Benoît Proulx was a loyal customer of the SuperClub Vidéotron in Neufchâtel, where I worked in the mid-1990s. He wandered for hours between the rows, walked on the Vidéoway and watched the films projected on the screens.
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He lived nearby and always came alone. We, the employees behind the counter, recognized him immediately with his beard and his glasses. It was journalist Benoît Proulx, the weird guy linked to the France Alain affair. In Quebec, everyone knew who Benoît Proulx was. His face lined the newspapers and his name resonated on the airwaves for more than 10 years.
Two detectives had met one of my colleagues who was worried about systematically meeting Benoît Proulx on each of his shifts at the SuperClub Videotron. Paranoia really reigned in the Old Capital.
Even after his acquittal by the Court of Appeal in 1992, Benoît Proulx remained associated with the murder of his 21-year-old ex-girlfriend, shot dead in the middle of the street, in Sainte-Foy, on the evening of October 25, 1982. This gratuitous crime marked the imagination of 418, a week before Halloween: but who could have killed this brilliant electrical engineering student with no known enemy?
France Alain’s killer has never been caught, but Quebec’s airwave king André Arthur has long redirected suspicion – and popular discontent – to his taciturn colleague at station CHRC, newsreader Benoît Proulx . Imagine this climate of public suspicion, already very toxic at the time.
The biggest radio star in town was accusing (in thinly veiled words) his microphone neighbor of having liquidated a young woman – who was also his former lover – with a 12-gauge shotgun.
And the more the investigation of the Sainte-Foy police stalled, the more the vigilante André Arthur, one of the owners of CHRC, fueled the fire. Fed by former star investigator John Tardif, himself a cop with questionable methods, André Arthur never let go of his bones. According to the intimidating host, the person responsible for this horrible crime was called Benoît Proulx, no doubt possible. The pressure was mounting, the assassin was on the prowl and the local police functioned as in the days of the far west.
You will see, hear and understand the crucial involvement of polemicist André Arthur in this legal saga in the second episode of Presumed Innocent: The France Alain Affair, a gripping four-chapter docuseries landing on Crave on Wednesday. On traditional TV, Canal D will relay the four episodes from November 25. Sébastien Trudel and Marie-Claude Savard dusted off old files in the same journalistic spirit as their first series on Michelle Perron, the wife of director Gilles Perron, stabbed to death in her car in December 1987.
The France Alain affair is dense, complex and still mysterious to this day. The medium Alex Tanous was even summoned to the corner of Belmont and Chapdelaine streets, where the Laval University student received the fatal discharge.
On the evening of the homicide, Benoît Proulx was reading the news at CHRC. Sister stations CHOI (FM) and CHRC (AM) then occupied the same building on rue Myrand, one block from France Alain’s apartment. Benoît Proulx, who was still living with his parents, had broken up with France Alain three weeks before the tragedy. A friendly, smooth breakup.
The problem? Benoît Proulx revealed on the air details that the police had never disclosed. Like: the exact location where France Alain’s body was found, as well as his exact age. It was suspicious and enough to question Benoît Proulx, who was obsessed with the investigation.
Using extensive archival footage, including several excerpts from the now defunct show reverse shot by Anne-Marie Dussault, Crave’s docuseries revisits in a precise and effective way the events that forged this shocking story, full of twists and turns. For your information, an exhaustive coroner’s investigation exonerated Benoît Proulx, who had also passed the polygraph test.
The strangest twist remains the appearance of a surprise witness, eight and a half years after the murder. This man, retired civil servant Paul-Henri Paquet, swore he recognized Benoît Proulx’s eyes in a photo published in The Journal of Quebec in 1991. This particular look of a bearded man, Paul-Henri Paquet had encountered it in October 1982 near the crime scene, yes, yes.
“There were all sorts of rumors about France Alain and we tried to clarify all that”, explained to me in an interview the co-pilot of this “true crime”, Sébastien Trudel.
The research of Sébastien Trudel and Marie-Claude Savard points to a culprit who has long been in the sights of the police: the mechanic linked to bikers Richard Jobin. Richard Jobin’s sister, Francine Jobin, worked in advertising sales at CHRC and was married to Benoît Proulx.
Before being assassinated by the informer Serge Quesnel in 1993, Richard Jobin would have confessed to the murder of France Alain. Did he want to avenge his sister for an affair of the heart? Mystery. Francine Jobin and Benoît Proulx refused to participate in the Crave docuseries, as did the Quebec City Police Department.
Even deprived of a microphone, André Arthur continued to tap into Benoît Proulx on Twitter, tweeting that he had been released on appeal “on a technical question”, which was false. André Arthur had also declined the offer to appear in the documentary on France Alain. He died on May 8.