Cassock and the Crown

On 7 January 1922 Raoul Delorme's body was discovered in a Montreal suburb. He had been shot six times at close range. The victim's half-brother, Father Adelard Delorme, quickly became the prime suspect as circumstantial evidence pointed directly to him. In one of the first uses of ballistics, police matched the bullets used in the murder to a gun he had purchased only days before the murder, there were human bloodstains in his car, and the victim's body was wrapped in a quilt that matched others found at the Delorme house. Father Delorme had also recently taken out a life insurance policy on his brother, naming himself as beneficiary, and stood to inherit most of the family's estate under Raoul's will. The Roman Catholic church, however, was an extremely powerful institution in Quebec in the 1920s. Four trials took place before a verdict was reached -- a verdict that still leaves many questions unanswered.