Trial to begin in fire deaths of baby, senior

Woman accused of setting blazes that killed her infant and her mother

MONTREAL • Both fatal fires appeared tragically accidental at first. It was only after the second blaze that suspicion was fully aroused.

Mélanie Alix, a 30-year-old South Shore woman, is to go on trial this week for the murder of her baby son and her handicapped mother in separate infernos two years apart.

She says she is innocent and the deaths were both horrible accidents and a terrible coincidence.

She will contest the Crown’s evidence before a jury in Longueuil, where her trial was moved after excess publicity in St. Jean sur Richelieu stamped out the possibility of a fair hearing in her hometown.

In May, 2003, a fire consumed the white clapboard house in St. Blaise where Ms. Alix lived with her two children.

Ms. Alix threw her three-yearold daughter from a secondstorey window and escaped when a neighbour drove his truck up beside the burning house.

But her son, who had celebrated his first birthday only two weeks earlier, perished.

Leaving the hospital where she and her daughter were treated, Ms. Alix explained to reporters that she had left a baby bottle on the stove, then went upstairs to check on the children.

She fell asleep, she said, and awoke to find flames engulfing the stove.

She tried to extinguish the fire with rags and towels but she panicked when they ignited, spreading the flames.

Police did not accept Ms. Alix’s explanations.

Eight days after the blaze – and one day after the funeral for her son, where she was widely shown in the media lighting a candle in mourning – Ms. Alix was arrested.

She was charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder and arson.

At the same time, police began digging into the woman’s past and took a second look at a fire that killed her wheelchair-bound mother.

Françine Lévesque, 51, died in a suspicious blaze in L’Acadie in January, 2001. A coroner investigated, but the death was attributed at the time to a smouldering cigarette.

On the eve of Ms. Alix’s trial for the fire that killed her son, the Crown asked for a postponement to allow police to wrap up the reopened investigation into the cold case.

Then, last April, Ms. Alix was charged with first- degree murder and arson in her mother’s death.

Her trial for both murders is expected to last eight weeks.

TVA Mélanie Alix lights a candle at the funeral of her year-old son, who perished in a house fire. Alix was subsequently charged with setting the fire, as well as one that had killed her wheelchair-bound mother.