Early in October 1929, Louis LeClair arrived in New York. The U.S. Veterans Bureau Hospital, in Northport, was hiring wardens and he visited the facility and asked for a job application. In the space designated for references, LeClair stated that he had previously worked at the Rhode Island State Hospital for Mental Diseases, under superintendent Arthur Percy Noyes.

As LeClair seemed to be qualified for the job, he was quickly added to the staff. A letter was then mailed to Noyes for the simple purpose of allowing him to voice his opinion on LeClair’s employment there. Forty-nine-year-old Noyes was shocked upon receiving the letter. He certainly knew LeClair – not as a warden, but as a former patient who had recently escaped.

LeClair was born on Sept. 19, 1887 in Moosup, CT to French-Canadian parents – Louis and Mary LeClair. His father was a career millworker and LeClair grew up in Providence with numerous siblings. As a young man, he worked a winder in a woolen mill, then as an employee of the Providence Dying Company before taking a position with the railroad. By 1922, he was the only remaining child still living with at home. His father had fallen ill and was unable to work. The expenses of the household now fell on the shoulders of LeClair at a very bad time – along with the other railroad workers, he was on strike and had no income.

On the evening of July 14, 1922, a female resident of West Street in Pawtucket went to visit friends. She returned home just after 9 p.m. and was taken aback when she entered the house and found an interior light had been turned on.

Suddenly, Leclair ran from the house and the woman screamed for help. A nearby man chased LeClair until they came into the presence of a police officer who took LeClair into custody. He was charged with breaking and entering with the intent to commit larceny. He pleaded not guilty and explained that while his financial situation was not good, he had never stolen so much as a cent from anyone in his life.

Determined by doctors to be afflicted with arrested mental development, LeClair was committed to the State Hospital. On Sept. 29, 1929, as the patients were filing back to the main building after mass, LeClair left the line and seemingly disappeared.

His absence wasn’t noted until the following day. On the afternoon of Sept. 30, 40-year-old Annie Ortman was working in the cellar of her home, located on Greenwood Avenue in Warwick. She kept hearing light footsteps overhead but she attributed the noise to her cat. It wasn’t until she went back upstairs and into her bedroom that she realized someone had been in the house. Upon entering her bedroom, she found her purse lying empty on the bed and the drawers of her bureau pulled out and rifled through. Seventy-five dollars in cash was missing along with $1,300 worth of jewelry in the form of a silver necklace adorned with green and white crystals, a ring set with three diamonds, and a white gold bracelet.

The Warwick Police canvassed the neighborhood. The woman who lived next door to Mrs. Ortman stated that she watched a man dressed in a long black coat come out of the house. She described the man as walking with a sort of limp. LeClair had injured his left leg during World War I during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in France.

The woman said that after the man exited the Ortman house and saw her, he stopped and told her his name as well as his plans. “I’m Porky LeClair,” he said, adding that evening he was going to hop on a bus out of Providence to New York. He then took off across a nearby field.

A description of LeClair was sent to other police departments. The public was asked to be on the lookout and assured that LeClair was not violent or dangerous, he was simply unable to control impulses to steal things.                                    

  After the superintendent of the Rhode Island Hospital for Mental Diseases learned of LeClair’s new employment, two hospital officials were sent out to secure him and bring him back. LeClair lived for another 11 months. He died at the hospital at the age of 43 on Aug. 27, 1930. He is buried at Saint Ann Cemetery in Cranston with his parents and siblings.