The Theresa DeCourcy murder: Decades later, an arrest is made

From the archives of the Sault Ste. Marie Public Library:

In 1945, a teenager by the name of Theresa DeCourcy was found murdered near the Technical High School. However, despite the police’s best efforts in finding the perpetrator, they seemed to have hit a brick wall.

In November, less than a month after DeCourcy was killed, police said that “prospects [did] not look very good at the moment” for finding her killer.  And with the exception of some news stories – in 1946, a teenage girl was the victim of an attempted rape, during which the attacker took off her shoes, harkening back to Theresa DeCourcy’s body – the case dropped out of public attention.

However, it was far from forgotten.  Heading into the 1990s, it had the dubious honour of being the only murder case not solved by the Sault Ste. Marie Police – which was only underscored when a tip in 1991 led to yet another dead end.  That dead end, however, only made police more determined to solve the case.

In August of 1992, Sault Ste. Marie Police arrested Michael Leslie Hodgson, a frail man in his 70s who had been staying in hospital for over month, and charged him with second-degree murder.

He was accused of murdering Theresa DeCourcy 47 years earlier. Lawyers speculated that it may have been “the longest time span between the offence and an arrest in any murder case in North America.”

Hodgson had been a suspect as police attempted to solve the case in the 40s. Due to a lack of evidence, police had initially determined that he was not involved, and they never pressed charges.

Hodgson did spend time in Kingston Penitentiary in the 40s, however, when he was convicted for an attempted rape that happened just a week before DeCourcy was attacked. The cases had eerie parallels with each other, including that they both involved students at the Tech, and that they both took place near the school, in the field by the CPR tracks. Hodgson appealed the conviction successfully and only spent four months in prison.

Police in 1992 were sure that Hodgson had murdered DeCourcy. They found details that “proved to us beyond a shadow of a doubt he’s the person,” officers told the Sault Star.

Police visited Hodgson in the Plummer Hospital to interview him five times; the sixth time they visited, they arrested him. He had provided them with a written statement that referenced meeting Theresa DeCourcy by the railroad tracks and putting a rope around her neck.

The detectives involved with the case were elated, viewing it as the case of a lifetime. One was on the verge of retiring, and the other was moving out of detective work.

However, their excitement at solving the case would be short-lived. In early 1993, at Michael Hodgson’s preliminary hearing, the judge questioned whether his statement should be accepted as evidence. Specifically, the concern was that police had departed from normal procedure, misleading Hodgson in an attempt to gain his trust. They talked to him about the possibility of a pardon, promising that nothing would happen to him. Hodgson wasn’t told about the potential for a murder charge until after he gave his official statement.

Police said that they “didn’t want to spook him” and didn’t see another way to get the information they needed. The judge, however, said that Hodgson’s statement could not be admitted as evidence, stating that it was “grossly tainted.” He may have implicated himself in an official statement, but that statement held no legal weight.

Hodgson was discharged. He would not stand trial, and would pass away less than a year later. However, there was a bit more closure for the death of a young girl that had sent Sault Ste. Marie into a panic decades earlier.

Each week, the Sault Ste. Marie Public Library and its Archives provides SooToday readers with a glimpse of the city’s past.

Find out more of what the Public Library has to offer at www.ssmpl.ca and look for more Remember This? columns here