Posted on 04/26/2006 4:44:17 PM PDT by Loyalist
LONGUEUIL, Que. — A distraught family is offering $10,000 for clues to help solve a gruesome mystery involving a 68-year-old woman whose body was decapitated in a funeral home last July.
“Every morning we wake up and we say `Where is the head?’ ” said 63-year-old Ghyslaine Lemay, a sister of Cecile Lemay whose family has lived in torment ever since the bizarre incident.
Several of Lemay’s relatives held a news conference Wednesday to appeal for help after police admitted their investigation is no further advanced than it was last summer when the funeral home was vandalized.
While the family wants the head returned, a nephew of the deceased woman says it doesn’t want any surprises either.
“The police told us the head can be kept in the freezer for a lifetime,” said Alain Ouellette, 38, Ghyslaine’s son.
“We don’t want the head back (just) for the head. We just want to make sure we won’t, especially my mom at her age, find it in front of her door in the morning.”
Ouellette said the family can’t understand why someone would have committed such a horrible act.
“She was always smiling, always helping and loving everybody . . . she was such a good person,” Ouellette said of his aunt.
“Everybody loved her. So that’s something unimaginable. You cannot think that something like this would happen to a lady like this.”
Ouellette also said police had ruled out the possibility that a cult committed the mutilation, which occurred in Boucherville, south of Montreal.
“Actually, they checked that, they checked voodoo, they checked a lot of things, it’s not related apparently,” he said.
The family told reporters police asked them last summer not to speak publicly about the incident.
“But even today they have no idea so that’s why we had to go public and ask for the public and the media for help,” said Ouellette.
A Longueuil police spokesman confirmed the investigators had made little progress since the July 11 break-in was first reported by an employee.
“They have treated all the information they received, we met all the family,” said Jean-Pierre Gignac.
“But so far we don’t have any more information that could lead us to a suspect.”
Windows at the funeral home were smashed shortly before the mutilation.
An official with Alfred Dallaire-Groupe Yves Legare, the operators of the funeral home, echoed the family’s appeal for help.
“We still haven’t been able to understand the reasons and motives that pushed an individual or individuals to do such an odious thing,” Christiane Ratelle said in a statement.
She said all the doors of the funeral complex were locked at the time of the incident and employees had made a complete inspection of the grounds before closing.
But Ratelle refused to elaborate in an interview because the family is considering legal action.
Family lawyer Jean-Pierre Rancourt said the funeral home put in an alarm system the day after the break-in.
“We think they have an inherent responsibility to protect a body that they take care of in their funeral home,” Rancourt said in an interview.
“You know it’s not because you have somebody that is dead that nothing could happen. The proof is there.”
large population of haitians in montreal...
Montreal family seeks "Big Giant Head!"
Boy, if I had a dollar for every morning I've said that exact same thing.
What does a person have to do to get ahead in this town?
Hot tamales!
This really would be difficult for a family of a loved one to handle. The headlines invite some sarcasm but when you think about it, this is really sad.
“The police told us the head can be kept in the freezer for a lifetime,”
What an odd statement. Whose lifetime?
Whose lifetime?
The freezer's of course! Or at least till warranty runs out.
What is this? The prequel to '8 Heads in a Duffle bag'?
Sounds like an inside job to me.
Pretty gruesome. Some sick emefer did this.
Yeah, heads'll roll for this.
I know what really happened.
A woman was arranging for her husband's funeral. She wanted to check out how her husband looked in the casket.
When the funeral director took her in to look at the body about 10 minutes before the service started, she was outraged that the special suit she had picked for her husband was on another body in the next casket.
She started yelling and screaming at the director that she would sue if he didn't fix the problem before the service started in less than 10 minutes.
The director calmly told her he would take care of the problem and asked his assistant to escort the lady out.
Ten minutes later the service starts and there's the body all dressed up in the correct suit.
The wife is happy and the assistant is amazed. He knew the suit couldn't have been switched that fast.
He quietly asks the director how he was able to do it.
The director just smiled and said "I didn't switch the clothes. I just switched the heads."
So now we know what happened. But they just screwed it up!
Don't mess with Ichabod Crane... now off to Terrytown, NY to take out some trash.
They're complaining? John the Baptist's head got mislaid three times, so that we Orthodox have feasts commemorating the First Finding of the Honorable Head of the Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist John, and the Second and Third Findings (both commemorated the same day).
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