Allan Legere, the Monster of the Miramichi, Dies in Prison at 78

 

• A Crowd Shouts Hang Him

• The Murder of John Glendenning

• An Escape and a Reign of Terror

• A Life Sentence Ends

Allan Joseph Legere died Monday at the age of 78 while serving a life sentence at the Edmonton Institution in Alberta for a series of rapes and murders. The crowd shouted hang him as Allan Joseph Legere was led into a New Brunswick courtroom to answer for what would be his first murder. Little did they know on that unsettled, cool day in July 1986 that the Chatham man who would come to be known as the Monster of the Miramichi was just getting started.

Then 38, Legere was charged, along with two men from Newcastle, N.B., with second-degree murder in the beating death of John Glendenning, a 66-year-old shopkeeper, during a robbery at his Black River home the month previous. He died from strangulation, with a shirt tied around his neck.

A Crowd Shouts Hang Him

The robbers tied, beat, and sexually assaulted his 62-year-old wife as they hunted for a safe said to contain a substantial amount of money, but she eventually got free and called police. The doctor who first saw her later told the court he couldn t believe that a person could be that badly beaten and still be alive.

The robbers had tied John Glendenning s hands and feet. He was beaten so thoroughly that photos of his body showed hardly a spot that was not bruised. Some of his injuries may have been caused by blows from a piece of wood. But mostly the men just used their fists and their boots.

The Murder of John Glendenning

Two of them pleaded guilty minutes before his widow took the stand. Legere put up a fight, but a jury convicted him in January 1987. He was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 18 years.

Then on May 3, 1989, Legere escaped while guards from the Atlantic Institution, a maximum-security prison in Renous, N.B., escorted him to Georges Dumont Hospital in Moncton. They d taken him to a washroom, where Legere faked needing toilet paper and escaped out of the hospital, according to a chronology of events from the University of New Brunswick.

An Escape and a Reign of Terror

He had hidden a collapsed TV antenna in his rectum and a piece of metal in a cigar to open both his cuffs and leg shackles. His body belt remained buckled. The Correctional Service of Canada would later blame sloppy security for Legere s well-planned escape.

In the hospital parking lot, Legere pushed a woman inside her car and took off with her as a hostage inside the vehicle. She escaped unharmed, but many others would not be so lucky. Legere went on to terrorize the Miramichi area for seven months. Soon after his hospital escape, Legere beat up, bound, and robbed a man whose wallet and car he took.

Over the next months, he committed a series of rapes and murders that would seal his reputation as the Monster of the Miramichi. He was recaptured in November 1989 and convicted of four more murders. He was serving a life sentence when he died.

Источник: https://republican-review.com/component/k2/item/216222