BEHIND THE CRIMES: Dad launches Project Angel to remember loved ones including his own children

Imagine for a moment, coming home late one evening and expecting your children to be waiting for you. You enter the darkened house and they are nowhere to be found. They were at a friend’s house earlier that day. Were they late? Or were they just playing games? As any parent would be, you’re annoyed and maybe even a little angry that your kids would do this.

Don’t they know how emotional, how terrifying it is for a parent to come home and their children not there?

For Marcel and Jeannine Babineau, in the fall of 1984, it turned out it wasn’t a game at all. They had returned home from an evening hockey game, they discovered their two middle children, 11-year-old Daniel and Monique, nine, weren’t home. In fact, they were nowhere to be found.

“We looked around the house for them, checked with the neighbours, and nobody had seen them,” said Marcel.

“They found them both that night, behind the two portables at the school, strangled.”

Ray Holden, chief of the Orangeville Police Service at the time, delivered the news to the family after Daniel and Monique had been identified.

Marcel said the first feeling the news left them with was being lost.

“It was a shock,” he said. “First to realize that this was real, that it really happened, then to the siblings left behind. Our oldest was 13, and the youngest had just turned eight.”

The murders of the Babineau children sent ripples of fear throughout the community.

“Everyone was afraid,” recalled Holden. “Everyone thought it was going to be someone from out of town – no one in town could do that. Mothers were walking their children to school, even from three to four houses away, afraid of them being abducted.”

In a short period of time, with its population of less than 20,000 people, the word Orangeville was in headlines across Canada.

Part of what led the case to receive so much attention was due to an expert witnesses, a psychiatrist named Thomas Radecki, who blamed the act on the game Dungeons and Dragons. During the 1980s and early ’90s, the popular role-playing game generated much controversy, and was claimed to be behind a number of deaths.

As Orangeville Police worked with OPP investigators to sort through more than 600 interviews, suspicion began to arise around a local ninth grader.

In the days that followed the murders, the teen would pass the police station on his way to and from school.

“He’d pass by, and was always looking in, really interested in what was taking place as far as the investigation was concerned,” said Holden.

A week later, they had a signed confession.

“If affected all of our staff because it was two children that were murdered, and as it turned out, it was a youngster who committed the murder,” said Holden.

The case and trial marked the first time the Young Offenders Act would be used since being passed in April 1984.

“The worst a perpetrator could receive under the act was three years and that really bothered everyone,” said Holden.

In March 1985, the teen was ruled not criminally responsible due to insanity during a private plea bargain. He was sent to a psychiatric care facility in Oakville, to remain there until the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario deemed him no longer a risk to himself or others.

Though he would not have to face the weight of his actions by remaining in Orangeville, the Babineaus and community were left to find their way through the horror he had left behind.

“It had a very big impact,” said Marcel. “The population was very small and everybody kind of knew each other. So it affected everyone.”

And so, the family moved forward with their lives, demonstrating strength and resilience.

Nearly four decades later, Marcel is still an active and recognized member of the community.

“The way I was brought up was to help others,” he said. “We were raised to care for each other. I can’t say it’s been easy; it took a long time.”

Eventually, he launched Project Angel, which was responsible for the placement of a wooden statue of an angel at Forest Lawn Cemetery, as well as the restoration of the Soldiers War Memorial.

“It wasn’t just to remember Monique and Daniel; it’s a memory of all the loved ones,” explained Marcel.

The carving has been temporarily removed for restoration, but will be returned to its space in Forest Lawn, where Marcel hopes it will continue to bring comfort to those who have lost loved ones.

“I never had a chance to say goodbye to them. I feel them every day, and it’s an inspiration,” he said. “After (nearly) 40 years, either you deal with it or you don’t. I have kind of a saying, just like a car battery, unless the negative and positive work together the car’s not going to start.”