The Timeline: 1954

Henri Seguin

In early august, the body of a man named Leonard Hurd was found in his car off the side of a country road in Maxville, he had been shot 3 times in the head and was discovered mere miles from his house. He was a local businessman.  The murderer had taken $700-$800 dollars from Hurd, which was thought to have been the primary motive.[1] The man accused of the crime was a 28-year-old ex-soldier named Henri Seguin, who was also being pursued for two other murders in the province of British Columbia.[2]

Henri’s trial was set up for a charge of murder-to-rob, where he was found guilty and sentenced to the death penalty. There were five main witnesses that testified at Seguin’s trial and the most influential statements given was the fact that Henri rented a cabin in the same month as the shooting under the name of Henry Beaudry just 12 miles from Maxville and that the bookkeeper for Seguin had heard him plotting to rob Hurd several days before his body was discovered.  The police used the bullets that killed Leonard Hurd to match Seguin to a stolen rifle.

On January 18, about half an hour before he was supposed to be hanged by the state, Henri Seguin decided to take his own life by ingesting a cyanide pill that he most likely snuck into the jail from Kingston Penitentiary while he was being transferred from British Columbia. He died in cell #4 of the Hell’s Angel cell block. Before he died, he had written a 32-page letter to his sister just where he claims he will not let the state “hang him like a dog”.[3] The last person he spoke to before dying was a reverend by the name of Rudolphe Villeneuve, where he claimed he was innocent of his charges.

[1] The Ottawa Journal. October 28, 1953

[2] The Sun Times. March 18, 1953

[3] Seguin, Henry. Personal Letter. Jan 1954