Manon Dubé was 10 when she disappeared on the evening of January 27, 1978, after playing and sledding with her younger sister and friends near the Caisse Populaire in Sherbrooke. The children headed home at about 7:30 p.m.; Manon fell behind when her sister ran ahead and the corner of Craig and Union streets is the last place she was seen alive. A dark Buick was reportedly seen following the children in the period before the disappearance, and neighbors had reported strangers approaching children in preceding months.

When Manon did not return, police mounted an extensive search. Her mother received unexplained phone calls including a demand for $25,000 that investigators treated as likely a hoax; there was no evidence the caller had custody of the child. On March 24, 1978, two visitors from Montreal found Manon’s body partially frozen in a stream near Ayer’s Cliff about 30 kilometres south of Sherbrooke.

Investigators considered abduction, a vehicle collision with subsequent concealment, and an attack, but none has been proven. The case has been examined alongside other Eastern Townships deaths as a possible linked pattern, but no confirmed connection exists. No one has been publicly identified as the perpetrator and the Sûreté du Québec still lists the case as unresolved. Did anyone in Sherbrooke or the Ayer’s Cliff area have information about that January evening or the dark Buick?