The Deck - Janet Couture (Jack of Diamonds, Connecticut)

Episode Date: March 25, 2026

Our card this week is Janet Couture, the Jack of Diamonds from Connecticut. In 1973, Janet Couture was murdered in her home, and for more than five decades the case remained unsolved. Despite years of investigation, the breakthrough came only in 2025, when a longtime suspect with a violent history was finally arrested. If you have any information about other crimes George Legere may have been involved in, or believe you were a victim of him, contact Detective Christina Johnston of the East Hartford Police Department at 860-528-4401, or if you would like to remain anonymous, call 860-289-9134.   View source material and photos for this episode at: thedeckpodcast.com/janet-couture Let us deal you in… follow The Deck on social media. Instagram: @thedeckpodcast | @audiochuck Twitter: @thedeckpodcast_ | @audiochuck Facebook: /TheDeckPodcast | /audiochuckllc To support Season of Justice and learn more, please visit seasonofjustice.org. The Deck is hosted by Ashley Flowers.  Instagram: @ashleyflowers TikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkie Twitter: @Ash_Flowers Facebook: /AshleyFlowers.AF Text Ashley at 317-733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Our card this week is Janet Couture, the Jack of Diamonds from Connecticut. There is an old saying in law enforcement. A cold case is never really cold. And today's story proves that, because just last year, there was a new development that closed this unsolved murder case from 1973, proving that it's never too late. And in some cases, the answers might have been in front of you all along. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is the deck. It was around 3 a.m. on Saturday, October 13th, when 21-year-old Janet Couture turned to her sleeping boyfriend on the couch and uttered something pretty terrifying.

Janet had said to him, I think somebody might be in the house. That's Detective Christina Johnston of the East Hartford Police Department. She spent years pouring over the original reports from this case, including. including the accounts from Janet's boyfriend, Jay Locke. According to those reports, after Janet told him what she'd heard, Jay got up and took a look around. Now, where she lived was a single building that was comprised of four separate units.

All these units were within the building but had their own separate entrances. The front door that leads into the kitchen was unlocked and open, and the window was unsecure. unsecure and open. But Jay didn't find anyone hiding out when he went through the apartment room by room, making sure to close the open window as he did.

The two-bedroom duplex wasn't large, and Janet's roommate was away for the weekend, so he cleared the place pretty quickly. He said to Janet, I'm going to leave because he had to work in the morning. So she says, okay, I'm going to go upstairs, I'm going to go to bed, because she wasn't feeling good that day. She was sick. And then she let him out.

He said she locked the door. That was about approximately 3 o'clock in the morning, between 3 and 3.10. Jay made sure the front door was locked as he left, leaving Janet to sleep in the still house in, I kid you not, Mayberry Village. But it was in these quiet moments that something happened. Around 8 a.m., Janet's next door neighbor, Paul Taylor, came out. to warm up his car and he noticed that one of Janet's windows was wide open and the screen had been yanked out and was leaning against the building.

Unbeknownst to him, this is the same exact window that Jay had secured just hours earlier. But still, this was concerning enough of a sight to Paul that he called out to Janet. But she didn't respond. So when the neighbor walked into the front door, which leads into the kitchen, he observed a telephone on the wall. the receiver had been removed and put into a drawer. Whether it was the site of this receiver still connected to the wall mount, half peeking out of a drawer, or something else,

Paul got the sense that he had to find Janet. Something was off. And he knew he was right when he finally made it into Janet's upstairs bedroom. Janet was lying on the floor in a pool of blood. Paul rushed out and called the police from his police. place next door, and within a few hours, the place was an active crime scene, crawling with police and texts and detectives, trying to make sense of what they were looking at, starting with that phone in the drawer. That particular drawer was where she kept all the silverware, and there was some

knives in there as well. They proceeded into the living room, which was fairly neat. There was no signs of a struggle. They then walked upstairs to the second floor. They noticed that, they noticed that there was two bedrooms. One bedroom was undisturbed. And then the other bedroom, which was Janet's bedroom. They noticed her on the floor. She was lying on her side closest to the wall in a night table. They observed that there was a knife still in her chest. She was not wearing any clothes and her nightgown was in close proximity to her. There was also an unraveled wire hanger on top of the dresser and judging by all of the marks that they saw in her body, in addition to the stab wound and the blood stains on the mattress and the wall,

it seemed like Janet had been beaten with the hanger and stabbed with the knife while she was on the bed. And then from there, she had somehow moved or been moved to the floor where they found her. She didn't stand much of a chance fighting back at whoever was torturing her because her face had been covered by a pillowcase, secured with ripped up pieces of her green bedsheets so she couldn't see. And then more of that bedsheet was later for.

found in her mouth, gagging her. Her hands were also tied behind her back with a telephone cord, though worth noting it wasn't the cord from the phone in the drawer downstairs. But detectives quickly surmised that the knife that was used had likely come from that drawer, or if not that drawer, somewhere within Janet's own home. Oftentimes when a killer doesn't bring their own weapon, it's an indication that the murder was not the motive. Usually you'll see them pull a weapon from the house in a case of a burglary gone wrong where they get surprised thinking that no one was home and then it turns into a robbery

and a homicide. But that's not what they thought this was. Nothing looked ransacked. Valuable items like money and jewelry, even a safety deposit box were all untouched. The motive wasn't robbery. It most likely was something else. They weren't there to steal anything of hers for monetary purposes. That didn't necessarily mean that they didn't take anything, though. When detectives began asking questions to the growing crowd of neighbors and looky-lose gathering outside, a man named Kenneth approached them holding something in his hands, a purse that he had found outside earlier that morning.

He was returning home from work after working the midnight shift, and there was a purse lying on the ground. in front of his front door. He picked up the purse and brought it inside. He spoke with his wife thinking that it was one of their kids' play purses, and she said, no, that is not ours. They then opened the purse and dumped out the contents and located a birth control pack that had Janet's name on it.

What seemed to be missing from the purse was Janet's wallet. And upon closer inspection, they realized that wasn't in the house either. And to this day, Janet's wallet has never been recovered. So did the killer take money from her wallet? Was the wallet a trophy? Is it possible Janet herself lost her bag earlier in the day? If so, she never mentioned it to another neighbor who told police that he'd been over hanging out with Janet and her boyfriend Jay until like 10.30 the night before. And this is when police learned that she had a boyfriend.

A boyfriend who, based on everything they knew at the time, seemed like the last one to be with their victim before she was murdered. But those suspicious high eyebrows lowered pretty quickly when they actually connected with Jay. He was instantly cooperative and took and passed a polygraph, so police believed that he was being truthful about his month-long relationship with Janet. And, most importantly, about his last night with her. how she woke him up because she heard a strange noise, how he searched the place and closed the window, but after not finding anything, decided to go home. A decision that I am sure ate at him for years to come.

Now, out of all the other neighbors that they spoke to, no one else heard the noise that woke Janet up at 3 a.m. And there were no reports of odd cars or strange men lurking around the building at that time. But what if that's because Janet's skin? wasn't a stranger. Because interestingly, in the same breath that neighbors would say they didn't hear or see anything, many of them also told police about one man in particular that they were suspicious of, someone who just so happened to be friends with Janet's neighbor.

George Legerre. That was the name that police heard again and again after Janet's murder. his friend Lee Albert also live right next door to Janet. The police discovered that George had actually been at Lees the evening of Janet's death. A neighbor who had stopped by Lees at around 7 p.m. had run into him there. And the neighbor remembered that there was some talk that came up about Janet's roommate being away that weekend. And the 25-year-old George had some history with Janet based on what one of her sisters told police. The sister had stated that Janet expressed to her.

that he's creepy and he would knock on my door from time to time and asked to use my phone. Janet's sister had told her, don't let him in anymore. If you don't feel comfortable, don't have him come in and use your phone. If he ever was permitted to come in and use the phone, it likely would have been the one on the first floor,

the one that police found off the hook and in the knife drawer. According to one news report, Janet's sister said that George had asked Janet out on multiple occasions, And George was on the radar of law enforcement too. He had been arrested in the past for sexual assaults and incidents that were similar in nature. Nothing like murder or homicide, but other agencies had floated the name around. You might want to talk to this person. And for good reason.

In the mid-60s, George had been arrested multiple times for violence. assaults on women when he was still a teenager. All four of these assaults took place in a two-year period. Three of these were alleged sexual assaults. George was charged with rape, attempted rape, and carnal knowledge of a minor. Now, we know two of those were downgraded, and all of them only resulted in a fine. One as low as $35. In one non-sexual assault that he was arrested for, George punched a woman after she

refused to go out with him. Now, by the time East Hartford PD officers were able to get in front of George, it was Halloween 1973. In that conversation, George told police that he had gone to the Mayberry Village neighborhood on the night of October 12th for a party. He also confirmed what neighbors had previously told police that he had stopped by Lee's apartment, twice, actually, once earlier in the evening on the 12th, and then again, between 1.30 and 2 o'clock in the morning on the 13th. And he knocked down the door, he said nobody was home, so then he just went to the party, Greyhill Road.

He said he arrived around 2 o'clock in the morning at that party. The party at Great Hill Road was just a four-minute walk from Janet's building. George said that he stayed there until he left at around 5 a.m. Then he stopped at a gas station on the way home, which police tried to confirm by talking to other people who had been at the party that evening. Now, a few partygoers remembered George. but they remembered him arriving later and leaving earlier,

although it was a party, so it's hard to know how reliable those accounts are. That said, one woman told police that she remembered seeing George leave, and then she pointed out that he had driven away in a different direction than one might expect if he was heading towards the gas station that he mentioned to police.

The female witness then saw George drive away on Great Hill and made a, she said he made a left-hand, turn, which would have been onto Woodlawn Circle, which was the direction to go to Janet's house. But George told detectives he had turned right, the opposite direction to head towards the gas station that he mentioned he stopped at. So police followed up on that too. They had showed the gas attendant who was working that evening of the early morning hours of the 13th of October, a picture of George's car. And I believe they also showed him a photograph of George. And the gas attendant did not remember the vehicle and did not remember seeing George.

Again, this was a few weeks after Janet's death. It's totally possible that the attendant just couldn't remember the evening clearly. But either way, detectives were doing their due diligence with George. And they went beyond just a basic interview. They did take pictures of him, his body. They took pictures of him with a shirt off to see if he had any type of wounds or bruising or anything like that. They also did take photographs of his car. There wasn't anything that came from the car, though. George didn't have any suspicious marks or bruises on his body either.

And what he said when asked if he was involved with Janet's murder, well, that I couldn't tell you. Because Detective Johnston said there is no note in the case file of that question being asked. So it's hard to say how seriously the department was looking at this guy. But that didn't mean he was off their radar by any means. In fact, just eight days later, he put himself front and center for police.

On November 2nd, 1973, Vernon Police received a incident report from a woman who claimed that she had been kidnapped and sexually assaulted from a shopping plaza in Vernon, Connecticut, in the daylight hours. And shortly thereafter, on November 8, 1973, they arrest Georgia Gear for kidnapping in the first degree, a risk of injury of a minor, and sex assault in the first degree. A couple of things here. First, Vernon is just a little over 10 miles from East Hartford.

And second, the risk of injury to a minor charge came because when George kidnapped this woman, her child was in the backseat of her car. But this time, George couldn't just... pay a fine and walk away. He was convicted and sentenced to five to ten years in prison. Now, George's conviction was a good news, bad news situation for the East Hartford PD. Good news was that he was off the streets. Bad news was that this didn't move the needle in Janet's case.

They still had nothing to connect George to Janet's murder. And by the end of 1974, there were still no new leads or new. evidence. And nothing changed even after George was released on parole in 1978. Not even as decades passed by. And the department tried to go through old evidence that they collected at the scene to see what was maybe viable for this brand new thing that was all the rage called DNA testing. And pretty much everything was a mixture or a complex mixture. We did not have anything that was single source DNA. So that made it difficult as well, because we would have. have to get known DNA swabs from individuals to be able to compare it.

That was pretty much where Janet's case stood through the new millennium. Police tried here and there to see if updated technology would help, but every time, no dice. But as fate would have it, in May of 2021, another case changed everything for Detective Johnston, who had inherited the case a few years before. I was at my house. I was at home. and I was watching the news, and I had learned that George Aguirre had been arrested for a 1984 coal case out of Avon, Connecticut.

Avon is just under a half hour from East Hartford. The department had identified George after a hit on his DNA in CODIS. It started in Massachusetts back in 2019. George was convicted of assault with a firearm. That conviction is how his DNA ended up in the system, but not right away. Just before he was released, he was swabbed and his DNA was entered into CODIS. So, in 2021, with George's DNA finally in that system, Avon PD was able to connect him to their old case from 1984, another sexual assault slash kidnapping. So George was eventually convicted of that and sentenced to 25 years for kidnapping.

But because it had taken so long to connect him to the case, sadly, the statute of limitations on the same. sexual assault had run out. The victim in his 1984 case survived. But without going into too much detail, there were a lot of similarities to Janet's case. So this case is what kind of like really blew the doors off this entire thing, right? That's really got it going again. Once I saw this case, I dug even deeper into the case file and found the Vernon case. and the Vernet from 1973 case.

And then I found all the other cases from the 60s that had been documented and that were sitting in the case file. Johnston was able to obtain a search and seizure warrant for George's DNA because they couldn't just use his profile in Codas for a direct comparison. On July 26th of 2021, myself and my lieutenant at the time,

Lieutenant Olson, went to the prison where Georgia Gear was being held because this is before he was on trial for the Avon case. He was awaiting trial. We went there to get the known sample. George refused to talk. He didn't even ask why they were there. But they didn't need him to talk.

Just need him to open wide. They swabbed his cheek, sent the sample off, and... He was not linked to anything. He was eliminated from some things. Some things it was they couldn't make a determination, inconclusive. So there was nothing. We were at square one again. We didn't have any physical evidence to link him to the crime scene. I was absolutely devastated. I was upset because I was like, what do I do now, you know? Because you hold on to that hope of, you try to be hopeful. Like,

yes, yes, okay, here we are, here we are, here we are. And then you're like, nope, no, next. You got to figure something out, like, what's next? In 2025, Detective Johnston reached out to a colleague, Michael Sheldon, a supervisory inspector for the state's cold case unit to see if he had any ideas. And he did. He goes, why don't you put posters up in the prison? Why don't you blow up her cold case card? It said the date, it was a picture of her and that she had been stabbed in her apartment at 150 Cannon Road in East Hartford. Very, very short blurb. And at the bottom, it was a $50,000 reward offered by the state. So Detective Johnston did just that. She blew Janet's card up, and by March of 2025, Janet's face

was hanging in the McDougal Walker Correctional Institution. And in roughly two months, Detective Johnston had a new lead. May 9, 2025, I received a call from Investigator Sheldon. informing me that an inmate had called the hotline from the poster saying that he had information pertained to our case. So that was like, oh, my God. Okay, the wheels are turning again. So that was a really good phone call. I'll never forget that phone call.

When Detective Johnston spoke with the witness, at first all the guy was interested in was the reward money. But eventually, over the course of three interviews, he started to talk. He said that a man he was in prison with was responsible for Janet's death, and he brought receipts, handwritten notes that he said came from the killer that had details in them, like the color of the knife handle used in Janet's murder, which was brown, something that was never made public. By the third time, Detective Johnston talked to the witness. He came with a lawyer, and he brought something else, a diagram. that the killer had drawn of Janet's place to prove that he had been inside

and a confession signed by none other than George Leger. After all the years and the disappointing DNA test results, Detective Johnston could barely believe that she might actually be able to finally close Janet's case. But that would only be possible if she could trust the witness who had come forward.

He provides us with, a statement that is handwritten. He claims that the witness claims that he wrote the statement, but George told him what to write. George then signs this statement. And not only was it signed by George, but his signature was also notarized by a Department of Corrections employee. The deal George had made with the witness

was that this confession statement would be turned over after his death. But guess what? George was still very much alive. Now, if you're not watching this, we do have a copy of this statement. We asked Detective Johnston to read a short portion of it. I do want it known that after 1986, I did change my life and was productive to the community and family. Further, I am sorry for my actions while on drugs and for more drugs from partying at the Mayberry Village in East Hartford. in October 1973.

I broke into an apartment of a woman I knew. I broke in looking for money to get drugs while searching the bedroom. Janet woke up and noticed me and said my name. I believe I tied her up as that's what I've done to others. I did go to the kitchen and get a butcher knife. George goes on to admit that he stabbed Janet

and threw her wallet over a bridge, which explains why it was never recovered. The details were all compelling and all credible, but hard to reconcile with the DNA results that had come back without a match. But it turns out there are legitimate reasons why George might not have left DNA at the scene, like the quality of evidence, for starters. Evidence in the 70s wasn't collected and stored the way that we would do it now. So who knows how many people touched this stuff back then. Plus, he could have worn gloves. That's actually one of Detective Johnston's personal theories.

With his confession now, Detective Johnston had the ammo to go after him. But the first attempt didn't go so well. George just kind of danced around at all, suggesting things but not really admitting to anything. And then finally, he asked for a lawyer. But Detective Johnston wasn't about to give up. At the urging of the state attorney's office, they went back at him. And this time, Detective Johnson was. Constan changed tactics.

Clearly, George wasn't fond of women, so she sent in two men. One of them was my partner who was familiar with this case and was working with me at the time through all this. And another one was a detective I worked closely with who was familiar with this case as well. And in that time, they were able to get a confession from him. George confessed to killing Janet. Despite George's claim that his motive that night was wrong. robbery. Detective Johnston believes that this was ultimately a sexually motivated crime. She believes that George came into that house, attempted to get in, which would have been

when Janet first heard the noise, and then maybe he saw her boyfriend Jay with her or spotted Jay's car, and then he left and returned later after Jay was gone. The truth is, that part didn't matter much anymore. What mattered is that Detective Johnston now had enough for an arrest warrant. I couldn't believe that we had gotten this far because there were so many times where, you know, it was like a balloon deflated, you know? Like, oh, God, we got to start from square one again. So it was surreal. In September of 2025, Detective Johnston headed to the McDougal Walker Correctional Institution to formally arrest then 77-year-old George. Now, he was already in prison, so all they had to do was process him, you know, prints, mugshot, etc.

When I went to arrest him, he states, quote, everything I said before I said only because I could get some of the reward money. He continued to state, quote, if that's happening, if I get some of it, then I'll plead guilty. And, quote, if I'm not getting some of it, I lied just to get the reward money, end quote. Then stated, quote, I need like maybe 10,000 of it. The other can go to the family, but I want some of it. You heard that correctly. George was hoping to receive the reward money for a murder that he committed. Obviously, that didn't happen.

No one ended up with the reward money, by the way. This arrest had been in the making for over 50 years. Before, Janet's case was East Hartford PD's oldest unsolved murder. And now, Detective Johnston could bring some semblance of close. to her family. This was a moment that her mother had hoped to be alive to see, and she was so close. But unfortunately, she passed away in 2023.

Before the press could get a hold of it, Detective Johnston reached out to Janet's siblings. They were relieved. They were thankful. That's what I remember in particular. They were very thankful. I met with Janet's brother in person, and he was very, very thankful.

that an arrest had been made. But here's the thing about justice. Sometimes it can be elusive. A little over a week after his arrest for Janet's murder, George passed away. When I found out that he died, it was like the balloon deflated all over again, you know? But there was nothing I could do about it.

I knew he was in bad shape, you know? I knew he was old, and I knew it could happen. I was just hoping that we would get maybe a little further in the court process. before happen. With George now deceased, the East Hartford police have closed the book on Janet's case. But there are still questions that remain. Specifically around George, a man with such a violent pass spread across decades, it makes Detective Johnston wonder, could he be involved in other unsolved or even unknown cases?

And that is the one reason why I agreed to do this project is because I, I do believe that there may be other victims out there. There may be people that are missing and may have not been recovered. I do believe that by getting this information out there, it also gives hope to other detectives who have cold cases, that anything is possible with these cases. They can change at any second. If Janet were alive today, she would have been 73 years old.

And I think that emphasizes how young she truly was when George decided to take her life. She deserved better. And if there are other victims of George still out there, they deserve better, too. So if you're listening or watching this and you know something, please speak up. Let's not let another case go unsolved for as long as Janet's did. So if you have any information about other crimes, George Leger might have been involved in,

or if you believe you were a victim of his, contact Detective Christina Johnson of the East Hartford Police Department at 8605. 284401. Or if you'd like to remain anonymous, you can call 860-289-9134. The Deck is an audio-chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the Deck and our advocacy work, visit the Deckpodcast.com. I think Chuck would approve.