Nurse held in Cranston, charged with murder

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On Dec. 17, 1935, 26-year-old Marie Simonne Sevigny was taken from her cell at the Cranston jailhouse and transported to the RI Women’s Reformatory. She had already gone through two days of interrogation, the answers from which would be the basis for a murder charge.

Sevigny had been employed as a housekeeper by Joseph Valmore Philias Normindin, a 41-year-old former auditor for the city of Woonsocket, who was working as a salesman for a Providence electrical shop. Joseph lived at 73 Maple Street in Woonsocket with his wife, Emma (Ayotte) Normindin, and their children; Phyllis, 16; Estelle, 17; and Oscar, 13. Emma had been ill for a while and could barely get out of bed.

Marie regarded herself as an unregistered practical nurse. She had once been a member of a religious order but since that time had been taking positions in people’s homes as a house-keeper who performed nursing duties.

During her interrogation, she told police, “On Wednesday, December 11, my patient Mrs. Normandin, was uneasy and hard to handle. She woke up about 6:30 in the morning. I gave her the medicine prescribed by the doctor, and a cup of coffee about 7:30 that morning. Mr. Normindin was shaving in the bathroom and left for work about 7:40 in the morning. Then the children went to school. It was then I concocted the idea of killing her.”

She went on, “I had read of mercy killings in the newspapers but I won’t say that actuated me in this case. I just wanted to put the woman out of her suffering. I figured I would give her ammonia. I found a bottle in the bathroom with a big poison label on it. Then I got a green-colored glass and I put in about one and one-half inches of the ammonia. It turned white and looked like milk. Then I told her to drink it. I said it would do her good. She drank it.”

At 8:00, Oscar unexpectedly returned to the house as he had forgotten his lunch. He later told police that Marie was acting strangely and, when he heard his mother scream, he asked Marie what was wrong.

“She has taken ammonia and she is in agony,” Marie told him.

Oscar ran up the stairs where he found his mother lying on the bathroom floor. Alone, the boy helped her back into bed.

Deputy police chief John Crowley, who interrogated Marie, later reported that he’d asked if she’d purposely administered the ammonia to kill Emma and that she’d said yes. Initially she had claimed that her only intention was to calm Emma down but finally admitted she had planned to fatally poison her one-half hour before she committed the act.

Crowley said she described how she had made breakfast for the family and, because Emma could not come down stairs, she had brought her a cup of coffee. After everyone else left the house, she brought Emma into the bathroom to bathe her. She sat her on a stool, and a short time later, she poured some ammonia in a cup, mixed a little water with it, and handed it to the ailing 50-year-old woman.

Police immediately began to look into Marie’s history. Upon her arrest, several narcotics were found in her handbag. Crowley said he asked her if she used narcotics and she said yes.

It was then discovered that, shortly after Emma died, Marie had gone to the pharmacy near-by and asked for six tablets, 2½ grains each, of an unnamed narcotic. The clerk refused to sell them to her but agreed to provide her with six quarter-grain tablets. When police searched the Normindin house, they located her suitcase which a police official noted contained enough drugs “to float a ship.” Edward Myers, police surgeon, learned she had once been under medical care for a nervous condition and believed there was enough evidence to support her now being a drug addict.

The daughter of Ernest and Lydia Sevigny, Marie had been born in Vermont on Jan. 23, 1909 and was one of ten children. She told police that one of her sisters was a psychiatric patient at the New Hampshire State Hospital and that another sister, Rachel, had died at the same institution on March 31 of that year. At just 15 years old, Rachel had been placed at the hospital one year and four months earlier after having been diagnosed with epilepsy at the age of two. She died of pulmonary tuberculosis.

Marie’s attorney requested that she be examined by a psychiatrist. If the exam, which would occur over the course of ten days, showed her to be criminally insane, she would be placed at the RI State Hospital for Mental Diseases for life. 

As word of the arrest spread, other families who had employed Marie as a housekeeper in the past began to come forward. The Gelinas and Lanclot families of Woonsocket, who had experienced deaths in their home while Marie was working for them, wanted their loved ones exhumed and toxicology tests run. The Magnon family of Mapleville, two families in Massachusetts and three others were also petitioning for investigations.  

One of the people asking for an exhumation was 47-year-old Frank Prince of Douglas, Mass. The machine shop spindle-maker had come forward to admit that he’d employed Marie as a housekeeper and had engaged in an intimate affair with her under the same roof where his wife, Dorilla (Deslauriers) lay dying. He told police that Marie begged him to marry her.

When taken to the courthouse to enter her plea to the charge of murder, a doctor advised that Marie was in no shape to withstand the proceedings. Her pulse was incredibly weak and it was theorized to be the result of an absence of drugs in her body. She was allowed to remain in a small room of the courthouse where she quietly pleaded, “not guilty” before collapsing into the arms of a police matron. 

That evening, she cried out from her cell, “I can’t stand it! I want to die! Why don’t you let me die?”

The petitions to exhume bodies for toxicology tests were denied. The death of Emma Normindin was ruled a suicide and, in Feb. 1936, Marie was exonerated by the grand jury. The judge blatantly criticized the Woonsocket police for what he referred to as an unsatisfactory investigation and for “bungling” the case. He also chided them for what he felt was their poor treatment of the accused. Crowley was soon demoted to the position of patrolman.

Marie returned to seeking work as a housekeeper and “nursing.” Before long, she was employed by the real estate proprietor Alphege Bonneau and his wife Eliza (Quintin), both 68 years old, at their home on Nye Street in New Bedford. On Sept. 25, Eliza died. The autopsy attributed the death to swelling of the brain and paralysis but an inquest into the matter was called for and Marie was put on the witness stand.

Nothing came of the investigation and, in 1937, Marie went on to marry Henri Pelletier, a chemist six years her senior. They resided in New Bedford. She died on May 21, 1951 at the age of 42. She always claimed her confession had been brought about by coercion and she continued working a housekeeper and “nurse” until becoming fatally ill herself.

Kelly Sullivan is a Rhode Island columnist, lecturer and author.

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