In the early spring 1977, Jocelyne Houle, a bright and ambitious twenty-four-year-old nursing student from Chicoutimi, Saguenay, Quebec, Canada, was on the cusp of a promising future. Engaged to be married just months later on September 5th—coinciding with her twenty-fifth birthday—she had traveled to Montreal for a three-week internship at the Montreal Heart Institute in the Rosemont neighborhood, specializing in respiratory therapy.
Jocelyne’s internship was wrapping up, and on April 13th, 1977, she decided to mark the occasion with a night out on the town. Joined by seven fellow students from the Jeanne-Mance Institute, the group kicked off the evening with dinner at the Barnsider restaurant on 2250 Rue Guy in downtown Montreal.
By eleven-thirty p.m., the energy had shifted to the Old Munich bar at 1170 Rue Saint-Denis, a lively spot in the heart of the city’s nightlife district. The group drank and danced until closing time around one-thirty a.m. on April 14th. Eager to keep the party going, they decided to walk a short distance to La Calèche bar on Rue Sainte-Catherine. It was a decision that would prove fateful.
As the group moved through the dimly lit streets, Jocelyne lagged behind, chatting with two men she had danced with earlier at Old Munich. Witnesses later recalled seeing her laughing and engaged in conversation, but she never caught up to her friends at La Calèche. When her absence was noticed, the concerned group backtracked to Old Munich, searching the crowds and streets in vain. Assuming she had returned to the institute on her own—a reasonable guess given her responsible nature—they dispersed.
But Jocelyne never made it back. She failed to show up for her classes on April 14th and 15th, and when she didn’t return home to Chicoutimi for the weekend as planned, alarm bells rang. Her family and friends reported her missing, but in an era before cell phones and widespread surveillance, the trail had already gone cold.
Three days later, on Sunday, April 17th, around eleven a.m., a passerby driving along a quiet gravel road in Rang 5, Saint-Calixte—about forty miles north of Montreal in the Laurentians—stumbled upon a horrifying scene. There, in a shallow roadside ditch filled with a few inches of murky water, lay Jocelyne’s body. She was face-down, half-naked, her bra torn and her belongings scattered nearby, including her handbag. The remote location, far from the urban pulse of Montreal, suggested she had been transported there after her abduction.
An autopsy conducted shortly after painted a picture of unimaginable brutality. Jocelyne had been beaten to death, her body showing signs of a savage assault: a broken jaw, severe facial trauma from repeated punches and kicks, and her breasts mutilated in a manner described by investigators as “butchered.” Large amounts of semen were found inside her, pointing to a possible sexual assault involving multiple perpetrators. Crucially, forensic experts determined she had not been killed at the ditch site; the absence of blood spatter and struggle marks indicated her attackers had dumped her body there postmortem to conceal their crime.
The investigation, led by the Sûreté du Québec, zeroed in on the two men Jocelyne was last seen with near Old Munich. One of her friends vaguely recalled seeing her climb into a car around the time of her disappearance, though details like the make, model, or license plate were lost in the haze of the night. Police canvassed the bars, interviewed patrons, and appealed for witnesses, but the leads evaporated quickly.
Those who knew Jocelyne emphasized her character: outgoing with friends but prudent, especially after dark in a strange city. “She wouldn’t just leave with anyone,” a colleague later told investigators. Yet, in 1977 Montreal—a booming metropolis grappling with urban decay and a nightlife scene rife with opportunists—the line between celebration and danger was razor-thin. No arrests were made, and no suspects formally named.
Jocelyne’s murder was not an isolated tragedy. It unfolded amid a grim epidemic of unsolved killings of young women across Quebec in the 1970s, a period marked by 179 homicides province-wide in 1977 alone—more than double the rates of today. Cases like those of Louise Camirand (strangled and dumped near Lake Memphrémagog in 1973), Hélène Monast (beaten in a Chambly park on her 18th birthday in 1977), and Denise Bazinet (found strangled in Montreal’s La Fontaine Park later that year) shared eerie similarities: vulnerable women targeted in social settings, bodies discarded in remote or watery areas, and investigations hampered by jurisdictional silos between local police forces.
Amateur sleuths and podcasters, notably through the “Who Killed Theresa?” series examining the 1979 murder of Theresa Allore, have theorized links to a serial predator dubbed the “Bootlace Killer” for the garrote-style strangulations in some cases. While Jocelyne’s beating didn’t match that modus operandi exactly, the timing, victim profile, and disposal method fueled speculation of a single hand behind multiple deaths. A 2020 Canal D documentary, Sur les traces d’un tueur en série, revisited these connections, interviewing families and experts who pointed to destroyed evidence, victim-blaming attitudes, and poor inter-agency communication as barriers to justice.
In 2016, relatives of eight victims—including many from this cluster—petitioned Quebec’s Public Security Minister for a public inquiry into 1970s policing practices. “Quebec was a violent place back then,” said John Allore, brother of Theresa Allore, highlighting how attitudes toward sexual violence often dismissed victims as “asking for it.” Though no inquiry materialized, the Sûreté du Québec’s cold case unit, established in the 2000s, has since centralized efforts, leveraging DNA and genetic genealogy to revisit files like Jocelyne’s.
Nearly five decades on, Jocelyne’s loved ones continue to seek closure. The Sûreté du Québec still lists the case as active, but there have been no recent developments, and the case remains unsolved.
Crime Immemorial 