CANADA Canada - Toronto Crimes Discussion

●A cyclist taking an early-morning ride through High Park on Colborne Lodge Rd. on Saturday, December 3rd, 1988, found the bloodied body of 28-year-old Richard Thomas Moore in some bushes near a footpath not far from Grenadier Restaurant. The murdered man, a drifter who worked for a temp agency as a labourer, had been stabbed and beaten, apparently during a robbery. A police search of the area yielded Moore's wallet and what was later determined to be the murder weapon, a Solingen hunting knife with a 4.5 in. blade and black leather handle.
It was later learned that Moore had been drinking at the Edgewater Hotel on Roncesvalles St. at Queen St. W. until 10:40 Friday night. Moore lived nearby, so the question became what he was doing at the scene of his mugging/murder, 1.5 km to the west-northwest in the middle of High Park. No further information.

●Six gunshots rang out at the Connections 2 nightclub at Dufferin St. and Finch Ave. W. in north Toronto at 1:45 a.m. on Wednesday, December 29th, 1999, leaving Godfrey Dunbar, 27, and Richard Brown, 30, dead. The club was packed with 800 party-goers enjoying a hip hop and reggae festival when someone opened fire. There followed a mad rush of attendees to the exits.
Dunbar's friends carried him to a car and tried to get him to hospital, but were stopped by police who summoned an ambulance. Brown's body was found inside the nightclub.
Police believed Dunbar was the intended target and Brown was an innocent victim. Police were not impressed by the lack of cooperation of witnesses to the shooting, including Dunbar's friends. One of those uncooperative witnesses, Kirk Sweeney, was himself shot to death in December, 2003 in a nightclub called the G-Spot.

●On Tuesday, October 2nd, 1990, 23-year-old Mabel Wong was last seen by her family as she left their Bexley Cres. home at 10 p.m. On October 12th, Wong's Toyota Tercel was found abandoned in a parking lot at 1550 Jane St., roughly 1.5 km north of her home.
Although no trace of Wong was ever found, police felt foul play was involved, as Wong was a responsible young woman not given to rash, unpredictable conduct. In the weeks before her disappearance, she had complained to a co-worker at a Bathurst St. restaurant supply store that she was being followed.

●On Tuesday, August 9th, 1977, 80-year-old James Cummings was murdered during a break-in, presumably at his home, somewhere in Toronto. Other than a tiny blurb in a year-end round-up of murders, in which it was denoted that his murder remained unsolved, there isn't a shred more information on this forgotten victim's case. Shame.

●James Stewart Kennedy, 49, was found strangled and beaten to death in his apartment on Jarvis St. on Monday, September 20th, 1976. Kennedy worked at the Department of National Revenue on Adelaide St., and his body was found when he failed to show up for work as usual. A towel had been knotted tightly around his neck and his face had been badly battered. The victim, a bachelor, had last been seen Saturday night. No further information.

●At 5:45 p.m. on Sunday, November 2nd, 1947, 13-year-old Arlene Anderson waited on the porch of her home at 99 Marchmount Rd. for her father to come home from a union meeting. Just moments after her mother last looked out the door and asked her if she was okay, Anderson, who was mute and had cerebral palsy, disappeared.
On Wednesday, November 5th, 250 volunteers, many of them friends and acquaintances of the Andersons, undertook an unsuccessful search of High Park.
Shortly after noon on Thursday, November 6th, a woman picking dandelions discovered the body of Anderson lying in a patch of weeds behind a factory on Bartlett Ave. just north of Geary Ave., about a kilometre southwest of her house. Anderson had been hit once on the right side of the head and then strangled with her blue woollen underwear by someone who was, the coroner declared, "very powerful". The coroner also concluded she hadn't been dead longer than 12 hours, and the lot where she was found was a well-used shortcut between Bartlett and Bristol Aves., so it was very unlikely her body had lain there since Sunday. Several people who came forward and reported having crossed the lot on Wednesday were adamant Anderson's body had not been there then.
A woman who knew Arlene said she saw a man leading the crippled girl by the hand south on Shaw St. toward Dupont St. at about 6:10 p.m. on Sunday afternoon, moments after the girl's mother last saw her. The woman described the suspect as 35-40 years of age, of medium height, with fair hair greying at the sides, and wearing a beige windbreaker and dark pants.
Police believed Anderson was kept unharmed at a house somewhere nearby for four days before being brought to the industrial lot, murdered, then sexually molested. In their investigation, Toronto police rounded up and questioned all 915 of the city's known sex offenders.

●On Tuesday, December 10th, 1991, 43-year-old Norman Washington Ennis, a Beck taxi driver, was shot twice in the back of the head as he drove fares west on Eglinton Ave. W. a couple of blocks west of Caledonia Rd. He was found slumped on the ground outside his taxi in front of Westside Mall at 2460 Eglinton Ave. W. An investigation revealed that a fellow cabbie saw Ennis pick up two men and a woman at around 3 a.m. at the Spectrum nightclub near Greenwood and Danforth Aves., east of downtown Toronto. Less than half an hour later, across town, Ennis was near death, bullets having torn through his jaw and temple. Although he was revived twice by medical personnel, he died in hospital six hours later.
It is uncertain if the three persons seen getting into Ennis's car at the nightclub were the culprits, or if they were dropped off somewhere along the route and Ennis was killed by someone he picked up next. When police arrived on the scene at 3:30 a.m., Ennis's meter was still running and only a $10 tab had accrued.

●On Friday, February 25th, 1955, 8-year-old Judy Carter spent a couple of hours after school playing with two boys from her class. They cavorted for a while in the schoolyard of Winchester Public School before the boys invited Carter over to their house on Rose Ave. to look at comic books. At 6 p.m. Judy left for home, and the last time her playmates saw Judy Carter alive, she was heading east on Winchester St. towards Parliament St., in the direction of her home on Metcalfe St., just two blocks away. She never arrived home.
An intensive search was immediately launched by police that evening, but nothing was found. In the days following, witnesses came forward saying that, on the day in question, they had seen a little girl matching Judy's description on a westbound King St. streetcar in the company of a man who was holding her hand. She had been pleading "I want to go home to my mommy". At about 7 p.m., the man and girl disembarked the streetcar at Bathurst St., crossed the street, and headed south. Two of the witnesses, a couple, stated the girl and man had boarded the streetcar at either Parliament St. or Sherbourne St. Their eyes were drawn to the girl because she appeared frightened. In fact, one of the witnesses was so alarmed by what appeared to be a kidnapping, she almost alerted the driver before being dissuaded by her husband with the admonition to "mind your own business". Seeing Judy Carter's picture in the newspaper later, the witnesses were certain it was the girl they had seen.
The description (later amended as more witnesses came forward) of the man seen with Carter was of an unshaven 60-year-old man about 6 feet in height, with a ruddy complexion, discoloured teeth, a thin face with high cheek bones, missing the pinky and ring fingers on his left hand, and clad entirely in brown, including a fedora. He spoke perfect English.
A flurry of sightings of a little girl and man who appeared to be Judy Carter and her three-fingered abductor were later reported to have taken place on Saturday, including in restaurants at Bathurst and College Sts and on O'Connor Dr., but it isn't known which of those were valid. The following weeks brought fake ransom demands, the rousting of known sex criminals, and other fruitless heartache for Judy's parents as the search for their daughter stretched on.
On Saturday, April 9th, two boys fishing along the Rouge River in a rural area northwest of Unionville found a body and ran to a nearby farm for help. The body was that of Judy Carter. She had died of strangulation, her own scarf having been knotted tightly around her neck. An autopsy by Dr. Chester McLean, however, showed she had not been sexually assaulted, at least not raped.
Police believed Judy had been killed the night she was abducted, likely by a thrill-killer, not a sexual deviate, and that her body had been dumped from a Warden Ave. bridge about 1 km north of 16th Ave., then floated a few hundred metres downstream to where it was found.
A $3000 reward was posted, and further leads and tips trickled in, including one that the killer may have been driving a 1937 or '38 dark blue Dodge or DeSoto, but everything evidently led nowhere, for Judy Carter's killer remains unidentified and unpunished to this day.

●The body of 30-year-old David Anthony Gentles was found by a road crew in a ravine off Skyway Ave, east of Pearson International Airport, on Monday, December 12th, 1988. Gentles, who lived on Echo Point in northeast Toronto, had been strangled. His frozen body was wrapped in a thick blanket, his wrists were bound, and a cord was wrapped around his neck. He had been last seen on December 9th in an apartment building near Finch and Warden Aves. The killing was believed to be drug-related. No further information.

●16-year-old Sandy Ebrahim spent the night of Monday, June 28th, 1999 out with friends celebrating her upcoming birthday. Instead she ended up dead. At 3:15 a.m., having spent the evening at a nightclub, Ebrahim and her four friends were standing around their car in the parking lot of a 24-hour Burger King at 7220 Kennedy Rd., just north of Steeles Ave. E., when a stolen black Lincoln Navigator pulled up alongside them. Several shotgun blasts were fired from the vehicle, one of which struck Ebrahim in the back, killing her. The Navigator sped out of the parking lot and onto northbound Kennedy Rd. The stolen SUV was spotted shortly thereafter by a patrolling officer, but he lost sight of it for a moment and when he finally reached it, it had been abandoned.

●On Wednesday, May 8th, 1974, 24-year-old nurse Joanne Anstett was sexually assaulted and strangled to death in her apartment in Kitchener, Ontario, a city about 75 km west of Toronto. Anstett's nude body, covered in bruises, was sprawled on her bed.
A neighbour, 18-year-old Kenneth Roberts, who lived in the apartment directly above the victim, called police at 4:45 a.m. to report a woman screaming in the building.
Roberts was arrested on June 10th and charged with first-degree murder when forensic testing of long blond hairs found near Anstett's body indicated they were consistent with Roberts's hair. Roberts was convicted on October 17th.
A crusading defence lawyer spent a year preparing an appeal by having the hairs tested using a more sophisticated method called neutron activation analysis. The new test results contradicted the earlier findings and Roberts won a new trial. On Thursday, December 22nd, 1977, Roberts was found not guilty and freed.
No one else was ever charged in the murder of Joanne Anstett.
Comment: Those blond suspect hairs, presumably still in evidence, should be DNA tested and run through the national database. The acquitted Roberts could also provide DNA to rule himself out completely.

●Between 6:05 and 6:30 on the evening of Friday, December 7th, 1956, mail truck driver Weldon Boyd, 41, was shot four times in the back as he sat in his truck parked in a vacant lot at the rear of the Lake Shore Honey Packers plant at 12 Carlaw Ave. According to a blood trail investigators retraced in the light of the next day, Boyd's killer then, for unknown reasons, drove the mail truck, with Boyd's body inside, north on Carlaw to Queen St. E., two blocks east on Queen, and half a block south on Pape Ave. There, sometime between 6:55 and 7:30 p.m., according to residents of the area, the killer abandoned the truck and disappeared into the night after grabbing $7,500 in cash packed into 15 mailbags. Boyd's body was found slumped on the floor of the truck's cab by an off-duty policeman shortly after midnight.
Police believed the killer was familiar with post office routine, and may have been someone known to the victim. They also believed the killer had an accomplice who drove him and the money away from the scene. The empty mailbags, one covered in blood, were discovered at 8 p.m., just an hour after the murder, by a passing motorist on Westlake Rd., just east of Kingston Rd., 15 km northeast of the murder scene.

●32-year-old taxi driver Ralph Margeson was shot to death by a fare or fares on Tuesday, November 11th, 1947. At half past midnight, Margeson had called his dispatcher at Ardee Cab Company saying he was in the vicinity of Roncesvalles Ave. and Dundas St. W., and requesting permission to drive someone who had hailed him to Port Credit, southwest of Toronto. He was granted permission, and it was during the drive to Port Credit, at a point west of the intersection of the Queen Elizabeth Way and Browns Line, that he was shot in the head with a large calibre gun. Margeson's hat was found at that location, and there was evidence his body had been dragged out of and back into his car there. Margeson's body was ultimately dumped in a grassy ditch next to Dixie Rd., about 1.5 km from the shooting scene. The cabbie's wallet and pocket watch had been taken and his trouser pockets turned inside-out.
Margeson's cab was found abandoned in a laneway off Weston Rd. near St. Clair Ave. W., not far from 89 Guestville Ave., where the cabbie lived with his wife and five children. Oddly, on the night of the murder, a prowler tried to break into the Margeson house. Margeson's wife heard footsteps on the veranda and phoned police, but the intruder was gone when they arrived. It is not known if the break-in was connected to the murder.

●Around noon on Sunday, April 3rd, 1988, a maid at the Ramada Inn at 185 Yorkland Blvd found the body of 46-year-old George Kourtis in a third-floor room. He had drowned in the bathtub.
Kourtis's van, a vehicle he used for his contracting business and which bore the lettering Kourtis Flooring on the sides, was found a few blocks away from the hotel in the parking lot of a business called The Monarch Group at 2025 Sheppard Ave. E. near Hwy 404. Kourtis, who lived on Inverary Cres., 5km northeast of the hotel, was married with two teen children, and his wife had reported him missing on Sunday morning after he failed to show up for a late dinner date they had set for Saturday. His wife said Kourtis had seemed "very happy" when he left for a business meeting around midday on Saturday. Records showed he checked in at the Ramada Inn at around 3 p.m.
Police theorized Kourtis met his killer(s) at the parking lot where his van was left and went with him/her to the hotel. Newspaper articles do not specify how it was determined homicide was the cause of death.

●At approximately midnight on Friday, May 18th, 2001, 24-year-old Segun Farquharson was shot in the chest in the parking lot of 218 Duncanwoods Dr. in the Islington Ave. and Finch Ave. W. area of northwest Toronto. He died at hospital less than an hour later. The circumstances surrounding his murder are somewhat murky, but what is known is that his killers (at least two men present) demanded money from him as they pistol-whipped him inside a car. It is apparently not known if he was randomly targeted for robbery or owed someone money (though the recording linked below implies he was acquainted with his killers).
Farquharson had the presence of mind to activate the "record" button on his cell phone, and the conversation leading up to his shooting was recorded. He pleads for his life for several minutes with the promise to "go get the money right now", before the shooter loses patience and ends his life. Frustratingly, despite the killers' voices having been captured on audio, they have yet to be identified or captured.
-Toronto Police web page about the case: www.torontopolice.on.ca/homicide/case/70
-Audio recording of murder (warning: disturbing, and there are a few expletives): www.torontopolice.on.ca/media/audio/2003.12.18-1030b.mp3

●Sarah Jean Carlin, 78, was found beaten and strangled in her apartment in a seniors' highrise complex in Newmarket, 50 km north of Toronto, on Saturday, August 14th, 1976. She may have lain semiconscious for several hours before dying of a heart attack due to a blow to the head. The elderly woman, who was hard of hearing and had limited mobility, was found lying on her bedroom floor with her mattress and bed on top of her. She was last seen Friday afternoon at 5:30 by neighbours. Her apartment had been ransacked. She was known to be distrustful of banks, and may have had a considerable amount of money stashed in her abode.
Additional info on this murder is very hard to come by.

●Early on Friday, September 12th, 1947, the bodies of George Vigus, 39, and 21-year-old Iris Muriel Scott were found in Vigus's 1935 Chevrolet on a popular lover's lane at the southern end of High Park, 200 ft north of Colborne Lodge, a heritage estate owned in the 1800s by the park's founders. Both victims had been strangled, Vigus with a sash cord, Scott manually. The bodies had been stuffed into the trunk. Vigus's wallet, watch, and car keys were missing, as were Scott's purse and wristwatch. Vigus's keys were found early Thursday morning on Sorauren Ave. near Garden Ave. by a citizen who turned them in days later. Scott's purse and a piece of rope were found west of the crime scene on Sunday by two boys searching for frogs.
Police determined the duo had been killed late on Wednesday night, probably at another location, and that the car was deposited in the lover's lane sometime between 1 and 3 a.m. on Thursday, but, although the presence of the car was noted by several passersby throughout Thursday, it wasn't until Friday that police, along with Vigus's adult son, brother, and a family friend, jimmied the trunk's lock and made the horrific discovery.
The married Vigus was an executive at a paper box company, while Scott was a secretary at Ainsworth Motors, a car dealership. They were known to be friends, but nothing more. An acquaintance of Scott's spotted her and Vigus at a restaurant at Avenue Rd. and Eglinton Ave. at 6:45 p.m. Wednesday. He was the last to see them alive. Police theorized that, after diner, the twosome went to the paper plant on Wellington St. W. where Vigus worked, parked in a secluded courtyard, and were surprised by their killer(s). Aluminum paint recently applied to a storage building at the factory was consistent with paint found on the heels of both victims' shoes. Vigus was known to frequently visit the plant at night.
An inquest into the murders was held, but it failed to produce many answers or a suspect or suspects.

●At 1:15 a.m. on July 1st, 1991, taxi driver Anthony Ekunah, 35, who worked for Metro Cabs, received a call from his dispatcher to pick up a passenger on Willowdale Ave. at Byng Ave. Soon after, Ekunah radioed dispatch to say he had picked up the fare and was taking him/her to Finch Ave. E. and Leslie St. He was not heard from again.
At 11 a.m., Ekunah's bloodied body was found inside his blood-spattered cab on Rondeau Dr., a quiet residential street near Leslie St. and Steeles Ave. E. He had been stabbed and slashed several times, and his body was slumped across the front seat. The killer had not stolen Ekunah's money or jewelry, leaving motive a mystery.

●On the evening of Thursday, October 20th, 1955, beer store clerk Walter Hewlett, 49, was shot to death as he tried to block the escape of a man who had attempted to rob the store at St. Clair Ave. W. and Lauder Ave. The gunman shot Hewlett twice, once in the leg and once in the chest, with a .38 revolver, before calmly walking off. A man, his wife, and their daughter followed the culprit in their car for a short distance before the young girl became too frightened and her parents decided to cease the pursuit. They last saw him heading west on Rosemount Ave. toward Dufferin St. He was described by witnesses as a well-dressed man in his thirties.
One of the best clues police had was a hold-up note the killer had handed to the cashier. Police hoped the handwriting would lead to the murderer's identification.

●On Friday, January 20th, 1967, Bruno Seidel, 55, was found stabbed to death in the room he rented at 103 Hamilton St., near Dundas St. E. and Broadview Ave. He had five wounds in his chest and back inflicted by a knife with an eight-inch blade. Seidel, an immigrant from Germany with no family in Canada, was a loner. No one claimed his body, and few people even knew him. He worked as a labourer at an east-end factory. His landlady, who didn't know his full name, last saw him on Thursday evening.
One establishment where the victim's face was familiar was Dennis House, a bar on Broadview Ave. where Seidel was a regular patron. Waiters there identified him as a customer who often left in the company of younger men. Police learned Seidel left Germany in 1952 when charges were laid against him for the "crime" of homosexuality. No additional information.
Comment: Although a long shot, I wonder if Seidel was a victim of James Greenidge, a convicted killer and rapist of men and women who is suspected in a number of murders in the 1960s and '70s. Link: http://hazel8500.wordpress.com/2009/03/10/james-greenidges-criminal-career-across-canada/

●On the night of Sunday, December 6th, 1953, 17-year-old Marion McDowell and her boyfriend, 19-year-old James Wilson, sat in Wilson's parked car under an apple tree along Danforth Rd. just north of Eglinton Ave E., in what was then called Scarboro Township, a secluded, virtually rural area on the eastern outskirts of Toronto (now a densely-populated suburb). At sometime between 9 and 9:30 p.m., the two lovers had been there for ninety minutes when a masked man armed with a gun suddenly appeared out of the darkness, slugged Wilson unconscious with the gun butt, leaving a laceration that would require 17 stitches, bundled both youths into the back seat of Wilson's car, and started driving north on Danforth Rd. Just south of Lawrence Ave. E., the assailant forced McDowell into the trunk of his own car and drove off northbound, abandoning Wilson and Wilson's car. The now half-conscious Wilson could do little more than look on helplessly. Marion McDowell was never seen again, nor was her body ever found, despite an investigation of unprecedented magnitude, scads of tips, daily media coverage, and dozens of intensive and wide-ranging police and volunteer searches.

●In the spring of 1963, someone known as "The Mad Stabber" was briefly in the news. On Thursday, May 30th, two men were stabbed in the area of Dundas St. W. and Ossington Ave. 42-year-old Leon McQuarrie was walking along Lakeview Ave. toward his home on Churchill Ave. at around 12:25 a.m., when a man ran up behind him and stabbed him between the shoulder blades. Five minutes later and less than a block away, 38-year-old Jacob Fugal was stabbed in the back in front of his home on Harrison St. Fugal was treated in hospital and released, but McQuarrie's injuries were much more serious, though ultimately not fatal, and he spent several days in hospital recovering. On Saturday, June 1st, Dennis MacGillivary was only slightly wounded when he was stabbed in the back while sitting on a park bench around midnight in MacGregor Park, on Lansdowne Ave. north of College St., a kilometre or so west of where the previous attacks had taken place. The attacker was described as about 20 years of age 5'8 - 5'10, with dark, unruly hair.

●At about 11:15 p.m. on Tuesday, May 15th, 1973, 26-year-old Adele Komorowski, a graduate student at McMaster University in Hamilton, 60 km southwest of Toronto, was grabbed at the front door of her campus residence and dragged 450 feet into a nearby ravine in Hamilton Botanical Gardens. A fellow female student who lived on the third floor of the same complex heard screams and looked out her window to witness a man dragging a woman toward the ravine. Police were called, arrived promptly, and found Komorowski's body mere minutes after her murder. She had been strangled with a piece of rope. Though the victim had been stripped to the waist, she had not been raped, likely because her killer was scared off before he could effect his sexual designs. Police with tracking dogs immediately began combing the secluded trails of Coote's Paradise marsh, which borders the university campus.
No further information, but the murder remained unsolved in the middle of September, when it was last written about in the paper.

●When firefighters responded to a call at 7089 Yonge St., just north of Toronto city limits, at 5 a.m. on Monday, September 21st, 1987, they found the body of 58-year-old Francesco Califano in the second-floor office of his business, Compupronto Mortgage Services. Califano, who was married and resided on Beecroft Rd., had been stabbed seven times and then his body and part of his office had been set aflame with an accelerant.
No additional information.

●At 4:25 a.m. on Sunday, March 19th, 1961, two young men driving along 9th Concession (Hwy 5) west of Myrtle, 40 km northeast of Toronto, found the body of 24-year-old Alice Margaret McCausland lying beside the road. She had been strangled. The woman's fur coat, shoes, and scarf, which witnesses later attested to having seen her wearing, had been removed from her body and were missing. Police were confronted with difficulties from the start, because it was not known exactly who the woman was, whether her name was actually Alice Margaret McCausland, and where she lived, though they quickly learned she rented a room on Berkeley St. Fingerprints revealed that the dead woman was convicted a month before her death of minor theft and given a suspended sentence. Records from her court appearance indicated she was born in Timmins, Ontario. Alice's mother came forward in short order and revealed that, sadly, her daughter suffered from Huntington's disease, a degenerative illness that causes the sufferer to lose control of movement and bodily functions. Alice had married five years earlier, but was now separated, and she and her husband had two daughters.
The pathologist found substantial bruising and fingernail marks and scratches on McCausland's neck, and he concluded she had eaten about half-an-hour before her death. The victim's body had been dumped on the secluded road within an hour before it was discovered, and the killer was fortunate to avoid being spotted by a patrolling Ontario Provincial Police constable and two men, all three of whom drove past the crime scene shortly before and after the dumping.
Further investigation led police to search for a man driving a red and white car. The victim was last seen getting into the man's car outside a Parliament St. restaurant around 1:30 a.m., three hours before her body was found.
No further information available.

●On Sunday, November 15th, 1981, Metro taxi driver Peter Gamoulakos, 37, was found strangled to death in his cab, which was parked near Miranda and Schell Aves in the vicinity of Dufferin St. and Eglinton Ave. W. Police were led to believe he had been murdered Saturday morning. A passerby on Sunday noticed Gamoulakos's body slumped over in the car and called police. The car was parked inconspicuously, which may explain why Gamoulakos wasn't found earlier. The keys were in the ignition but the engine was off. The deceased had close to $200 in his pocket, meaning either the killer panicked and fled or harboured a motive other than robbery.

●Shortly before noon on Wednesday, July 30th, 1982: An unnamed 23-year-old woman was sunbathing on a grassy hill in the northwest corner of High Park, just across from her apartment building on Bloor St. W., when she was dragged into some nearby shrubbery, bludgeoned with a brick and a fist-sized rock, and raped. The area would have been fairly busy, and police speculated that either the victim's cries were ignored by passersby or they blended in with the joyous screams of children playing in a nearby playground. After the attack, the woman stumbled wounded along Bloor St. W. where, by happenstance, she ran into a friend who was on her way to joining her sunbathing.
The victim was taken to Toronto General Hospital where she lapsed into a coma. Doctors were unsure she would recover from the severe head wounds. The victim remained comatose for more than two weeks before slowly beginning to recover. She was able to describe her attacker as a light-skinned black man with dreadlocks, mid-to late-20s, 5'5" - 5'7", medium build with muscular shoulders, dark eyes, a thin nose and lips, a very clear complexion, even, white teeth, and wearing light-coloured clothing that smelled of smoke. A composite sketch was drawn and circulated.

CrimeSolver said:

●The decomposed body of 45-year-old Phyllis Farquhar was discovered on Friday, November 23rd, 1979 under an old mattress behind her apartment on Edgewood Ave. She had been stabbed. The apartment superintendent notified police when he hadn’t seen Farquhar since early October and she hadn’t paid her rent.
Ironically, Farquhar had been a witness in a stabbing-murder court case back in 1964.

●Cindy Halliday, 17, disappeared on Monday, April 20th, 1992 after she attempted to hitchhike from Barrie, Ontario (100 km north of Toronto) to her mother’s home in Waverley, 30 km north of Barrie. Halliday, a habitual runaway, had spent April 19th at a dance in Penetanguishene, then hitchhiked south to Barrie to visit her jailed boyfriend, and then headed north for home. The last sighting of Halliday was of her trying to thumb a ride in front of the Hasty Market on Hwy 27 in Midhurst between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m. on the 20th. Four witnesses who later came forward said they saw her get into a light-coloured older model Chrysler LeBaron or Dodge Diplomat driven by a single male.
A man walking his dog found her skull on Sunday, June 21st in a forest off Horseshoe Valley Rd. about 2 km east of Hwy 27. The rest of her remains were found by police 500 metres to the east of where her skull was located. An autopsy revealed Halliday had been stabbed, but, due to decomposition, it could not be determined if she had been sexually assaulted. Further tests conducted almost two years after her body was found showed Halliday may have been alive for up to a month after she disappeared. Similarities between Halliday’s murder and that of university student Lynda Shaw two years earlier near Woodstock led police to believe the two might have been committed by the same person. At one time, notorious serial killer Paul Bernardo was a suspect.
Link: www.opp.ca/Intranetdev/groups/public/documents/investigative/opp_001222.pdf

●On Sunday, December 4th, 1983, art teacher Thomas Cahill was stabbed to death in his home on Berkeley St. Charles Furlong, a tenant in Cahill’s house, had heard Cahill talking to someone downstairs, and then, at 4:45 a.m., he heard Cahill call his name. When Furlong came downstairs, he found the front door open and Cahill lying in a pool of his own blood. Police believed Cahill was stabbed by a departing visitor. He had spent Saturday night at the Parkside Tavern on Yonge St.
Comments: I wonder if this case is related to the murder of Graham Pearce (see previous post)? Both Pearce and Cahill were apparently gay men stabbed in their homes in the post-midnight hours, both had spent their last nights at the Parkside Tavern, and both were killed in 1983.

●At 2:15 a.m. on Sunday, November 17th, 1985, the body of Lorelei Brose, 19, was found with a bullet to the head in a room in the Inglewood Arms hotel on Jarvis St. She was found fully clothed and had not been robbed. Police were alerted after hotel employees received complaints of a woman’s screams. Brose was a prostitute who frequented the Jarvis-Gerrard Sts. area. Many of Brose’s fellow prostitutes raised the theory that Brose had been slain by a contract killer hired to settle a personal dispute. Brose was known to rip off her clients.

●Marie Woods, a 31-year-old single mother of a six-year-old daughter, vanished on September 21st, 1981. Her Subaru station wagon was found abandoned on Oct. 5th at the Scarborough Town Centre. Police found no clues to her disappearance in her home or car. Although there was no specific evidence immediately to suggest she had been abducted, Woods had a normal life, a well-paying job, and the responsibility of her daughter, suggesting she wouldn’t have left of her own volition.
Then, five years later, in November, 1986, remains later identified as Woods were found in Newmarket, about 50 km north of where her car was abandoned. Police had a strong suspect in the early ‘90s, Peter Stark, who had once dated Woods and was convicted of the 1990 murder of a teenage girl, but there was apparently never enough evidence to lay charges. At least, I could find no reference to an arrest in this case.
As a tragic postscript, Woods’s daughter Jennifer died of cancer at age 14 in September, 1989.

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concerning Maria Woods not Marie-She was my neighbour and the case has had a couple of suspects but no arrests. I remember those days because it was me and not her husband (because legally divorced) had to go into her home several times and had police and reporters at my door even on Sunday mornings at 6a.m. with questions after questions. I was the first to report her missing and there is one person who was of great interest who did the same to a very young girl and Maria had woken up on a boat too after being knocked out when this person put something in her drink. A week later she was dead and the night she left, probably not on her own free will someone just about stripped the gears on her car and she would not of done that. If I got up to look I might of seen something that would identify the person and i've lived with that for the rest of my life. There is alot to this story that was never printed and some that was but wrong. I hope we get some answers soon!!!

Thanks for posting your personal recollections, downsview 57. Do the police know about the incident the previous week, with the girl and the boat?

●Arthur Chiang, 50, the night manager of the Paradise Lanes bowling alley on Danforth Rd. near St. Clair Ave. E., was found bludgeoned to death in an office of the establishment on Friday, July 27th, 1990. His body was found by his wife and son, who went to the business at 6:30 a.m. when he hadn't returned from work. He had died of multiple skull fractures and lacerations to the brain.
Bowlers at the alley last saw Chiang alive at about 2:50 a.m. Detectives investigated possible Asian gang connections, but it is not publicly known what, if anything, was gleaned from their enquiries. No further information.

●Just before 2 a.m. on Sunday, January 17th, 1993, shooting erupted at the Club Paradise restaurant at 843 Kipling Ave. in an industrial section of west-end Toronto. Up to 500 people packed the club at the time. Of the four people hit by gunshots, three, a 34-year-old man, a 22-year-old man, and a 22-year-old woman, survived, but 32-year-old Howard Alfanso Xymines, a divorced father of two, died en route to hospital.
Three suspects were sought in the shooting spree, all of whom were described as black, in their mid to late-20s, with either Trinidadian or Barbadian accents, and all armed with handguns. No further information, but case is presumed unsolved.
Photo of victim:

●Concealed in tall weeds off the Don Roadway south of Commissioners St., a desolate spot near Toronto's industrial waterfront, the nude body of 30-year-old Marion Jang was found by railway employees working near a spur track on Saturday, July 17th, 1965. Jang, who lived on Beverley St., had been strangled with a piece of cloth tied tightly around her neck. She was believed to have been killed Friday night.
No further information is available, so the disposition of this case is not known.
Photo of victim:

●On the night of Sunday, September 30th, 1990, a raucous house party was underway in an Ontario Housing townhouse complex on Morecambe Gate near Victoria Park and Finch Aves. More than 100 attendees drank and danced to deafening reggae music. At around 1:45 a.m., 15-year-old Kareem Alhakeem O'Brien was shot in the basement of the home. He died in hospital at about 10 a.m.
No additional information.

●At 4:30 on Monday, November 13th, 1961, 7-year-old Sylvia Fink left her home in London, Ontario to run an errand. Her mother sent her to the corner store a block away to fetch an evening newspaper. The little girl didn't return. Her parents organized a search party, and at 8 p.m., three friends of the family found Fink's body hanging by a belt in the attic of an abandoned building that was used by neighbourhood children as a play area. Police determined the death was not the act of a sex murderer.
No further information is available, so the disposition of this case is not known.
Photo of victim:

[FONT=&quot]●On Sunday, May 5th, 1991, 38-year-old Zygfryd Zoch, the night manager at the Idlewood Inn, located at 4212 Kingston Rd. in Scarborough, was found shot to death near an abandoned house in a vacant lot immediately southwest of the motel. Zoch, a Polish immigrant who had lived in Toronto for three years and had no relatives in Canada, lived alone in a condominium on Collinsgrove Rd., a few blocks from the murder scene. Police found his body at 5 p.m., several hours after day shift employees reported him missing. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Police believed Zoch was held up by a robber at about 5:30 a.m., and that the perpetrator ordered Zoch outside and into the lot next door where he shot him in the head with a shotgun.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Photo of victim: [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot][/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]●Margaret Dowling, 47, was found dead of stab wounds in her home on the west side of Morton Rd. between Stephenson and Oakcrest Aves on Sunday, January 19th, 1992. Dowling, a highly respected and liked nursing supervisor at Central Hospital on Sherbourne St., was found by police lying on the main floor of her home. She lived alone with her beloved cat. Co-workers had called police after she failed to show up for her Saturday evening shift. Her house showed signs of a break-in, and police believed burglary was the primary intention of the murderer. Speculation was that the murder occurred between the 16th and the 19th, during a period when the victim had three days off work, and was perhaps caused by Dowling's surprising an intruder when she returned home. Her body was still dressed in an overcoat when found. The intruder had dragged her around a corner, out of sight of the front door.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]In August, 1995, police released information that a strong suspect in the Dowling murder, who remained unnamed, had committed suicide in 1993. They had circumstantial evidence against him, but could not prove his culpability.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Photo of victim: [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot][/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]●Wednesday, December 19th, 1990: Krystal Connors, 29, was found dead in her second-floor apartment on Louis Ave. in St. Catharines, a city 60 km due south of Toronto, after firefighters arrived to douse a blaze. Connors had been strangled to death with a cord that remained wound around her neck. She lay face-down on the floor, and the lower part of her body had been badly burned.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Connors was last known to be alive at 3:38 a.m., when cab company records showed she called for a taxi to take someone who was at her apartment to Bunting Rd. When the taxi arrived minutes later, no one answered the apartment buzzer. It was just after 6 a.m. that firefighters responded to a call that Connors's apartment was on fire.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Connors was last seen earlier that night with a man at the Time-Out sports bar at 547 Ontario St. Witnesses described him as white, about 30, 5'7" to 5'10", about 160 lbs with a medium build, dark brown shoulder-length hair, a moustache, a two-day growth of beard, and wearing a black baseball cap and green jacket.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Connors, who was unemployed, had lived alone since divorcing in 1982. She had a 13-year-old son.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]No further information, therefore disposition of case is unknown.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Composite sketch of man last seen with victim: [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot][/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]●At 7 p.m. on Tuesday, May 7th, 1991, 21-year-old Marcey Bent was shot to death in the main-floor stairwell of an apartment building on Driftwood Ave. Bent lived in another apartment building on Driftwood Ave. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]At 4 p.m. that afternoon, the body of Raymond Senior, 36, of Brooklyn, N.Y., was found in a home on Driftwood Ct., 180 metres from where Bent had been killed. Senior had been shot in the head as he lay in bed in the basement of the home. Bent and Senior knew each other. Senior had been arrested numerous times on drug charges in Brooklyn, but Bent was not known to Toronto police. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]No further information.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Photos of victims: [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot][/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]●A shooting erupted at an illegal nightclub in the basement of a fish shop on Eglinton Ave. W. near Keele St. at 4 a.m. on Sunday, October 19th, 1991. In its wake, 28-year-old drifter Devon "Niney" Green and 18-year-old Radcliff Nugent were left dead. It appeared to be a gangland hit. Three gunmen, all described as black, in their 20s, and with American accents, sped away in a black Nissan Maxima with grey trim. Although the club was packed with 200 people, only two witnesses came forward to police.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]In probing criminal connections, police uncovered that Nugent had been involved in a series of armed robberies and a police chase in 1990. Nugent had recently been expelled from school, but was to re-enrol in the week following.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Police believed one of the two was an innocent victim, while the other was targeted. No further information.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Photo of victim Radcliff Nugent: [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot][/FONT]

Update:

CrimeSolver said:

●On Sunday, July 17th, 1988, 22-year-old Lisa Maas attended a house party in Woodford, Ontario, 200 km northwest of Toronto and 15 km east of her hometown, Owen Sound. After Maas left the get-together, she dropped a male friend off at his home and was never seen again. Two days later her green 1976 Plymouth Fury was found on an isolated bush lane not far from where she was last seen. Several subsequent searches turned up items belonging to Maas, but her body was never found.
At the time of her disappearance, Maas was five months pregnant and had recently separated acrimoniously from her boyfriend.

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The Ontario Provincial Police is offering a $50,000 reward in the disappearance of Lisa Maas:
http://www.1017theone.ca/news.php?area=details&art_id=7426

The OPP announced today they are continuing the investigation into the disappearance of an Owen Sound woman 21 years ago.

A reward of 50 thousand dollars is now offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the disappearance of Lisa Maas.

On July 17th, 1988 Lisa Maas was last seen leaving the residence of a male friend in her 1976 Plymouth after a house party.

Two days later, her vehicle was found stuck in the mud on a township road in a rural area northeast of Owen Sound.

The area was searched extensively, and the only thing found was some personal papers several kilometres east of the vehicle. No trace of Lisa Maas has ever been found.

An extensive investigation was conducted in this case involving hundreds of interviews.

The OPP Criminal Investigation Branch Unsolved Homicide Investigations Team is appealing for new information.

Anyone with any information regarding the disappearance of Lisa Maas should contact the nearest OPP office, or Crime Stoppers.

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The button design is not an infinity symbol nor a figure 8 - it is a coiled serpent and should be easier to identify the source/manufacturer - possible that it is a military insignia, or represents a veterinary association, perhaps an exclusive club of some kind?:waitasec:

^^To which case are you referring?

Edit: sorry, didn't notice the title of your post.

Has it been established that the button did not belong to Kaye? If so, that could be a major clue.

The OPP have stated that the button did not belong to Veronica. This information was just recently released to the public in an attempt to get new leads in the case. This button was found under the body and it was a clip on type button - not sewn onto clothing.

CrimeSolver said:

^^To which case are you referring?

Edit: sorry, didn't notice the title of your post.

Has it been established that the button did not belong to Kaye? If so, that could be a major clue.

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Interesting, thanks.

http://www.caledoncitizen.com/news/...00_reward_in_29yearold_murder.html#comment-12

"
Police also reported a unique metallic button was found under her skeletal remains. They released details of that find at a press conference held Tuesday in Bolton in the hopes that its design might be familiar to someone.
The button was about 1.5 centimetres in diameter, and was a clip-on button, as opposed to being sown to a garment. It had either a figure eight or the symbol for infinity on it. "

CrimeSolver said:

●Awoken from their sleep, 13-year-old Leah Sousa and her mother were raped and brutally beaten with a weapon by an attacker in their home in Cumberland Beach, Ontario, about 130 km north of Toronto, on September 1st, 1990. While her mother survived, young Leah died of her injuries.
www.opp.ca/Intranetdev/groups/public/documents/investigative/opp_000953.pdf

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Here is a documentary on the above-quoted case, produced by Canadian newsmagazine show W5.

CrimeSolver said:

Some more capsule murder summaries. Again, if anyone knows of any of these cases having been solved, please speak up.

●Sometime around 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, August 28th, 1987, 21-year-old receptionist Margaret McWilliam was raped and strangled to death while out for an evening jog in Warden Woods park in the Scarborough section of Toronto. Her body was found in the northeast sector of the park not far from subway tracks. Police found a clear footprint at the scene and were able to identify the type of shoes worn by the killer as rare Bata grey and white high-top sneakers with the letters AAU on the heel. They also had a composite drawn of a young man - a “witness” - wearing a red cap, who was seen leaving the park around 8 p.m. At one point police suspected the crime may have been committed by Frederick Merrill, an American fugitive featured on “America’s Most Wanted”, who was in Toronto at the time of McWilliams’s murder.

●On Tuesday, October 7th, 1975, 33-year-old data processing student Albert Chan was shot to death in the underground parking garage of his apartment building on Isabella St. in downtown Toronto. The killer stole Chan’s car and dumped it near the intersection of Carlton and Metcalfe Sts., not far from the crime scene.

●On Thursday, April 24th, 1980, Brink’s security guard Larry Roberts, 29, was gunned down with a machine gun in a well-planned robbery at Agincourt Mall, which is located at 3850 Sheppard Ave. E. in the Scarborough section of Toronto. His partner, 51-year-old Ted Montgomery, was shot and wounded. Multiple witnesses watched the incident go down as the three robbers grabbed the $178,500 the Brink’s men were transporting, dashed through a library and out the west side of the mall, jumped a fence that separated the mall from a nursing home, hopped into a car, and screeched out onto Bonis Ave. where they disappeared. A police manhunt failed to find the culprits, but police later found two cars nearby that had been stolen in Montreal and used by the robbers. The robbers were all described as white males between their late twenties and early forties. The gunman was described by witnesses as 40-45 years old, 175 pounds, with a short, stocky build, an olive complexion, a dark moustache and eyebrows, a strong jaw, a broad face. One accomplice was in his late-20s, 175 lbs, with a medium build and light to medium brown hair. The third man was described as 5’5” to 5’8”, 175 lbs, stocky, with medium to light hair. An investigation led police to believe the robbers were from Montreal, since the crime bore hallmarks of similar robberies there.

●Shortly before 8 a.m. on Thursday, February 10th, 1983, 42-year-old Philip Rimmington, Toronto’s deputy planning commissioner, was shot dead with a .22 handgun in the parking garage of the apartment building where he lived at 231 Balliol St., near Mt. Pleasant Rd. A nearby resident reported seeing a grey-haired man in his mid-50s fleeing the garage through a staircase at the northeast corner of the building shortly after the shooting. There were also reports that police had been called in weeks prior to the crime to investigate a stranger lurking around the parking area.
Rimmington, who was separated from his wife, with whom he had a 12-year-old daughter, was well-liked by his colleagues and was active in sports. In searching for a motive, police learned Rimmington did not have a tendency to engage in partisan political discussions or activities, so the possibility of angering someone through his work at city hall was virtually ruled out. Three guns owned by the victim were discovered missing, and for a time there was speculation he was shot with one of his own weapons.

●Maintenance man Donald Gibbons, 33, was stabbed to death with a butcher knife on July 18th, 1971 after chasing a man he believed was stealing a TV set from his apartment above a deli at Queen St. E. and Pape Ave. The killer ended up stealing a tape recorder and an amplifier belonging to Gibbons.

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Apparently Margaret McWilliam's family has contacted LE regarding the possibility that Russell Williams may have had something to do with her demise. Bernardo was a suspect in Margaret's death but he was discounted as he was not in the country when she was killed. Williams was quite possibly still in the area during this period as he had finished University (at the Scarborough Campus) the year earlier and was just entering official training at Base Borden. According to various articles, he officially changed his last name back to "Williams" in 1987. In a recently published article the McWilliams stated that they do not believe that their daughter knew RW but they were all living in Chalk River at some point and the McWilliams apparently did know RW's birth parents and occasionally encountered them at parties. I would think that these facts alone would make it worthwhile for LE to look further into this.

MOO

It's interesting to note that a boot/shoe print was found at the scene (it was from a "rare" shoe/boot) and also that someone had seen a man wearing a red cap and a composite had been done but I haven't been able to find much more about this. One other thing I wanted to add regarding the "Bata" shoe. Bata used to have a manufacturing plant near Trenton. RW was earning his Wings at Borden/Trenton during this time period.

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/story_print.html?id=2560638&sponsor=

http://news.ca.msn.com/local/toronto/article.aspx?cp-documentid=23457052

Fascinating backstory. Thanks, Pink Panther. The arrest of this Williams character is bringing to life a bunch of old cases.
I'll look through the paper again to see if I can find a composite of the man seen in the park. I believe it was a black man, though.

Pink Panther, here are some screen grabs from the newspaper database:
Composite of man seen leaving park:

Shoes worn by killer:

Map of area:

Thanks so much for finding and sharing this information Crimesolver!