Ant Hill Kids

By KayMcG1127

  • Roch Thériault born

    Roch Thériault is born into a French-Canadian family raised in Thetford mines.

  • Roch Renounces his Catholic Upbringing

  • Roch gets married

    Roch marries Francine Grenier and they move to Montréal having two sons. During this time he was also diagnosed with severe stomach ulcers accelerating his interest in human anatomy and health.

  • Roch moves again and gains his first follower

    Roch moves the family back to Thetford Mine. Despite this move, he continued to travel to other parts of Quebec to "sell his woodworking, " a new skill he had started developing. In reality, Roch was meeting with many women for sex. This is when he gains his first follower Giséle Lafrance, a woman he met and began a relationship with.

  • Roch and Francine Divorce

  • Roch Thériault converts

    Roch Thériault converts from Catholicism to the Seventh-day Adventist Church

  • Roch gains a following of female disciples

    While converting people to the Seventh-day Adventist church people began to notice that his converts were more interested in Roch than the church. These recruits would form the group of Roch's first disciples

  • Roch Thériault Founds the Ant Hill Kids

    The doomsday cult based on the Seventh-day Adventist church is formed. The group commune is formed in Sainte-Marie, Quebec with the disciples being forced to cut off all contact with families and the Seventh Day Adventist church. The group began to function on the belief that god had given Thériault a message warning him that the end of the world would happen in February of 1979.

  • Thériault removed from the Seventh-day Adventist church

  • Roch Remarries

    Roch gets remarried, now married to Gisele Lavallee while still keeping multiple concubines all of which he was having children with

  • The Ant Hill Moves

    In preparation for the end days growing closer Thériault moves his commune by hiking to a mountainside that he claimed would be where they all could be saved. They called this mountain "Eternal Mountain" which was in Hope a township of the Gaspé Peninsula.

  • The Apocalypse, or Lack of Plus Théraults Marriage Movement

    Followers began to question Thériault when the end of the earth didn't happen. Thériault then defended himself to his followers by claiming that the time on Earth and for God's world are not the same and that it was just a miscalculation. Thériault then decided that to keep the members devoted and gain more followers he would marry all the women in the commune and impregnate them fathering 20 children with 9 female members.

  • Second Group Relocation

    The group relocated from Quebec to an area near Burnt River in Central Ontario.

  • Social Workers Step in

    17 of the children are removed from the commune for abuse. Reasons included mateur surgical operations including injections into stomachs and circumcisions, making members break their legs, sit on stoves, shoot each other, and eat mice and feces. The children were sexually abused, held over fires, and nailed to trees while the other children were forced to throw stones. This abuse led one mother to leave her newborn in the cold to keep her away from the abuse. Roch was not punished for this.

  • The Death of Solange Boilard

    Solange had an upset stomach, in response Thériault performed surgery on her without anesthesia. He punched her stomach, forced a plastic tube into her rectum to perform an enema with molasses and olive oil, cut open her abdomen with a knife, ripped out part of her stomach and had it sewed up by another member. When she died he then cut open her skull and committed sexual acts onto her brain.

  • Thériault finally arrested

    Lavalleé, a follower, successfully fled the commune after the amputation of a finger, amputation of her arm, eight removed teeth, welding torch burns to the genitals, the removal of parts of her breast, and a smashed head from the blunt side of an axe. Once Lavallée fled she contacted authorities. Thériault was found guilty of assault for the amputations on lavallée receiving 12 years imprisonment. It had been illegal to investigate before due to its registration as an official church.

  • Thériault's second degree murder charge

    Thériault pled guilty to second-degree murder for the death of Solange Boilard being sentenced to life imprisonment. at this point, most of his followers had abandoned him and the Ant Hill Kids had been effectively dissolved. Some female followers remained as during his original imprisonment he did father four more children through conjugal visits.

  • Prison Transfer

    Thériault is transferred to a medium-security prison, Dorchester Penitentiary in Dorchester, New Brunswick.

  • Parole

    Thériault is rejected for parole due to his high risk to re-offend and never applies again

  • Savage Messiah

    The film Savage Messiah is released. The film depicts his crimes and the legal situation of Thérault and his cult.

  • Thériault Artwork

    Thériault tries to sell his work on MurderAuction.com but the correctional service of Canada prevents his artwork from leaving the penitentiary and the Canadian federal public safety minister writes to the correctional service to express concern about Thériault benefitting from work in prison.

  • Death of Thériault

    At age 63 Thériault is killed by his cellmate Matthew Gerrard Macdonald a 60-year-old convicted murderer who was serving life in prison. MacDonald stabbed Thériault in the neck with his shiv, walks to the officers, hands them the shiv, and then says to them "That piece of shit is down on the range. Here's the knife, I've sliced him up"