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This is Murder, She Told, true crime stories from Maine, New England, and small-town USA. I'm your host, Kristen Zevey. You can connect with me and suggest your hometown crime at MurderSheTold.com and follow me on Instagram at MurderSheToldPodcast. The dim lights around the Biddeford Snowshoe Club twinkled and set a cozy mood on a chilly November evening.
It was Thanksgiving night in 1966, and despite the holiday, a good portion of social club members around town were out and everyone was dressed to celebrate. Festive music danced throughout the room at a low volume, and streamers hung from the log rafters. Portraits of past club members that hung on the walls next to vintage snowshoes gave one a sense of belonging.
Mary Charles found herself once again chatting with 42-year-old Armand Brochu. She felt like he'd always been a little sweet on her, despite the fact that he had a family. She pretended not to notice his flirtations.
Armand and Mary were there at the social club the night before as well. And this particular night, they were invited to a private party at a member's residence after the doors had closed. Meanwhile, Monique lay suffering in critical condition in a hospital bed at Maine Medical Center. Monique was Armand's wife, and she was dying. Maybe it was the warm buzz of the liquor, or maybe it was a morbid curiosity that kept Mary in this conversation.
He must be very sad right now. He told her the night before that poison from a plastic tube from a previous operation had gone to her brain, and there wasn't much they could do. Mary wondered why he was here instead of by her side at the hospital, but she didn't question it too hard. People grieve in different ways.
Armand stepped closer to her. A little too close. She could tell he wanted something. The night before, he'd asked to take her to dinner, but she didn't give him an answer. He hovered in her personal space so close she could feel the heat of his body. "You may think it's strange, me asking you to go out with her in the hospital, but there isn't anything I can do for her. Everyone thinks we get along great, but we don't always get along.
But before Mary could answer him, a man, still wearing his winter jacket, someone that Armand seemed to recognize, approached him and whispered something in his ear. He sighed deeply and looked at the man, and then turned back to Mary with a serious face as the man started to head out the door. Armand grabbed Mary's arm, and she almost spilled her drink. "Please don't leave me now. Come with me, please don't leave me." His wife had died.
This is the story of the poisoning of Monique Brochu.
Around 8.40 p.m. on December 5th, two weeks after her mother's death, 12-year-old Nancy Brochu, the youngest of the three Brochu children, answered the door to two police officers asking for her father. She knew why they were there. A pang of guilt hit her stomach. She hoped she was doing the right thing. The officers, armed with a warrant, placed Armand Brochu under arrest for the murder of his 41-year-old wife, Monique.
A confused Armand protested that he was innocent but complied with the officer's orders. He was taken to the county jail and held without bail. Earlier that day, 12-year-old Nancy had agreed to go down to the police station to tell police what she knew about the timeline of events. She picked at her fingers as she walked detectives through what she remembered, despite knowing that her mother would scold her for a habit she was trying to break.
if her mother were still alive. But that was the reason Nancy sat here in the first place. She told them that her mother had gotten violently sick two days after having a cocktail on November 18th, and by Thanksgiving, she was dead. Monique had been fatally poisoned.
That same morning, police came to the house to do an unofficial search. Armand let them in without objection. He had nothing to hide. Police walked away empty-handed, as he figured they probably would. What did Nancy tell them in that interview that brought on an arrest warrant?
On December 10th, a probable cause hearing was held at a court in Saco to determine whether or not it was likely that Armand could have committed the murder he was accused of. A probable cause hearing is a very early hearing in the criminal legal process, and it is held before a judge and no jury. It allows testimony from the state, and if the judge deems that there is probable cause, then the case continues on a path through the criminal justice system.
It's essentially a preview of a potential trial from the side of the prosecution, including witnesses, that allows a judge to decide if it has merit to move forward. It also examines the legitimacy of an arrest in the first place and considers whether or not the defendant should have been given an opportunity for bail. Armand Brochu was being held at the county jail without bail.
The state's key witness was Armand's daughter, Nancy. She nervously carried a rosary in her hand, shaking as she walked to the witness stand and testified against her father, telling the court what she remembered seeing that day, the same story that she told detectives a week prior.
Dr. Joseph Stock, a resident pathologist at the Maine Medical Center who performed the autopsy on Monique, testified that his diagnosis was methyl alcohol poisoning, indicated by the softening of brain tissue and moisture in the brain.
What exactly is methyl alcohol? Methyl alcohol sounds a lot like ethyl alcohol, but only one will kill you. Ethyl alcohol is the typical alcohol you find in liquor. Everclear, the high-proof liquor reminiscent of college keg parties, is essentially pure ethyl alcohol.
Methanol, also known as methyl alcohol or wood alcohol, is clear, just like ethanol. It even burns and has a similar smell. The name wood alcohol was coined in 1661 by a chemist who called it "spirit of box" because he made it from distilling boxwood. But unlike ethanol, which is widely and regularly consumed,
Methanol can be fatal. Methanol, too, is mass-produced and widely available, but is used in much different ways and is even an ingredient in formaldehyde. The ancient Egyptians used methanol as part of their embalming process.
But just because it's fatal won't deter everyone from drinking it. Before the rise of forensics, a coroner was simply an elected official of a town who often had no medical training and, until 1917, was tasked with assessing how these frequent mystery deaths occurred, which he more often than not classified as a suicide or an act of God.
Poison had become a popular method for ridding oneself of a rival or a family member until a chemist named Alexander Gettler figured out the physical manifestations of wood alcohol poisoning in a cadaver, arming coroners with the medical knowledge necessary to determine the true cause of death. Poisoning from methyl alcohol was actually a common occurrence, especially during Prohibition.
For years, it was the secret ingredient in homemade whiskey. Bootlegged alcohol more often than not contained methanol, and the poisonings in the early 20th century occurred so frequently that they became a public health issue. In New York City alone in 1926, about 1,200 people got sick and 400 died from consuming poisonous alcohol that contained methyl.
It isn't only bad if you drink it, but also if you inhale it or even absorb it into your skin. When ingested, methanol breaks down into even more toxic chemicals in a process called toxification.
Enzymes in the liver first convert methanol to formaldehyde, which is then converted to formic acid. My side note takeaway from that is the horror over the fact that the person is essentially being embalmed on the inside while still alive. This conversion process from formaldehyde to formic acid takes up to 30 hours from the initial ingestion of methanol and means that you might not die initially from its consumption, but perhaps a day or two later.
Usually, the first sign of methanol poisoning is loss of vision, as formic acid actually damages the optic nerve. And even if the person recovers, the blindness is permanent. The next witness for the state was Dr. Robinson Bidwell, a neurosurgeon at the Maine Medical Center who attended Monique at the hospital. He confirmed that Monique was in critical condition when she was admitted to the emergency room.
She was comatose, cyanotic, a condition in which your skin turns blue from lack of oxygen, and she was barely breathing. They had to perform an electrocardiogram or ECG several times to even get a heartbeat.
Edward Gawlin, the county attorney, questioned Dr. Bidwell on what might have caused such a condition, but the defense was not here to make this easy. Any time a question arose about the cause of Monique's death, Charles Smith, Armand's attorney, would object on grounds that one cannot testify to lab reports or test results where they weren't the ones who performed the task in the first place.
If lab reports were to be admitted as evidence, the people who completed the reports must testify themselves, and the reports needed to be officially submitted as evidence. Galen then reframed his question and obtained testimony from the doctor that his diagnosis indicated Monique had ultimately died from toxicity caused by ingestion of methyl alcohol and acute cerebral hypoxia, a lack of oxygen to the brain.
As the day wore on, so too did Armand's comfort. After watching hours of doctors and detectives and even his own daughter testify against him, Armand was worn out and could no longer maintain a calm facade. By the late afternoon, he was visibly tense and uncomfortable.
Armand's defense attorney, Charles Smith, argued that the state had failed to establish its claim that the death of Monique was caused by methyl alcohol poisoning and stated that testimony was more of the "could have been" variety than actual fact. He also said that there was no evidence of malice. Armand pled innocent at the conclusion of the testimony. But Judge George Varney did find probable cause.
The defense requested bail for Armand, but it was denied. In the 1960s, bail wasn't typically granted for defendants who were being accused of murder.
The next major step in the legal process was the trial. The Brochu trial was initially set for the January term in 1967, but was moved to February after scheduling conflicts arose with the prosecutor's office. Charles Smith, Armand's defense attorney, objected to the postponement because he was being held without bail. He then put in a request for a bail hearing, and at the end of January, when the trial was moved once again,
Bail was finally set and met at $20,000, and Brochu was out. In 2021, that would be about $155,000. By April, the case still hadn't gone to trial due to motions to suppress evidence from the defense. Every time the judge would refuse the request, the defense would file another motion, thus causing the trial to continuously be pushed back.
The defense argued that key evidence had been obtained by a legal search and seizure. There were two searches of Armand's home. The first was with his verbal consent and was conducted on the morning of December 5th. But once 12-year-old Nancy went down to the station and told police what she knew, they arrested Brochu and obtained a search warrant from a judge to do a more thorough search the next morning.
Because Brochu was in jail at the time his house was officially searched, his lawyer said that his constitutional rights were violated and his motion and appeals went all the way to the Maine Supreme Court.
During the search on December 6th, investigators found a nearly empty vodka bottle hidden in a dilapidated cushion in a chair in Brochu's garage. Tests were done by a chemist on the bottle, and it was determined that the contents were approximately 94% methyl alcohol. It's curious to me that a man who proclaims he did nothing wrong hid a bottle in a couch cushion hoping that nobody would find it.
They also obtained a cloth, three glass jars, and a funnel. The defense's primary objection was that the search warrant was very specific, as it should be, and that the police officers conducting the search took things that were not the intended targets of the warrant. A search warrant must explain what the police are to look for, and this warrant's language, verbatim, is, quote, a container or vial containing methyl alcohol, end quote.
The justices found merit in the defense's objection and ruled that the other paraphernalia found, the cloth and the funnel, would be inadmissible. Furthermore, the defense objected that the warrant indicated a specific place, his home, and contended that the search should be limited to the house alone, and not the garage where they found the bottles.
The justices ruled that the garage was part of his home and was included under the warrant's language, thus allowing the bottles to be presented as evidence as part of the state's case at trial.
Finally, almost a year and a half after Monique's death, the murder trial of Armand Brochu began at the York County Superior Court. The state, led by District Attorney Daniel Lilly, was trying to prove that Armand had intentionally poisoned his wife, by design and in cold blood, by giving her methyl alcohol, knowing that she would die from it when he handed her a lethal cocktail on the night of November 18th.
The defense stated that there was no malice in the act, and, at the very worst, Armand came home with a mistake, quote, a treat that turned into a tragedy, end quote. The state practically called up every doctor who had been in contact with Monique at all stages during this time.
A poison specialist at Maine Medical Center testified that he took samples of Monique's blood on November 21, 1966, the day she was admitted to the hospital in an unconscious state. The blood test results showed a high rate of acidosis in Monique's system caused by methyl alcohol poisoning.
There was no question that Monique was poisoned and that it was from methyl alcohol. But how did this happen? And why? Why would Armand Brochu want to kill his wife? The state also called up Miss Mary Charles, who had seen Armand two nights in a row at the snowshoe club as his wife lay in the hospital on her deathbed, and told the court of his peculiar behavior.
She wasn't the only pretty single woman Armand was talking to that night. Miss Rita Marie Anderson, a childhood schoolmate of Armand's, also testified a similar story as Mary. Rita said she was also at the snowshoe club the night of Thanksgiving and chatted with Armand, who told her, quote, you look as good now as you did back then, end quote.
He also allegedly told her, quote, wait for me, it won't be long now, end quote. Not even a few hours later, and Monique was dead. Armand's 18-year-old son, Guy, also took the stand and testified that on December 5th, 1966, the day before the official search of their home, his father told him that the police were coming and that they wouldn't find anything because he'd thrown everything away.
Charles Smith, Armand's lawyer, asked Guy why he hadn't mentioned that in an interview at the probable cause hearing, and Guy admitted that he hadn't thought of it until later. He also testified that a few days after the police search, when he visited his father in jail, that Armand asked whether the police had taken anything from the house or not.
But the state's key witness was a now 13-year-old Nancy, who was skipping classes at Biddeford Junior High to be at the trial. When she sat at the police station in December of 1966, she knew the gravity of what she was telling them, but she never imagined it would bring her here.
The courtroom was cold, and the chairs were almost as bad as the discomfort that hung in the room. Most teenage girls come of age when they kiss a boy for the first time or get their driver's license. Nancy Brochu came of age having to testify for the state against her father in the murder of her mother.
The prosecutor, Daniel Lilly, could sense some nerves, so he eased up on his energy, coaxing the story out of Nancy as if it were just the two of them in the room. What did Nancy see on that evening of Friday, November 18th, 1966, that warranted an arrest for murder?
Washing the dishes was Nancy's least favorite chore, and because she was the youngest, she felt like she got stuck with it often. Over the sounds of the Nancy Sinatra album playing on the record machine, she heard her father ask her mother if she'd like a drink. Silly question. Mother always liked her after-supper cocktails.
As Nancy was drying the dishes, her father came into the kitchen with a small jar and approached the counter beside her. "Nance, can you grab me a funnel?" he asked. As she went to grab it, Armand pulled out a near-empty vodka bottle from under the sink.
Nancy went back to wiping down dishes, curiously watching as he opened the jar. Immediately, a smell hit the air that burned her nose. "What is that?" she asked, as her father funneled the crystal clear liquid from the jar into the old vodka bottle. "It's pure alcohol," he said.
as he reached for the yellow-stemmed glass to serve it in. Nancy didn't question it. Other than a few sips of a drink at a Christmas party once, she'd never had alcohol. But this smelled awful. Do people actually drink that stuff? Armand added a little ginger ale and lime to the cocktail and carefully picked up the tipsy, overfilled glass to take to the room echoing with the hauntingly slow lyrics of "Bang Bang."
The sound of her mother's voice interrupted the days of the song. "What is this? It's awfully strong," Monique asked. Armand re-entered the kitchen and grabbed the unlabeled jar the pure alcohol liquid had been in and headed outside with it. When the cocktail was gone, Nancy washed out her mother's glass.
The following morning, Nancy noticed that it took her mother nearly a half an hour to do her hair, a task that usually only took her 10 minutes to do. But that wasn't as alarming as her slurred speech and blurry vision. She could barely see, and she was incoherent and confused. Monique was also having trouble walking, almost as if complete vertigo was taking over her body.
She ended up spending most of the day in bed, and Nancy thought she'd be better by the morning. When she wasn't, the family called a physician to the house. By Monday morning, Monique barely had a pulse, and her skin was turning blue. A second doctor was called to the house to see her, and he immediately called an ambulance to the Brochu house to take her to the main medical center in Portland.
Nancy recalled her father going to the hospital in the ambulance. And that was the last time she saw her mother, as she was being wheeled into the ambulance on a gurney, her father following behind. The prosecutor gave her a look, grateful for her testimony and thanked her. The teenage girl could finally breathe and sit with her brother and sister in the courtroom. Now it was her dad's turn to tell his side of the story.
On February 6th, Armand Brochu took the stand in his own defense. Armand, who worked as an electrician at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, testified that he brought home a plastic container of pure alcohol from work on November 18th, 1966, after it was pointed out to him by a janitor at the shipyard. He said that before coming home from work that night, he made himself a cocktail with the substance, mixed with coke,
and drank it at work. Earlier in the trial, Armand's superintendent at the Navy Yard confirmed that both ethyl and methyl alcohol were available on base, and that both were used in the shop where Armand worked.
However, the ethyl alcohol that was used for cleaning purposes was pink, and the methyl alcohol was clear. He also stated that in other parts of the base, clear ethyl alcohol was used but wasn't readily available to workers like Armand. Armand described pouring the alcohol from the jar into the vodka bottle that night, and said that he did make a cocktail from the liquid after pouring it into the bottle.
Armand even corroborated his daughter Nancy's testimony and told the court that she did in fact watch him make a cocktail that Monique thought was too strong. But Nancy admitted that she didn't specifically see her mother drink the entire cocktail he'd given her, and Armand claimed that his wife only tasted that cocktail, and that he mixed the couple another cocktail from the same material that night and the following evening.
Charles Smith added, quote, if you kill someone, you don't do it in front of witnesses, end quote, speaking to the fact that Nancy had seen him mix and give her mother the cocktail. Under cross-examination, Armand said that he assumed Monique knew what was in the vodka bottle, but that he didn't remember if he'd actually told her what it was. When asked if he killed his wife, he stated that he loved her,
and testified, "No, I did not murder my wife." Armand also said that he brought home a solvent from work to clean auto parts and that he had put the solvent in an empty vodka bottle. When it was mostly used up, he put the bottle in a chair in the garage. When the police seized the bottle from the chair during the search, that bottle tested 94% methyl.
He said that the following day, on Saturday, Monique did show signs of illness and ended up in bed most of the day. By Sunday, her illness had progressed and he could only see the whites of her eyes.
Armand's sister, Teresa, testified that during this two-day period, she visited the home several times over his concern for his wife's condition. When she arrived Monday morning, the doctor was there, and he spoke with Armand privately. She testified that after their conversation, he appeared broken up and was in tears, exclaiming, Dear Lord, please take me, but don't take her. My children need her."
The defense, Charles Smith, argued that there was no malice in intent and that Armand Brochu never had any idea of killing his wife. Furthermore, Smith argued that the state's case, through the 24 witnesses who had been called to the stand on their behalf, hadn't proved anything at this point in the trial. Their intention may have been to prove that his client murdered his wife with a cold, calculated scheme,
but there had been no clear evidence to support that claim, and no motive had surfaced. The state also hadn't proved any malice, and Smith believed their case negated what it set out to do. The state presented no evidence that Monique actually drank the drink described in Nancy's testimony, and that no other evidence was introduced that the drink in question actually contained methyl. He
He argued that Armand obtained what he thought was ethyl alcohol and drank a good quantity of it himself. Armand was a family man who depended on his wife and had no reason to want to kill her. Quote, They were married for 20 years and had three children. They were planning a family trip together. They'd also just bought a new house and paid off the down payment. They had everything to live for. Why would he kill her? End quote.
Before Judge Knudsen set the jury of 12 off to deliberate on the final day of this nine-day trial, he left them with this. If the death was accidental and they believed Armand brought the alcohol home from the Navy Yard not knowing it was lethal, then that wouldn't be an unlawful death.
He also added that if they believed this death to be an accident, they must also find him innocent. Proof of malice is essential in an unlawful killing. According to the judge, manslaughter really didn't apply to this case. He told the jury that manslaughter was mostly done in the heat of passion and that the jury must find that there was criminal negligence in the matter and that this wasn't just a careless or inadvertent act.
If no criminal negligence is found, he isn't guilty of manslaughter. It only took the jury an hour and 50 minutes to deliberate. We, the jury, find the defendant, Armand Brochu, innocent of murder as charged in the indictment. Armand Brochu was innocent.
The courtroom erupted in applause, to which Judge Knudsen ordered the disturbance to cease and the courtroom to be cleared. Armand just lowered his head in his lap, covering his face with his hands when he heard the decision.
And that is pretty much the last of Armand Brochu, who lived a seemingly quiet life until his death. Masonic news here and there, various town activities… Though one thing I found peculiar was that in July of 1968, the same year as the trial, the local funeral home that took care of Monique won a suit against Armand Brochu, who neglected to pay his wife's burial costs.
They were awarded the sum of $1,006, or $7,481 today. An interesting predicament for someone who, less than six months prior, was found innocent of her murder.
This is a case that makes me think, and I still have a lot of unanswered questions I find rather curious about this story. Why would somebody innocent stuff a bottle in a couch if there was nothing to hide? Why would somebody be out socializing while their wife, whom they loved dearly, was dying in the hospital? Why did he bring home the jar in the first place? But maybe it was a simple accident, a treat gone horribly wrong.
But I still wonder if Armand Brochu actually did get away with murder, just like the killers of the early 20th century did. A vintage crime using a vintage method that's buried in the archives of local newspapers, only remembered by the people who were there. So, what do you think?
I want to thank you so much for listening. I am so grateful that you chose to tune in and I couldn't be here without you.
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My sources for this episode include archived articles from the Associated Press, Bangor Daily News, the Biddeford Sacco Journal, and the Portsmouth Herald. Additional sources include Biology Corner and Wikipedia. All links for sources and media can be found in the episode link in the show notes and on MurderSheTold.com.
If you're a friend or a family member of the victims or anyone connected to this story, you are more than welcome to reach out to me at MurderSheToldPod at gmail.com. If you have a story that needs to be told or would like to suggest one, I would love to hear from you. My only hope is that I've honored your stories in keeping the names of your family and friends alive. Murder She Told will be back next week with another crime story from Maine. Thank you for listening. Life is full of adventures.
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