The River de Chute Kidnapping Case

Demure sixteen year old Charlotte hasn't seen her well-to-do engineer- banker father in eight years. Kept on a generous pension he sends from afar, and living with various relatives, the motherless girl has just finished schooling across river in a wild sawmill village at the Canadian-American border, where she has fallen in love with the son of that side's notable landowner and businessman. Crossing via the ferry of lecherous Elross Smart, she soon learns of the power differences between men and women, the rewards and punishments of secrets kept and broken, and life altering decisions when she is unexplainably kidnapped. Suddenly becoming a front page news sensation, the search is on to find Charlotte in what becomes an international kidnapping trial. Based on true events of the author's maternal grandmother.

Courtroom scene dialogue contains verbatim testimony using actual newspaper articles from the trial of 1916 and 1917 beginning with the first headline, up to the scandalous jury trial outcome.

  • The Lost World of River de Chute (Blurb.ca & Blurb.com/ National Library, Ottawa)
    Writer
  • Project Type:
    Screenplay
  • Genres:
    Drama
  • Number of Pages:
    85
  • Country of Origin:
    Canada
  • Language:
    English
  • First-time Screenwriter:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • "The RdeC Kidnapping Case" as: "Going Beyond Violet" for: 2014 Female Eye Film Festival
    Toronto
    Official Selection
  • "The RdeC Kidnapping Case" as: "Going Beyond Violet" for: 2012 Moondance International Film Festival: Semi-Finalist
    USA/Colorado
    Semi-Finalist
  • Larry Brody's TV Writer.com (USA) 15th People's Pilot: Semi-Finalist: "Takeover"
    USA/California
    Semi-Finalist
  • Great Message International Film Festival
    Mumbai, India
    March 16, 2021
    Official Selection as of March, 2021
  • Nollywood International Film Festival
    Toronto
    Official Selection (true events screenplay) as of May 11, 2021
Writer Biography - The Lost World of River de Chute (Blurb.ca & Blurb.com/ National Library, Ottawa)

Gregory Terlecki is an ACTRA member based in Toronto, and a graduate of Ontario College of Art in Fine Arts and Film. A published writer, his bio/history works include the 1604 to the present hardcover photo - illustration book of his birthplace: "The Lost World of River de Chute," part of the National Library, Ottawa and New Brunswick Public Library and Legislative Library, Fredericton collections. A fourth edition is now in the works with added photos and illustrations. Gregory assisted in the English language version of Hamid Zaher's recent Persian/Swedish/English book: "Overcoming," previously known as: "Your Enemy is Dock-Tailed," the true story of Afghanistan's only known out gay person living there. Writing the appendix and of his own travel experiences in that country, Gregory also turned it into a screenplay " Running Through Walls." Inheriting a love of the camera and art from his WW 2 photographer father Bill, Gregory is a world traveller, having bussed from London to Kathmandu through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, afterwards, on to South-East Asia to Australia, and later, South America. Later, Gregory co-owned and ran one of British Columbia's largest dressage equestrian centres in the Fraser Valley, and bred Hungarian horses there, and later in Quebec, along with running an equine cryogenics breeding program. A lifelong singer, Gregory is a tenor and music minister, and former actor in the Canadian Border Services Association program of training officers for all of Canada.

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Writer Statement

I often write from a female POV. The history of women in my family, as well as of my mother being a working woman when it was sometimes looked down upon then by her peers has allowed me to see the other side of the fence. Coming from a long line of story tellers from the woods of New Brunswick, I quickly picked up their tricks of embellishment: keep it moving, keep them on a hook, and never crack into a smile when doing so. They would always lose out on the third one. That third one to me, was the key to believability in story telling, whether in writing or acting out: reaching the end, and wishing there were more.