The widow shot back: “with people like you about, it’s better to wear red for mourning than black.” Asked at her trial if the comment reflected her sentiment towards her husband, Cloutier thought it mig
ht have, since by the time her husband died she had no feelings for him whatsoever. The prosecutor wondered whether the witness thought it a bit strange that she used the same expression twice, both times in the context of the death of her first husband. Cloutier said she did not think so. “When I used it first I had been joking. The other times I was angry. They said I hadn’t taken good care of Villemond.”[11]

  Other statements the barely grieving widow made both before and after her first husband’s funeral came back to haunt her. The Crown Attorney focussed particularly on what Cloutier had to say when she heard that the police were thinking about digging up the body of Brochu. She told friends that if they found poison, they would not find very much. The prosecutor asked why she mentioned poison before the police even knew of its presence. “Did you know before the coroner’s inquest into Brochu’s death that he had been poisoned?” Her response did not satisfy the lawyer: “I only knew what the doctors had said that he was poisoned by his liver and his kidneys.” But, he wondered, “how did you know before the inquest then that there was poison in his body — you told Mrs. Joseph Carrier before the inquest and the result of the autopsy was known that “They may find some but they have to see it given.” Different versions of the same question were asked over and over, but Cloutier refused to back down. The clearly exasperated prosecutor asked Cloutier to explain why, after her husband’s body was exhumed, she told detectives if they found anything in his body they could not have found much. She denied everything. “I didn’t say that. I showed them a mortuary card made after my husband died and asked them if the body they dug up looked anything like the picture on the card and they said it didn’t.”[12]