Angela Belisle: Who Murdered This Mother In Cold Blood In 1981
Channel: Don’t Watch This Alone
Date: 2021-07-03

Angela Louise Gage was born in England in 1945. She was the first child of a wartime marriage between Royal Canadian Air Force bomber pilot Wesley Gage and his wife Louise, a member of the Canadian Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. The Gages soon moved back to Canada and settled in Stanbridge East. The had four more children, three boys and another girl. Angela was a good student who attended college for two years and obtained her teaching certificate. She began dating Gerry Belisle, a cement-truck driver, in the mid-1960s after meeting him at a dance hall in Bedford, Quebec. They were married in 1968 and moved into a trailer in Swanton. Angela’s brother Colin said, “I thought that Gerry was a pretty good fellow. We all liked him. He was a down-to-earth individual and a very hard worker.” Angela and Gerry had three children. Angela taught in St. Albans and began taking graduate school courses in the University of Vermont’s psychology department. She was a really good student and a delightful person, her former psychology professor, Richard Musty recalled. While Angela was excelling in the education field, her husband Gerry was busy building a successful cement-pouring business and constructing a $70, 000 home to replace the trailer. They were a busy couple, progressing in life at a steady pace. They also bought a camp on Lapans Bay on Lake Champlain, but by then they began to have problems. By 1978, after trying to make the marriage work several times, they separated. Angela’s friends said that Angela began to fear for her safety, especially after the Swanton home mysteriously burned in 1979 and the Lapans Bay camp she received in the divorce settlement was vandalized in 1980. Her brother stated, “I think Gerry did not have eyes for anyone else, but I think my sister Angela did…Gerry had a hard time with Angela not being there for him anymore.” 

Court records from the divorce case reveal that at the time Angela died, she was attempting to have the couple’s divorce case re-opened, seeking child-support money from Gerald and a change in the valuation for the vandalized camp. The hearing for her request had been scheduled for January 14, 1981- 11 days after she was killed. The authorities soon began to focus on Gerald as a prime suspect and obtained a search warrant to seize all the firearms from his home. He had a solid alibi for his whereabouts the night his ex-wife was gunned down: He was home with the kids, whom he had picked up from her during a pre-arranged meeting in the parking lot of The University of Vermont around 6 p.m. Friday, Jan 2, 1981. In his own words, Gerald said, “I went right home after picking them up.every other weekend she would bring them to me at the old Goesbriand parking lot. I never spoke to her. The police evidence backs up his statements. 
Who killed this mother, educator and grad student?