Thomas Bernard Brigham
Encyclopedia
Thomas "Tommy" Bernard Clark Brigham (d. February 14, 1993) was an elderly American
war veteran
convicted of planting a bomb in Central Station in Montreal
, Canada
on September 3, 1984, killing three French
tourists and injuring 30–47 other people. He was widely believed to be protesting Pope John Paul II
's impending visit to Canada later that week, although he said that he had nothing against the Pope because was "going to be our ambassador against the Communists".
who had served as an Air Force navigator who flew 24 missions during the Second World War, and claimed his bomber was shot down over Germany on April 29, 1944, leaving him in a prisoner of war
camp with minor injuries.
His son Paul, a priest in St. Louis, later explained that his father became mentally disturbed but was not violent.
Brigham was committed to American mental institutions four times, having had delusions believing he was Jesus
. He was also under surveillance by the Secret Service
after it was determined that he was stalking
President Ronald Reagan
.
A divorced father of 11 children, Brigham lived in Ohio
and Boston
before moving to Montreal in April 1984, after spending a great amount of time in the city.
He was detained a year before the bombings by Constable Norman Veskels, who was suspicious to see him wandering the streets of Montreal in the middle of the night. He was released once it was determined he was not up to any trouble.
Brigham lived in the Princess Lodge rooming house four blocks from Central Station, and would spend his days drinking coffee and watching the trains pull into the station.
police were called by a man speaking in broken French and told them to "be careful, it's going to blow". Via clerk Marc Bellevile later testified that a subsequent search of the premises had been made, but turned up no evidence of suspicious material.
Three days before the bombing, Via Rail received an anonymous letter addressed to the "director" of "Cosmic Amtrak, Dorchester", warning of "the end of the Unholy Vatican", which warbled between disjointed French and English sentence fragments that spoke of impending violence. The back of the letter contained the names of Kathy Keefler, a local television journalist with the CBC
, Clark Davey the publisher of the Montreal Gazette and Kathy May, a reporter with the Ottawa Citizen
. The Mentor, Ohio
address of Brigham's daughter Kathy Brigham-Herten was also written in the note.
Two minutes before the bombing, Canadian National officers were alerted when a "young man with long blond hair who had been loitering in the station" ran across the station with his hands cupped over his ears "as if to shut out noise".
A pipebomb, consisting of gunpowder, dynamite and possibly gasoline, exploded in locker
#132 at 10:22 am, killing three. Thirty others were wounded, including Robert Georges Duponte who separated his shoulder.
Witnesses later testified that someone shouted "Le pape est mort!" ("The Pope is dead!") just before the explosions, although Brigham did not speak French
.
Ambulances arrived four minutes after the bomb exploded, and the first fatalities were confirmed at 10:45. Police initially reported the three deaths were of a man, woman and small girl; and speculated they may have been from the same family. The original assumption was that the bombing was related to an ongoing labour dispute amongst railway workers.
A telephone call to the station between 11:35 and 11:40 warned that a second bomb had been planted in the building, but police initially reported that no such device was found. A report released later that day said that a second device had been found in a locker near the one in which the first bomb was placed, and a third announcement at 4:45 pm again issued the story that no second bomb had been found.
Moments after the phone call, police arrested a man on Dorchester Boulevard who met the description of the one who had been seen prior to the bombing, but released him without charges. By noon, police knew of the letter that had been sent to Via, and had given a copy of the letter to reporters at the scene.
At 6:00 pm, the Île aux Tourtes Bridge
to Montreal Island was shut down following a bomb hoax.
At 6:45 pm, Brigham was wearing glasses and a tweed jacket and cap when he found Leger outside the station and began speaking to her for twenty minutes. He assured her that he had nothing to do with the explosion, although he believed the station's clock pointed to 10:17 at the time of the blast, which he felt was a significant time for the papacy and began discussing numerology
. He also told her that he had written threatening letters earlier, and felt premonitions something was going to happen in the station today. Leger excused herself from the conversation, and went inside the station to tell police, and a pair of homicide detectives took her to Montreal police station.
officers confronted Brigham the evening of the blast, accusing him of writing two threatening letters, the one sent to Amtrak, and another found in a local hotel room that included comments such as "Time Bomb Set For 10:30 Prox" and "Papacy ended with a bang Sept. 3". Brigham again acknowledged writing the letters, but continued to deny he had been involved with the bomb. He was brought into the Montreal police station, and at 11pm Leger identified him in a police lineup
and he was held as a material witness
, although he was not charged with any crime.
The day after the bombing, the Montreal bomb squad was called to Central Station after an anonymous bomb threat. Police found a styrofoam cooler and detonated it in a controlled explosion
, but it simply contained food. They held and questioned a man in relation to the hoax, but let him go.
Another man was detained by CN
officers the day after the explosion because he was wearing a Fatima
sweatshirt, raising alarm as the word had been prominently used in Brigham's threatening letters.
Two days after the bombing, police announced that Brigham had been "ruled out", stating that "He didn't plant the bomb...we know that. We've checked it out." Police announced they were instead looking for "a bearded man in his late 20s or early 30s" who was seen immediately before the blast and believed to have befriended Brigham. They suggested that somebody who knew Brigham had written threatening letters may have taken the opportunity to plant a bomb themselves. They also announced that fingerprinting had failed to identify the three corpses, but their passports indicated they were tourists from Paris
, university students 25-year old Marcelle Leblond and 24-year old Michel Dubois, as well as 24-year old artist Eric Nicolas. A fourth tourist who was travelling with the group, Joel Mary, was in stable condition at Royal Victoria Hospital.
Police announced they were going to release Brigham on September 12, ostensibly to wait for Coroner Maurice Lanielle to finish his inquest to determine the cause of death of the three French tourist, although acknowledged to be an attempt to keep him in custody until the day the Pope ended his visit.
In November 1984, fellow prisoner Raymond Kircoff, a drug addict serving time for theft of a VCR, allegedly had discussions with Brigham about bomb construction while the two were being driven to court together from the detention
facility. He subsequently stated that it was so simple "a 12-year old could do it", but during closing statements at Brigham's trial it was argued that the design of a bomb that Kirkcoff claimed Brigham had shown him was completely unlike the bomb used in the station. At his arraignment, Brigham pulled down his pants and stated that he was "not the bomb squad but the truth squad", and that there could be as many as 30 other bombings in the city, focusing on its strip club
s, and suggesting that "Montreal is going to be the sacrifice to the second coming".
In January 1985, the prosecution requested a hearing by sessions judge Claude Joncas into Brigham's mental competence to see if he was fit to stand trial, a move that was resisted by the defence who felt it unfairly villainized Brigham.
During the trial at the Quebec Superior Court
, prosecutor Claude Parent called twenty witnesses, while attorney Pierre Poupart called nine including Brigham's ex-wife. During the course of the trial, the key to the locker was lost at the crime laboratory before it could be tested for fingerprints.
On April 19, the court took a bus to the station accompanied by Brigham, who quoted that it was "nice to be a star", referring to the rampant media attention later dismissed by overseeing judge Kenneth Mackay.
Summation
s wrapped up on May 1, 1985, and a jury of six men and six women deliberated for nine hours on May 3 before retiring for the night, and then eight more hours the following day before returning a verdict of guilty on all three counts of first degree murder. In a statement after the verdict, Brigham spoke for 30 minutes referring to "cosmic forces" and stating that Our Lady of Fatima
was due to appear in Montreal, and asking "If I were a bomber, would I have gone back to help people?"
Brigham was sentenced to life imprisonment
at the Pinel Institute for the Criminally Insane with no parole for 25 years. In May 1985, shortly after his sentencing, it was announced that immigration officials were obtaining a deportation
order that would be served in 2009 upon his release from prison.
A successful appeal in 1989 led to a new trial in front of Justice Charles Phelan after it was determined that Justice Kenneth MacKay had made four errors in his handling of the case. The verdict and sentencing of the second trial were identical, but led to another successful appeal request by attorney Jay Rumanek, arguing that an earlier defence attorney, Michael Kastner, had committed errors after learning Brigham could not testify to the jury.
Brigham died of a heart attack in 1993, at the age of 73, only days after determining with his attorney. His death between trials would mean that he would be presumed innocent
.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
war veteran
War Veteran
War Veteran is a science fiction short story by Philip K. Dick. It was first published in If magazine in March 1955.-Plot summary:The plot concerns an old man who claims to have travelled back in time from a future in which Earth has lost a devastating war to its own Martian and Venusian colonies...
convicted of planting a bomb in Central Station in Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
on September 3, 1984, killing three French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
tourists and injuring 30–47 other people. He was widely believed to be protesting Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II
Blessed Pope John Paul II , born Karol Józef Wojtyła , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church and Sovereign of Vatican City from 16 October 1978 until his death on 2 April 2005, at of age. His was the second-longest documented pontificate, which lasted ; only Pope Pius IX ...
's impending visit to Canada later that week, although he said that he had nothing against the Pope because was "going to be our ambassador against the Communists".
Life
A native of Rochester, New YorkRochester, New York
Rochester is a city in Monroe County, New York, south of Lake Ontario in the United States. Known as The World's Image Centre, it was also once known as The Flour City, and more recently as The Flower City...
who had served as an Air Force navigator who flew 24 missions during the Second World War, and claimed his bomber was shot down over Germany on April 29, 1944, leaving him in a prisoner of war
Prisoner of war
A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...
camp with minor injuries.
His son Paul, a priest in St. Louis, later explained that his father became mentally disturbed but was not violent.
Brigham was committed to American mental institutions four times, having had delusions believing he was Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
. He was also under surveillance by the Secret Service
United States Secret Service
The United States Secret Service is a United States federal law enforcement agency that is part of the United States Department of Homeland Security. The sworn members are divided among the Special Agents and the Uniformed Division. Until March 1, 2003, the Service was part of the United States...
after it was determined that he was stalking
Stalking
Stalking is a term commonly used to refer to unwanted and obsessive attention by an individual or group to another person. Stalking behaviors are related to harassment and intimidation and may include following the victim in person and/or monitoring them via the internet...
President Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
.
A divorced father of 11 children, Brigham lived in Ohio
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...
and Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
before moving to Montreal in April 1984, after spending a great amount of time in the city.
He was detained a year before the bombings by Constable Norman Veskels, who was suspicious to see him wandering the streets of Montreal in the middle of the night. He was released once it was determined he was not up to any trouble.
Brigham lived in the Princess Lodge rooming house four blocks from Central Station, and would spend his days drinking coffee and watching the trains pull into the station.
The bombing
A week before the bombing, Via RailVIA Rail
Via Rail Canada is an independent crown corporation offering intercity passenger rail services in Canada. It is headquartered near Montreal Central Station at 3 Place Ville-Marie in Montreal, Quebec....
police were called by a man speaking in broken French and told them to "be careful, it's going to blow". Via clerk Marc Bellevile later testified that a subsequent search of the premises had been made, but turned up no evidence of suspicious material.
Three days before the bombing, Via Rail received an anonymous letter addressed to the "director" of "Cosmic Amtrak, Dorchester", warning of "the end of the Unholy Vatican", which warbled between disjointed French and English sentence fragments that spoke of impending violence. The back of the letter contained the names of Kathy Keefler, a local television journalist with the CBC
CBC Television
CBC Television is a Canadian television network owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national public broadcaster.Although the CBC is supported by public funding, the television network supplements this funding with commercial advertising revenue, in contrast to CBC Radio which are...
, Clark Davey the publisher of the Montreal Gazette and Kathy May, a reporter with the Ottawa Citizen
Ottawa Citizen
The Ottawa Citizen is an English-language daily newspaper owned by Postmedia Network in Ottawa, Canada. According to the Canadian Newspaper Association, the paper had a 2008 weekly circulation of 900,197.- History :...
. The Mentor, Ohio
Mentor, Ohio
As of the census of 2000, there were 50,278 people, 18,797 households, and 14,229 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,878.2 people per square mile . There were 19,301 housing units at an average density of 721.0 per square mile...
address of Brigham's daughter Kathy Brigham-Herten was also written in the note.
Two minutes before the bombing, Canadian National officers were alerted when a "young man with long blond hair who had been loitering in the station" ran across the station with his hands cupped over his ears "as if to shut out noise".
A pipebomb, consisting of gunpowder, dynamite and possibly gasoline, exploded in locker
Locker
Locker may refer to:* Locker , various kinds of storage compartment or container* Footlocker , a storage box* In nautical usage, a "locker" may be a storage place that in other environments would not be referred to as a locker, such as cupboards on board ships for keeping stores, anchor lockers,...
#132 at 10:22 am, killing three. Thirty others were wounded, including Robert Georges Duponte who separated his shoulder.
Witnesses later testified that someone shouted "Le pape est mort!" ("The Pope is dead!") just before the explosions, although Brigham did not speak French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
.
Ambulances arrived four minutes after the bomb exploded, and the first fatalities were confirmed at 10:45. Police initially reported the three deaths were of a man, woman and small girl; and speculated they may have been from the same family. The original assumption was that the bombing was related to an ongoing labour dispute amongst railway workers.
A telephone call to the station between 11:35 and 11:40 warned that a second bomb had been planted in the building, but police initially reported that no such device was found. A report released later that day said that a second device had been found in a locker near the one in which the first bomb was placed, and a third announcement at 4:45 pm again issued the story that no second bomb had been found.
Moments after the phone call, police arrested a man on Dorchester Boulevard who met the description of the one who had been seen prior to the bombing, but released him without charges. By noon, police knew of the letter that had been sent to Via, and had given a copy of the letter to reporters at the scene.
At 6:00 pm, the Île aux Tourtes Bridge
Île aux Tourtes Bridge
The Île aux Tourtes Bridge is a bridge on the western tip of the Island of Montreal, spanning the Lake of Two Mountains between Senneville, and Vaudreuil-Dorion, Quebec, Canada. It carries 6 lanes of Autoroute 40 and is the main link between Montreal and the province of Ontario...
to Montreal Island was shut down following a bomb hoax.
At 6:45 pm, Brigham was wearing glasses and a tweed jacket and cap when he found Leger outside the station and began speaking to her for twenty minutes. He assured her that he had nothing to do with the explosion, although he believed the station's clock pointed to 10:17 at the time of the blast, which he felt was a significant time for the papacy and began discussing numerology
Numerology
Numerology is any study of the purported mystical relationship between a count or measurement and life. It has many systems and traditions and beliefs...
. He also told her that he had written threatening letters earlier, and felt premonitions something was going to happen in the station today. Leger excused herself from the conversation, and went inside the station to tell police, and a pair of homicide detectives took her to Montreal police station.
After the bombing
Sûreté du QuébecSûreté du Québec
Sûreté du Québec or SQ is the provincial police force for the Canadian province of Québec...
officers confronted Brigham the evening of the blast, accusing him of writing two threatening letters, the one sent to Amtrak, and another found in a local hotel room that included comments such as "Time Bomb Set For 10:30 Prox" and "Papacy ended with a bang Sept. 3". Brigham again acknowledged writing the letters, but continued to deny he had been involved with the bomb. He was brought into the Montreal police station, and at 11pm Leger identified him in a police lineup
Police lineup
A police lineup or identity parade is a process by which a crime victim or witness's putative identification of a suspect is confirmed to a level that can count as evidence at trial....
and he was held as a material witness
Material witness
A material witness is a person with information alleged to be material concerning a criminal proceeding. The authority to detain material witnesses dates to the First Judiciary Act of 1789, but the Bail Reform Act of 1984 most recently amended the text of the statute, and it is now codified at...
, although he was not charged with any crime.
The day after the bombing, the Montreal bomb squad was called to Central Station after an anonymous bomb threat. Police found a styrofoam cooler and detonated it in a controlled explosion
Controlled explosion
A controlled explosion is a method for detonating or disabling a suspected explosive device.Methods which are used to set off a controlled explosion include emptying out the area and moving the package into a confined space such as a telephone booth.Another classic method of controlled explosion...
, but it simply contained food. They held and questioned a man in relation to the hoax, but let him go.
Another man was detained by CN
Canadian National Railway
The Canadian National Railway Company is a Canadian Class I railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec. CN's slogan is "North America's Railroad"....
officers the day after the explosion because he was wearing a Fatima
Fatima
-People:* Fatima , a female given name of Arabic origin* Fatima bint Muhammad, daughter of the Islamic prophet, Muhammad* Fatima Jinnah, the younger sister of Muhammad Ali Jinnah...
sweatshirt, raising alarm as the word had been prominently used in Brigham's threatening letters.
Two days after the bombing, police announced that Brigham had been "ruled out", stating that "He didn't plant the bomb...we know that. We've checked it out." Police announced they were instead looking for "a bearded man in his late 20s or early 30s" who was seen immediately before the blast and believed to have befriended Brigham. They suggested that somebody who knew Brigham had written threatening letters may have taken the opportunity to plant a bomb themselves. They also announced that fingerprinting had failed to identify the three corpses, but their passports indicated they were tourists from Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, university students 25-year old Marcelle Leblond and 24-year old Michel Dubois, as well as 24-year old artist Eric Nicolas. A fourth tourist who was travelling with the group, Joel Mary, was in stable condition at Royal Victoria Hospital.
Police announced they were going to release Brigham on September 12, ostensibly to wait for Coroner Maurice Lanielle to finish his inquest to determine the cause of death of the three French tourist, although acknowledged to be an attempt to keep him in custody until the day the Pope ended his visit.
In November 1984, fellow prisoner Raymond Kircoff, a drug addict serving time for theft of a VCR, allegedly had discussions with Brigham about bomb construction while the two were being driven to court together from the detention
Detention (imprisonment)
Detention is the process when a state, government or citizen lawfully holds a person by removing their freedom of liberty at that time. This can be due to criminal charges being raised against the individual as part of a prosecution or to protect a person or property...
facility. He subsequently stated that it was so simple "a 12-year old could do it", but during closing statements at Brigham's trial it was argued that the design of a bomb that Kirkcoff claimed Brigham had shown him was completely unlike the bomb used in the station. At his arraignment, Brigham pulled down his pants and stated that he was "not the bomb squad but the truth squad", and that there could be as many as 30 other bombings in the city, focusing on its strip club
Strip club
A strip club is an adult entertainment venue in which striptease or other erotic or exotic dance is regularly performed. Strip clubs typically adopt a nightclub or bar style, but can also adopt a theatre or cabaret-style....
s, and suggesting that "Montreal is going to be the sacrifice to the second coming".
In January 1985, the prosecution requested a hearing by sessions judge Claude Joncas into Brigham's mental competence to see if he was fit to stand trial, a move that was resisted by the defence who felt it unfairly villainized Brigham.
During the trial at the Quebec Superior Court
Quebec Superior Court
Quebec Superior Court is the highest trial Court in the Province of Quebec, Canada. It consists of 144 judges who are appointed by the federal government.Chief Justices : [partial listing]* Edward Bowen...
, prosecutor Claude Parent called twenty witnesses, while attorney Pierre Poupart called nine including Brigham's ex-wife. During the course of the trial, the key to the locker was lost at the crime laboratory before it could be tested for fingerprints.
On April 19, the court took a bus to the station accompanied by Brigham, who quoted that it was "nice to be a star", referring to the rampant media attention later dismissed by overseeing judge Kenneth Mackay.
Summation
Summation
Summation is the operation of adding a sequence of numbers; the result is their sum or total. If numbers are added sequentially from left to right, any intermediate result is a partial sum, prefix sum, or running total of the summation. The numbers to be summed may be integers, rational numbers,...
s wrapped up on May 1, 1985, and a jury of six men and six women deliberated for nine hours on May 3 before retiring for the night, and then eight more hours the following day before returning a verdict of guilty on all three counts of first degree murder. In a statement after the verdict, Brigham spoke for 30 minutes referring to "cosmic forces" and stating that Our Lady of Fatima
Our Lady of Fatima
Our Lady of Fátima is a famous title given to the Blessed Virgin Mary as she appeared in apparitions reported by three shepherd children at Fátima in Portugal. These occurred on the 13th day of six consecutive months in 1917, starting on May 13...
was due to appear in Montreal, and asking "If I were a bomber, would I have gone back to help people?"
Brigham was sentenced to life imprisonment
Life imprisonment
Life imprisonment is a sentence of imprisonment for a serious crime under which the convicted person is to remain in jail for the rest of his or her life...
at the Pinel Institute for the Criminally Insane with no parole for 25 years. In May 1985, shortly after his sentencing, it was announced that immigration officials were obtaining a deportation
Deportation
Deportation means the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. Today it often refers to the expulsion of foreign nationals whereas the expulsion of nationals is called banishment, exile, or penal transportation...
order that would be served in 2009 upon his release from prison.
A successful appeal in 1989 led to a new trial in front of Justice Charles Phelan after it was determined that Justice Kenneth MacKay had made four errors in his handling of the case. The verdict and sentencing of the second trial were identical, but led to another successful appeal request by attorney Jay Rumanek, arguing that an earlier defence attorney, Michael Kastner, had committed errors after learning Brigham could not testify to the jury.
Brigham died of a heart attack in 1993, at the age of 73, only days after determining with his attorney. His death between trials would mean that he would be presumed innocent
Presumption of innocence
The presumption of innocence, sometimes referred to by the Latin expression Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat, is the principle that one is considered innocent until proven guilty. Application of this principle is a legal right of the accused in a criminal trial, recognised in many...
.