Roxanne Luce

At 35 years old, Roxanne Luce was a mother living in a Longueuil, Quebec apartment in the spring of 1981. Her son, Stéphane Luce, was 13 at the time and staying as a boarder at the Michèle-Provost Academy in Montreal. He remembered his mother and the life that was violently stolen from her, a tragedy that would shape the rest of his own life and lead him to become an advocate for countless other families of victims.

In the early hours of April 1, 1981, while Roxanne was asleep in her own bed, an intruder broke into her home. The attacker unleashed a horrific and brutal assault, striking her approximately 70 times with a cut mop handle that had been wrapped in a plastic bag. She was discovered the next morning, not having woken from the attack, and was rushed to a hospital. Roxanne Luce remained in a coma for three days before she was declared dead on April 4, 1981.

The Longueuil police investigated the savage killing. During the initial inquiry, detectives focused on a particular suspect, but their investigation never led to an arrest or conviction. Decades passed, and the case grew cold, leaving Roxanne’s family without answers or justice. Years later, it was reported that the evidence collected in the case had been destroyed by the police, a devastating blow to any hope for future forensic analysis that might identify the killer.

The profound and unresolved loss of his mother had a lasting impact on Stéphane Luce. For years, he felt isolated in his grief and frustration with the open case file. "I found it difficult until I met people who were going through the same thing," he later recalled. This connection with others who had experienced similar tragedies fueled a new purpose. After years of administering another victims' association, he founded his own non-profit organization in 2017, Meurtres et disparitions irrésolus du Québec (MDIQ), or Unsolved Murders and Disappearances of Quebec.

Through MDIQ, Stéphane Luce created a network of volunteers, including private investigators, certified divers, and canine handlers, to assist families and work with police on cold cases across the province. His goal was not to criticize the police but to offer a complementary resource. “I’m not here to tell them they did their job badly. I showed that we could be complementary,” he explained. His advocacy also connected him with other families from the same era who were demanding a public inquiry into how police handled the investigations of numerous murdered women in the 1970s and early 1980s. Roxanne's case was one of eight highlighted in a letter to Quebec's public security minister.

As of March 2024, more than four decades after the brutal attack, the murder of Roxanne Luce remains unsolved, and no perpetrator has ever been brought to justice. The investigation is still officially open, a cold case file waiting for the one piece of information that could finally provide a resolution. Her son continues his tireless work, channeling his personal tragedy into a public mission to ensure that victims like his mother are never forgotten and that their families receive the answers they have waited so long for.