CANADA Celia, Isaac & Avrom Airst, Toronto, 30 September 1979

https://www.torontopolice.on.ca/homicide/case/35/1979

Murdered on: September 30, 1979

Location: 13 Division
[h=4]Details of Investigation:[/h] On Sunday, September 30, 1979, at about 1:30 p.m., police responded to a check address call in the area of Glencairn Avenue and Englemount Avenue.

The victim was discovered inside a residence, suffering from blunt trauma. Despite life-saving efforts by emergency personnel, the victim was pronounced dead at the scene.

The victims of Homicide #33/1979 (Celia AIRST), and Homicide #34/1979 (Isaac AIRST) were discovered inside the same residence, suffering from blunt trauma. Despite life-saving efforts by emergency personnel, both of these victims were also pronounced dead at the scene.

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https://www.torontopolice.on.ca/homicide/case/33/1979
Celia AIRST, 43

55-year-old Isaac Airst and his wife, 43-year-old Celia Airst, were killed along with their 22-year-old son in September 1979. The case remains unsolved. (Toronto Police Cold Case Files)

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http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/high-profile-cases-1.4470585

CrimeSolver posted this on the Toronto Cold Cases thread.
https://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?63274-Canada-Toronto-Crimes-Discussion&p=2123675#post2123675

Case #1: The triple-slaying of the Airst family

In the early morning hours of Sunday, September 30th, 1979, upper-middle-class couple Ike and Celia Airst, aged 55 and 43 respectively, and their son Avrom, 22, were viciously bludgeoned to death in their mid-Toronto home on the southwest corner of Glencairn and Englemount Aves (at the time the area was part of a separate city called North York). The Airst’s married daughter, Simmie, found the three bodies at 1 p.m. on Sunday when she came to visit. She ran across the street to tell neighbours.
The Airsts had somewhat controversial histories. Ike owned 31 commercial buildings in the city, including one that housed a gay bathhouse, which brought him some unwanted attention in 1977 after a boy was murdered by pedophiles in a seedy downtown body rub parlour. Additionally, in 1965, he and his brother had been publicly accused of being slum landlords. However, friends and people who knew him from his work doing repairs on his various properties said he was a hardworking, kind man. Celia was an ardent member of the Jewish Defence League, and had gained some notoriety in 1971 for heckling visiting Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin in the name of her cause. Avrom lived at home with his parents and assisted his father with his maintenance work. A neighbour said the family was very private and “kept early hours”. Ike had suffered several strokes and a heart attack in recent years and was thus not in fulsome health.
Based on the daughter’s statements and the layout of the crime scene, police believe the crime transpired as follows: On Sunday evening, Celia and Avrom went out for dinner and drinks with Simmie and her husband. Ike decided to stay home and watch a baseball game. After enjoying dinner at Inn on the Park in the city’s east end, Avrom wanted to go home to tend to his father, who had a pacemaker. He was driven home, and then his mother left again with her daughter and son-in-law for drinks and a stroll in the Yorkville district. At almost 1:30 a.m., Celia was dropped off at her house. It was a foggy night. Police speculate she entered the house and locked the door, but opened it again when she heard a knock, perhaps thinking it was her daughter. She was immediately fatally attacked with a blunt instrument, and then the killer(s) went upstairs and killed Ike and Avrom in their bedrooms in the same manner. Celia’s body was found in the front hall, the men’s upstairs. The crime scene was saturated with blood.
There was no evidence of forced entry, and police determined it was unlikely that Celia would have opened the door to a stranger. Robbery was ruled out as a motive since nothing was taken. Although police probed possible political grievances or anti-Semitism as motives for the murders, no connections were ever established, nor was a link found to Ike’s business dealings. And police could apparently neither confirm nor dispel theories that this crime is related to the nearby murder of an elderly couple, Harold and Florence Fagan, in 1978 (I will consider posting this case in the future). Almost thirty years later, the Airst family murder remains unsolved.

Comments: The most informative article about this crime was published in the Toronto Star on September 30th, 1981. From what is publicly known, police didn’t make much headway in searching for suspects, but this is almost assuredly not a “random” crime. A question I have is why the bludgeoning of Celia in the front hall didn’t rouse the men upstairs from their sleep. It would probably have made quite a racket. Maybe the killer(s) was/were in the house already, and had killed Ike and Avrom, when Celia arrived home.

Below are aerial images of the location:

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http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/7358/airst1on3.jpg
http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/1691/airst2zl0.jpg

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Just an observation, a common thread...FWIW.

- Celia was an ardent member of the JDL (from the above link)

- It was JDL that picketed at The Sherman home in 2015: http://www.cjnews.com/news/canada/jdl-picket-sherman-hosted-jewish-fundraiser-trudeau

Interesting " the JDL has targeted anyone it considers a threat to the survival of radical Jewish nationalism. and Jewish community members who are simply not "Jewish enough."
Hmmm https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/jewish-defense-league
Is Trudeau Jewish?

Unless there was another, unmentioned, sibling I'm guessing that Simmie was the sole beneficiary and inherited a substantial legacy as a result of the murders.

Peace777 said:

Interesting " the JDL has targeted anyone it considers a threat to the survival of radical Jewish nationalism. and Jewish community members who are simply not "Jewish enough."
Hmmm https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/jewish-defense-league
Is Trudeau Jewish?

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Pierre or Justin? Both are technically Catholic - not sure how observant JT is these days.

Trudeau erases Jews from the Holocaust, again
October 2017

http://torontosun.com/2017/10/04/tr...gain/wcm/5961a79b-1c4a-4438-a2b3-9c7ab3eee871

It's an odd sequence of events geographically. None of these places are terribly far apart, but they're sort of parts of different worlds... Inn on the Park doesn't exist anymore according to Google maps, but my recollection is that it was at Eglinton and Leslie. Glencairn and Bathurst isn't super far, but it's not like it's exactly on the way from there to Yorkville. In the 70s, Yorkville was transitioning from its hippie music days to its modern ritzy shopping persona, but definitely still closer to the 60s. Seems like a surprising spot for a possibly conservative Jewish family, but perhaps the father owned property there.

MelmothTheLost said:

Unless there was another, unmentioned, sibling I'm guessing that Simmie was the sole beneficiary and inherited a substantial legacy as a result of the murders.

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Hmm, and the rather unusual way the evening unfolded – driving the brother home, then going out separately with the mother – did ensure that each family member was home alone or arrived home separately. My speculation only.

dotr said:

CrimeSolver posted this on the Toronto Cold Cases thread.
CANADA - Canada - Toronto Crimes Discussion

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This was my aunt, uncle and cousin. I was seven years old at the time. The story above differs from what I was told as a teenager. I do know that it was a young Julian Fantino who was one of the officers working the case.

Danmarco said:

This was my aunt, uncle and cousin. I was seven years old at the time. The story above differs from what I was told as a teenager. I do know that it was a young Julian Fantino who was one of the officers working the case.

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Welcome to Ws Danmarco!
Very sorry about the terrible loss of your family members, hoping to bring some attention to this disturbing crime by posting about the case here.
Any extra details or clarification most welcome.

Danmarco said:

This was my aunt, uncle and cousin. I was seven years old at the time. The story above differs from what I was told as a teenager. I do know that it was a young Julian Fantino who was one of the officers working the case.

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Welcome, Danmarco! I'm terribly sorry for your aunt, uncle, cousin and all who love/loved them. Would you mind sharing what you were told? You thoughts?

Bumping...

It's now been 41 years.

Ws thread for the other murdered couple referenced in link below..
CANADA - Florence, 63 & Harold 64,Fagan, Toronto, 6 March 1978

Dec 5 2021
Two midtown Toronto families killed at home, a year apart. What, if anything, connects their ‘overkill’ murders?
''Isaac (Ike) and Celia Airst, aged 55 and 43 respectively, lived in a midtown Toronto home on the southwest corner of Glencairn and Englemount Avenues with their son Avrom, 22.

A retired homicide investigator told the Star at the time that the Airst murder “looks too much like the Fagans’ to ignore the similarities.”

Both couples had long-standing marriages, and the Airsts were getting ready to celebrate their 25th anniversary.

Again, there were no signs of forced entry.

Again, there were suspicions that the victims might have known their attacker or attackers.

How else could the killer get inside?

The Airsts were known for valuing their privacy, and it wasn’t unusual for all of their three second-storey windows to be covered by blinds and for the main floor windows to be blocked by curtains. And Celia Airst routinely used an intercom at the front double doors to screen visitors.

The order of the murders wasn’t immediately clear.

The men were bludgeoned to death upstairs in their bedrooms. Celia Airst was bludgeoned and stabbed in the back just inside the front door.

Were the men killed first in their bedrooms, with Celia walking in on the crime?

Or was Celia was killed first, the attacker or attackers moving quickly, so that the Airst men didn’t hear the noise and come downstairs.

There was a major difference between the Airst and Fagan murders.

There was something methodical about the Airst family killings, while the Fagan killer or killers seemed to have been in a major hurry.

Nothing appeared disturbed in the Airst residence, although their half-ton truck was missing from the driveway.

Investigators wondered if antisemitism was involved in the Airst murders. The family had been slain on the eve of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.

Celia was active for Jewish causes, and had worked for the Holocaust committee and for a couple of years with the Jewish Defense League.

“She was active in many charitable causes,” Rabbi David Monsson of Beth Sholom Synagogue told The Star. “She was always taking an interest in good causes.”

That explained how Celia made the news in October 1971 when she and another supporter disrupted a dinner for Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto.

They chanted “Freedom! Freedom!” and unveiled a red banner with the words, “Let My People Go,” in reference to Soviet curbs on emigration to Israel.

After Celia was ejected from the event, she told The Star that Kosygin had “got a good idea of democracy in action.”

“We got through security with ease,” she said. “We had no plans to do anything violent. We just wanted to hold up the sign.”

She was also involved in trying to persuade the Canadian government to act against Nazi war criminals from World War II.

Their son Avrom also had strong political views. At 13, he requested that funds for his bar mitzvah should be spent to plant trees in Israel rather than on gifts or donations to himself.

Isaac Airst had the reputation of being a kind, low-key man who didn’t flash his money. He dressed in baggy work pants and rubber boots, and he and Avrom routinely arrived for work in a half-ton truck.

Like Harry Fagan, he had worked his way up in the world.

Isaac Airst had left school at 14 so that he could help support his family, using his bicycle for jobs like delivering newspapers and prescriptions for a pharmacy.

“He had a strong sense of obligation to his father, who was not well,” his sister Sylvia told The Star. “He wanted to help — our father was a furrier, and furs were not selling well in those days.”

Isaac Airst repaired Corvette warships for the Navy in World War II. After the war, he worked in a family business retreading auto tires before getting into real estate and scrap metal.

He was a strapping man, but didn’t likely put up much resistance to any intruder who entered the family home on Sunday, Sept. 30, 1979 — he had a bad heart and had suffered a stroke.

Again, it was massive overkill.

Eventually, police grew to think the cases weren’t connected, despite any outward similarities.

“We do not consider the two cases linked,” acting Det. Sgt. Stephen Smith of the Toronto police cold case squad said in an email.

“As for possible motives, they are tenuous at best but it is believed the Fagan case was directly related to Mr. Fagan’s business dealing while the Airst case appears to be more of a robbery scenario,” Smith said.

The Fagan and Airst murders remain unsolved.''

"... the Airst case appears to be more of a robbery scenario,” Smith said."

And yet I have read elsewhere that robbery had been ruled out since nothing was taken. Is it possible the reporter got it mixed up in the article above?

Both the Airst and Fagan cases have a remaining offspring, a daughter in each case, and presumably a beneficiary. Nowhere does it mention if and how the daughters were ruled out and why?

2018
High-profile cases like the Sherman deaths no easier to solve for police, experts say | CBC News
''A year after the Fagan murders, another prominent Toronto family was struck by tragedy. Just minutes away from the Fagan home, three members of the Airst family — Isaac and Celia Airst, and their son, Avrom — were found bludgeoned to death inside their home in the Glencairn Avenue and Englemount Avenue area.

To this day, that high-profile case also remains unsolved.

While Gallant said there are no updates in either of those four-decade-old cases, he stressed that investigators treat all cases with the same level of care, high-profile or not. Some, he added, just take longer than others.

The unique aspects of high-profile cases can also complicate already challenging investigations.''