The Story of Sébastien Métivier, Maurice Viens & Wilton Lubin
On the evening of November 1, 1984, while Sébastien Métivier, 8 years old, and Wilton Lubin, 12 years old, were playing outside in the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve district, they disappeared. The case took some time to gain media attention, with the authorities favoring the theory of a runaway rather than kidnapping.
Earlier that day, Maurice Viens returned from kindergarten. Maurice was 4 years old and was living with his mother Francine and his brother Alexandre on Dorion Street which was a poor neighborhood in the South Center of Montreal. Soon after returning home, Maurice headed towards Rouen Park with his friend Gagnon without asking his mother’s permission. On the way back, the two children play in an alley on rue Dorion. This was just a short distance from both of their homes. Then at 1:15pm a stranger driving a car invites the children to get in, promising them candy. Little Maurice agrees, while his fearful friend runs away right up to warn Francine Viens, Maurice’s mother. “Maurice left with a gentleman” he tells him.
The police quickly taped off the neighborhood and organized a massive search in which 500 police and volunteers took part.
It was later in the evening that the disappearances of two other boys were reported in the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve district. They were Wilton Lubin and his friend Sébastien Métivier. Police believed that they had run away, but friends would have seen them in the area of the Olympic stadium.
Lubin and Métivier would have gone looking for the bullies that evening, because the day before they had had their candy stolen, which they had collected on Halloween.
The Discoveries
Maurice Viens
Three days after the disappearances, little Maurice’s jacket was found along a road in Saint-Antoine-sur-Richelieu. A letter addressed to the CUM Police that revealed details about the body of Maurice Viens. The next day, a Quebec police officer from Portneuf Steven Lynch, as well as a hypnotherapist Yvan Gagnon, put a businessman from the north shore of Montreal who wished to remain anonymous under hypnosis. This Mr. X, as he was nicknamed by the media, said he was gifted with ESP. According to him, he “saw” a child having fun with a man on a narrow country road, near a railway line and a dilapidated chalet. On November 6, 1984, Yvan Gagnon the hypnotherapist decided to go to the indicated location: an abandoned house located in Saint-Antoine-sur-Richelieu. Inside he found the mutilated body of Maurice Viens. 20 minutes later the Quebec police arrived on the scene, some claimed that Maurice had been sodomized and violently beaten while in 1994, André Cédilot published “the great trials of Quebec” in which he claimed that the toddler was not subjected to sexual abuse. This is what he describes about it:
“the mutilated body of the child lies half-naked in a hole in the floor… His pants and underwear are pulled down on his heels, he has been beaten, he has marks of violence on his face and bottom back. The autopsy reveals that he suffered martyrdom before dying from the blows that were inflicted on him and that despite appearances, he was not sexually abused.
After the discovery of Maurice Viens’ body, Mr. X, who helped find him, automatically becomes the main suspect. Afterwards, Yvan Gagnon will then abandoned his hypnotherapy practise and refuse to comment on the case any further. The investigation not longer focused on Mr.X.
Wilton Lubin
On December 2, 1984, a month after his disappearance, the body of Wilton Lubin was found on the bank of the St. Lawrence River near Charron Island. The murderer threw the 12-year-old Wilton’s body into the river after strangling and slitting his throat. Sadly he was unrecognizable.
The Disappearance Of Sébastien Métivier
With the bodies of Wilton Lubin and Maurice Viens found, law enforcement believed that it was just a matter of days before they would find Sébastien Métivier. They also believed that the chances of finding him alive were decreasing, but his body was never found. The police immediately launched a major search and left no stone unturned. They searched all of the vacant lots in eastern Montreal, all the abandoned buildings in the neighborhood were searched, and posters were put up all over Montreal.
Sébastien Métivier
Case reference: 2012020114
Classification: Endangered Missing
Missing since: November 1, 1984
Missing from: Montréal, Québec, Canada
Date of Birth: December 4, 1975
Age at Disappearance: 8 years
Gender: Male
Ethnicity: White
Eye Color: Brown
Hair: Brown
Height: 120cm / 3ft 11in
Weight: 30kg / 66lb
Notable: Sébastien has a birthmark on his lower abdomen, a scar on his right cheek and a piercing in his left ear.
Person of Interest
On November 14, 1984, they arrested a 44-year-old taxi driver. He behaved strangely during his interrogation: he started talking like he was talking to someone who was in the room with him even though he was alone. Jacques Duschesneau and his colleagues were convinced of his guilt, but had no evidence that can be used to convict him. Meanwhile, the Quebec police are interested in another person who had an intellectual disability whose identity will never be revealed publicly.
In October 1987 it was announced that a 24-year-old man with an intellectual disability had just confessed, but the case was not developed further.
Until then, the suspect who was the most interesting remained this mentally unstable taxi driver who, after attacking two little girls, had been interned and declared unfit to live in society in 1975. In the 1960s a law was passed in line with the political of deinstitutionalization in Quebec which would allow his release from the Phillipe Pinel Institute in 1992. His photo was published on the front page of a magazine in order to collect evidence against him, but nothing came of it. Since then, he has been arrested/jailed again and no one has heard from him again.
The most serious suspect in this affair appeared in 1992. Thanks to clues which remain unknown to the public, the police made certain deductions which led them to turn to a certain Jean-Baptiste Duchesneau, then aged 44. at the time. In addition to having a long criminal record, he lived only a few streets from Lubin and Métivier at the time of the events. On November 1, 1993, investigators Roger Pilon and Guy Préfontaine visited Duchesneau who was then behind bars in La Macaza, near Mont-Laurier, for having sexually assaulted a 7-year-old girl. Duchesneau was surprised to see them questioning the double murder of Lubin-Métivier, but he agreed to take the polygraph test two days later. But the day after this meeting, November 2, 1993, and the day after the 9-year anniversary of their disappearances, while investigators were taking steps to obtain his temporary release in order to submit to the test, Duschesneau committed suicide in his cell. The investigators who met him the day before found him “extremely tense”. Following his suicide, the suspicions hanging over the culprit will never be confirmed.
It should also be noted that Duchesneau had already committed a murder before. In 1974, he murdered Sylvie Tanguay in cold blood with a hammer. Following the trial which took place at the Quebec courthouse, he was found guilty. He would likely have been released in 1983 to settle in Montreal. He will have served less than 10 years for the murder of little Sylvie.
In 2006, Duchesneau’s son, Keven Duchesneau, allowed an exclusive interview in which he decided to denounce his own father for another murder. That would be the murder of Denis Roux-Bergevin, 5 years old, who disappeared on June 5, 1985 at approximtely 12:00pm noon. He was last seen sitting on a step on the balcony of the family residence which was located in the Côte-Saint-Paul district of Montreal. His body was found three days later in the woods in Brossard, on the south shore of Montreal, he had been hit in the head and had shown obvious signs of sexual assault on his body found semi-naked. Keven Duschesneau, who was a teenager at the time of the murder, even thinks that his father could have killed other children at the same time, in addition to confirming that he would have had an accomplice who was still alive, which could include the Métivier affair.
If you have information on this case, please contact any of the following:
Service de police de la Ville de Montréal: 514-393-1133
Reference Case#: 285-52-841101-045
Crime Stoppers: 1-800-222-TIPS(8477)
Online at: https://www.canadiancrimestoppers.org/submit-a-tip/submit-a-tip
Crime Stoppers provides anonymous tipping
Send email to the National Centre for Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains at: canadasmissing-disparuscanada@rcmp-grc.gc.ca
Sources:
Canada’s Missing
Doe Network
International Missing Persons Wiki
Websleuths
Someone Saw Something 
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