Deaths in Montreal
On October 3, 1969, Shirley Audette was found dumped at the rear of an apartment complex in downtown Montreal. Although she was fully clothed, she had been raped and strangled, and showed savage bite marks on her breasts. There were no signs of bloody skin under the fingernails of the victim which led one biographer to theorize that she did not struggle against her assailant. The victim's boyfriend had been at work on the night shift. Boden, who lived next door, met her outside the building where she sat when she felt nervous.
One of Audette's former boyfriends told the police that he believed that she got involved with a very dominant, attractive man because she was "getting into something dangerous"; she never mentioned the man's name. Based on this interview, police have surmised that the killer had an attraction for girls who wanted "rough sex."
On November 23, a jewelry clerk named Marielle Archambault left work at closing time with a young man whom she introduced as "Bill" to her co-workers, who afterwards remarked that she seemed happy and entranced by the man.
When she did not report for work the following morning, Archambault's employer went to check on her in her apartment to see if she was ill. Together with her landlady, they discovered her fully-clad body on the couch. The room was tidy. The killer ripped her pantyhose and bra, raped her, and left his telltale teeth marks on her breasts.
The police were able to find a crumpled photograph amid the wreckage of Archambaut's apartment, which was readily identified as the mysterious "Bill" by her co-workers. However, despite this apparent break, the police were not successful in connecting the photograph to any known suspect, even through a police sketch based on the picture was distributed for publication in the newspapers. The photo was not of the right person. It was the victim's dead father.
"Bill" waited two months before he struck again. On January 16, 1970, the boyfriend of Jean Way, 24, came to pick her up for a scheduled date at her apartment on Lincoln Street in downtown Montreal. When she did not answer the door, he decided to come back a little later. Upon returning, he found the door unlocked and found her naked body on the bed. Her breasts were unmolested. It seemed that the killer had been in the apartment when Way's boyfriend Brian Caulfield was knocking at the door earlier that evening. An autopsy done by Dr. Jean-Paul Valcourt found two small fibers under the fingernails of her left hand, indicating that - contrary to legend - the victim had indeed struggled against her assailant. (Rapport Medico-Legal from the Institut de Medecine Legal et de la police scientifique 20 January 1970, page 4).
The resulting publicity from the murders put the city under a grip of fear. But it turned out that Jean Way's murder was the last in that city, as "Bill" had disappeared, only to turn up in another city 2500 miles to the west more than a year later.
Boden's last victim and arrest
In the city of Calgary, a 33-year old high school teacher named Elizabeth Anne Porteous did not report to work on the morning of May 18, 1971. Her apartment manager was called, and found her body on the bedroom floor. As with Marielle Achambaut, her apartment showed considerable signs of a struggle. Raped and strangled, her breasts were likewise mutilated with bite marks. Amid the wreckage, however, the police recovered a broken cufflink under the victim's body.
In their investigation of the murder, the police were able to find out from two of her colleagues that she was seen at a stoplight riding in a blueMercedes on the night she died; the car was reported as having a distinctive advertising bull-shaped decal in the rear window. A friend of the victim also informed police that she had been recently dating a man named "Bill", described as a "flashy" dresser with neat, short hair. Clearly, there was a link between Elizabeth Porteous' death and the murders in Montreal.
The following day, on May 19, the blue Mercedes was spotted by patrolmen, parked near the murder scene. Boden, a former fashion model, was arrested half an hour later as he went to his car. He told the police that he moved from Montreal a year previous and admitted that he had been dating Porteous and was with her on the night of the murder. When the broken cufflink was presented to him, he admitted its ownership. However, he insisted that Porteous was fine when he left her that night.
The police in Calgary were in possession of a copy of the photograph recovered from Archambaut's apartment and, as Boden resembled the man in the picture, they held him for suspicion in murdering Porteous. They then turned their attention to the marks on the victim's breasts.
Bite mark evidence
The police turned to a local orthodontist, Gordon Swann, to prove that the marks on Porteous' breasts and neck were Boden's bite marks, with the intent to verify them as having been left by Boden. As there was nothing in Canadian forensic literature on bite mark evidence, Swann wrote to the FBI, hoping for any information on the matter. What he got in reply was a letter from then-director J. Edgar Hoover, who directed him toEngland, where he met a man who had dealt with 20 or 30 cases.
Eventually Swann was able to get the information he needed and based on a cast made of Boden's teeth he demonstrated 29 points of similarity between the bite marks in Elizabeth Porteous' body and Boden's teeth. This evidence was sufficient for the jury of Boden's trial to find him guilty of murder for which he was subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment.
Conviction, imprisonment, and death
Boden was returned to Montreal to face trial, where he confessed to three of the related murders, but denied involvement in the death of Norma Vaillancourt, a 21-year-old student killed on July 23, 1968. Boden had been suspected in that homicide as well but, in 1994, Raymond Sauve, was convicted of the crime and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Boden was sentenced to three additional life terms and he was sent to the Kingston Penitentiary, where he began serving his sentence onFebruary 16, 1972.
In 1977, with Boden five years into his life sentence, American Express granted him a credit card, which he used while out on a day pass from Laval prison. He escaped and was recaptured 36 hours later while eating lunch in a restaurant in the Mount Royal Hotel in downtown Montreal. Three prison guards were disciplined and American Express conducted an internal investigation to find out how a prisoner serving a life sentence for murder managed to get a credit card.
Boden died at Kingston Regional Hospital on March 27, 2006 of skin cancer after being confined in the hospital for six weeks.
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