Léopold Dion was a Canadian sex offender and serial killer who killed and raped 21 boys; he was active in Quebec in the 1960s. He was nicknamed the "Monster of Pont-Rouge".
Crimes
His first sexual assault, which also involved an attempted murder, was against a young woman from Pont-Rouge. Léopold Dion and his brother raped and stabbed the woman on the railway track linking the Rang Petit-Capsa to the village of Pont-Rouge. They left her for dead, but she survived, albeit with both physical and psychological injuries. Dion sexually abused 21 boys, killing four. He lured his victims by posing as a photographer. His first murder victim was 12-year-old Guy Luckenuck, in Quebec City that day for clarinet lessons. This boy came from Kénogami. They travelled together every week to take music lessons at the Conservatoire de Musique du Québec in Québec City. Dion lured the boy by taking a series of snapshots with an old camera that had no film before claiming to want to continue elsewhere. He drove the boy into the country, where, in a remote spot, Dion then strangled him, and then buried him. On 5 May 1963, Dion crossed paths with eight-year-old Alain Carrier and 10-year-old Michel Morel. He used the same ploy to lure them into his car, driving them to a run-down building in Saint-Raymond-de-Portneuf. With Alain, he pretended to play prisoner so that he could tie the boy up in the cottage. Once the younger boy had been overcome, Dion turned to the older one, Michel, whom he led outside, whereupon he asked the child to take his clothes off. Dion then strangled him with a garrote, before going back inside and smothering the other boy. On 26 May 1963, he met 13-year-old Pierre Marquis, who was also taken in by the fake photographer’s promises. They were a couple of paces from a dune, the same one that had become Guy Luckenuck’s grave a bit more than a month earlier. Once again, Dion asked his victim to pose naked. The child complied, but when Dion tried to assault him, he fought back before succumbing to the assault. Dion strangled Marquis.
Arrest
Dion, who was then on conditional release for raping a schoolteacher several years earlier, was arrested the day after his last murder. It was a description of Dion from another boy whom he had waylaid, but who had gotten away from him, that led to the police apprehending Dion. Once in prison, Dion held out for a month before he finally admitted to his crimes in detail to his interrogators. He then led investigators to the spot where he had buried the children's bodies.
