CANADA Canada- Tracey Ann BRUNEY, 5, Toronto (Marie Curtis Park) 14 May 1975

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Homicide #17/1975
Homicide #17/1975
Victim:

''Tracey Ann
BRUNEY
Age: 5

Gender: Female

Murdered on: May 14, 1975

Location: 22 Division

Details of Investigation:
On Wednesday, May 14, 1975, at about 12:30 p.m., police responded to a 911 in the area of Lake Shore Boulevard W and Forty Second Street.

The victim was discovered in Marie Curtis Park in a small body of water, suffering from medical trauma. The victim was transported to hospital, where she died shortly after arrival.''

''If you have any information regarding this case, please contact Homicide at 416-808-7400, or at homicide@torontopolice.on.ca''

 

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May 11 2021
HUNTER: Child's unsolved murder from 1975 tops May's cold cases | Canada.Com
''On May 15, 1975, the girl was snatched from St. Clare Separate School on Northcliffe Blvd. Her mom had dropped her off outside the school grounds, but she never made it to class.

A 13-year-old boy found the little girl’s body later that morning floating face down in a creek 16 kilometres away in Etobicoke’s Marie Curtis Park. Officially, Tracey drowned, but she had injuries consistent with a beating. She was not sexually assaulted.

Cops soon hit a brick wall in the hunt for her killer. Now, 46 years later, Tracey’s beautiful wee face remains on the Toronto Police cold case page.

She joins 47 others on the page for May. People who never came home. Never found justice.''

 

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By Michele Mandel
May 15, 2014
''News stories of the day recount that she was 10-months-old when she was sent back to live with her maternal grandmother in Dominica while her mother Merle tried to establish herself financially. Her mom went on to marry machinist Earl Chambers and together they had a daughter, Terry.

In December 1974, Tracey was brought back to Toronto to be reunited with her mom and to meet her stepdad and new half-sister. Just five months later, she was dead.

The family had recently moved from Rexdale into an apartment above a restaurant on St. Clair Ave. W. Her mother told police she had dropped her daughter off outside St. Clare Catholic School just around the corner on Northcliffe Blvd. where Tracy had been attending morning kindergarten for several weeks. She never made it to her classroom.

“Tracey was so happy with us and she laughed all the time,” her mom told the Sun at the time. “When she didn’t come home at lunch hour, I went back to the school to look for her but no one had seen her.”

While Chambers was frantically looking in her neighbourhood, 13-year-old Mark Norrie was playing in Marie Curtis Park about 16 kilometres away when he saw a girl lying face down in Etobicoke Creek. He ran home to tell his mother, who quickly called police.

Officers responded shortly after 1 p.m. and attempted mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. But it was too late. Tracey was pronounced dead at Queensway General Hospital. “The official cause of death was drowning but the post-mortem showed a number of injuries consistent with physical assault,” Borg explains. She was not sexually assaulted.''

''A month later, a Sun feature story questioned whether there was a child killer responsible for the deaths of Tracey and another little girl as well as the disappearance of three other kids between Toronto and Hamilton that year.

Tracey was just a tiny doll of a child — 3-foot-7, weighing all of 43 pounds, her black curly hair in braids, dressed in a grey cloth coat, blue turtleneck and blue pants. “It was a terrible case,” Borg says after reading the file. “I see nothing here that indicates to me that the family were suspects.''

 

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Tracey Bruney – Nicoll Investigations
''In 1975, we have five-year-old Tracey Bruney in Etobicoke. In 1981, we have Erick Larsfolk in the company of his best friend, John McCormack. Neither body have ever been found. Do you believe this is all connected to the man that he referred to as the neighbour?

We then see four remarkably similar murders — in terms of ammunition and signature — in the Toronto area in the immediate vicinity of the area, in which he is living at the time after moving from London.

While these lives are being taken in Toronto, Alsop is trying to sound the alarm to his superiors that this is the work of a serial killer and it started in London and has moved to Toronto.''

 

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Log into Facebook
Nicoll Investigations.
''The *advertiser censored* Man - Killing in Port Stanley and Tillsonburg and known to have moved to Toronto sometime shortly after 1972. How many did he kill in Toronto?

Detectives nicknamed him the "*advertiser censored* Man" and privately admit they may have bungled the investigation into the suspected serial killer who operated over a three-year-period in the Port Stanley, Stratford and Tillsonburg areas.

Police had been watching the man for years; he had a long criminal record and had been in psychiatric hospitals.

They closed in on him when they started finding the body parts of one of his suspected victims, Priscilla Merle, in 1972, near Port Stanley, a small town on the shores of Lake Erie.

Merle's left arm was floating in Kettle Creek. Soon after, her upper torso was discovered near a marina in the same area.

Police believe the body of the 21-year-old woman had been cut up with a 35-centimetre (14-inch) power saw.

The separated mother of one had last been seen alive getting into a station wagon, a vehicle that resembled the one driven by the *advertiser censored* Man.

Merle's death was the last in a series of murders starting in October, 1969, with the slaying of Jacqueline English, whose nude body was found floating in Big Otter Creek, near Tillsonburg.

The 15-year-old had been raped and murdered after hitchhiking home from her job as a waitress. Less than a year later, another 15- year-old, Soraya O'Connell, disappeared after hitchhiking home from a youth centre in London.

Her skeletal remains were found four years later in a garbage dump south of Stratford.

Police raided the *advertiser censored* Man's home, where they made a grotesque discovery in his basement.

There were bags of feces stored in a chest, human waste he had collected for some bizarre reason. Along with the feces were pictures of naked children.

But the evidence wasn't strong enough to take to court, and he wasn't arrested.

Soon after, the *advertiser censored* Man moved, and was last believed to be in the Toronto area.

In their eagerness to arrest the *advertiser censored* Man, detectives now admit they may have moved in on him too soon.

"Looking back on the case, perhaps we could have played it differently. Perhaps tailed him more," said one detective.

"But one thing's for sure. After he left town . . . the killings stopped."

 

[Deleted member 275109]

Were the pictures of naked children actual photos taken by this man? Who were the children? I wonder if their identities were ever determined. Did this creep have to explain who the children were or where he got the pictures? I can’t believe he was just allowed to leave, go on and do more harm elsewhere.

 

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May 12 2023 rbbm

HUNTER: Brutal slaying of Tracey Bruney, 5, still cold after nearly 50 years

A child had been viciously murdered. Her name was Tracey Ann Bruney. She will be five years old forever.

torontosun.com

''Tracey Ann Bruney was found 15 km from her home.
The weather was warm that late spring day, a precursor to the heat wave forecast to roll in the next week.''

''Nearly 50 years later, Tracey’s slaying remains unsolved. Cops hit a cement roadblock on Day 1 and have never been able to move the needle.''
Her mother Merle had dropped her off at St. Clare Catholic School where Tracey had been attending morning kindergarten. But the smiling little girl never made it to her classroom.''

“Tracey was so happy with us and she laughed all the time,” her mother told the Toronto Sun in 1975. “When she didn’t come home at lunch hour, I went back to the school to look for her but no one had seen her.”

''About four hours later, a 13-year-old boy was in Marie Curtis Park around 16 km away when he saw a girl lying face down in Etobicoke Creek. She was later pronounced dead at Queensway General Hospital.

Officially, she died from drowning but her body revealed injuries “consistent with physical assault.” She was not, however, sexually assaulted.''

Det. Sgt. Steve Smith of the Toronto Police cold case unit told the Toronto Sun that cops have DNA in the little girl’s slaying.

The unsolved murder of Tracey Bruney is one of a trio we’re featuring this month.

“These are the type of homicides that shake the community. A young girl, taken and murdered on her way to school, a successful community member leaving his place of work and an avid volunteer stabbed to death in his own residence,” Smith said.''