1951: Albert Guay
6 comments January 12th, 2008 Headsman
On this date in 1951, Albert Guay was hanged in Canada for one of the earliest commercial airline attacks — bombing a Canadian Pacific Airline flight to murder his wife.
Stuck in a loveless marriage with little recourse to divorce, Guay‘s loins burned for a young mistress.
He engaged a watchmaker colleague, Généreux Ruest, to make a bomb, and the latter’s sister, Marguerite Ruest-Pitre, to air freight it on the doomed plane. Both would maintain their innocence of the plot, but after Guay’s own conviction, he implicated both — possibly in an attempt to delay his own hanging.
Guay had intended the plane to explode over the St. Lawrence River, eliminating the forensic evidence, but a slight delay before takeoff laid the damning debris over the land. The flight’s entire complement of four crew and nineteen passengers — including three top executives of the Kennecott Utah Copper Corporation — perished.
The crime had ample media attention both north and south of the Canada-U.S. border — flight still being something of a terrifying novelty for the general public. Guay’s purchase of life insurance for his wife on the day of the trip was not especially inculpatory, but a standard procedure for air travelers.
Guay’s last words caught the irony of his celebrity: “Au moins, je meurs célèbre” (“At least I die famous”).
A few years after this day’s events, an American attempted a similar crime, with similar results.
On this day..
- 1861: Antonino Aberastain - 2020
- 1934: Surya Sen - 2019
- 1949: Margaret "Bill" Allen, transgender - 2018
- 1830: Agnes Magnusdottir and Fridrik Sigurdsson, Iceland's last executions - 2017
- 2015: Laila Bint Abdul Muttalib Basim, filmed - 2016
- 1874: Three for misshapen love - 2015
- 1864: Samuel Wright, by contrast - 2014
- 1400: Sir Thomas Blount, "bowels burning before him" - 2013
- 1629: Anna Gurren, in the Mergentheimer Hexenprozess - 2012
- 2010: Gary Johnson - 2011
- 1959: 71 after the Cuban Revolution - 2010
- 1928: Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray - 2009
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Canada,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Cycle of Violence,Death Penalty,Execution,Famous Last Words,Gallows Humor,Hanged,History,Infamous,Milestones,Murder,Notable for their Victims,Notable Jurisprudence,Notable Sleuthing,Pelf,Sex
Tags: 1950s, 1951, alberg guay, genereux reust, january 12, love triangle, marguerite pitre, marguerite ruest-pitre, montreal
Recent Comments