Disappearance Of Jacques Chaput

The Disappearance:

 

October 15, 1977. Cap-de-la-Madeleine, Mauricie area, Québec, Canada. 17-year-old Jacques Chaput had just argued with his mother. He responded to the problem like a lot of teenagers would: he stormed out of the house.

 

When Jacques didn't come home that night, his mother began to worry. She started calling around, seeing if Jacques might be with someone.

Among those she called was her older daughter Louise, who was staying over at a friend's house. Louise, upon speaking to her mother, wasn't worried yet. She figured Jacques had just gone somewhere and forgotten to call home, and that he'd come back later.

 

But Jacques hadn't come home by the next morning or the one after that. Days passed without any sign -- except for a letter the Chaput's found, which Jacques had written and left for them. In the letter, Jacques reportedly declared that he had the intention to go live in Ontario.

 

That was the last known trace of Jacques Chaput. He has never been seen or heard from again.

 

Jacques was born on September 21 (some sources say September 26), 1960. He stood 178 cm, or 5'10, and he had a slender build, weighing 59 kg (130 lbs). He had brown eyes and long, brown hair; his complexion was described as fair.

 

The Chaput family were Francophones. They lived in Cap-de-la-Madeleine, then a city in southern Québec. Cap-de-la-Madeleine, along with several surrounding towns, has since been consumed into a neighboring city, Trois-Rivières. Jacques was one of several siblings, and he was very close to his sister Louise.

 

When Jacques left the house that day, he was wearing a dark green T-shirt, blue jeans, size 10 sneakers, and a diver's watch. His right wrist either was fractured at the time of his disappearance or had been earlier.

 

The Investigation:

Given that it seemed that Jacques had left voluntarily, his family wasn't sure what action they should take. At first, they were hopeful he'd decide to return on his own, or at least to contact them. For some time, they didn't officially report him missing, despite their worries.

 

That didn't mean they didn't try to look for him on their own -- but they didn't have much success with their searches. The Chaput's took "numerous steps" to find Jacques. Among other things, they inquired with everyone they knew if they had seen the boy, or if they knew where he might have gone. But nobody had any idea where Jacques could be -- even his closest friends were bewildered.

 

The only logical clue to Jacques' location was the letter he left for his family, saying he wished to reside in Ontario. There aren't too many details on the contents of this letter, and it leads to other questions: how was Jacques planning to get to Ontario? He left home on foot -- was he planning to hitchhike? In the letter, did he give a more specific location? At its closest, the Ontario border was about 250 kilometers away from Cap-de-la-Madeleine. What was his plan once he got there? Did he know anyone in the area? All unclear.

 

Weeks turned to months which passed without a sign, despite the family's efforts. The Chaputs' anxiety grew. If Jacques had run away, where was he? If he had made it to Ontario, he'd never sent word. And then there was the frightening, unspoken question: could something have happened to him? Finally, six months after Jacques disappeared, his family went to the police.

 

(Note: The RCMP website says that Jacques wasn't officially declared missing until 2013, while Louise Chaput's account says it was 6 months after Jacques vanished. It's fogged what the source of this contradiction is -- one article mentions Jacques' case was closed and that the Missing Children's Network reopened it much later, so perhaps this is what this was referring to.)

 

Louise told the Missing Children's Network in 2016 that waiting so long to report Jacques missing was "one of her hugest regrets". She wonders if things might have turned out oppositely had all the stops been pulled out right after her brother vanished.

 

But it was a different time. In the '70s, when a teenager had run away, people often didn't think to go to the police, at least not right away. You waited for them to come home -- and usually, they did come home, within a few weeks or months. But Jacques didn't.

 

It's not declared if Jacques had ever talked about or effort to leave home before, or what he took when he left -- if it would have been enough for him to at least attempt to live on his own. The majority of missing teenagers are runaways rather than victims of kidnapping, but these youth are also at risk -- very the longer they are missing. Unfortunately, the dangers of life for runaway minors weren't as well-known at the time Jacques vanished.

 

A missing person's report was taken down in 1978 when the Chaput family went to the police, though the conflicting information makes it unclear. Certain details on what steps police at the time might have taken in their search aren't available.

 

But apparently, little progress was made in locating Jacques even after law enforcement became involved -- half a year had already passed, and the trail was cold. Finally, the case was closed without any resolution.

 

In the years after Jacques' disappearance, attitudes about missing children began to change -- especially after many high-profile abducting cases influenced public opinion. In late 1984, such a tragedy struck one Montréal family: a 4-year-old boy named Maurice Viens was kidnaped and killed. It was in his honor that the Montréal non-profit Missing Children's Network, or Réseau Enfants-Retour, was founded the following year. The Network was the first of its kind in Québec.

 

Still, it wouldn't be for many decades that the Missing Children's Network took on the still-unsolved case of Jacques Chaput. The Network, according to Louise Chaput, was a massive source of support for her family -- providing the guidance and assistance which simply hadn't been available to them at the time of Jacques' disappearance.

 

Not only did the Network launch their inquiry into Jacques' case, but through their work, law enforcement reopened their inquiry as well. In 2014, the Ontario Provincial Police created an age-progression sketch of Jacques, showing what he might look like at the age of 54.

 

Unfortunately, despite their efforts over the last few years, neither the Missing Children's Network nor the police has been able to solve Jacques' disappearance. The case remains open; anyone with information is asked to contact the Trois-Rivières Police Department, the Missing Children's Network, Crime Stoppers Canada, or the National Centre for Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains.

 

Conclusion and Discussion:

 

To this day, Jacques Chaput remains missing. If he is alive, he will turn 61 this year. The most up-to-date age progression is the one linked above, which now dates back seven years.

 

Louise Chaput considers Jacques' disappearance to be one of the most difficult things she ever went through. After her brother disappeared, she was plagued by "isolation, anger, and guilt", and though she says that the feelings are less intense today than they were back then, "the guilt and blame are ever-present". She can't help but wonder if things would have gone differently if she had been home that night: would Jacques have never left? Would he have been safe? Of course, there's no way of knowing.

 

In 2016, Louise told the Missing Children's Network that if her brother is out there, she has two things she wants to tell him: that she loves him, and that he "will always be an integral part of her life".

 

Meanwhile, law enforcement and the Missing Children's Network continue to seek answers about what occurred to Jacques. The latter organization promises that none of the cases they work, including Jacques', will be closed until they have been solved: "Until a missing child is recovered, a case remains active."

 

Jacques' case has received relatively little press, and there is not a lot of data available online about it. The circumstances of his case do suggest that it is not unusual that he is alive and voluntarily missing.

That being said, 44 years is a long time. Unlike most runaways, Jacques never contacted any of his friends or family again after leaving -- the possibility that he could have met with foul play after leaving home is, unfortunately, very real. For a while, there was even online belief that Jacques might have been one of the two Sumter County Does, along- unknown young couple found slain in the mid-'70s in South Carolina, due to a lead indicating that the male Doe was a French-Canadian runaway named 'Jacques'. However, that theory was put to rest when the two were finally identified earlier this year as James Paul Freund, 29, and Pamela Mae Buckley, 24 (as it turns out, neither were Canadian).

 

(Note: James Freund and Pamela Buckley were found killed in August 1976, more than a year before Jacques Chaput disappeared; the speculation that 'John Doe' might be Jacques was based on information on the RCMP website saying Jacques wasn't formally declared missing until 2013, which led some to wonder if the date of the last contact was misremembered).

 

In any case, with such little information and such a long time elapsed, it's hard to make any definitive conclusions about what could have transpired to Jacques. I hope that posting about his case will raise awareness if nothing else.

 

With the few clues that exist, there's a lot of questions: What occurred to Jacques Chaput after he left home that October day in 1977? Where has he been for the last 44 years? What about the letter -- did Jacques attempt to go to Ontario? If so, did he make it? Was foul play involved in his disappearance? The answers to these questions may be unknown -- but I hope that one day, those who cared for Jacques will have them.