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Stéphane Luce was 13 years old, spending the night away in a dormitory, when his mother was beaten into a coma in her Longueuil apartment in 1981.

Roxanne Luce, 36, was found on her bed the next morning and died in a hospital days later. Thirty-seven years later, the case remains unsolved.

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Last year, Luce founded a non-profit called Meurtres et Disparitions Irrésolus du Québec, bringing together families affected by cold cases.

In early June, he had an idea. He asked volunteer researchers who joined the group to dig through public archives to see what they could find on his mother’s case. He expected them to come back with a few newspaper stories and a coroner’s report.

But what they found instead, Luce said Tuesday, left him numb.

“I have no words …” he said of the discovery. “It’s completely unacceptable.”

Available to all at the Old Montreal building of the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) was a cardboard box containing 304 pages of documents Luce had always been told were classified.