CANADA Canada - Randy Rankin, 46, Morewood, Ont, 12 Feb 2007

Raging Ranter

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This case has received very little coverage in recent years, and in fact I do not recall hearing much about it when it happened. Despite that, it apparently has been much talked about in the harness racing community in Ontario.

Randy Rankin was a well-known children's entertainer who went by the names of "Lunchbox Louie" and "Koo Koo the Clown." He was also passionate about horse racing, and regularly bought and trained horses.

His death has been widely publicized on websites serving eastern Ontario's harness racing community, of which he was an active and outspoken member.

Gary Rankin said his brother had made enemies for posting his opinions about what he saw as corruption in the eastern Ontario harness racing industry.


Here is the link to the OPP cold case page on Randy with a downloadable poster highlighting the $50K reward for information.
 
Snipped...
...Randy Rankin was sitting at his computer desk in the basement of his home in the village of Morewood, southeast of Ottawa, in the early morning hours of Feb. 12, 2007, when someone snuck up to the window and fired a gun through the glass, hitting the 47-year-old in the back of the head.

His wife and daughter, who were upstairs at the time, ran to the basement to find him dead.

:thinking:
 
Rankin died of gunshot wound: autopsy
February 14, 2007

Snipped...
...OPP Sgt. Kristine Rae said that while no arrests had been made by Wednesday morning, police had "lots of persons of interest."

"We've been getting lots of information from the public, that's for sure," Rae said.
 
March 16 2017
Unsolved in the Ottawa Valley, Part 1: The killing of Randy Rankin
"MOREWOOD, Ont. — The gunman must have been cold and tired by the time Randy Rankin flicked on a basement light and sat down at his computer.

It was 5 a.m. in mid-February 2007. Snow was falling in the dark.

Soundlessly, the gunman took aim through the basement window of the secluded bungalow Rankin shared with his wife, Dorothy, and their teenage daughter, Amanda.

Rankin was a sizable target. He was 6’4’’ and 400 pounds with a neck that swallowed his jaw and enthroned his chin.

His life was equally large and headstrong. Rankin, 46, was consumed with harness racing but tended to gamble more than he could afford to lose at Ottawa’s Rideau Carleton Raceway. He also held staunch, controversial opinions, which he shared online, about what was wrong with the state of racing in Ontario: He railed about horse doping, financial corruption and hinted darkly at even larger scandal.

Rankin could be argumentative and abrasive, and he collected a full share of enemies.

Yet there was another side to him, an alter ego, which manifested itself in the form of Koo Koo the Clown and Lunch Box Louie. His size was an asset when it came to entertaining children — and he took real joy in playing the clown. This was the man much loved by the women in his life: his wife, daughter, mother and grandmother, with whom he was exceptionally close.

None of it mattered, though, to the killer who applied increasing pressure to the trigger under his fingertip.

In a split second, a bullet exploded from the weapon’s barrel, pierced the basement window and crashed into the back of Rankin’s skull.

Dorothy and Amanda Rankin scrambled out of bed to investigate. As the gunman melted back into the night, Rankin slumped dead in his chair, his traumatized daughter at his side.

No one has ever been arrested for the killing of Randy Rankin, but that doesn’t mean the case is a cold one: Far from it. History is on the boil in North Dundas Township."
 

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