Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Murder in Old Chippewa Falls - Part Five, Was Justice Served?

If you are coming to this story late, here's the tale of Murder in Old Chippewa Falls from the start:

Part One - The Wrong Corpse

Part Two - The Suspect

Part Three - Arrest

Part Four - Escape and Recapture

Felix Fourboul Junior was convicted of second degree manslaughter and sentenced to seven years in the State Penitentiary.  He was released after four.  

It seems a light punishment for patricide, and the matter of escaping from jail seems to have just been ignored.  Some newspaper accounts actually sounded a bit admiring!  From time to time there were reports on his life in prison, as in this short bit from 1915.


I'm not sure why the lesser charge was pursued instead of say, murder.  Perhaps the account of a fight between father and son, along with the injuries Felix came away with, gave doubt as to premeditation and motive.  And who knows, perhaps Felix Senior was not as nice a guy as he was portrayed.  In a small town people know such things.

As to the other characters in our little tale....

Mrs. Fourboul vanishes from view.  From an off hand remark by her step son it sounds as if she was from Canada.  With poor health and no remaining ties to Chippewa Falls I suspect she went back there.

As mentioned earlier Orrin Fuller, the apparent brains behind the jail break, was also never heard from again.  He must have been a resourceful fellow.  His would be a story well worth the knowing and the telling.

Mrs. Alice Bertrand also gets no further mention in the local papers.  Bertrand is a common enough name in this town, so perhaps the various other Mrs. Bertrands were just being precise when they always listed their first initial.  Or, given the allegations, perhaps they wanted it known that they were certainly not THAT Mrs. Bertrand.  There is an Alice Bertrand, nee Germain, buried in Chippewa Falls.  She lived from 1877 - 1971.  This would make her 28 at the time of these events, so the servant girl might have been onto something with her suspicions.  

So what ever became of Felix Fourboul Junior?  I wish I could tell you.  I find no burial record in either the US or Canada.  Newspaper archives are always hit and miss, but essentially I find no mention of a Felix Fourboul anywhere in North America following the events of this story.  Its an unusual enough name that changing it to something simpler, and ditching connection to a sordid past, would only be sensible.  Essentially Felix did his time, then appeared at the offices of the Chippewa Independent on October 20, 1915.  He paid the bill for the paper he had been receiving while imprisoned, walked out the door and vanished to history.  As it happens, his is only the second most remarkable escape from the Chippewa Falls Jail, but that's a story for another day.

And Felix Senior?  He also makes a final appearance in 1915.  After a fashion.  In an article describing the need for a new courthouse much is made of the crowded and dilapidated state of things.  I don't know what to add to this quote:


Presumably his mortal remains were eventually interred in a pauper's grave.  Perhaps his final resting place is under one of the small, unmarked stones in the cemetery associated with the County Poor Farm.



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