The father of Marc Lepine, the war buff who gunned down 14 women in an anti-feminist rage, beat his wife and children and treated women like servants, divorce papers disclosed Saturday.
"He would speak of love and other things - and out of nowhere I'd get blows to my face," said the killer's mother, Monique Lepine, in testimony at a 1976 divorce hearing."I didn't know if I was supposed to be his wife or his servant," she testified.
Sometimes Lepine - then known as Gamil Gharbi - would be beaten bloody, she said.
The father, Algerian-born Rachid Liass Gharbi, "would resort to violence against me and the children for the least reason, to the point of sometimes making (the children's) noses bleed," Lepine's mother said.
"He would stop me from taking them in my arms and consoling them."
The couple separated when Lepine was 7. Lepine took his mother's maiden name when he turned 18.
In a related development, authorities believe a violent pay-television movie may have triggered Lepine's killing frenzy Wednesday evening.
The movie, "Commando Terreur (Terror Squad)," starred Chuck Connors and depicted a group of military-garbed terrorists who broke into a school and killed students in their classrooms.
The movie aired two days before Lepine broke into the Ecole Polytechnique and killed and wounded 27 students before turning the gun on himself.
"Lepine loved war movies," said Jacques Duchesneau, Montreal's organized crime division chief. "These kinds of pictures gave him a thrill."
Officially police have declined to give names of the 15 prominent women listed for assassination in Lepine's three-page suicide note, but sources indicate they include former Status of Women Minister Monique-Gagnon Tremblay and Monique Simard, vice president of the Confederation of National Trade Unions. Others listed include sports journalist Daniele Rainville and television commentator Jeannete Bertrand.
"I'm in a state of shock," said Simard. "But I'm not sure what I can do." Others said they may seek police protection now that the names have surfaced.
"You can't discount the idea there may be some other nut who wants to carry out the rest of (Lepine's) mission," acknowledged Duchesneau.
As facts of the massacre begin to emerge, residents expressed anger that police delayed entering the building and male students did nothing more to stop the killer.
"What type of society do we have where a sniper kills women one at a time and nobody lifts a hand to stop him?" asked Jeannette Quassa, a Polytechnique student.
"We waited for 20 minutes locked in the computer (room) on the second floor," said a student survivor who asked not to be identified. "After I heard 30 shots I realized, `there are no police officers here.'
"Then we got out and none of the police had gone in," she said. "They were all standing crouched with their guns around the outside walls of the building."
Some complained that dozens of male students evacuated the building, ordered away by Lepine, while female students were being killed.
"If only two or three had tried to jump (Levine) the story might have been much different," said Quassa.
One man - a Conservative member of Parliament touring the building - attempted to jump from a two-story window when he heard the shots.
"There is a tremendous instinct for self-preservation which takes over," said crime division chief Duchesneau. "It is perfectly natural."
Although the police tactical squad arrived 20 minutes after the last ambulance had carried away the wounded, an hour after Lepine shot himself, police were praising their performance.
"There were a number of tactical considerations," said Claude St. Laurent, chief of police station 13. "Overall we reacted as quickly as we could."
Families of nine of the 14 women killed returned to the University of Montreal campus Saturday where caskets containing the bodies of victims were on display. Relatives of the other five victims were holding private vigils.
Sunday, thousands of people are expected to visit the caskets at the Hall of Honor in the university's main pavilion. The Hall, transformed into an altar, was filled floor-to-ceiling with green plants and hundreds of flower arrangements.
The five days of mourning will end Monday with a funeral at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Old Montreal.