When a serial killer mentions your name
The past few days have been an unwelcome reminder of a time that seemed forgotten
It was a simple question.
Did he ever think about the pain and suffering he’d caused, asked National Parole Board member Delaine Dew.
“I understand that part,” Allan Legere said. But he doesn't understand something else, he added.
“Why they can’t forgive me. Why they can’t forget.”
There it is, I thought, staring at the Twitter feed documenting the serial killer’s parole hearing earlier this week. A psychopath’s mind at work.
The past few days have been an unwelcome reminder of a time that seemed forgotten.
It began with messages online. Had I heard about Legere, who beat five people to death in Miramichi, getting a parole hearing in a few days?
My heart sank. "The Monster of the Miramichi" had been sentenced to life in prison. Five times.
He got life with no chance of full parole for 18 years for the 1986 killing of an elderly shopkeeper. He got life with no chance of full parole for 25 years for four more killings committed three years later.
He’d been eligible for full parole for years, but never tried to get it before.
“Would you be willing to come on the show and talk about it,” said the first caller.
It was as if the last 30 years had never happened. Back then, people fled from microphones, fearful they might someone end up on Legere’s ‘list’ if they said anything.
As the editor the local newspaper, I felt it was wrong to a no-comment reporters trying to cover the story. Microphones soon found me. My wife was not happy.
The Friday in 1989 when Legere was caught, I breathed a sigh of relief. It was over. But that Monday, a publishing house in Toronto called. Write a book in 21 days was the deal. I signed and cowrote it.
A year later, when Legere’s trial was announced, they called again. Similar deal, but the deadline was months away. I shared the writing with two others reporters.
Then I put it all in a box. The newspaper clippings, the piles of research, the audio and video tapes. And the emotions. It was stuffed into a closet to be ignored.
Sure, the occasional person in a grocery store would say, “Are the guy who wrote that book?”
“Co-wrote,” I’d say, with a polite smile.
But the boxes and the emotions gathered dust for 30 years, until the phone calls this week. Reporters in four provinces and two TV networks. Facebook messages from students, past and present.
“Do you fear for your safety?”
It’s like scar tissue being ripped apart, the emotions beneath suddenly as fresh as the day they were born, I said.
Why? Check out the podcast, I replied.
A podcaster asked in 2019 to talk about the case. I agreed, then forgot about it. Then the podcaster did the natural next thing and sent a letter to Legere seeking his response.
This Christmas Eve, a fivepage letter and Christmas card from the nearly 73-year-old Legere formed the basis of a new audio piece. The killer talked about his life, how he never forgets anything, and how much he hates me. He went on for some time.
Near the end he started talking about the unfairness of being kept in prison for “some 30-year-old crimes.”
That’s a psychopath talking, I thought. The people he killed and the pain he caused mean nothing to him. He’s as dangerous now as he was then.
I stared at my laptop this week reading moment-bymoment tweets from the parole hearing in Edmonton.
“I’d be willing for the rest of my life to wear an anchor bracelet,” Legere said.
“I can do more good on the street as an example than being locked up,” he said. “You can put me on the street right now.”
He denied killing anyone. He was there, but someone else did it.
Looking back at you then, would you consider yourself a violent person? he was asked. Not really, no, he replied. The break between the hearing and the decision went on and on, until finally word came.
“Your risk is not manageable,” Dew said. “The victim harm is still felt to this day and you have a number of outstanding issues.”
Now comes the effort to repair the scar tissue, one more time.