Eighty-one-year-old Newton Harold Boutilier was a respected local shopkeeper in French Village, Nova Scotia. He lived alone in a residence on Highway 33 that also served as a general store, which he had owned and operated for three decades. According to all accounts, he largely kept to himself.
At a little before ten a.m. on the morning of January 7th, 1968, two neighbors attempted to buy groceries at the store, but found to their confusion that the establishment was closed, when it normally opened every day without fail at nine a.m. The potential customers went next door to the home of Newton’s sister Annie and asked her what was wrong.
The three of them then returned to the store, gained entry, and found the elderly proprietor lying dead near an overturned wood stove, which had burned a hole through the floor.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) responded to the scene at 10:45 a.m. Initially, foul play was not suspected, but as the crime scene was examined more closely, investigators noticed traces of blood on the door of the shop and on an ice cream cooler. An autopsy was ordered, at which point it was determined that the victim had been savagely stabbed to death.
Ominously, the murder of Newton Boutilier was the third stabbing death in the province in just the past few months. On November 18th, 1967, a shopkeeper named Robert Arthur Ward was found dead of multiple stab wounds in a ditch not far from Halifax, and on December 29th of the same year, a teacher named Cora Barteaux was stabbed to death in her home in Nictaux Falls. The two victims had actually known each other, and like Newton Boutilier, had lived alone in semi-rural areas. Detectives looked into the possibility that the three crimes were connected, but this line of inquiry didn’t seem to have yielded any concrete results.
Decades later, the RCMP continued to seek information, appealing to the public for any leads that might shed light on this longstanding unsolved homicide. The murder of Newton Harold Boutilier remains an open case.
Crime Immemorial 