Solving for X - Francine Da Sylva / WKT7 #9 - podcast episode cover

Solving for X - Francine Da Sylva / WKT7 #9

Mar 31, 202332 minSeason 7Ep. 9
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Episode description

One of the most interesting things about Francine Da Sylva's murder on October 18, 1985, is that three days earlier, Frank Shoofey was gunned down, on October 15, 1985. And not only that, Shoofey's law office on the 5th floor of that apartment building on Rue Cherrrier is two blocks from the alley where Da Sylva was stabbed to death. Standing at the entrance to that alley on Saint Timothee, you can see the Shoofey building up the hill.

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Transcript

Life isn't fair, justice is blind and dysfunctional, and some cops aren't smart and dedicated like on television. This is who killed Teresa. First, some words about Francine da Silva, because this story is ultimately about Francine da Silva. I can't remember if it was in a podcast, but I've spoken many times about where she was found, that area having a strong influence on me, where she lived and her murder was committed. And the locus is place

Emilia Gamelet, that in itself is a focal point in Montreal. The main library Banquieu is located there. It's also where Berry Yukon metro station is placed. It's one of the main terminals of the city subway system. Oursham Bows is there but will be closing this spring. It's a bookstore that has been an institution in the city for at least half a decade. My nephew worked there for years and I used to drop in and surprise him whenever I was

in town. I didn't know until recently that Plasdui, an indoor shopping court across the square known today more for homeless and drug problems, was the original location of Depuis Frey or one of Montreal's most venerated department stores, and I could go on and on. Plas Emily Gamilins like a magnet for me,

I'm compelled to stay in the area whenever I visit Montreal. One time after dark, I went out photo exploring, and this is long before you know I've written about Francine da Silva, and I shot a picture of her apartment on Rueandrei with out even having known Francine had lived there. So it's kind of strange, and that it's a very unassuming building. The bus station is north of the square. I used to hang out there as a kid,

and so did Francine and her friends anonymous to each other. And then finally, I can't tell you the number of hours I've spent in that library bunk, staring at microfilm of old newspapers, looking for clues and meanings. That I believe without question that Edmund Turcott murdered Tianti Bowl. There's such specificity in his confession, such defiance in his posturing in court, but the judge let

him go. Why I would argue that Edmund Turcott was protected. He served a low level purpose to organize crime, and they would come to his aid when he needed assistance. Not for everything, of course. There are petty crimes where Turcott met with justice, but nothing. Ever, like murderer, He's usually slapped on the wrist with a fine and the threat of serving time, but nothing for murder, which I believe he continued to commit throughout his

criminal career. In nineteen seventy eight, while living in LaSalle, Turcott was charged with soliciting a prostitute. The attorney RAYL Charbonneau also represented Turcott in that process. In nineteen eighty, while living in Point O'tromble, he was charged with manslaughter, though he appears to have beaten that sentence. Then in nineteen eighty one, while living in Tarban, he was handed a six month sentence for minor infractions. There are almost twenty years where Turcott does not appear to

have been in trouble with the law. Then suddenly, in nineteen ninety seven, he resurfaces and San calik'st area where he was charged with theft. The legal process for the murder of Diantibou started after his arrest in late November nineteen seventy eight, and it dragged out all through the spring of nineteen seventy nine, with the judge's final decision not delivered until May fourteenth of that year,

nineteen seventy nine. Charbonneau and Turcott stuck together all through that There would have been telephone conversations and meetings for almost half a year. Through this process, Turcott was incarcerated in the Parthenay jail at the Set Duquebec's headquarters near the Jacques Cartier Bridge. Then all at once, he was set free in mid May nineteen seventy nine. Two and a half months later, Nicole Gudreau was found

murdered in an alleyway near the Plateau. But Gudreau isn't murdered on just any Montreal summer night. She's found on August third, nineteen seventy nine, almost exactly four years from the date of the murder of Diantibou. Would Edmund Turcott have celebrated his release from incarceration for the murder of di'antibou by murdering another woman

on the anniversary of the killing, That's my question. Nicole Gudreau spent the evening of August second at a bar called Baltimore at the corner of Sank Hubert in Ontario. Like Tibau, Gudreau was severely beaten, then transported from a domicile to an open area, in Goudreau's case, an alley, which was also an abandoned lot. Really it was a field, and she was left

there to die. Like Dian Tibou. At the time, Montreal police hypothesized that either she was attacked on the street by a stranger between the Baltimore and her destination two blocks away on Rue Saint Andre, or her assailant had been drinking with her at the Baltimore and the two left the bar together. This second scenario matches Turcot having partied with Tibeau at the Rodeo before taking her back to a rooming house and assaulted her. Six years later, Francine da Silva

is also on her way home after dark. Like Nicole Goudreaux, she too has been out that evening. She meets a friend at the La Famou at Mount Royal and Saint Denis, and the two part ways at Saint Denis and Duluth, with Francine making her way on foot back to her apartment at Saint ANDREI and Yes, Saint Andre is the same street where police found Goudreau's blood and belongings the night she was murdered. Francine's apartment is a mere two blocks

from what is thought to have been the place when Nicole was attacked. Francine doesn't make it back to Saint Andrei. In fact, at Sherbrooke and Saint Andrew, she continues on the main artery of Sherbrooke, over shooting where she lived on Saint dre perhaps because at this point she knew she was being followed and she wanted to remain in the public view of the heavily traffic Sherbrooke.

At Rue Saint Timothy, she's attacked, Francine is dragged into the alley behind the apartment building at nine zero two Sherbrooke Street East, where she is raped and stabbed repeatedly. Early in the process, police focused on a suspect name Raymond Charette. When arrested, Sharette's clothes had evidence of blood on it. A second victim of an attack on the same day that Francine was murdered came forward and told police she was waiting for a bus on Rue mont Royale when

she was forced into a vehicle by a man with a knife. Alleged to have been Sharette alleged to have been Sharette. They drove around for a while on the plateau, and Sharette eventually let her out of the vehicle. Sharette was ever charged with Da Silva's murder. All of this is getting a little heady with streets and locations and dates. I will remind you again they're on

the website. There is a map. The Dean Tibou plot points from seventy five are marked in blue, the Nicole Goodreau plot points from nineteen seventy nine are marked in red, and then finally the Da Silva geographic points from nineteen eighty five are marked in green and kind of a geographic profile. And you know, if if you're not going to go to the map, I'll just tell you that the Tibou location is is not contiguous with the other two.

It's it's it's a little it's a little east. But but Da Silva's and Goodreau's overlap. Those geographic points overlap with each other. So I know we're dealing with an extraordinarily long timeline ten years seventy five to eighty five, yet ten years three murders. However, I'm just pointing out possibilities. I'm not saying I know this. I don't know anything. I'm just pointing out possibilities.

So go to the website RISA la dot com. T h R E s A A L l o R E point come concerning what happened to Francine da Silva. Over the years, others have offered theories. Christian Gravener from Kolopolis suggested to me rather recently that her murder could have been committed by Augustino Ferrari, Quebec serial killer convicted of the nineteen ninety rape and murder of Claire

Sampson and Danielle Laplunt. Fierre is an excellent candidate. In nineteen ninety five, he sexually assaulted to women in an apartment at Barrie and Ontario, one block west of the Baltimore, where Nicole Goudreau was last seen in August seventy nine. However, there's an age problem here. Fierra was born in sixty four. He would have been sixteen when Goudreaux was murdered. Not out of the question. My bigger issue is his mo Fierra committed his assaults indoors.

Thibougudreau and Silva were all found outdoors. And this is the same problem as when producers of the TV series the Quebec television series s Latras sur letras dun tour tried to suggest that William Fife was responsible for all of the downtown murders in the Montreals in this evanies and it's a bit like throwing a ubiquitous sleuthing blanket over the whole mess. Right, Fife's MO was strictly daytime, indoors, ruse entry and usually older women. Whoever killed Thibou, Gudreaux and DaSilva

was a nightcrawler. Fife's not our guy. Who could be our guy is Edmund Turcott. He is often in the right place at the right time. He confessed to a murder with a very similar MO to those of Gudreau and Da Silva outdoors encounters, on streets or in bars. Whoever killed Gudreau did it on the anniversary date of Tibo's murder, almost like a punctuation mark, saying I got away with murder. And Turcott appeared to have gang or gangster

affiliated protection. He certainly had a high powered lawyer on his side, a man who later rose to prominence as a defender of the hell Angels in some of their most infamous cases in the province of Quebec. Turcotte rarely served time for his convictions. Usually he was given a slap on the wrist fine, something a high powered lawyer could manufacture. When we catch up with Turcott nearly twenty years later, he's living in Saint Calixt, an area well known for

Hell's Angel's inhabitants. And there's one more thing that makes Edmund Turcott unique. He had an association with the assassinated mob lawyer Frank Shuffy. One of the most interesting things about Francine da Silva's murder on October eighteenth, nineteen eighty five is that three days earlier, Frank Shuffy was gunned down on October fifteenth, eighty five. And not only that, Shufy's law office, on the fifth floor of that apartment building on Rue Charier, is two blocks from the alley

where Da Silva was stabbed to death. Standing at the entrance of that alley on Saint Timothy, you can see Shufi's building in the distance. Up on the hill. Edmund Turcott new Frank Schufi at his interrogation for the murder of Diantibaux on November twenty third, nineteen seventy eight. The first thing Turcott tells the corner and police is my lawyers are not here this morning. They are

supposed to arrive this afternoon, mister Shufi and Charbonneau. So this is the same thing that played out two years later where Shuffie and Charbonneau initially shared a case, but Charbonneaux eventually ended up holding the bag for Frank. Recall a case real Charboneau was charged with contempt of court for failing to show up to represent his client, a man accused of kidnapping and rape of a thirteen year old. Charbonneau alleged that the arrow was due to a mix up with his

legal associate, Frank Shuffy. Charbonneau and Shuffy often worked on cases together in this era, and in this case, Shufy decided that Charbonneau would represent the case of the pedophile solo. The one problem was that Chuffy had failed to notify Charbonneau and he had drawn the shortest straw in this fair. Something like that might have irked Charbonneau. In fact, it could have pissed him right

off. Over the years, there's been a lot of speculation about the motive for Frank Shouffy's assassination, and the consensus appears to be that it was a mob hit. Quebec crime writer Shell Oje has written that it was likely mobsters were the killers of Shuffy, with Claude Grant, an attorney who articled under Frank, adding that the Montreal Underworld had a contract out on Shufi a year before the actual murder. It's a little complicated, but at its heart,

Shofy had influence on the Hilton family. Not the Hotel Hilton's, not Conrad Hilton. This was a family of boxers. The Hiltons were set to sign an agreement with American boxing promoter Don King. Shuffy publicly advised against this, which put him in the crosshairs of Montreal mafia boss Frank Katroni. Frank Katroni, who was representing the Hiltons, wanted the deal with Don King to go through. Katroni was on the verge of being extradited to Connecticut on charges of

airwin trafficking. He needed the money to pay for his legal defense, and by the way, his lawyer was Sidney Leathman, who we've already met Schufy was becoming too much of a nuisance for Frank Katroni, so he put a contract out for Frank's murder. There's also a theory that the hit on Shuffy had nothing to do with the Katronis, but everyone does agree that it was a mob hit. When a contract is issued, someone has to carry out that contract, and we've seen an example of how this can be carried out

whor was carried out in that era. In nineteen sixty nine, a Sherbrooke businessman wanted his partner and the Pats Fried Chicken franchise murdered, so he ordered a contract out on Roland Jaguarre to be carried out by a local hood named Yavan Charlin. Charlin then had two thugs, the brothers Regis and Jean Claude la Chause, execute that contract for ten thousand dollars allegedly, so if Frank Katroni wanted someone murdered in nineteen eighty five, he might do something similar.

He'd ordered a contract for the murder of Frank Shuffy and then someone would find a low level guy to carry that out for five thousand or ten thousand dollars. We've also seen how lawyers like Sidney Leathman were well acquainted with underworld figures, and how the lawyer Rayal Charbonneau was not above getting involved in criminal activities.

He was sentenced for forging a false affidavid about the bombing of an apartment building on demezen Of Boulevard in nineteen eighty four that killed four people, a document which he said Sidney Leathman grew up. There's an element of geographic profiling

to this theory. It suggests that criminals habitually stick to familiar territory. Turcott hunted in the area around Sherbrooke and Saint Andre because he had dealings in that area as early as nineteen seventy eight, where one of his lawyers was officed.

Then he ended up assassinating that lawyer. This is not unlike the urban section around King and Wellington and Sherbrooke, Quebec, Regis La Chasse, Jeannie Charlin and Luke Gregoire they all lived in that area also around nineteen seventy eight. It's where they partied at the Moulin Rouge, which was like the Rodeo where Jutan's and Atum Gang clubhouses were located. Where some of them committed Arson's

abductions maybe murders. It's also where the criminal courts are located, like Turcotte periodically visiting Shuffi La Chasse, Charlin and Gregoire spent many days in court hearings in the same area where they committed their crimes. There's a nagging component to all of this that I'm omitting, possibly that I should admit, but it keeps kind of tugging at my pant legs. So I'm just gonna bring it up, probably regret it. But it's phone calls. There's this odd theme

of anonymous phone calls in this narrative. Then they probably mean nothing, but I'm nosy by nature. So here it is Turcott's brother in law, Roger Moreau, remember him. He makes the anonymous phone call to the police saying, if you're looking for Dion, look for Edmund Turcott. Then he hangs up. There's also the anonymous phone call that was made in the case of Nicole Goodreau's murder from seventy nine. Somebody called up and stated, I just

killed a woman. You'll find it in the vacant lot of Rue Saint Andre. Then hung up, and I'm not done. The English language newspaper The Gazette received a call after the Shoofy murder, where the caller explained, I and my colleague have assassinated Frank Shuffy good Writtens. Now they also claim an affiliation with the Red Army Liberation Front is something everyone believes to have been like

a ruse to throw police off the trail of the real killer. So there's all these calls, and I guess I'm bringing this up because two years before the Gaudreau murder, someone called the police after the Montreal murder of Catherine Hawks in nineteen seventy seven, saying almost the exact same thing as the Goodrow case. He explained that he had killed a woman and where they could find the

body. If you're looking for the whole Catherine Hawk's story, I don't have time to go into it today, but it's linked on the site terseller dot com. And one final thought before I kind of draw this whole, it's this whole package. To a conclusion, I reached out to Raal Charbonneau, the attorney for this story, and he replied once confirming his law office today is located in Old Montreal, and then he ignored all my subsequent emails and

from messages, I give you my affection bills and bills. But far I suggest that someone got word to Edmund Turcott that he could make some fast money by carrying out the contract killing of Frank Shufy, the execution of a man he knew. He had most likely been to the office on rouch Arhier on

numerous occasions. He was familiar with the area. He possibly murdered Nicole Gudreau in that vicinity in nineteen seventy nine on the anniversary of the murder of Diantibau, and he was there again just three days later after Shufi's murder, when he most likely stabbed and sexually assaulted Francine da Silva. So in this theory, the values are Shufi, Da Silva, Gudreau and Thibout. Solving for X requires moving the Turcot variable to the other side and seeing if the two

sides add up. But solving for X has more significant implications. Do you recognize the pattern where X are Quebec unsolved murders than on the other side. We have all these broad themes, these variables, biker and gang activity, police forces unwilling to go the distance to solve murders, the destruction of case evidence, innocent women caught in the crosshairs of gang members, extra curricular activities, lawyers, cutting corners and cutting deals corners, making deals with lawyers,

weak, easily manipulated judges. We see it here with Turcott Da Silva, Gudreaux Thibaut, and we've seen it before the murder of Teresa Martin and the involvement of bikers, the murder of Teresa Lore and Roland Shaguere and Carol Fecteau and Regis le Chase, also a gang member. All of this is speculation, but after decades with Montreal and Quebec police seemingly taking no interest, showing no curiosity in this criminal investigative affair, speculation is a weapon of last resort.

Someone needs to lift a finger and at least try to bring some sense of conclusion to these unsolved murders. This is whom Kill Teresa. If you liked the podcast, you can follow us on social media. Go to the website tresor dot com, th h R E S A A L l or epoint com and to the right you'll see links to all of our accounts on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, substack, etc. Please subscribe to the newsletter

on substack that's at John Alore dot substack dot com. You can get and you can you can sign up for free, or you can sign up and become a paying patron. Either works for me, just so long as you sign up and you spread the word through. You can write a review, you can share the post. Share this post with your friends and your social media groups. You'd be greatly greatly appreciated. That's all I have for today. Just um um, you know, kind of kind of my last word.

If someone were to ask me, do you have any final thoughts, any additional thoughts on the murder of Francine da Silva. That's what I would offer, and Nicole Gergreau and and Diantibou and then has a bonus Frank Shufy of all people this has been, who killed Teresa? I'm your host, John Alore. Have yourselves great great days? You know them? Think I'm gonna let you play in the I like a medical I don't feeling feel a

bit better. I pray space sky fell from the sky. Scratched my head on one of my time ties into timer causing at day nine times Disney's blog Go Hall of fame, baseball, staying into the beach, singing a hall times reality straight bodsteady, Chad placed upon the screen instead sheet my flat, too hot to hole hats, settle for North, Doug screen, DoD Go

discovery, don't burst time bodst recovery and shrump fling the water. I am balling gun Benny shopping on the walk in the side servative propos timeside the reality aside my fight may gill spread to some maestro's back will people soundtrackking brain screen on the sack. Executives have hard attack. It's a so called sell your

love the money makers would avoid. Sometimes lusitions get reverse in a robbing universe, when line valatility propos time side things to hide the reality all side by side by Gille, you are the low my jock, don't check the mad pretty little thick about free the trying flash the old grow an eager and boy and I had a day. Now do we stand? Do I well?

Now? Death by baby version fancialize with give my best stick in your line time, I'm s you mind the reality as I mind for many guilty your home, Oh didn't you line you trying to a tea Holy building people prol setimes of line reality as I mind for many guilty, your oh,

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