Can You Help Me Solve This Crime?: A Widow's Scrapbook

By Lois K. Chicoine

Please read the first chapter of the book Life Is Not Fair to get a better understanding of my biography.
Before I grew up and met my husband, I had a typical childhood, with six brothers and four sisters, me being the middle child of eleven children. We lived on a forty acre farm in a small suburb north of Minneapolis, Minnesota. I did well in my elementary school, junior high and senior high school. After graduating from high school I was in a horrible deadly car accident, where four people died and I was disabled for almost a whole year. After that year I went to a community technical college taking the practical nursing course and did well also, I passed my State Boards first try. I was working as an LPN when I met Armand Chicoine, we dated on and off for about a year and a half when he proposed. After our marriage, life was perfect. The book then gives you most of the information regarding the time after our marriage up to and including the events regarding his murder. Since his death I have lived life waiting and hoping for something to come of this mystery. After seeing so many cold cases on TV and in Article in the Newspapers and/or books on this subject I thought I would write a book and hopefully get some help to solve my husbands Cold-Case Unsolved Murder. I started this book in 2002. Writing a book is not easy. I've had several Ghostwriters who wanted to write the story their way and not as it was. So they did not write this book. I hired three Ghostwriters who helped me to professionally put together this scrapbook. So the rest of the story starts here. Life Is Not Fair!

I hope you like this book and you can help me find answers to my questions: Who did it and Why? If you have any information regarding my husband Armand P. P. Chicoines murder please get back to me at my Email address: [e-mail].

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 16, 2009
• ISBN: 9781462805228

Book preview

Copyright © 2009 by Lois K. Chicoine.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner. Police reports and any other information maybe photocopied for enlargement purposes ONLY if information is used in investigation of this murder.

Disclaimer

This book is based on real events. The events, people, places, times, and descriptions used within this story are as accurate as possible, to the best of my knowledge, and do not reflect the views or opinions of anyone other than myself.

Lois K. Chicoine’s e-mail: [e-mail]

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

51886

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Picture on Cover: Photograph taken during autopsy showing mechanical wound (probably knife) to the ribs at right from the back.

DEDICATION

For Armand’s memory, this deserves answers to my questions.

For Mom, who was there when I needed her most.

For Maren, who is here for me now.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Ghostwriters: Joseph Laizure, Christine I. Traxler, Chad Chapman

Editor: Sally Morem

Mentor: Joseph Moses, PhD

Contents

LIFE IS NOT FAIR

THE SCENES OF THE CRIMES

INTRODUCTION

MORE INTRODUCTIONS

THE PERFECT RELATIONSHIP—THE START OF SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL

A NEW LIFE IN SAVANNAH

OUR HAPPY LIVES

THE LAST TIME WE SAW ARMAND

THE MIDNIGHT CALL

POLICE REPORTS

FEARFUL SCENARIOS

ARMAND’S WORK AT UNION CAMP CHEMICALS CORPORATION

LEGAL ADVICE AND PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS

PSYCHIC VISIONS

NEWSPAPER ARTICLES ON THE DISAPPEARANCE

DEALING WITH THE VOID OF LOSS: LEGAL FORMS AND LETTERS

MORE NEWSPAPER ARTICLES

PROBATE COURT DOCUMENTS

MORE LEGAL PAPERS AND LETTERS

PROBATE COURT HEARING

RESPONSES TO THE PROBATE COURT RULING

THE INSURANCE BATTLE

FROM DISCOVERY TO AUTOPSY

ACCEPTANCE EVER AFTER

AN IMPROBABLE SUSPECT

THE IMPACT OF DEATH

LIFE IS NOT FAIR

Life is not fair. The first person to make that statement should go down in history as the most honest person in the history of mankind. Some are not even given a chance at life; some like me, Lois Chicoine, have been blessed with two lives. I survived a deadly car accident, and then I met and married my true love and best friend. Then I lost him forever. I will tell you my story. The world deserves to hear it.

As an eighteen-year-old, less than a month after graduating from high school and a couple of months before beginning my training as a nurse, my friends and I took a weekend jaunt up to northern Minnesota for some swimming and fun in the sun. Shortly after we began the trip back home, we got into a horrible car accident. Four people died. Miraculously, to the doctors who treated me, I barely survived with a broken leg, fracture in twelve places, three skull fractures, and a number of facial cuts caused by flying glass shards from the passenger door window. Thus, my chance at a second life—a life that has gone on while questions about the disappearance and death of my wonderful husband, Armand, have gone unanswered to this day.

July 2, 2007, was the twenty-sixth year, since the day my husband, Armand, didn’t show up at home when we expected him. I never saw him again. Although many of my questions now have answers, my daughter, Maren, and I do not have the closure we so desperately seek. That is the sole reason for these words to appear in print.

I have since felt like a dam ready to burst with information and questions as I struggled to have my story heard. Twenty-six years is a long time. When I’m asked even a small question about my husband’s murder, I burst out with an answer in extreme detail and clarity. It is as if I had been waiting forever for someone to ask that question. The murder of the love of my life shocked so many people when it was reported. And to this day, the knowledge that he will never come home again burns in my mind as sharply as it has for more than a quarter of a century.

The disappearance of my best friend still leaves a few big questions for me and everyone else who knew anything about what happened. At the center of all questions is the big one: Who killed him and why? That question I will leave for you to answer for yourself. Perhaps you know. If so, after reading this book, perhaps you’ll tell me.

I have contacted at least six cold-case TV shows, a couple of murder mystery authors, and at least three talk show hosts to help me unravel this mystery. No one thought Armand was famous enough to produce anything dealing with his murder. So I wrote this book to ask anyone who may have noticed anything out of the ordinary, anything that may be related to the murder that day, to get in touch with me in order to help me find out what happened.

The case of my husband’s murder happened exactly two months to the day after the murder, also in Savannah, Georgia, described in the book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt. Armand, our daughter, Maren, and I were just beginning to feel at home in Savannah and were excited about our new life, when that new life was so cruelly destroyed.

My husband’s cause of death was a stab wound to the right back. There has been a confession from a known serial killer not accepted by the police as fact. I have been over all of the materials related to this murder and the confession literally thousands of times, and things do not add up. Maybe you can see things differently.

In this book, I hope to show in a clear and objective manner what the police, my private investigator, and my husband’s employers at Union Camp and their private investigator did and didn’t do.

I have included most of the documentation and other information I have collected over the years, I tracked down more detailed information after I began writing this book. This includes letters, newspaper articles, photographs and maps of the crime scenes, Airport-City and County Police reports, legal papers, and my own and my private investigator’s testimony in the probate court transcripts. Much of the information that I included may be unrelated to the murder, but it will help show the progression of the case over time.

I will not include a lot of comments, since I do not want to bias you in any way. I will give a fair and equitable reward to anyone who completely and satisfactorily solves this crime as judged by law enforcement officials I shall name at the time this case is considered solved conclusively.

Please! If you know anything, even something you may believe isn’t important, please let me know. If you tell me, you may be able to help me find the answers to the questions I’ve been asking for over a quarter of a century. My e-mail address is: [e-mail].

The Scenes of the Crimes

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THE SCENES OF THE CRIMES

Previous page: Photo of the canal and canal road leading to the possible murder scene and site where the body ID’d as Armand was found—Pipe Makers Canal and Pipe Makers Canal Road.

See the man standing two-tenths of a mile down this road in the photo? Now go right and walk eighty-one feet from the canal on your left. This is where the ninth John Doe of Savannah, Georgia, identified as Armand P. P. Chicoine, was found by a hunter on October 15, 1983.

This area is a little less than one mile from Savannah Municipal Airport where Armand’s car was found on fire at approximately 12:45 a.m. on July 3, 1981, in a restricted parking lot. So close and yet so far . . .

Why did it take over two years to find him? His remains apparently had lain in the same spot for at least that long. But, perhaps not. He may have been abducted first, and later killed and left there, after the initial investigations had been completed regarding his disappearance.

The remains laid just off a busy highway that ran right in front of the airport. Wasn’t there a noticeable smell around there for at least a few days after the murder? Wasn’t there an unusual number of birds flying around in this area? Wouldn’t that had captured the attention of nearby residents or passersby who could have called the police? What about other hunters during this time?

Did the police or anyone else actually search this particular area? I was told that the police did. How well had they searched? But was this search actually before the body was deposited at this site, or was the body there from then on that fateful night? Why hadn’t they used dogs and/or the military? Would these searches too have been worthless since the body may not have been deposited at this site until days after the abduction? There is a military base very close to the Savannah Municipal Airport. Why hadn’t they been utilized in this search? Yes, there were very few personnel at the base this holiday weekend. What about the many other weeks since Armand was a missing person for over two years? Did someone find something and not tell anyone? Did you live