John Allore, best-selling author and one of Quebec’s leading unsolved crime experts, tragically lost his life in a collision last Thursday.
Mr. Allore, 59, was on one of his long, almost daily bike rides near his home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, when he was fatally struck from behind by the driver of a motor vehicle. As soon as they arrived at the scene, the police pronounced him dead, according to the North Carolina State Highway Patrol.
Karen Denisse Maldonado, 26, was arrested at the scene of the collision and charged with failing to reduce speed and causing death by means of a motor vehicle. The country road where the collision occurred did not have a shoulder.
A father of three daughters, Mr. Allore had developed a passion for unsolved crimes in Quebec. His own sister, Theresa Allore, was found dead near the Coaticook River in the Eastern Townships in 1979 at the age of 19. An unsolved crime to this day.
14 years old at the time, John Allore saw his happy and united family plunge into a whirlwind of distress and difficulty, he told La Presse in 2021.
“It was my father who must have gone to identify Theresa’s body at the Sûreté du Québec morgue on Parthenais Street in Montreal. He entered it alone. When he came out of it, it was as if his life had left his body. He was never the same man again. »
An intractable critic of the methods of the Sûreté du Québec, John recounted his quest for the truth in the bestselling book Wish You Were Here: A Murdered Girl, a Brother’s Quest and the Hunt for a Canadian Serial Killer, co-written with Patricia Pearson and published in 2020. John Allore is also the author of the podcast Who Killed Theresa? and the website of the same name.
At the time of the fatal collision, John Allore, who was working as the City of Durham’s budget manager, was about to fly to Quebec to film an episode of an American documentary show about unspeakable crimes. resolved.
Senator Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu remembers John Allore as an early ally in defending the rights of victims of crime in Quebec. Twenty years ago, the two men created the Association of Families of Persons Assassinated or Disappeared.
“John is a man who inspired me a lot, and I think it was mutual,” notes Senator Boisvenu in a telephone interview. We were very close to each other. It was a great shock to me to hear the news of his death. John had only one wish, it was to have the answer to the death of his sister, and I like to think that he knows the truth today where he is. »