Practically Perfect (22 page)

Henry Séguin killed three people, two for no other reason than they might sometime in the future be able to identify him. With the official death party waiting outside his cell to escort him to the gallows, he somehow managed to kill himself. In his suicide note he wrote that he was the real victim, not those whom he wronged during a life of crime.
Courtesy of Vancouver Sun.

Shortly after beginning to serve his sentence Séguin escaped. He immediately went on a crime spree, earning himself a term of two years less a day in the institution from which he had just broken out. A year into that term he escaped again. After committing a series of breakins, he sought refuge in the Canadian army. A routine background check quickly determined that he was an escapee, and he was promptly discharged by the armed forces and arrested by the police. Séguin had finally reached the big leagues — he was about to do his time in a federal penitentiary.

If there was any doubt about Séguin’s career path it was put to rest when shortly after being released he returned to Kingston Penitentiary, again convicted of break, enter, and theft. It was following this sentence that the connection between Séguin and Maxville was established. In late February 1952, Séguin left Kingston for the last time, and the now twenty-six-year-old moved home to live with his parents in the dance hall they operated in Cornwall. In a lot adjacent to their business an acquaintance of the Séguins stored a small house trailer. A few weeks after returning to reside with his parents, Henry broke into the unit and stole a Leatherneck Model 150 .22 calibre rifle and a small, three-compartment change purse.

In June, Séguin left Cornwall following a fight with his parents, and he and a man he identified as his uncle rented a cabin a few miles outside his hometown. Weeks later, and now alone, he began sleeping in his car near an unused church on the outskirts of Maxville.

Early in August Séguin was walking down the town’s main street when he ran into Douglas McKibben, whom he met while both men were imprisoned in Kingston. Over coffee the two reminisced about their days in prison, then McKibben made the mistake of telling Séguin that he was working as a bookkeeper in a garage owned by one of the town’s wealthiest citizens. He compounded his mistake by admitting that when he took the job he did not disclose that he was an ex-con. Séguin immediately realized what that meant, and told McKibben that if he did not supply him with money and food, he would share the bookkeeper’s secret with Leonard Hurd, McKibben’s boss.

With the cash he was extorting Séguin rented a cabin on a farm near Maxville and began planning his next crime. On August 16, 1952, he carried it out. His target was Hurd, a man widely known to carry on his person large sums of money, often well in excess of $1000. The plan was simple — Séguin would park his beat-up 1934 Chevrolet coup on the side of a road just outside Maxville, then when it got dark walk into town and ask the garage-man for gas and a ride back to his car. Once the two were beyond prying eyes, Séguin would take Hurd’s money.

It worked, sort of. Séguin did indeed leave his car outside Maxville, and he had no difficulty locating Hurd. The problem was the wealthy businessman was busy for most of the evening, and did not stop by his garage until 11:30 p.m., by which time several area residents had driven past Séguin’s Chevrolet and remembered both it and the stranger walking to town. Nonetheless, Séguin persuaded Hurd to give him a ride back to his car. When they arrived at their destination Séguin exited the rear passenger seat, pulled out his stolen rifle, opened the front passenger door of the vehicle, and shot Hurd five times, three times in the head. He then took the mortally wounded man’s wallet and cash, pushed Hurd’s car into the ditch, and took off in his coup.

Séguin had no sooner driven away than a car passed the disabled vehicle. It was followed shortly thereafter by several more. The driver of one recognized the car angled into the ditch, and drove into Maxville to report the accident to Hurd. The Good Samaritan happened onto one of Hurd’s employees almost as soon as he reached town and the two immediately drove back to what they thought was the scene of an accident. As soon as they looked more closely, however, they realized they were wrong.

Hurd was sprawled across the front seat, his legs on the passenger side of the car, his head under the steering wheel. Even without opening the driver-side door it was obvious Hurd had been shot. The men headed back to town, one to locate the local doctor, the other to report the crime to Maxville’s single-member police force.

News of the incident spread like wildfire, and within an hour the murder scene was crowded with spectators. As soon as he realized there was nothing that could be done for Hurd, the town doctor returned home to contact the coroner, and report the robbery-murder to the nearest detachment of the Ontario Provincial Police force. By 2:00 a.m. the first O.P.P. officer arrived, and he noticed a brown leather bag lying on the floor in the rear of the Hurd vehicle. It was removed when the car, its owner still lying across the front seat, was towed to a Cornwall funeral home, where a post mortem was to be carried out the following day.

On Sunday a senior inspector from the Toronto headquarters of the O.P.P. arrived to take over the investigation. One of his first actions was to inspect the brown satchel. Under a wash cloth and bath towel he found a number of comic books, a shaving kit, clothing, and three articles that tied Séguin directly to the murder. The first was a pay book issued by the Canadian army to Joseph Henry Laurier Séguin. Inside it the inspector discovered a certificate indicating that Séguin had been dishonourably discharged from the armed forces in January 1945. The last item was an Unemployment Insurance Card, also in Séguin’s name.

Now that they knew who they were looking for, the police began a very public search for the killer and his unusual looking car. The coup had been modified by a previous owner, and a large wooden box was built into the space normally occupied by the trunk. For the next week the authorities found no trace of either Séguin or his car. But that did not mean that the investigation had not been fruitful. A key piece of evidence tying Séguin to the murder was turned up at the cabin rented by the fugitive. The killer befriended a teenage nephew of the cabin’s owner, and the two discussed guns at length. Séguin bragged about how good a shot he was, and told the young man he made it a habit to print his name under the metal butt plate of his guns, ensuring that there was never any doubt about to whom they belonged. In addition, Séguin gave the youth a handful of what he said were unique bullets; bullets which, it turned out, were identical to those that killed Leonard Hurd.

Six days after the murder of the Maxville businessman a member of a highway maintenance crew cutting grass near the scene of the murder discovered the stock of a .22 calibre Leatherneck Model 150 rifle. As soon as the find was reported to the police an organized search of both sides of the road was begun, and it quickly turned up the barrel and trigger mechanism that fit the butt, together with a pouch containing ammunition similar to the bullets used in the murder. Printed in ink under the metal butt plate of the gun was “H. Beaudy,” the name used by Séguin when he checked into the cabin he rented shortly before the murder. Ballistic tests later revealed that the bullet recovered from Hurd’s body was fired from the rifle discovered by the maintenance crew.

By day’s end the O.P.P. were satisfied they had sufficient evidence, and a warrant for the arrest of Séguin was issued. For the next two months the search for Séguin and his car produced no leads, but on October 25, 1952, a hunter walking along the bank of the Ottawa River near the Ontario-Quebec border discovered an unusual looking vehicle at the bottom of a steep embankment. By the next day there was no doubt it was the car seen parked on the side of the road near the spot where Hurd was murdered. The coup’s owner, however, was long gone.

In fact, a week and a half after he robbed and murdered Hurd, Séguin began working for a lumber company ten kilometres north of Williams Lake, in the interior of British Columbia. The fugitive gave his name as Henry Godin, and for a month kept much to himself. That changed in early October, with the arrival of Frederick and Jean Labrie. Shortly after Fred began working with the same company as Séguin, the Labries struck up a friendship with the fugitive. Over the course of the next few weeks it grew sufficiently intimate that when Séguin quit his lumber job, he was able to persuade Fred to join him three hundred kilometres away in Kamloops. Jean was already in the city, working as a waitress at the Royal Cafe. The three rented one half of a duplex, and furnished their new home with items the Labries left in storage when they moved to Williams Lake. On November 14, the furniture, the three friends, and the Labries’ brown and white dog became a household. Three days later the young couple were dead.

Investigators were never able to determine the precise sequence of events that led to the murder of Fred and Jean Labrie, but they suspect that something happened to make Séguin fear that his past was about to catch up with him. To prevent that from happening he shot Fred twice in the head, and then stabbed Jean to death before dumping their bodies in a streambed sixteen kilometres southwest of Kamloops.

Twenty-four hours after disposing of the Labries, their killer began selling the couple’s household effects. A few days later Séguin used Fred’s truck as part payment on a used mobile home. Although he moved his purchase into a local trailer park, for the next month he continued to reside in the duplex. The fugitive had enough of Kamloops, and in mid-December caught a westbound bus for Williams Lake. On the fifteenth he was noticed hanging around the Canadian Bank of Commerce, apparently indifferent to the falling snow.

At 11:00 p.m. the manager of the bank finally finished work, and no sooner started his car when Séguin opened the passenger door and slipped in beside him. The Maxville murderer stuck a .32 calibre handgun into the banker’s side, and told him to drive out of town. They no sooner reached the countryside when the fugitive said to stop the car. The two sat in silence for a few moments, and then Séguin told the manager to drive back. As they neared the bank they saw two men standing on the sidewalk and Séguin instructed the banker to keep going. Seconds later he told the manager to make a U-turn. The men on the sidewalk were still chatting, and the killer again forced his hostage to head out of town. This time they stopped for a few moments near the town’s garbage dump before returning.

At last the sidewalk was empty. Séguin ordered the banker to pull over, park the car, and let him into the bank. The men walked directly to the vault, leaving the front door slightly ajar. One of the individuals who had been visiting on the sidewalk happened to be an employee of the Bank of Commerce, and when he and his friend finished their coffee and started for their respective homes he noticed the open door. Almost as soon as the pair stepped into the bank to see what was wrong they were told to put their hands up, and to stay where they were. With the manager in front of him and the two newcomers behind, Séguin was outflanked. The killer ordered the banker to step away from the vault and join the men by the door, but instead of walking around the counter the hostage started towards Séguin. He no sooner took his first step when a shot rang out and Séguin bolted.

Within minutes all five members of the Williams Lake detachment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrived on the scene, greeted by two badly shaken bystanders and a bank manager with a wound to his leg. Figuring out where the bad guy went was not difficult. Séguin’s footsteps were clearly visible in the fresh snow, and officers easily followed them to the highway leading out of town. For a while the robber walked in a relatively straight line down the road, but over the next two miles Séguin periodically left the highway to walk through the ditch on one or the other side of the roadway, as if he were trying to avoid being detected by drivers of passing vehicles. When the fugitive’s trail turned down a densely wooded back road, pursuing officers opted for caution and returned to Williams Lake to organize a search party.

Early the next morning trackers followed the footprints of the bank robber to a creek bed just inside the Sugar Cane Indian reserve, and their pursuit slowed to a crawl. Around 9:00 a.m. a constable suddenly shouted that he saw the fugitive. As soon as he did Séguin stepped from behind a tree, gun in hand, and demanded that his pursuers put down their weapons. Instead, all but one of the officers dropped to the ground. As Séguin began shooting at the downed posse members the only policeman with a clear view of him fired, hitting the escaped killer in the chest.

Someone was immediately dispatched to arrange for a doctor to be brought to the scene, and when he arrived the badly wounded criminal was stabilized, and then transported to the Williams Lake hospital. From that point onwards things quickly began to unravel for the Cornwall killer. Six days after he was shot, while still recuperating in hospital from his chest wound, Séguin’s fingerprints identified him as the man wanted for the murder of Leonard Hurd. On January 13, 1953, the killer was committed to stand trial, and five days later pled guilty to wounding with intent to kill, shooting with intent to do bodily harm, and robbery while armed. The result was a five year term of imprisonment on each count, the sentences to run concurrently.