QUEBEC: A lobster fisherman was found shot in the back of the neck while asleep on the couch in what looked to be a robbery. 15 years later, his fiancée was arrested after confessing to an undercover police officer, but 8 years later, she was acquitted.
(Thanks to LoydoRedi2910 for suggesting this case. If you'd like to suggest any yourself, please head over to this post, which asks for case suggestions from my international readers, as I focus on international cases.
As for why I'm doing a Canadian case, I more so focus on cases that are also locked behind a language barrier and well, Quebec is a French-speaking region, so when it comes to covering cases from Canada, I'm open to true crime for that province)
Grande-Rivière is a small fishing town of 3,384 located in the Le Rocher-Percé County Municipality right on the tip of Quebec's Gaspé Peninsula. One of this fishing community's residents, one known by all, was 37-year-old James Dubé.
James had lived in this town all his life, making a living as both a lobster fisherman and from the revenue brought in by the Grande-Rivière fish factory, of which he was a co-owner. His brother also ran an auto body garage in Grande-Rivière, meaning that his family was quite well off.
James's life as a fisherman also held a certain sentimental value since his father had died a gruesome death when he hit the sea. On one fishing voyage, he became entangled in a net that was dragged into the winch of his boat, killing him instantly. So perhaps to honour his father, James not only chose fishing as his profession, but he also used the same exact boat his father had been killed on.
When he wasn't fishing, James went moose hunting in the woods instead and rode snowmobiles through the countryside during the winter. Owing to his demanding lifestyle, James was noted to be very physically imposing, strong, and if anyone tried to physically confront him, they found it difficult to knock him off his feet.
James had long been planning to formally marry his long-time common-law wife, 37-year-old Johanne Johnson, a woman with whom he had already had two daughters.
At 3:00 a.m. on April 30, 1998, James got out of bed, careful not to wake up Johanne or the children. He joined his fishing partner for a trip out at sea to retrieve their lobster traps, a long and demanding process that resulted in all 250 cages being brought back to the surface, emptied and cast back into the sea, leaving both men exhausted.
Once they arrived back on land, James drove to the fish factory to sell them before then making his way back home. He picked up Johanne, and they had lunch together, which consisted of two sandwiches purchased at a convenience store. Then that afternoon, they had sex before Johanne told him that she had to go to work at the local lobster factory. After she left, James went to sleep on the couch.
This was only intended to be a short nap, as James had more business to do later that day. He had been scheduled to go to a solicitor to sign documents that would dissolve his co-ownership of the fish factory, which, upon signing the papers, would also nullify his life insurance tied to said factory. James would never sign those papers, as this was a sleep he never woke up from.
James was discovered dead on the couch by his eldest daughter, who was screaming, crying and panicking in the kitchen when paramedics and the local police arrived. They announced James was dead at the scene from a single gunshot wound to the back of his neck. James's brother and Johanne were both informed over the phone, and Johanne appeared shocked and distressed when she arrived to see the police and paramedics surrounding the house.
The investigation was handled by the Sûreté du Québec, with a senior investigator driven from Rimouski to Grande-Rivière, a drive that would take around 5 hours. When he and personnel from the Sûreté du Québec began their investigation, the initial assumption was that it had been a robbery gone wrong; it appeared as if the home had been searched, and pots and other objects were strewn across the floor as if the property had been ransacked.
The Sûreté du Québec at the scene
But something seemed odd upon closer inspection, such as the valuable television set being untouched, every hunting rifle normally kept in the basement all accounted for, none of the valuables actually missing and the fact that James was still lying on the couch, still in his work clothes, as if he had never woken up to even see the intruder. The Sûreté du Québec searched the entire home, but no shell casing could be found.
Furthermore, very little blood was actually found anywhere else in the home aside from the sofa where James's body lay. There were no signs of any cleaning either, so it wasn't as if the blood was washed away.
According to the autopsy, the bullet that killed James entered through the back of his neck and belonged to a 22 calibre. Just as the Sûreté du Québec had suspected, the pathologist determined that James had been fast asleep based on the bullet's angle of entry.
Although they couldn't find the bullet, the Sûreté du Québec still believed they knew where it had come from. One week before his murder, James had reported a 22-calibre rifle that he kept on his boat stolen. If that rifle was the murder weapon, then it seemed even more likely that rather than a robbery gone wrong, James's murder had been premeditated.
The Sûreté du Québec interviewed James's co-workers, family and neighbours, but at first suspects were in short supply.
The Sûreté du Québec also set up roadblocks on every road leading out of Grande-Rivière and searched every car that approched the roadblock for the missing rifle, but each car came up clean.
The Sûreté du Québec then questioned all the other fishermen in the area in case James had been killed due to a dispute over the proceeds of their latest catch, but nothing was found to link James's murder to his fellow fishermen.
Grande-Rivière hadn't seen a murder in many years, so having one of its residents shot dead in his sleep came as a shock and shattered their sense of secruity.
So when only a few days later James's neighbour accidentally tripped and fell in the basement, cutting his neck on the wall of an aquarium and bleeding out on the floor, many were afraid that it couldn't have been a coincidence and therefore made the community even more uneasy, with the residents now keeping their lights on even in the dead of night.
As the investigation seemed to be at a standstill. James's brother came forward to present the authorities with their first real suspect. He felt concerned and put off by just how quickly his sister-in-law seemed to move on from James's death.
James's brother took Johanne and his nieces in, and Johanne didn't show much sadness, asked no questions about her husband's murder, and returned to the crime scene to have a shower.
She also seemed very eager to spend the money she was paid out. She began telephone shopping for a car for her daughter, a purchase James opposed before his murder and was also talking about building a house, all of this within the first few days of the murder.
The Sûreté du Québec decided now was a good time to look into Johanne. She had been co-owner and shareholder of the fish factory, which meant she was a beneficiary of the life insurance policy that James was mere hours away from voiding. After his death, Johanne inherited his fishing boat, which she subsequently sold for 175,000 CAD, and she was also paid 30,000 CAD in life insurance.
With all this in mind, the Sûreté du Québec asked Johanne to take a polygraph test, but she refused, insisting it was unnecessary because she was innocent. Johanne was interrogated, continued to deny any involvement, and was later released.
Johanne remained their only suspect, but since they failed to find any new evidence against her, the Sûreté du Québec eventually left Grande-Rivière, with James's murder going unsolved.
After the case was shelved, Johanne took her two daughters and moved to Rivière-du-Loup, a city on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, 520 kilometres away from Grande-Rivière, where she remarried.
In 2012, after 14 years without any new leads, the Sûreté du Québec's cold case unit decided to employ a new strategy, something called "Mr. Big".
This was not something they invented. Mr. Big was developed by the RCMP and had been used 350 times across Canada. Here's how it worked: an officer would go undercover to approach a suspect in a Cold Case, start a relationship with them and pretend to be a member of some criminal organization.
They would give the target of the operation a series of tasks, either completely innocent or small petty crimes and pay them cash in exchange. This would keep going until they saw the undercover officer as a friend or were financially dependent on them.
Then, when the time was right, the officer would introduce the target to "the big boss" of the organization they claimed to be a part of, aka "Mr. Big". who would then tell the recruit/target that there was a problem with their past that the organization needs to know about in order to protect them and that to join their group, they would need to be honest about their past, if the target does confess, everyone involved would later reveal themselves to be police and arrest them for the murder in question.
This technique was not without its controversy; many confessions had their reliability questioned due to the pressure placed on the targets of these operations, while there were also fears that financial dependence or false friendship could be so strong that an innocent person might confess to maintain it.
But it also produced many successes, with several cold cases solved with "Mr. Big" sting operations netting several convictions for cases once believed to be unsolvable with no other evidence.
So, with co-operation from the RCMP and the Montreal police, the Sûreté du Québec decided to deploy its own Mr. Big operation with Johanne as the target.
Although initially it seemed like it was destined for failure, 2 weeks were spent trying to get an officer close to Johanne, but due to her movements, they were never able to make her acquaintance.
On December 5, 2012, Johanne stepped out of her car in front of her husband's home in Rivière-du-Loup shortly after 3 p.m. She noticed a woman standing near a vehicle parked in the street that she didn't recognize. Johanne approched her, and the woman said she was lost and looking for a sister she had not seen in a long time, as their mother had recently died.
Johanne offered to help, so she got in her car, and Johanne began driving her around town and the neighbourhood in search of this missing sister. The woman showed Johanne a photo of her "sister" and offered her a $50 bill as thanks, but Johanne declined the money, saying she was glad to help out for free. What Johanne didn't know was that this woman was law enforcement, the sister didn't exist and that she was the Sûreté du Québec's eighth attempt to pull a "Mr. Big" sting on her.
The officer placed the bill in a glass in the middle of the console while she spoke with Johanne. The two built a rapport within just two hours, with Johanne speaking openly about her daughters, the grandchildren she now had and her health problems, which resulted in her being on sick leave from her job caring for the elderly at a community health center.
At 5:00 p.m., Johanne returned home, obviously having not found the fictitious sister. The officer offered Johanne another 50 Dollar Bill, which Johanne again refused, although once out of her sight, the officer silently hid it next to the first bill.
She then told Johanne that 500 CAD would be awarded to whoever found her sister. The two women exchanged phone numbers, and Johanne told her that she would be free to continue helping her on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Just like that, she finally found a way to be consistently close to Johanne.
The two went on more and more drives with Johanne opening up even more to who she thought was a friend. She talked about her past struggles with gambling and alcoholism and mentioned that her "ex" had died in an accident some years back. And she told the officer that for years she had been a victim of domestic abuse at the hands of this unnamed ex.
She also said that she was in need of money but that her new husband was controlling her finances, including her widow's pension.
In the ensuing days and weeks, their relationship grew stronger, with the two going out to eat at restaurants with the officer usually paying the bill. She also kept giving her 50-100 dollar bills, which Johanne was now beginning to accept, saying that she would use the money to "spoil her grandchildren".
On December 20, the officer surprised Johanne with a gift of perfume and a Celine Dion CD. Johanne grew so close to this officer that she told her that she was a "godsend". That was exactly what she needed to hear, now knowing that Johanne trusted her enough for her to move on to the next phase of the operation.
The fictional story that she told Johanne was that her husband ran a "transportation company" and, since Johanne told her that she wasn't getting any hours due to her sick leave, asked if she would like to drive city-to-city, a paid job as part of this company. Johanne agreed and was soon introduced to the "husband" who, in reality, was another undercover police officer. Johanne was paid in cash for every job and joked to the officer, "You'll make me rich,".
However, the jobs began to escalate with Johanne now tasked with transporting a suitcase by bus from Rivière-du-Loup to Sainte-Foy, then putting that suitcase in a car and transporting further. Johanne was paid 400-500 CAD for this and was assured the suitcase didn't contain drugs but was otherwise barred from inquiring as to its contents...The suitcase contained weapons.
Johanne was also given tasks by them that had nothing to do with driving vehicles or transporting suitcases but still netted her a decent profit regardless; for example, they would have Johanne sell cloned SAQ gift cards, mobile phones and counterfeit hockey jerseys.
Johanne kept doing these jobs, making anywhere between 400 to 500 Canadian dollars a day, and after each successful job they celebrated with high-end meals at prestigious restaurants such as La Bête in Québec City. And during these outings, Johanne was promised that one day she might get an even bigger reward like a nice car or a home in Montreal.
Then on January 29, 2013, Johanne was awarded further when she went to Montreal for a delivery and got to watch a hockey game live at the Bell Centre, a first for her. When all was said and done, Johanne got paid 20,400 CAD over the course of the operation. And speaking of that operation, the Sûreté du Québec decided it was finally time for Johanne to meet "Mr. Big".
On June 19, 2013, she was told that a "big job" was available to her if she could prove herself, but that first she needed to meet the "big boss" of the organization. The meeting was to be held at a cottage in New Richmond, a seaside town 500 kilometres on the Gaspé Peninsula not that far from Grande-Rivière.
On their drive there, they stopped at a Tim Hortons in New Richmond while Johanne watched her self-described "Godsend" leave to go make a phone call. When she returned, she looked visibly distressed and told Johanne that the "big boss" was not in a good mood and something had come up.
Johanne asked if any harm was going to come their way, to which she was reassured that nothing physical was going to happen but that they had "better not screw up". This interaction was designed to try and build up as much anxiety in Johanne as possible without making her think she was in danger and flee.
When they arrived at the cottage, the "boss" confronted Johanne. He told her that their organization was facing some heat because of something from her past, specifically, that "ex" she had mentioned.
His exact words were, "I made some phone calls. Before helping you, I want to know if it's worth it. And I'm telling you, if I don't help you, you'll lose it all... If I don't help you, your grandsons won't ever see their grandmother because you killed their grandfather."
Everyone else vacated the cottage, leaving Johanne alone with the "big boss", in reality, yet another undercover officer.
Despite the intense contents of his speech, this officer made sure to speak in a calm and non-confrontational manner, saying, "If you want me to help you there, you're going to start telling me what happened that day from A to Z. The truth, no lies, because if you tell me a lie, that's it. What happened?" Johanne replied with: "The day James died...I killed him"
She was asked to elaborate, where she described the murder as "like a flash" and that it was the first time she had ever told anybody. She confirmed that she shot James in the back of the head with a rifle she had stolen from her boat while James was asleep on the couch. Afterward, she threw pots on the rug to make it look like a struggle had occurred.
She then rolled the rifle up in a rug and left the home through the back door, drove approximately fifteen minutes to a wooded area near Chandler, where she disposed of the rifle.
Johanne said that the money she got due to James's death didn't benefit her much in the long run. She said that the proceeds from selling James's fishing vessel and from the insurance policy were partly used to fund the drug habit she picked up after James's death, with the rest of the money going toward her daughters. She also said she paid an extra 30,000 CAD to pay off her father's debts.
Seeing as she didn't really see barely a cent of the money she gained from his death, Johanne stated that the motive was not financial in nature. Johanne wasn't just confessing to being a murderer for the first time; it was also the first time she said in detail the true nature of James's character.
James had spent almost their entire marriage subjecting Johanne to domestic abuse, beating her regularly; one time, he abused her so badly that she had to spend 32 days in the hospital recovering from a shoulder injury, which left her unable to work.
Speaking of work, whenever things weren't going well for James on the job, such as with the fish factory he managed, Johanne was always his scapegoat to throw under the bus if something went wrong.
James also kept trying to pressure Johanne into having sex with him even when she said no.
On the afternoon of April 30, 1998, she and James had gotten into an argument over their oldest daughter being in the home after she dropped out of school, with this argument being the final straw for Johanne, who said she "I was so fed up, I couldn't take it anymore".
Johanne thought that killing her abusive husband after years of abuse and humiliation would be liberating, but she said that James's death had, in fact, left her destroyed after all, causing her to cope by spending the following two to three years doing drugs in an attempt to suppress the memory.
Every summer, she feared the Sûreté du Québec were going to come to her door having discovered the rifle.
She also said that her drug use was only intensified by feelings of paranoia, as she felt as if the police had been stalking and following her everywhere she went, unaware of the irony. She was also unaware that her confession was being recorded since the Sûreté du Québec had bugged the cottage prior to the meeting.
Rather than removing the mask right away and arresting Johanne on the spot, they kept the charade going a bit longer. "Mr. Big" ordered two of his "men" back into the cottage and instructed them to make their way to Chandler, locate the rifle and make it "go away," with Johanne told to join them.
They drove to the wooded area next to the road, but neither of the three could find the rifle. With the passage of 15 years, it's entirely possible Johanne forgot the exact location or that a resident discovered it and kept it for themselves, unaware of its significance.
On the way back, they stopped at the local IGA grocery store, and Johanne asked to go in to buy some Diet Coke and chocolate chip cookies for the big boss. Johanne did so, and as soon as she left the store with the items in question, she was finally arrested.
Johanne's trial opened on January 18, 2016, before a 12-member jury of 5 men and 7 women at the Palais de justice de Percé.
Johanne arriving to court for her trial.
The Crown's main piece of evidence was the result of the Mr. Big operation; the prosecutor argued that Johanne's confession was too precise, specific, and consistent with the forensic evidence to have made the story up on the spot. Additionally, Johanne's daughter testified that her mother had confessed to her before her arrest, though the defence objected, calling that statement hearsay evidence.
For motive, the Crown also relied on her confession but with one deviation. Although they argued that Johanne did kill James after years of abuse and humiliation, they argued that it was murder she had premeditated rather than just snapping one day, owing to the fact that the rifle used to kill him was stolen over a week in advance.
They also argued that Johanne wasn't being honest with the undercover officer when talking about how the murder left her traumatized, using her behaviour in the immediate aftermath of the murder as evidence of such, such as how she showed no outward signs of distress and returned to the crime scene to have a shower.
Which also prompted the Crown to argue that there was a financial motive to the murder after all, seeing as she was immideately talking about buying a house and a car, and the timing of the murder just seemed impossible to ignore, the fact that James was mere hours away from dissolving his ownership of the fish factory.
When it was Johanne's time to speak, she denied any involvement and said that her confession was a false one. She said that she had been scared during the encounter with the "big boss" and had told him what she believed needed to be said to protect those she came to view as her closest friends and to maintain her position in their organization.
Johanne's defence also used the trial to attack "Mr. Big" stings in general, arguing that any confession obtained through them were inheritely illigitmate. She argued that the Sûreté du Québec exploited Johanne's history as a domestic abuse victim and poor financial situation to coax a confession out of her rather than the truth. In her attorney's words, "Mrs. Johnson is a citizen, and in front of the whole machine, she was no match".
On April 16, 2016, after three days of deliberation, the jury returned with their verdict, finding Johanne Johnson guilty of the murder of James Dubé.
But instead of first-degree murder like the Crown had charged her with, the jury instead convicted her of second-degree murder, rejecting the Crown's assertion that the murder had been premeditated.
Sentencing took place two days later on April 19, where the presiding judge handed down a sentence of life imprisonment with the possibility of parole after 11 years. Johanne was also slapped with a lifelong ban from owning any firearms and would be required to provide DNA samples for Canada's DNA database.
Johanne appealed her conviction to the Québec Court of Appeal, and they had a strong argument.
You see, one year after Johanne's arrest and two years before Johanne's conviction, Canada's Supreme Court ruled in R. v. Hart that the probative value of these Mr. Big stings was outweighed by their prejudicial nature and potential for false confessions, arguing that they should be given a much higher bar to be considered admissible evidence unless the accused gives an overwhelmingly reliable confession such as knowing details only the killer could.
According to the ruling, this would apply retroactively to all cases that mostly hinged on confessions obtained this way, and Johanne's attorney argued that the judge in the first trial had failed to instruct the jury on both this fact and the hearsay statement given by Johanne's daughter, leading them to take her confession at face value without much scrutiny of the process to obtain it.
On August 3, 2020, the three justices made their decision and agreed with the defence. On the grounds that the jury received inadequate instructions concerning unreliable evidence, they had Johanne's conviction overturned, released her from prison and ordered a second trial to be held.
Johanne's retrial began on March 17, 2021, and took much longer than her initial trial did, as various pre-trial motions were held to determine what evidence would be admissible.
In October 2021, 5 months after the trial began, it was finally ruled that Johanne's confession would not be accepted into evidence.
This effectively destroyed the Crown's case, as without that confession, the Crown didn't have much left to put forward and so lacked any additional evidence to support their arguments.
On December 12, 2021, the presiding judge returned with his verdict, finding Johanne not guilty based on a lack of evidence and reasonable doubt. Johanne burst into tears upon hearing the verdict; 8 years after her arrest, she got to leave court a free woman.
On January 21, 2022, her freedom became permanent when Quebec's Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions announced that they would not pursue a third trial.
With that decision, it meant that in a legal sense, the murder of James Dubé remains unsolved.
Sources (Should be in the comments)
Posted Jul 29, 2026, 1:03 PM UTC