Léopold Dion

Case overview

Léopold Dion (c. 1921 - 17 November 1972, Québec) was a Canadian sex offender and serial killer who was active in Québec in the 1960s. He was nicknamed the “Monster of Pont-Rouge”.

He sexually abused 21 boys, of whom he also killed four. He lured his victims by posing as a photographer.

The offence

Dion’s first sexual assault involved an attempted murder against a young woman from Pont-Rouge. Léopold Dion and his brother raped and stabbed the woman on the railway track linking the Rang Petit-Capsa (a street) to the village of Pont-Rouge. They left her for dead, but she survived with both physical and psychological injuries.

Dion’s first murder victim was twelve-year-old Guy Luckenuck, in Quebec City that day for piano lessons. Dion lured Guy Luckenuck by taking a series of snapshots with an old camera that had no film before claiming to want to continue elsewhere. Dion drove the boy into the country, where, in a remote spot, Dion strangled Luckenuck and then buried him.

On 5 May 1963, Dion crossed paths with eight-year-old Alain Carrier and ten-year-old Michel Morel. He used the same ploy to lure them into his car, driving them to a run-down building in Saint-Raymond-de-Portneuf. With Alain, Dion pretended to play prisoner so that he could tie the boy up in the cottage. Once the younger boy had been overcome, Dion turned to the older one, Michel, whom he led outside, whereupon he asked the child to take his clothes off. Dion strangled Michel with a garrote, before going back inside and smothering the other boy.

On 26 May 1963, Dion met thirteen-year-old Pierre Marquis, who was also taken in by the fake photographer’s promises. The encounter occurred a couple of paces from a dune that had become Guy Luckenuck’s grave a bit more than a month earlier. Dion asked his victim to pose naked. The child complied, but when Dion tried to assault him, he fought back before giving in and getting strangled.

Dion was on conditional release for raping a schoolteacher several years earlier.

Investigation

It was a description of Dion from another boy whom he had waylaid but who had got away from him that led to the police apprehending Dion.

Once in prison, Dion held out for a month before he finally admitted his crimes to his interrogators, in detail. He then led investigators to the spot where he had buried the children’s bodies.

Arrest

Dion was arrested the day after his last murder.

Trial

Dion was defended by criminal lawyer Guy Bertrand.

In the end, Dion was charged with only one murder, Pierre Marquis’s, for lack of evidence in the other cases.

Sentencing

On 10 April 1964, Judge Gérard Lacroix sentenced Dion to be hanged.

Appeals

The death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by then Governor General of Canada Georges Vanier after Bertrand's appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada in the matter had failed.

Outcome

On 17 November 1972, Dion was stabbed to death by a fellow inmate named Normand “Lawrence d'Arabie” Champagne.

Champagne was later found not guilty of this crime by reason of insanity.

Other details

Dion lured victims by posing as a photographer and was identified through a description provided by another boy who had escaped. A first murder victim was Guy Luckenuck, and the later murders included Alain Carrier, Michel Morel, and Pierre Marquis. Dion’s activities involved Pont-Rouge and the railway track linking the Rang Petit-Capsa (a street) to the village of Pont-Rouge. The later luring involved a run-down building in Saint-Raymond-de-Portneuf.