Roger Bolduc’s Disappearance and Unknown Fate

Roger Bolduc’s disappearance is an unresolved family mystery set against the September 11 attacks: he was in New York City that morning, but neither his fate nor the cameo’s whereabouts could be established. Conflicting interpretations fill the gap left by his absence—suspicion that he fled with the jewel, and Loïc’s growing conviction that Roger died in the World Trade Center complex.

The journey to New York City

An investigation disclosed that Roger had been traveling toward Toronto when he changed direction in Montreal and boarded an overnight bus to New York City. His reason for making the journey was unknown. The account could not establish whether he was at the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, and the investigation was still underway. His presence in the city became known to Isabelle only afterward; too shaken by the news to speak with Loïc, she was represented in the call by her father, Judge Georges D’Anjou.

Georges told Loïc that the information was strictly confidential. The warning placed the disappearance inside a guarded family inquiry even before its implications became public. Roger was missing from the day of the attacks, but at this stage there was no confirmation that he had been among the victims.

Suspicion within the families

When Georges later described the missing cameo to the D’Anjou family, Roger’s secret trip and disappearance made him an immediate suspect. Isabelle sat pale and silent as relatives wondered what he had gone to New York to do, whether he had taken the jewel, and whether he was dead. Georges said that Isabelle had told him what she knew, but that Roger concealed much of his business and dealings from her as well as from the family. Alain, Isabelle’s older brother, responded with open contempt for the Bolducs. The family’s questions and accusations did not establish what Roger had done; they show how rapidly his unexplained absence became a case against him.

Suspicion also crossed the divide between the D’Anjou and Bolduc families. As the months passed without evidence that Roger had died in the towers, the D’Anjous increasingly imagined that he had sold the cameo to an anonymous collector and used the attacks as cover to escape, perhaps to a tax haven or a remote Pacific island. This remained conjecture, but it deepened the conflict: Isabelle was isolated from her own family, while Roger’s siblings and other Bolduc relatives pressed her for answers and eventually drove her to cut contact.

A story managed for the public

As rumors threatened to reach the press, Georges tried to control what the public would hear. He arranged for Le Soleil to publish a limited account identifying Roger as a well-known businessman from Québec City who had been in New York City on the day of the attacks. The article said that he was not on the victim list, that there was no proof he had perished, and that the family had put the matter before the police. Georges preferred this controlled disclosure to either a local tabloid’s exposure of the story or a public battle over accusations and concealment.

The statement preserved the uncertainty rather than resolving it. In public, Roger was a missing man whose case remained under investigation; within the D’Anjou family, he was increasingly treated as the likely thief of the cameo. The divergence between those accounts kept both his fate and the jewel’s location open, while turning the family’s silence and speculation into part of the mystery.

Loïc’s search and conviction

For Loïc, the uncertainty did not mean that Roger might still be alive. Since September 11, he had been convinced that his cousin died in the attacks, a conviction he experienced as intuition beyond ordinary perception. Recurrent nightmares returned him to images of a fall beside a skyscraper, floating bodies, spectral voices, and Roger surrounded by a sinister radiance amid the sound of an explosion. The dreams intensified the disappearance’s hold on him, but did not supply verifiable evidence of what happened.

Loïc searched the Web for information about the victims and the companies affected, and examined accounts from relatives, photographs, and final telephone communications. He copied photographs and footage so he could study them repeatedly, slowing the images and enlarging them on his computer. He considered whether Roger had been crushed or burned inside a tower, but increasingly favored the possibility that panic or self-preservation had driven him through a window. He concentrated on images of people falling beside the skyscraper, trying to identify Roger, yet the poor resolution concealed faces, profiles, silhouettes, and clothing details. His painstaking search thus ends without identification: it records the intensity of his belief while leaving Roger’s actual fate unconfirmed.