Allan Legere

Allan Legere (born February 13, 1948) is a Canadian murderer and arsonist, also known as the Monster of the Miramichi. On May 3, 1989, Legere escaped from RCMP custody while serving a life sentence at the Atlantic Institution for the murder of shopkeeper John Glendenning, of Black River Bridge, New Brunswick, on the evening of June 21, 1986. Legere was being transported from Renous to a Moncton hospital for the treatment of self-induced wounds at the time of his escape. Legere managed to convince officers to let him use the washroom alone. There, he picked the lock on his handcuffs with a piece of T.V antenna he had concealed on his body and fled. After his escape, Legere committed four additional murders: Annie Flam, sisters Linda and Donna Daughney, and Father James Smith. He was recaptured on November 24, 1989; rewards of $50,000 were collected for the information that led to his arrest.

Legere's trial featured one of the first Canadian uses of DNA fingerprinting, despite his lawyers' argument that the relatively shallow gene pool of the Miramichi region could easily lead to false positives, Legere was convicted for a second time in 1991.

As of 2008, he was one of only 90 prisoners held in Canada's only Super-Maximum security penitentiary, nicknamed the "SHU", in Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, Quebec.

External links

• NFB film, Allan Legere: The Monster of Miramichi
• Article on the legal history of DNA fingerprinting which cites the Legere case, misnaming him as "Alain Légère" (requires Adobe Acrobat reader)
• Allan Legere's long shadow, by David Adams Richards