====== Seguin, Henri Joseph ====== (died 18 Jan. 1954, aged 29; age also given as about 35), criminal. (Henri Seguin, Henry Seguin). Cornwall native. He was convicted in a trial at Cornwall of the murder on 16 Aug. 1952 of Maxville businessman and taxi driver Leonard Hurd, who was found shot dead in his car a mile south of Maxville. After the death of Hurd, Seguin fled to the West, but he was arrested in British Columbia while he was robbing a bank. Seguin was sentenced to be hanged on 19 January 1954, but a few hours before the execution he poisoned himself in the jail cell at Cornwall, where the execution was to take place. Like some members of the Nazi leadership not many years before, and perhaps therefore in imitation of them, he had used a concealed capsule of cyanide. The Hurd murder and the Seguin trial and death made up one of the most sensational crime stories in Glengarry history. During a period not too long before the Hurd murder, Seguin appears to have lived east of Dunvegan. Clarence Ostrom tells the Seguin story in some of the most vivid pages of his unpublished history and describes how he was one of the first people to learn about the Seguin suicide and how he quickly informed the Ottawa //Citizen// as well as an Ottawa radio station. Seguin was also suspected to have been involved in the murder of a couple by the name of Labrie whose remains were found in British Columbia. ---- //Glengarry News// 22 Aug. 1952 (murder), 26 Dec. 1952 & 2 Jan. 1953 (Seguin captured in B.C.), 23 April 1953 (Seguin returned east), 20 Aug. 1953 (preliminary hearing at Alexandria), 29 Oct. 1953 (sentence), 21 Jan. 1954 (Seguin suicide), 22 Sept. 1955 (Labrie deaths) * Ostrom 314-316 * Marin 454-457 * Marcel Quenneville, “Media Flocked to Historic Trials,” Hometown section of //Standard Freeholder// 11 Nov. 1995 * escapes from Cornwall jail, is recaptured, sentenced for jail-breaking, //SFH// 19 & 20 May, 24 June, 13 July 1943; escapes from Ontario Reformatory, is recaptured, //SFH// 26 & 28 Aug. & 14 Oct. 1944; sought on robbery with violence charge, sentenced to three years in Kingston Penitentiary, //SFH// 23 May & 25 June 1947 * //The Manor Chatter// Sept. 2007: a retelling of the murder story based on //Official Detective Stories// Dec. 1957 [<6>]