Joseph LaPage

Joseph LaPage (born Joseph Paget; 1838 – March 15, 1878), known as "The French Monster" and various other aliases, was a Canadian rapist, serial killer and necrophile who murdered four women in Canada and the United States, also attempting to kill his wife's sister and another unnamed woman. He was hanged for the murder of 17-year-old Josie Langmaid, which occurred in Pembroke, New Hampshire.

Biography Life and early crimes LaPage was born as Joseph Paget in 1838, in an unnamed settlement northwest of Montreal. His parents, who were immigrants from France, were well-respected farmers in the area. When he was about 20 years old, LaPage married a woman three years older than him, with whom he had five children. Five years after their marriage, the family moved to Sainte-Béatrix, where he had already received a negative reputation. He frequently abused his wife and his eldest daughter; he even went so far as nearly killing his wife's sister, Julienne Rousse (who survived and testified as his later trial).

Murder of Mariette Ball On July 24, 1874, Mariette N. Ball, a school teacher in St. Albans' nearby district, was murdered. Her daily trips from her home to work passed by a field in which LaPage worked, and he became fascinated by her. After many weeks of contemplation, on July 24, 1874, he decided to follow her. He gave an excuse that he was going to pick berries, and then cut through the woods and waited at a hill. Ball was walking through the desolate path, en route to the residence of Foster A. Page, which she did every Saturday. LaPage, who had put on a roughly made mask made from an old mat, attacked Ball, who pleaded for her life and fought back. During the struggle, she managed to tear away the mask and see LaPage's face. Despite her strong physique and the several scratches inflicted on the man's face, she was strangled to death by LaPage, who then had sex with her corpse. After he was finished, just to make sure that she wouldn't return to life, he bashed her head into a stone. The bloodied murderer then left the scene.

Learning of this, LaPage then proceeded to wait for the girl out in the woods near Pembroke on October 4, 1875, but as she did not appear, he instead focused his attention on another target: 17-year-old Josie Langmaid. She had just left her father's house and was walking towards school when she turned towards the old road. When seen by LaPage, he immediately attacked her. A severe struggle ensued, with LaPage tearing through the girl's clothes, raping her before beginning to hit her with a stick, before taking out his knife and cutting Josie's throat so deeply that he began decapitating her. He was put in an isolated cell, where he was noted as repeating prayers, pacing around, and looking gloomily out the window. He was visited several times by reporters and religious figures, and confessed the murders of both Langmaid and Ball to them, saying: "I kill gal. Yes, I kill two gal. Too bad, too bad."

When the day of his execution came, Sheriff Dodge and his deputies brought him to the scaffold. He was accompanied by Fathers Barret and Millett, repeating their prayers slowly in French.

According to George Fountie, his wife and 16-year-old daughter Minnie had been murdered by LaPage on October 12, 1867. The pair had gone to the village, about two and a half miles away from their home, for trading purposes. After the wife met a fellow lady friend, they had dinner at her house and stayed there until half past six, but never returned home that night. On the dawn of the new day, Mr. Fountie, anxious that something horrible had happened, immediately began looking for them, assisted by the community. Following a long, exhaustive search, the mutilated bodies of both women were located under a brush pile off the main road, in a nearby pasture. Minnie, like Josie Langmaid, had been raped and her body mutilated, with the exception that her head hadn't been decapitated. A scamp by the name of Horace H. Martin was arrested, but soon released due to lack of evidence and the fact that he wasn't even near the area when the murders occurred.

However, Joseph LaPage was in the village at the time, doing business in the local post office. He was standing in the office doorway when the women passed by him on their way home. He followed them, and as they turned a corner in the street, he began speaking to them in an insulting way, which was resented by the mother and daughter. They said that if he didn't mind his own business, they would have him arrested, and LaPage soon went back to the post office, with neither party aware that the entire conversation was overheard by a man who had passed by. When he returned to the post office, LaPage said in an irritated tone that "if the women did have him 'hauled up' they would be sorry some time." He then left and crossed a field toward the north side of the village, which had a path leading directly to where the bodies were found. LaPage was never suspected of the murders at the time, but when he confessed to the Ball murder, Fountie was thoroughly convinced that he was the perpetrator. He claimed that if the murderer was alive, he would be convicted without much trouble, but also said that it didn't matter now, only showing the world at large the dangerous character of the man who had died on the scaffold.