CANADA William Duncan ROBINSON, 25, Toronto, 28 November 1978

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https://www.torontopolice.on.ca/homicide/case/49/1978
[h=3]Homicide #49/1978[/h]William Duncan
ROBINSON

Age: 25

Gender: Male

Murdered on: November 28, 1978

Location: 13 Division
[h=4]Details of Investigation:[/h] On November 28, 1978, at about 2:08 p.m., police responded to a check address call at 205 Vaughan Road.

The victim was discovered inside an apartment residence, suffering from stab wounds, and obviously deceased.
 
http://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/pride-police-1.4618663
April 16 2018
[h=2]1970s Cold cases[/h]Back in November 1978, William Duncan Robinson was found stabbed to death in his apartment. He was the 14th gay man murdered in Toronto since 1975. Including Robinson, seven of these cases remain unsolved.

At the time of the investigations, potential witnesses were reluctant to speak to police because they were concerned about how they might be treated. They were also worried if they came forward with information, they themselves might be charged with some sort of offence, or that they might be publicly outed. And members of the community had good reason worry about that.

On December 9, 1978, less than two weeks after Robinson was found dead, police raided Toronto's Barracks bathhouse. Twenty-eight men were charged under the bawdy house law for acts of indecency. The membership list for the Barracks, with over 800 names, was also seized. In the weeks following the raid, a police staff sergeant notified the employers of six men charged.
 
https://nicollinvestigations.wordpress.com/2016/09/30/william-duncan-robinson/
Posted on September 30, 2016
Duncan Robinson, 24, was stabbed and slashed to death early on Sunday, November 26th, 1978 in the bedroom of his apartment on Vaughan Rd. His mutilated body was found by police on Tuesday after Robinson’s sister was alerted by his employer that he hadn’t shown up for work for two days.
The shy, well-dressed Robinson was seen leaving his apartment at 9:30 Saturday night on his way to a gay bar downtown. A neighbour said she had heard “a strange hollow sound” coming from Robinson’s apartment sometime between 11 p.m. and 12:30 a.m., but she had decided against calling police. Further investigation disproved the importance of what the neighbour heard, for witnesses saw Robinson leaving a Yonge St. tavern with a man at 2:30 a.m. The man was described as Caucasian, late-20s, 6’5” to 6’7”, with a lanky build, greasy brown hair past his ears, a scruffy goatee, sloping shoulders, dirty hands, a clumsy walk, and a foul body odour. He had asked bar patrons about buying drugs and was seen to roll his own cigarettes.
duncan-robinson-suspect-sketch.png

Robinson’s murder was the 14th slaying of a homosexual man in 3 ½ years at the time, and there would be more to come in the ensuing years. Half of those 14 cases remained unsolved at the time. The circumstances of a number of the cases were very similar.

https://nicollinvestigations.wordpress.com/2016/09/30/william-duncan-robinson/
 
How are the other 13 killings distributed in a sense of time ? Did the other 13 quickly succeed each other ? Or are they nicely (or perhaps ritually ) spread over a timespan of 3 years ? And last but not least : Were the other 13 killed in a similar way ?
 
attachment.php

https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform/toronto-gay-village-killings
[h=1]It happened before[/h] Forty years ago, 14 gay men were brutally killed in Toronto. Half of those cases are still unsolved, and police are looking for any potential links between those homicides and the ones Bruce McArthur is accused of now.


Lisa Mayor, Jen White and Saman Malik

April 4, 2018
Shortly after Robinson’s murder a message was scrawled on the wall in the washroom of the St. Charles Tavern: “I’ll kill again Saturday night.” During the same week, on the graffiti board at Buddy’s Backroom Bar, someone wrote “Billy is next.” Billy, a waiter, was understandably worried. A University of Toronto professor active in the Damien Committee and the Gay Academic Union received by mail a clipping about the unsolved murders torn from the Toronto Star. Typewritten across it were the words “You’re next.” It was postmarked Malton, a Toronto suburb. Note: Anything on the identity of the UofT Professor mentioned?
 

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How are the other 13 killings distributed in a sense of time ? Did the other 13 quickly succeed each other ? Or are they nicely (or perhaps ritually ) spread over a timespan of 3 years ? And last but not least : Were the other 13 killed in a similar way ?
Maybe some of your very good questions may be partially answered in this link.
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2018/02/02/gay-village-stalked-by-a-serial-killera-second-time.html
Feb 2 2018
A financial analyst, tied to a bed, strangled, and stabbed to death. A disco manager, stabbed 100 times in his blood-soaked apartment. A part-time lecturer at the University of Toronto, found naked with stab wounds to the back and chest.
These gay men are counted among seven similar unsolved murders in Toronto between 1975 and 1978.
The recent arrest of Bruce McArthur on five murder charges may feel like a case of déjà vu for some in the Church and Wellesley Village who wrestled with the unanswered question of whether these men were being preyed upon by a serial killer four decades ago.
Fourteen gay men were murdered in that period, the Star reported then, but those seven cases are cold to this day.
April 11 2018
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada...s-about-the-bruce-mcarthur-investigation.html
. How far back in time are police looking?Investigators are now looking at 15 cold cases in Toronto between 1975 and 1997.

Idsinga said his investigators are narrowing down the cold cases to men who may have been linked to the Gay Village and “gay lifestyle.”

In February, the Star reported on seven cold-case murders of gay men between 1975 and 1978. A number of those deaths followed a similar pattern of “overkill,” in which the victims were in some cases tied up, beaten and stabbed excessively, according to the Body Politic, a now-defunct LGBT magazine. McArthur would have been between about 23 and 26 years old at the time of those deaths.

Idsinga maintains that police have no evidence linking McArthur to those murders, but they have engaged the cold-case unit led by Det.-Sgt. Stacy Gallant to go through outstanding cases from that time until 2010.
 
I see why people say that there are similarities , but stabbing someone 100 times screams some kind of personal relation with the killer . Even the amount of stab wounds cold hold a symbolic meaning for all we know . If I had to put my hand on my heart however , I'd say that MOST of the killings could have been done by the same person , but that there undoubtedly isolated instances among them . I say this because what I term an " ideological " killer almost always tends to go on a killing spree instead of an collective array of spaced out murders . ( The ideology being that homosexuals are " sinners " in the eyes of God supposedly )
 
Thanks for the bump and link!
1979-body-politic-article.jpg

This graphic appeared in a 1979 article in the magazine Body Politic about the killings of 14 gay men over the course of four years in Toronto. (Xtra)

''That work involved digging case files out of police archives — boxes that contain the body of work investigators collected at the time. Police are now testing that evidence to see if they can pull any usable DNA.

Of the 23 cases, investigators have ruled out McArthur's involvement in eight. In another seven cases, there's no conclusive answer one way or the other. Even in the cases where McArthur has been ruled out, police are still running the DNA analysis to see if they can identify the culprit.

A few cases will likely never be solved, Gallant said, as the evidence in the case files has deteriorated and can no longer be tested. Work on the remainder of the cases is ongoing.''

Sandy LeBlanc was murdered just two months before Duncan Robinson. The murders of the two men looked similar — both were in their late 20s and both were stabbed to death in their bedrooms.''


william-duncan-robinson.jpg

In 1978, William Duncan Robinson was found dead in his apartment. (Submitted by Kathryn Robinson)
 

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