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Lesser Known But Intriguing Historic Criminals

Khalid Elhassan October 17, 2019 32 min

U.S. Destroyers: An Illustrated Design History - Crime

10. Joseph A. Guay’s Route Out of Marriage

Joseph-Albert Guay in 1949. Popper Photo

Joseph-Albert Guay, a Quebecoise jeweler, wanted out of his marriage, and wanted out badly. He had met and wed Rita Morrel during WWII, but fell out of love soon after the couple had a child. He then met and fell head over heels in love with a 17-year-old waitress named Marie-Ange Robitaille, and using a fake name, Roger Angers, began a torrid love affair with her. However, Guay’s wife found out, and confronted the duo.

When Robitaille discovered that her lover was not the single Roger Angers, but the married-with-a-child Joseph-Albert Guay, she dumped him. Getting a divorce back then in Roman Catholic Quebec was next to impossible, so Guay decided to end the marriage via murder. Since he also happened to be drowning in debt, Guay decided to kill two birds with one stone, and make a nice bundle off his wife’s life insurance. As seen below, he went to great lengths to accomplish that.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.