Birdie Lane in Golf View Estates usually has residents walking and visiting, bicycling and riding in golf carts.
Instead, homicide investigators spent a fifth day Tuesday examining the home of Marc and Rita Gagne, Canadian snowbirds who were found killed inside.
The Broward Sheriff’s Office has released few details on the case that has shocked the couple’s neighbors and over-55 community.
One of those friends found the bodies of Marc, 80, and Rita, 78, inside late Friday afternoon along with “lots of blood,” he told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The couple were from Saint-Come-Liniere, south of Quebec City, and spent part of each year at their winter home in Pompano Beach, the news service reported.
The Gagnes last spoke with a relative on Tuesday, and a neighbor last saw them alive that night.
The house’s front door was unlocked when the bodies were found, the Sheriff’s Office said.
Debbie and Donnie Hall live a few doors down from the homicide scene. Since the killings became known, she has not used their screened-in lanai, decorated with comfy furniture and a television, unless her husband is home.
“It’s the fear of losing your security and peace of mind,” Debbie Hall said of the impact the double homicides have had on her and their friends.
Hall is a firefighter and medical first responder in Westchester, in rural Nova Scotia, and has seen crime scenes before. But she said she hopes the Gagnes’ home, a reminder of their apparently brutal deaths, can be removed from the community.
“I don’t feel comfortable in my own house, and this has done that to me and others in the [development],” she said.
On Sunday, detectives attended the couple’s autopsy examinations, which were performed by the Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office. The causes of death, as well as any motive, have been withheld by the Sheriff’s Office.
“The cops have been closed-mouthed, even to us,” said Garland Mattioli, who lives four houses away from the Gagnes. “There’s [police] activity there all night long.”
He and other residents said they may not have been able to have long conversations with the French-speaking Gagnes but found their long-time neighbors to be friendly and close with their family.
The couple recently suffered the loss of an adult daughter to cancer, they said, and an adult son and grandchildren visited them this season.
“There’s no reason to kill 80-year-old people,” Mattioli said.
Neighbors said crime there typically involves kids who live outside of Golf View Estates who steal bicycles from their yards and items from unlocked cars.
While Mattioli was sad for the couple, he said such violence was rare and that he was not worried for his own safety.
“It could have been any one of us,” Mattioli said.
Since the killings, Birdie Lane has been “the busiest dead end street in all of Broward County,” Mattioli said of nosy folks. They watch deputies at work and compare rumors about what may have happened.
“Everybody is playing detective,” Mattioli said. “There’s a million questions.”
And so far, with few answers.
The community has mobile homes and RVs, and more than half the residents are Canadian, homeowners said. The management office for Golf View Estates declined to comment, and efforts to reach a press officer at the Consulate General of Canada in Miami were not successful.
Golf View Estates is north of West Atlantic Boulevard and east of Florida’s Turnpike. There are no gates, though at night there is a roving security guard and another guard parked at the entrance off 901 NW 31st Ave., residents said.
The Sheriff’s Office said the Gagnes’ bodies were found about 5:47 p.m. Friday.
On Tuesday afternoon, a tow-truck driver wearing a protective suit, booties and gloves over his clothes hauled off the Gagnes’ silver Jeep Laredo, which has a Quebec plate.
Crime scene technicians carried rolled-up sections of carpet from the couple’s mobile home. It was surrounded in front and back by yellow crime scene tape, as were the houses closest to the Gagnes’ gray house, No. 770, which is for sale.
On Monday afternoon, residents walked 1.5 miles around the community in memory of the Gagnes, a neighbor said.
A farewell picnic was scheduled Tuesday night for those who will head north, their six or so months in the South Florida sunshine coming to a somber end.
The Golf View Estates website calls the community a place where homeowners can “find your rainbow and pot of gold.”
A meeting is scheduled Wednesday with the community’s owners and residents. Gates, fences and overall improvements to security are likely to be big topics, homeowners said.
The killings were big news in the Gagnes’ home country.
Debbie Hall wants her fellow Canadians to know “this is a good community, this is a good place to live and regardless of where you live, tragedies happen,” she said.
“We are banding together and supporting each other,” she said. “For people in Canada who are worried about their loved ones here, we’re checking in on each other and with each other.”
“I love this community,” Hall said.
The Broward Sheriff’s Office asks anyone with information about the case to call Detective Barbara Dyer at 954-321-4262. Broward County Crime Stoppers will accept anonymous tips at 954-493-8477, and will pay up to $3,000 for information that leads to an arrest.
ljtrischitta@sunsentinel.com, 954-356-4233 or Twitter @LindaTrischitta
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