Bio

Thomas Bernard Clark Brigham was born on September 3, 1919, in Rochester, New York. He was an American by birth.

He served in the Army Air Forces during the Second World War as a navigator. He flew 24 missions. Brigham said his bomber was shot down over Germany on April 29, 1944, and that he was held in a prisoner of war camp with minor injuries.

He was a divorced father of eleven children. One of his sons, Paul, became a priest in St. Louis. Paul later said his father had become mentally disturbed but was not violent.

Brigham was committed to American mental institutions four times. Records and reports say he had delusions in which he believed he was Jesus. He was also placed under surveillance by the United States Secret Service after concerns that he had been stalking President Ronald Reagan.

He lived in Ohio and Boston at different times. After spending a great amount of time in Montreal, he moved there in April 1984.

In Montreal, Brigham lived in the Princess Lodge rooming house. The lodge was about four blocks from Central Station. He spent his days drinking coffee and watching the trains. A year before authorities later took a closer interest in him, a constable detained him for wandering the streets at night and released him after determining he was not causing trouble.

Murder Story

On September 3, 1984, a bomb exploded in Montreal Central Station. The device went off at 10:22 a.m. in locker #132. Three French tourists were killed. Between 30 and 47 other people were injured.

A week before the blast, a man had called Via Rail and warned, "be careful, it's going to blow." Three days before, an anonymous letter arrived warning of "the end of the Unholy Vatican." The back of that letter listed several journalists and included the Mentor, Ohio address of Brigham's daughter.

Two minutes before the explosion, officers saw a young man with long blond hair run across the station with his hands over his ears. Witnesses later said someone shouted, "Le pape est mort!" just before the blast.

Thomas Bernard Clark Brigham was questioned the evening of the blast. Police accused him of writing two threatening letters. He said he wrote the letters but denied planting the bomb. A journalist, Kathryn Leger, spoke with him outside the station and later identified him in a police lineup. He was held as a material witness.

Police found a note in a hotel room that mentioned a "Time Bomb Set For 10:30 Prox" and other phrases about the papacy. Two days after the bombing, police said Brigham had been "ruled out" and they were looking for another suspect seen near the station. The three dead were later identified from their passports as Marcelle Leblond, Michel Dubois, and Eric Nicolas. A fourth member of the group, Joel Mary, was hospitalized.

At trial, the prosecution called twenty witnesses and the defence called nine. The key to the locker was lost at the crime laboratory before it could be tested for fingerprints. On May 3, 1985, a jury found Brigham guilty on three counts of first degree murder. He was sentenced to life at the Pinel Institute for the Criminally Insane with no parole for 25 years. Immigration officials said a deportation order would be served after any release.

An appeal in 1989 led to a new trial. That trial produced the same verdict and sentence. A further appeal argued earlier defence errors and led to more court action. Brigham died of a heart attack in 1993 while legal proceedings were still underway.