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Crewmen on a Canadian Coast Guard boat were the first to notice it: what looked like a body floating in the St-Lawrence River, off the shores of Varennes, about 30 kilometres northeast of Montreal.

Reacting swiftly, they brought it to the nearest access point along the river, another dozen kilometres downstream to a small dock in the town of Verchères.

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Two officers from the local police force, called the Sûreté municipale de Ste-Julie at the time, were called in to meet them.

Using a yellow rope the coast guard had fastened around the body, they carefully pulled it from the water and turned it over onto a backboard borrowed from local ambulance technicians.

Thirty or so people had now gathered by the water, so the officers moved the body farther along the dock to avoid them. There, shielded from the crowd, they began to inspect it.

It was a man, about 30 years old, with dark hair and no ID on him.

He wore a grey and black long-sleeved sweater under a dark Levi’s jean jacket, faded jeans, grey socks and black steel-toed hiking boots.