Death of Theresa Allore

Theresa Allore was a 19-year-old student at Champlain College Lennoxville in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. She lived in lodgings in Compton, roughly a fifteen-minute drive south of the campus. On November 3, 1978, she disappeared from the college. Her body was discovered five months later, on April 13, 1979, by a muskrat trapper in a small body of water approximately one kilometre from her dormitory residence in Compton. She was found wearing only her underwear, and her death was treated as suspicious.

The Allore family's grief was compounded by what is described as a laissez-faire attitude from officials at Champlain College and from the police investigating the disappearance and death. When Theresa first went missing, police reportedly suggested she was a runaway. After her body was found, investigators suggested she may have been the victim of a drug overdose, possibly involving fellow students.

In the summer of 2002, the Allore family enlisted investigative reporter Patricia Pearson, a family friend, who wrote a series of articles for the National Post presenting evidence that Theresa Allore was a victim of murder and that her death might be connected to other unsolved local cases. Since 2002, Theresa's brother John Allore has continued investigating the case, including through the podcast "Who Killed Theresa?" His work identified dozens of other unsolved murders and disappearances from 1971 to 1981 in the region that he suggests may be linked, including the deaths of Manon Dubé and Louise Camirand. Geographic profiler and then-FBI consultant Kim Rossmo reportedly supported the theory that a serial sexual predator may have been active in the Quebec region in the late 1970s and advised authorities to investigate the deaths collectively.

John Allore's advocacy contributed to the creation of a Sûreté du Québec cold case unit in 2004. Starting in 2018, he broadened his focus to other Quebec cases from the 1970s to the present, citing what he describes as systemic failures in the province's criminal justice system. On January 17, 2019, the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (Montreal police) announced the creation of its own cold case squad, which has been attributed largely to Allore's lobbying. In November 2018, John Allore received the Senate of Canada's Sesquicentennial Medal in recognition of his victims' advocacy work. A book by Allore and Pearson about the case, "Wish You Were Here," was published by Penguin Random House Canada in September 2020.

At the time covered by the account, Theresa Allore's death remained unsolved and no individual had been charged in connection with it.