Joseph Guay, a Quebec jeweller, kissed his wife goodbye at Quebec airport as she boarded a Canadian Pacific Airlines plane in the afternoon of September 7th, 1949. Twenty minutes later the plane exploded in mid-air 40 miles from the airport and all 23 on board, including Mrs. Guay, were killed.
Accident investigators discovered that a parcel labelled religious statuette loaded as freight had contained dynamite and a timer. Airport staff remembered that it was delivered by a woman in black, and a taxi driver recalled picking up such a woman from her home and driving her to the airport.
She was Margu?rite Pitre, one-time lover of Joseph Guay, and by the time police arrived at her home she had already attempted suicide. When she recovered she confessed that her crippled brother, G?n?reux Ruest, who had a talent for manipulating and mending delicate machinery, had constructed the bomb.
All three were arrested. Guay, it emerged, wanted his wife out of the way so that he could marry his latest lover, a 19-year-old night club cigarette girl known as Angel Mary. Guay, Ruest and Margu?rite Pitre were all found guilty of murder and executed, Margu?rite Pitre being hanged at Montreal Prison on Friday, January 9th, 1953.