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(Michelle, as photographed by her final family the Freemans, under the name Ruby) January 17th, 1973 - February 13th, 1995
Michelle Elisabeth Leroux was a French conwoman and serial killer who repeatedly posed as child and would subsequently kill her adoptive families. She is the basis for the movie Orphan.
Born in Lille, France, her early years were uneventful. She had an older sister named Chantal, who she got on well with, despite an age gap of ten years. When Michelle was nine, her mother, Sophia Leroux, died in a car crash and Chantal left for London, leaving Michelle alone with her father. This was the last time the sisters ever saw each other. Michelle's father, Claude, began physically and sexually abusing her. For the next six years, she put up with it.
At fifteen, she was diagnosed with hypopituitarism, giving her proportional dwarfism. This subjected her to even more of her father's abuse, though it turned less sexual and more physical, with him just smacking her around and using her as a punching bag. He apparently kept repeating to her that 'she'd never be a real woman'. She then killed her father and went on the run, but not before being found and thrown into the Garnier Institution, where she spent five years before escaping. During her time there, she was noted to be violent, constantly trying to hurt the staff.
When Michelle escaped, she took on the name Vivian Leroux, an eleven year old girl. She got herself into an orphanage and spent seven months there, before being adopted by the Allard family. She spent six months living with them, before attempting to seduce the father, Hugo Allard. It failed, obviously, so Michelle decided to kill Hugo and his wife, Eleanor. Shortly afterwards, she was found and once again thrown into Garnier Institution, where she spent another three years.
Now twenty-five, Michelle once again escaped and looked into missing girls in the UK. She bore a striking resemblance to a girl named Anita Casper so she left France and found her way to London, where she went to the first police department and made up an elaborate story about how she'd been kidnapped by a Frenchman. She said she never saw his face and never got a constant name out of him. So, Michelle was taken to the Casper family's countryside mansion.
For a year, she lived there as Anita before finding out that the Casper mother, Susan Casper, had accidentally killed the real Anita. Susan buried Anita's body on the Casper property and then filed a missing person's report. Anita's body was properly buried in 1995, after police found out about this from reading Michelle's diary after her death. For two months, Michelle extorted Susan out of at least a thousand dollars. After those two months, she murdered Susan, the father, John, and their two other children, Janie and Hannah.
After this, she went back to France, now under the name Ruby Lambert. Now twenty-six in 1989, she went to Paris and got herself into an entirely different orphanage. In 1990, she was adopted by a Canadian family, the Johnsons. She lived with the family for two years, during that time she pushed their son, Harrison, off the roof, subsequently killing him. In July of 1992, she burnt the house down.
She played the role that she had barely got out alive and was soon placed in another Toronto orphanage, where she was adopted by the Freemans in November of 1994 and her name was changed to Ruby Freeman. The Freeman family consisted of the parents, Pearl and Hector, and their children; Wesley, thirteen, and Catherine "Cat", seven. Cat was deaf. According to Pearl Freeman, she was a wonderful big sister to Cat during her time there.
January 1995, a sister from the orphanage came by the Freeman house, Sister Esther, to talk to Pearl and Hector about the fact that 'trouble has a way of finding Ruby'. So Michelle enlisted Cat's help to kill her.
Michelle was very disrespectful to Pearl and so Pearl started looking further into her background, especially after her talk with Sister Esther. She found out about the Garnier Institution after finding Michelle's diary, which had been in French. At some point, Michelle made it seem like Pearl had broken her arm. She and Wesley also didn't get along, so Michelle tried to kill him by trapping him in and then burning his tree house.
Long story short, Wesley is still alive today. Wesley was in the hospital, as well as Pearl because she'd lost her shit when Wesley almost died and so they had to use some booty juice on her. That night, according to Cat, Michelle attempted to seduce Hector but when that obviously didn't work, she decided to kill him.
It was soon before that, Pearl got a call from the Garnier Institution from the man who had been Michelle's main doctor and basically he told Pearl that Michelle was dangerous, a grown woman and to get her daughter and husband out of the house and to also call the police. The plan was to get Michelle back to France but that didn't work out.
When Pearl arrived home, Hector was already dead. She found Cat hiding in her bedroom and when she did, Michelle attempted to kill them both but Pearl managed to grab her gun and shoot Michelle in the head, killing her. The date was February 13th, 1995.
