The Timeline: 1954

Peter Balcombe

On October 16, 1953, the nude body of a young woman was discovered in a ditch by a 14-year-old boy, near the towns of Morrisburg and Iroquois. She was eventually determined to be Marie Anne Carrier, a young woman from the Quebec area who was a Sergeant in the Young Women’s Reserve in the Canadian Army. She had been stabbed five times, once through the left eye, twice in the chest and twice in the stomach, then her body was discarded in a ditch on the side of the road near Iroquois.[1]  The man accused of the crime was a 24-year-old man named Peter Balcombe, who was a British immigrant and a lieutenant in the Canadian army. According to the three brothers of Marie-Anne Carrier; Balcombe and Carrier had a long on-again-off-again relationship while he was married to another woman whom he fathered two children with.[2] Carrier’s brothers claimed that she and Balcombe were engaged to be married but she broke it off when she found out he was already married. One of the most damning pieces of evidence that was presented at his trial was that they found his fingerprints on a chair inside a vacation cabin near to where her body was dumped in which she was thought to be staying, and that there were bloodstains inside his car.[3]  

Balcombe was proven guilty and sentenced to receive capital punishment at the Cornwall Gaol, he was kept in the windowless cell block with 8 other inmates.[4] On May 25 of 1954, Balcombe was walked from his cell to the gallows where he would be hanged for his crimes. The hangman is thought to be a man named Camille Blanchard, who was the regional hangman for Quebec at this time. He was described as calm and unemotional when brought before the gallows and went to his death quietly, having no last words.[5]

In 1958, the Jail started to put in a new parking lot on the west side of the courtyard, in which they found three bodies. [6] One of the three bodies discovered was that of Peter Balcombe; he was then moved and laid to rest in Woodlawn cemetery, Cornwall ON. 

[1] The Sun Times, 16 Oct 1953

[2] The Expositor, 19 Oct 1953

[3] The Windsor Star, 27 Feb 1954

[4]  F. J. Matthews. “Condemned prisoner – H. Seguin”. 1954.

[5]  The Ottawa Citizen, 25 May 1954

[6] “Transfer papers for Peter Balcombe”. 1958