COLD BLOODED KILLERS (Killers from around the World) (9 page)

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Marc Lépine

ECOLE POLYTECHNIQUE MASSACRE

Lepine was born Gamil Rodrigue Liass Gharbi on October 26
^th
, 1964, in Montreal, Canada, to Rachid Liass Gharbi, an Algerian-born executive, and Monique Lépine, a Canadian nurse.

       His father was abusive and contemptuous of women. After his parents separated when he was seven, his mother returned to nursing to support her children. Lépine and his younger sister lived with other families, seeing their mother on weekends. Lépine was considered bright but withdrawn, and had difficulties with peer and family relationships.

Instability and violence marked the family. They moved frequently, and much of Lépine's early childhood was spent in Costa Rica and Puerto Rico where his father was working for a Swiss mutual funds company. In 1968, the family returned to Montreal permanently, shortly before a stock market crash led to the loss of much of their assets. Gharbi was an authoritarian, possessive, and jealous man, frequently violent towards his wife and his children. He was also neglectful and abusive towards his children, particularly his son, and discouraged any tenderness as he considered it spoiling. In 1970, following an incident in which Gharbi struck his son so hard that the marks on his face were visible a week later, his mother decided to leave her husband.

Their legal separation was finalized in 1971, and the divorce in 1976. Taunted as an Arab because of his name, at the age of fourteen young Gamil Gharbi legally changed it to "Marc Lépine," citing hatred of his father as his reason.

Seeking a good male role model for her son, Lepine’s mother arranged for a Big Brother, and for two years the experience proved positive for Lépine as he, often with his best friend, enjoyed the time spent with his Big Brother, learning about photography and motorcycles. Lepine also enjoyed designing and building electronic gadgets, and watching action and horror movies, but developed an interest in World War II, and an admiration of Adolf Hitler. Lépine took considerable responsibility at home, cleaning and doing repairs while his mother worked.

In 1979, the Big Brother meetings ceased abruptly when the Big Brother was detained on suspicion of molesting young boys. Both Lépine and his Big Brother denied that any molestation had occurred.

Lepine moved out of his mother's home into his own apartment, and in 1986, applied to study engineering at École Polytechnique de Montréal. He was admitted on the condition that he completed two compulsory courses, including one in solution chemistry.

In 1987, Lépine took a job at a hospital but was fired for aggressive behaviour, disrespect of superiors, and carelessness in his work. He was enraged at his dismissal, and at the time described a plan in which he’d go on a murderous rampage and then commit suicide. His friends noted that he was unpredictable, flying into rages when frustrated.

In April of 1989, he met with a university admissions officer, and complained about how women were taking over the job market from men.

In August of 1989, Lépine picked up an application for a firearms-acquisition certificate, and received his permit in mid-October. On November 21
^st
, 1989, Lépine purchased a Ruger Mini-14 semi-automatic rifle at a local sporting goods store. He told the clerk that he was going to use it to hunt small game.

Sometime after 4 p.m. on December 6
^th
, 1989, Marc Lépine arrived at the building housing the École Polytechnique, an engineering school affiliated with the University of Montréal, armed with a rifle and a hunting knife. Lépine was familiar with the layout of the building as he had been in and around the École Polytechnique at least seven times in the weeks leading up to the event.

Lépine sat for a time in the office of the registrar on the second floor. He was seen rummaging through a green plastic bag, and did not speak to anyone, even when a staff member asked if she could help him. He appeared agitated, as if waiting for someone who had failed to arrive. He made eye contact with no one; his posture was stiff and his expression was grim. When an employee in the office asked if he needed assistance, he got up, grabbed his bag without a word, and walked away. The employee did not think much about it. The end of the semester was a tough time for students, and many were tired.

Lepine left the office. The halls had cleared and no one was about, no one who could raise an alarm. People in the offices were preparing to leave for the day. That would work in his favor. This was the moment. He had attached a high-capacity banana clip magazine so he could fire thirty rounds in quick succession, and he had plenty of ammunition. He was ready.

At around 5:10 p.m., he went to the second floor mechanical engineering class of about sixty students. After approaching the student giving a presentation, he said, “Everyone stop everything.” Professor Bouchard looked at him, annoyed. He squinted as if trying to remember who this student was. In French, the young man asked the ten female students to get up and move across the room. He then told the men to leave. No one moved. A few people laughed, thinking it some kind of joke. That was the worst thing they could have done. Lepine had considered himself humiliated enough in his twenty-five years. On this day, of all days, he was not going to be treated in that way.

Lifting his rifle, he shot twice into the ceiling. It was no joke. “You’re all a bunch of feminists!” he shouted angrily. “And I hate feminists!”

One of the students, Nathalie Provost, said, "Look, we are just women studying engineering, not necessarily feminists ready to march on the streets to shout we are against men, just students intent on leading a normal life." Lépine responded that, "You're women, you're going to be engineers.” He then opened fire on the students from left to right, killing six, and wounding three others, including Provost, who he shot three times. Before leaving the room, he wrote the word “shit” twice on a student project.

Lépine continued into the second floor corridor and wounded three students before entering another room where he twice attempted to shoot a female student. His weapon failed to fire so he entered the emergency staircase where he was seen reloading his gun. He returned to the room he had just left, but the students had locked the door. Lépine fired three shots into the door, but the door would not open. Moving along the corridor, he shot at others, wounding one, before moving towards the financial services office where he shot and killed a woman through the window of the door she had just locked.

He next went down to the first floor cafeteria, where about a hundred people were gathered. The crowd scattered after he shot a woman standing near the kitchen and wounded another student. Entering an unlocked storage area at the end of the cafeteria, Lépine shot and killed two more women hiding there. He told a male and a female student to come out from under a table; they complied and were not shot.

By this time, police had arrived and had assembled outside. Several went to cover the exits, lest the gunman slip away, but it took nearly twenty minutes before they decided to enter. They were not certain where he was and did not wish to endanger anyone. Calls went to a dispatcher for more ambulances, and those wounded students who could walk on their own went to meet them at the roadblocks.

Lépine then walked up an escalator to the third floor where he shot and wounded one female and two male students in the corridor. He entered another classroom and told the three students giving a presentation to "get out," shooting and wounding Maryse Leclair, who was standing on the low platform at the front of the classroom. He fired on students in the front row and then killed two women who were trying to escape the room; other students dove under their desks. Lépine fired towards some of the female students, wounding three of them and killing another.

He changed the magazine in his weapon and moved to the front of the class, shooting in all directions. At this point, the wounded Leclair asked for help. Maryse Leclair was down, but still alive. She pleaded for assistance, which attracted the gunman back to her. Those who survived this bloodbath recounted for newspapers what he did next. The strange young man sat down next to the wounded woman, quietly pulled a knife from the sheath strapped to his body, and used it to stab her in the heart. She screamed in surprise and pain. This violent act shocked those who were watching. The man had no mercy, but there was nothing anyone could do. He pulled the knife out and then plunged it in twice more until the girl laid silent, blood gushing from her wounds.

The gunman said, “Ah, shit.” He turned the rifle’s barrel toward his own face, pressed the muzzle against his forehead, and pulled the trigger. The rifle exploded, blowing off part of his skull and he fell to the floor. No one moved. The place smelled of hot metal, gunpowder, and fresh blood. Nevertheless, clearly it was over.

About sixty bullets remained in the boxes he carried with him. He had killed fourteen women in total (twelve engineering students, one nursing student, and one employee of the university) and injured fourteen other people, including four men.

As police came in, Montreal Police Director of Public Relations Pierre Leclair entered the building and went from one floor to another to assess the situation. Through a window in the third-floor corridor, he saw a young woman lying on a platform, on her back. He stopped. He could not believe what he was seeing. It was his daughter. Rushing to her, he realized that she was among those who had been killed; more horribly, she had been stabbed as well as shot.

It would take a while to piece together why Lepine had caused so much slaughter, but he had stated enough about his intent for students to tell reporters that his rampage had been anti-feminist. He had wanted to shoot only women.

A three-page letter was found in the pocket of his jacket. The letter was never officially made public, but was leaked in November of 1990 to Francine Pelletier, and published in the newspaper, La Presse. In his suicide letter, Lépine cited political motives, blaming feminists for ruining his life. He considered himself rational and expressed admiration for Denis Lortie, who had mounted an attack on the Quebec National Assembly in 1984 for political reasons, killing three Quebec government employees. The letter also contained a list of nineteen Quebec women whom Lépine apparently wished to kill because of their feminism. Another letter, written to a friend, promised the explanation to the massacre lay by following clues left in Lépine's apartment. The hunt led only to a suitcase of computer games and hardware.

The following is a translation of the suicide letter written by Lépine on the day of the shooting:

“Forgive the mistakes, I had 15 minutes to write this. Would you note that if I commit suicide today 89-12-06 it is not for economic reasons (for I have waited until I exhausted all my financial means, even refusing jobs) but for political reasons. Because I have decided to send the feminists, who have always ruined my life, to their Maker. For seven years life has brought me no joy and being totally blasé, I have decided to put an end to those viragos. I tried in my youth to enter the Forces as an officer cadet, which would have allowed me possibly to get into the arsenal and precede Lortie in a raid. They refused me because antisocial (sic). I therefore had to wait until this day to execute my plans. In between, I continued my studies in a haphazard way for they never really interested me, knowing in advance my fate. Which did not prevent me from obtaining very good marks despite my theory of not handing in work and the lack of studying before exams. Even if the Mad Killer epithet will be attributed to me by the media, I consider myself a rational erudite that only the arrival of the Grim Reaper has forced to take extreme acts. For why persevere to exist if it is only to please the government. Being rather backward-looking by nature (except for science), the feminists have always enraged me. They want to keep the advantages of women (e.g. cheaper insurance, extended maternity leave preceded by a preventative leave, etc.) while seizing for themselves those of men. Thus it is an obvious truth that if the Olympic Games removed the Men-Women distinction, there would be Women only in the graceful events. So the feminists are not fighting to remove that barrier. They are so opportunistic they [do not][71] neglect to profit from the knowledge accumulated by men through the ages. They always try to misrepresent them every time they can. Thus, the other day, I heard they were honoring the Canadian men and women who fought at the frontline during the world wars. How can you explain that since women were not authorized to go to the frontline??? Will we hear of Caesar's female legions and female galley slaves who of course took up 50% of the ranks of history, though they never existed. A real Casus Belli. Sorry for this too brief letter.”
Marc Lépine