Allan Legere Digital Archive
HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN
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ALLAN JOSEPH LEGERE
TRIAL held before Honourable Mr. Justice David M. Dickson and a Petit Jury at Burton, New Brunswick, commencing on the 26th day of August, A. D. 1991, at 10:00 in the forenoon.
At 10:40 a.m. on May 3, 1989 convicted killer Allan Legere escaped from a bathroom at the Dr. Georges L. Dumont Hospital in Moncton. He’d been taken to the hospital to be treated for an ear infection, under escort by guards from the Atlantic Institution, a maximum security penitentiary at Renous, N.B. Legere was serving a life sentence for the brutal murder of convenience store owner John Glendenning. On the way in to the hospital, Legere asked to go to the bathroom. At the time, he was wearing handcuffs and leg shackles. Once inside, he opened the door once, asked his guard for some toilet paper, then burst out. The cuffs and shackles were in the sink.
Allan Legere was on the run. That run would last for seven, very bloody months. In that time, he killed four people and sexually assaulted a fifth, leaving her for dead. The four were Annie Flam, an elderly storeowner; Donna and Linda Daughney, two middle-aged sisters; and Father James Smith, an elderly priest. The manner of their deaths, its sheer brutality, cruelty and savagery, shocked and terrified the community of Miramichi where the murders happened. That fear and terror spread throughout the province. People had guns and rifles under their beds.
Legere’s escape and the subsequent murders provoked one of the largest manhunts in RCMP history. It also introduced Canadians to what was then a new science, DNA analysis, now so commonplace and taken so much for granted because of such television programs as CSI. There were no witnesses to his killings but Legere would be the first Canadian convicted of murder in large part because of the use of DNA.”
(Excerpted from ALLAN LEGERE: A LOOK BACK by André Veniot © 2006).
We are grateful to the New Brunswick Law Foundation, the University of New Brunswick Work Study Program, the UNB EText Centre, and Maritime Law Book Ltd. for their material support of this project, and to all of those individuals who have contributed documents, images and personal reminiscences related to this critical period in New Brunswick socio-legal history.
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