CANADA Canada - Toronto Crimes Discussion

[CrimeSolver]

●Lois Hanna, 25, disappeared from her home at 286 Nelson St. in Kincardine, a lakeside town 200 km northwest of Toronto, on Sunday, July 3rd or Monday, July 4th, 1988. Hanna was last seen on the evening of the 3rd at a school reunion dance in Lucknow, a town about 25 km south of her home. She left the dance at 10:30 p.m. and apparently made it home safe, because a co-worker checking up on her when she failed to show up for work the next morning found a cup of tea on the counter, the TV on, and the dress she had worn to the dance hanging in the closet. Hanna had lived in the house by herself for close to four months. According to police, there were no signs of violence in the house. Despite the search efforts of police, search dogs, and many volunteers, no trace of Lois Hanna was ever found.
There is a $50,000 reward in this case:
www.opp.ca/Intranetdev/groups/public/documents/investigative/opp_001153.pdf
www.owensoundsuntimes.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=822265&auth=Jonathon%20Jackson

●9-year-old London, Ontario boy Frankie Jensen disappeared on his way to school on Friday, February 9th, 1968. His body was found floating in the Thames river near Thorndale, Ont. on Friday, April 12th. Police believed he was the victim of a sex-killer. No further information.

●57-year-old Antonio Cotroneo was stabbed to death shortly after 5:30 on the morning of Thursday, September 4th, 1986 in the parking lot of his apartment building at 1560 Lawrence Ave. W., west of Keele St. Cotroneo was on his way to work at a wholesaler when a young man accosted him from behind and stabbed him several times in the chest, neck, and arm. Cotroneo was dead on arrival at Sunnybrook Hospital. A witness in a nearby apartment, who heard the victim’s cries for help and raced to the scene, described the murderer as between 20 and 25 years old, 5’9”, with a medium build and dark or black mid-length hair. He was wearing a white T-shirt and dark-coloured rugger-style pants with two white stripes on the outside of the legs. Police believed the suspect hitchhiked out of the area with a female companion after the killing.

●Animal breeder Elgin Cullen, 65, suffered a fatal .22 rifle wound to the heart on Monday, November 14th, 1960 on his farm near Highway 27 and Richview Sideroad (now Eglinton Ave. W.) in what is now northwest Toronto. A thumb and forefinger had also been blown off, suggesting a defensive posture. A rifle was found on the ground near the victim’s body, but it was determined to have not been the murder weapon.
The victim’s wife Queenie told of hearing gunshots at around 7:30 p.m., and she found her husband’s body in a field some time later when she went to look for him. A neighbouring farmer later came forward to tell of being approached around the time of the murder by a man who asked for directions “to the pony farm”.

●On March 25th, 1994, the charred body of 24-year-old Louisa DaCunha was found in a remote field in Caledon, north of Toronto. DaCunha, who lived on Queen St. W. in the low-income Parkdale neighbourhood of Toronto, was a marginal individual known to police as someone involved in illicit drug use. No further information, including cause of death.

●55-year-old Paul Volpe, a prominent mobster in Toronto’s underworld, was found shot to death on Monday, November 14th, 1983. Volpe’s bullet-riddled body, blood-soaked and wrapped in towels, was discovered in the trunk of his BMW sedan on the second level of the parking garage of Terminal 2 at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport. Police intelligence squad officers had been tipped off by an anonymous call. Volpe had left home on Sunday morning, telling his wife he was meeting someone at the airport and that he would be home by 12:30 p.m.

 

[CrimeSolver]

●At 8 p.m. on Sunday, February 10th, 2002, Lin Tao, 19, a student at York University, suffered fatal stab and slash wounds to her throat as she walked home from the university to her apartment at 1 Four Winds Dr., just southeast of the sprawling campus. Tao was walking south along Keele St. when her attacker struck. Responding emergency workers found her body in the parking lot of her apartment building at 1 Four Winds Dr. Police believed the attacker was noticeably injured in the struggle, having probably sustained either scratches to his face or cut wounds from his own knife. A trail of the murderer’s blood marked his path as he fled north from Tao’s body on Keele St.’s west sidewalk. Police theorized he either flagged down a cab or a car, or got onto a bus somewhere between The Pond Rd. and York Blvd. A man who witnessed the entire attack said he saw Tao and the killer appear to embrace before she pushed the killer away. Then the two fought for 4 to 8 minutes, but the witness did not intervene. The murderer was described as an Asian male approximately 20 years of age, 5’6” or 5’7”, with a slim build and wearing dark clothing.

●Gordon George Joyce, 33, was found stabbed to death in a rooming house at 1361 King St. W. early on the morning of Friday, July 3rd, 1981. Joyce’s uncle lived in the rooming house, and the house’s caretaker described the murder victim as a heavy-drinking loner who would often visit his uncle so the two could drink together. Police came to believe Joyce was killed during an argument by someone he knew.

●Michael Traynor, 26, an unemployed plumber, vanished from his hometown, Barrie, Ontario, on Tuesday, September 12th, 1978, after spending an evening at a bar with friends. A hunter found Traynor’s decomposed body on Monday, October 2nd in a densely forested area north of Barrie. His hands were tied behind his back with copper wire and he had a gaping gunshot wound to the chest.

●At 11:15 p.m. on Tuesday, May 28th, 1991, 49-year-old Prithyi Raj (Lali) Vij, an entrepreneur and the host of TV and radio shows about East Indian culture, was gunned down as he and his wife Usha walked out of the TV studio he owned at 517 College St. Just a day earlier, Vij’s friend Umesh Raniga, a jewelry store owner, was stabbed to death inside his shop on Gerrard St. E., but police later concluded that, remarkably, the murders were unrelated. A friend of Raniga’s was subsequently arrested in his murder, but acquitted at his trial in 1993.
In looking for a motive and killer in the Vij case, police extensively probed his many business dealings, but determined the motive was a personal beef, not business-related. Police refused to release information on the type of weapon used, but finally released a description and composite of Vij’s killer at the end of August. The gunman was described as about 50 years of age, about 200 lbs, with curly brown or black hair. He drove away from the scene – north on Euclid Ave. - in a white Ford Econoline van.
Then, shortly after midnight on Friday, February 21st, 1992, 52-year-old Dr. Dhian Tilak Thapar, a denture therapist and real estate mogul, was shot dead as he sat in his Mercedes in front of his home on Silverbirch Place in Whitby, a bedroom community east of Toronto. Thapar was a friend and business associate of Lali Vij’s, and the investigation led to a link between the two murders. In December, 1993, police sources told the Toronto Star that one person ordered both the Vij and Thapar murders, and that police knew that individual’s identity. Investigators tracked the hit men to San Francisco, but it appears they were never able to definitively identify them or, evidently, solve either murder case. Conspicuously, neither case was mentioned again in the newspaper after December, 1993.

●On Saturday, August 2nd, 1975, 66-year-old Irene Frances Gibbons was found dead with her throat slashed in her home at 131Keefer St. in Strathroy, Ontario, a town roughly 200 km west of Toronto.
On Monday, October 20th, 1975, 19-year-old Louise Jenner was found dead of a slashed throat in her home in Mt. Brydges, Ontario, a village 12 km southeast of Strathroy. Police initially linked the Gibbons and Jenner cases, given the cause of death and rare incidence of murder in the area, but Jenner’s murderer, serial killer Christian Magee, was arrested in July, 1979, and convicted, whereas Gibbons’s case remains unsolved to this day.

●At 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, October 11th, 1978, 36-year-old Bok Kan Lem was stomped on several times as he sat in a parkette on the southeast corner of Bay St. and Dundas St. W. in Toronto’s financial district. Afterwards, the assailant stepped over his victim and walked away calmly on Bay St. Lem died in hospital that night.
Several people witnessed the attack but did not intercede. The killer was described as 6’ tall, 180 lbs, with dirty blond hair and a full beard. A 33-year-old man was arrested, but later released. No further details.

 

[CrimeSolver]

●On the frigid evening of Friday, January 6th, 1956, little five-year-old Susan Cadieux was playing with her brothers in a churchyard across from her home on York St. near Lyle St. in London, Ontario, when a stranger lured her away. A massive search was launched. Her body was found in the snow at 10:15 the next morning, next to train tracks in an industrial yard on William St. near Central Ave. Tears had frozen to her face. She had been sexually assaulted. Her underpants were torn and the jeans she had been wearing were missing. She had died not directly at the hands of her abductor, but of shock and exposure to the elements. The coroner later estimated she had been dead between one and three hours when found, which means she might have survived if discovered earlier.
Susan’s nine-and-ten-year-old brothers reported seeing her talking to a strange man just before she vanished, and they helped police compose a sketch of him. They described him as between 35 and 40, tall, slim, and unshaven.
Article with a photo of victim and a sketch of murderer: www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSmid=46520717&GRid=18494218&

●On a Friday in late September, 1995, 32-year-old prostitute and pregnant mother-of-two Dawn Alaine Stewart vanished from Niagara Falls, Ontario after telling a friend she was going downtown. Her decomposed body was found on March 21st, 1996 by a family hiking through a forest near Center St. and Metler Rd. in North Pelham, Ont., 25 km west of Niagara Falls. She may have been the victim of a serial slayer stalking Niagara Falls hookers at the time.

●On Sunday, September 19th, 1965, 40-year-old Geraldine Pickford, an employee of St. Andrews College at 15800 Yonge St. in Aurora, 40 km north of Toronto, was found murdered in Tannery Creek, which runs through the college grounds. She was last seen alive at 9:30 p.m. on Saturday. Concerned staff members and students conducted a search of the premises the following day, which is when Pickford’s body was found. She was lying face up in the water and was fully clothed except for her panties. She had been beaten and strangled, but there was no evidence of a sexual assault. Her killer had forcibly dragged her from the school’s driveway down a hill to the creek. The victim’s purse was found late Sunday night on the driveway near Yonge St. The spot where her purse was deposited was where police believed she was first accosted.

●On September 25th, 1970, 13-year-old Valerie Drew left her house on Wiley St. in Kingston, Ont., a city about 250 km east of Toronto, with two teenage male friends and never returned. Her friends were hitchhiking to Peterborough, 150 km to the west, and when Drew didn’t return later that day, it was assumed she had gone with them. When it was determined she hadn’t gone with them, a search was initiated, and shortly after 8 p.m. on September 27th, the girl’s body was found by searchers near a footpath in a heavily wooded area a few hundred metres north of her home, near what is now Conacher Dr. Drew’s body was bruised and scraped and her panties were knotted around her throat, but the cause of death was found to be multiple skull fractures.
A $25,000 reward is on offer in this case: www.police.kingston.on.ca/Drew%20poster.pdf

●On the night of Tuesday, July 9th, 1957, Chesterville, Ontario farmer Robert McLaughlin returned home from a cattle auction and found the nightgown-draped body of his 22-year-old wife Lois sprawled in front of their farmhouse. She had been stabbed and bludgeoned with a hammer and sickle, implements that were found in a nearby barn, but she had not been sexually assaulted. Neighbours at nearby farms on the quiet, secluded dead-end street said there were no unusual sounds that evening, apart from the barking of dogs.
Link: www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2007/07/11/ot-mclaughlin-070711.html

●A hotel maid discovered the body of motorcycle gang member Donald Melanson, 40, on the 18th floor of the Novotel Hotel at 3 Park Home Ave. in north Toronto on Thursday, September 3rd, 1987. He had been shot twice in the head. The victim was scheduled to appear in court on drug trafficking conspiracy charges the following Thursday. He had booked into the hotel on Wednesday, and was supposed to meet with an unknown individual there. An automatic pistol was found not far from the scene. No further information, but the crime was still unsolved in late 1989, when it was last mentioned in the newspaper.

 

[CrimeSolver]

●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.
Newspaper article with pictures: http://www.owensoundsuntimes.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=827106

●Sharmini Anandavel, 15, vanished on Saturday, June 12th, 1999. She had left her apartment building on Don Mills Rd. E. near Finch Ave. E. at 9 a.m., on her way to interview for a job as a receptionist for what police later learned was a fictitious company called Metro Search Unit. Her parents had planned to drive her there, but were sidelined that morning by a family emergency.
A friend saw Anandavel sitting on a bench inside Fairview Mall, 1 km south of her home, at about 10:30, and another witness, a tenant in her apartment building, claimed to have seen Anandavel alone at Peanut Plaza, across the street from her apartment building, at 11:45 a.m. That was the last time she was seen alive.
Hikers making their way through the East Don Parkland, about 800 metres south of Finch Ave E., found the skeletonised remains of Sharmini Anandavel on Saturday, October 9th, 2 km west of where she was last seen. An autopsy could not establish cause of death, nor whether she had been sexually assaulted, but common sense would point in the direction of the latter.
Even as soon as the immediate days after Anandavel’s disappearance, before her remains were found, police had a strong suspect, a 23-year-old former neighbour of the girl’s named Stanley Tippett. He was the one who arranged the job for Sharmini, according to what she had told her parents. Tippett claimed to have last spoken to Sharmini more than a week before her disappearance, and said he had arranged a job for her at a swimming pool, nothing else. Even though his alibis apparently checked out and police could find nothing concrete to tie him to the girl‘s murder, years later Tippett would be accused of perpetrating the very same type of lure that ensnared Sharmini, in the case of a woman who was promised a job that didn‘t exist. Then, in 2008, Tippett allegedly kidnapped a 12-year-old girl 50 km east of Toronto and sexually assaulted her before dumping her, alive, behind a school. He is to face trial very soon in that case.
Whoever killed Anandavel, police believed she went willingly with the individual down the narrow makeshift path, which entered the wooded park off Finch Ave. E. on the west side of Don River.
Map depicting the victim’s final steps:

●On Monday, June 7th, 1976, four boys exploring the “Bayview Ghost”, a decades-long-abandoned apartment building southeast of the intersection of Bayview Ave. and Moore Rd., on the site of what is now a subdivision, discovered the body of 18-year-old Salvatore Palermiti. The young victim, who was visiting from Italy and had been staying with his married sister since February, had been shot twice in the head. He was to have returned to Italy a week after he was killed. Palermiti was last seen alive at 9:30 p.m. Sunday, when he told his brother-in-law he was going out to play snooker at a pool parlour near Bloor and Dufferin Sts. A $10,000 reward was offered in the case at the time. No further information.

●On Saturday, April 21st, 1984, Corporal William McIntyre, 33, an undercover officer with the Ontario Provincial Police, was found dead on the second floor of his two-storey apartment on Marlborough Ct., just east of Trafalgar Rd., in Oakville, a city just southwest of Toronto. He had been shot once in the head with a .22 calibre gun. His body was found at about 9:30 p.m. when colleagues checked on him after he failed to show up for work.
McIntyre’s undercover detail involved physical and electronic surveillance on drug dealers, biker gangs, and other organized crime outfits, and one of the prongs of the murder investigation probed possible vendettas based on his work. For instance, McIntyre was to testify in a murder trial in May.
According to a timeline of his last activities, McIntyre was killed sometime between 6:30 Friday evening, when he left work, and 9:30 the following night. A neighbour in the victim’s building said he hadn’t heard anything, adding, “These apartments are fairly soundproof. The walls are concrete”. McIntyre’s apartment door showed no signs of having been forced open.
Link: www.hrps.on.ca/CrimeFiles/Lists/Homicides/DispForm.aspx?ID=6

●20-year-old Margaret Sheeler of London, Ont. was reported missing by her husband on Saturday, December 28th, 1963. He told police his wife had stormed out of the house the previous night after an argument over returning empty beer bottles.
Two boys found Margaret Sheeler’s body on Friday, January 24th, 1964 in a field near Kipps Lane in London, two blocks from her home. An early thaw had melted enough snow that the body became uncovered. Sheeler, who was 5-months pregnant at the time of her death, was dressed in only a blouse; the rest of her clothes were scattered about near her body. She had been sexually assaulted and had suffered fatal head injuries.

 

[Danaya]

Toronto is probably the scariest place in Canada, in my opinion. These crimes are spine chilling.

 

[CrimeSolver]

Actually, Danaya, that's a misinformed impression. Toronto is one of the safest of Canada's major cities. Only Ottawa and Quebec City are safer in the overall picture. Here's the latest data: Link

Even in terms of murders, Toronto is only 9th worst in the country, and that's based on 2007 numbers, a year when the city had its highest total number of murders ever, at 84. So far this year (up to today, April 17th), Toronto has recorded 12 homicides, a miniscule number for a North American city of its size. If it continues at this pace, which it probably won't since murders tend to increase during the warmer months, we could have a year-end total of 50 or so. That's a figure American cities of Toronto's size can only dream of, although crime rates in some major cities down south have plummeted to within at least shouting distance of Toronto's over the past decade (New York, for instance, a much larger city, has seen its total annual homicides drop from 2000+ in the '70s and '80s to "only" several hundred per year in recent times).

I'm not trying to come across as a city booster, but this notion, perpetuated by media sensationalism of individual cases (Creba, anyone?), that Toronto is some kind of crime-ridden dystopia is so far from the truth as to almost be its polar opposite. The city is not a crime-free idyll in which people everywhere are dancing in the street holding hands, but it is in reality one of the very safest cities on the continent. And that's quite a remarkable testament to the harmony innately engendered here, given that the city is a multicoloured quilt of different cultures and ethnicities. By all rights, there should be much more strife and violence here.

 

[Danaya]

Actually, I'm not getting my information from the media and I'm not misinformed by any means. I lived downtown in Toronto for a few months after hitch hiking there when I was 16. I used to look at the news briefs as well, I don't think they still release them to the public but daily there were reports of muggings, rapes and robberies. I'm sure that because of Toronto's size, you're correct, it has a low per-capita crime rate.

The gangs are also pretty prevelant there and there is a website for sex worker protection that details bad clients and experiences the sex workers have had. It has some really scary stories. So, this is my opinion and while statistics may not prove it it's my opinion none the less. Not trying to "put down" your city but that's how I view it. I have a brother who lives there.

 

[CrimeSolver]

Every city has crime. It's a fact of life. One has to consult statistics in order to get an accurate idea of the severity of a city's problem with crime. And the fact is, by the numbers Toronto is one of North America's safest cities. Here's a comparison chart of North American cities in which Toronto actually places first, by 2006 figures (scroll down to bottom of page).
In Canada, Saskatoon, despite its quaint image, is an infinitely more dangerous city, as is Winnipeg. And postcard Vancouver is quite a bit more crime-ridden too, as are Montreal, Edmonton, Calgary, and Halifax.

Of course, the level of safety perceived in a city by a citizen or visitor depends largely on where in that city he/she lives/visits.
You live in or visit the Dundas/Sherbourne area (why would you, given a choice?) of Toronto and you're going to run into quite a few hookers, druggies, and other marginal people.
Shootings, gang activity, drug dealing, and murders tend to be clustered in areas like Rexdale, Jane/Finch, Flemingdon Park, The Jungle, and parts of Scarborough; in other words, wherever poverty is the dominant theme. But even these downscale areas where crime is more prevalent couldn't be considered slums in the American sense of being places where buildings are bombed out and one takes one's life into one's hands just walking down the street. Our "slums" are a good deal less decrepit.

It's not a matter of "I'm offended because you're putting down my city", but more a matter of "let's not get hysterical and negatively broad-brush an entire city based on relatively isolated incidents or anecdotal observation". As I wrote earlier, I'm not interested in promoting Toronto as some kind of Xanadu, but I do insist on countering unfairly disparaging statements such as "Toronto is probably the scariest place in Canada, in my opinion".
You saw daily reports of muggings, rapes, and robberies. That's terrible and I feel for the victims (having been the victim of an armed robbery myself in the mid-'90s), but that simply comes with the territory in a city of over 5 million. Crime will not be substantially reduced anywhere until poverty and deprivation are eliminated and bad parenting is addressed.

 

[CrimeSolver]

●On Wednesday, August 18th, 1999, Georgina Wilson found her 10-year-old daughter Anita Agyeman dead on her bed at the Vendome Place apartment they shared with Wilson's boyfriend, Charles Boateng. A 911 call was placed at 4:45 p.m. The little girl was naked but there were no external signs of violence. An autopsy showed she had been asphyxiated. Police would not divulge whether she had been sexually assaulted, but they did say she had not been raped.
Prior to the murder, Boateng had been preparing to move after Wilson asked him to leave because their fighting was upsetting Agyeman. Wilson would routinely leave her daughter home alone during the day while she went to work, and the 10-year-old would wander around the complex visiting friends or play on the playground. No additional information, but crime remained unsolved at the start of 2000.

●24-year-old taxi driver Baljeet Singh was robbed and had his throat slashed by a fare early in the morning on Thursday, October 6th, 1988. Although police were on-scene within a minute of being called and mere minutes after the attack, Singh died in hospital an hour later.
According to dispatch records, Singh had received a 2:28 a.m. call from his dispatcher to pick up a passenger at 388 Driftwood Ave. in the notorious Jane/Finch neighbourhood of Toronto. He was to take the fare to 10 Yorkwoods Gate, 1.5 km south of the pickup location. At 2:37, Singh radioed the dispatcher to say there was "something fishy" about the passenger and that he was scared. At 2:44 a.m., two men unloading a truck on Yorkwoods Gate saw the taxi standing on the street and notified a parking officer who was writing tickets nearby. Paramedics arrived at 2:51, but were unable to revive the victim.

●Pretty 19-year-old Lynda White, a native of Burlington, Ontario, was a freshman at the University of Western Ontario in London in 1968. At 8 p.m. on the evening of Wednesday, November 13th, 1968, she finished writing a French exam and proceeded to hitchhike back to the apartment she shared with a fellow student about 1.5 km from the university‘s campus. Evidence showed she made it back to her room and changed clothes, but she left again and was thereafter never seen alive again.
On Friday, June 25th, 1971, a construction worker digging a factory foundation in Burlington, Lynda White’s hometown, and 120 km east-northeast of where she was last seen, found her wallet containing her driver’s license. An intensive search was conducted in the area surrounding the discovery of the wallet, but nothing further was found.
On Wednesday, May 9th, 1973, hunters found the skeleton of Lynda White in a wooded area near Simcoe, a town 75 km east of London and 75 southwest of Burlington.

●On Monday, January 29th, 1996, 60-year-old Clayton Russell and his roommate John Clarke, 40, were both found dead of stab wounds to the chest in their first-floor apartment in a four-storey building at the corner of College St. and Roxton Rd. Russell, who was the building superintendant, was separated from his wife, but the two remained close friends. Clarke was unemployed. Police learned the two deceased men had been out drinking together late Saturday night. No further information. The case was publicized in the newspapers for only two or three days after and then was never mentioned again.

●At 4:15 a.m. on Sunday, May 13th, 1990, residents on quiet Marblethorne Ct. in Mississauga, a city to the immediate west of Toronto, were jolted awake by a dozen rapidly-fired gunshots. When the shots ended, 49-year-old hairdresser Cosimo Lombardo, married with two adult children, lay dead at the foot of his driveway.
People who knew the victim described him as friendly and always smiling, but a woman whose son had his hair cut by Lombardo on Saturday the 12th said the barber had appeared upset and harried.
Investigation revealed Lombardo was probably the victim of a feud between rival organized crime groups, the Costa and Commisso families of the Calabrian Mafia.

 

[Danaya]

CrimeSolver, I am entitled to my opinion, and if it is that Toronto scares me and I personaly feel it is the scariest city in Canada then that is my right, I already said that statistics don't back up that opinion but it is how I feel having traveled throughout Canada by myself as a teenager extensively and by living in various downtown hostels. Montreal is pretty close but I just had bad experiences in Toronto. I'm sure if I was a working class professional at the time I wouldn't have felt that way, Toronto would have just been another tourist attraction with a lot of shopping.

 

[CrimeSolver]

You are entitled to your opinion just as I am entitled to challenge it with facts and stats, so let's just leave this exchange at that.

 

[gaia227]

I haven't all the way through the thread yet but wanted to say thanks CrimeSolver for all the work and time you have put into posting these cases! There are a lot of interesting cases to read through.

 

[CrimeSolver]

That's very nice of you to say, gaia227, thank you It has been a very time-consuming undertaking, so I'm happy if a few people are finding something of interest to read. I know the summaries can make for dry reading, but I wanted to keep them as straightforward and factual as possible instead of embellishing them with writerly verbiage like, "It was a stormy night when the killer stepped out of the shadows..."
Plus, you wouldn't believe how many of these murders were virtually ignored as news items in the papers. Sometimes the newspaper blurbs are so brief that it's hard even coming up with a location or cause of death, so that too hampers the possibility of making the synopses more like compelling mini stories.
Part of my motivation is that the subject of unsolved murders intrigues me, so I'm getting some gratification out of researching and writing these. Another part is that it's important to get the victims' names out there in the search engine caches so that these unfortunate people are not forgotten. My last and most quixotic motivation is that such documentation of murders might eventually assist in leading to a solution and arrests in one or more of them. A long, long shot, but you never know.

 

[Danaya]

You are entitled to your opinion just as I am entitled to challenge it with facts and stats, so let's just leave this exchange at that.

Go right ahead.

 

[CrimeSolver]

●On Sunday, May 29th, 1960, 84-year-old retired farmer Peter Carberry was found murdered under the kitchen table of his farmhouse near what is now the intersection of Kennedy Rd. and Eglinton Ave. E. in Cooksville, just west of Toronto (what was farmland at the time has long since been developed). Carberry had been struck on the back of the head at least 13 times with a blunt instrument. The killer left Carberry to die on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood while he ransacked the house.
Carberry had been robbed before, so in recent years he had taken precautions such as acquiring a guard dog and a shotgun. Police believed the killer was known to the victim, because Carberry was very unlikely to open the door to strangers. A nephew who was interviewed substantiated that hypothesis, saying his uncle wouldn't have turned his back on a stranger and would have put up a fierce fight if attacked. There were no signs of a struggle. Oil lamps in the house were not lit and Carberry was fully dressed, so police believed the murderer struck before dark, probably shortly after a visiting neighbour of the victim's left at 8:30 p.m.

●Alberta Khan was a beloved woman who took children in her neighbourhood under her wing and mentored them. The 36-year-old mother of two young children was the proprietor, along with her 43-year-old husband Omar, of Elson Variety and Gifts on Elson St. in the Markham Rd. and Steeles Ave. E. area of Markham, just outside the northeast boundary of Toronto.
At 10:50 p.m. on Wednesday, November 12th, 1997, Khan was minding the store by herself. Her husband had left briefly to buy soup at a nearby coffee shop. Two thugs burst in and robbed her of a handful of lottery tickets before subjecting her to vicious, fatal blows to the head. Husband Omar returned from his outing just as two black, clean-shaven men with short haircuts sped out of the plaza parking lot in a sporty, red "Mustang-like" car with tinted windows. Inside the store, his wife's lifeless body lay on the floor with the cash register overturned and packs of cigarettes strewn about.

●On Saturday, November 11th, 1978, Kenneth Cameron, 30, was found bludgeoned to death in a parking lot on Yonge St. (no further detail on location). Two bloodstained bricks lay nearby.
The person responsible for Cameron's murder was briefly and informally dubbed the Skid Row Killer, because police had reason to think he was responsible for an additional murder and the beating of another man.
36-year-old Joseph Landry was found beaten to death in the parking lot of a homeless shelter on Church St. between Shuter and Dundas Sts. on Thursday, November 16th, 1978. Landry, an unemployed truck driver, had been released from jail two days earlier after having finished serving a short sentence for failure to appear on an assault charge. Both Landry and Cameron frequented the same homeless shelter on Sherbourne St.
39-year-old alcoholic Sheridan Speight was found in a laneway off Ontario St. just north of Gerrard St. E. at around 1:30 a.m. on Friday, November 24rd. He had been bashed on the head with a rock and robbed; he suffered a fractured skull but survived, though with amnesia.

●Paul Cullinan, 38, was shot once in the forehead and left for dead in the parking lot of Fairglen Elementary School at 2200 Pharmacy Ave. in northeast Toronto on Saturday, December 5th, 1987. Police concluded the victim was shot elsewhere and then dumped on the school grounds. Cullinan survived, amazing his doctors, but he was left in a coma. He remained comatose until mid-1989, when he emerged from the coma. He was able to sit up and say a few words, but he either refused to name his attackers or did not know the people.
Police believed the attempted murder was drug-related and that Cullinan, a loner with a somewhat obsessive nature and few friends or family members, was a courier for a Trinidadian drug ring, shot because he attempted to back out.

●Police investigating complaints from residents of a noxious odour permeating a Lansdowne Ave. apartment building in west Toronto discovered the decomposing body of 44-year-old Vinko (Vince) Podnar in his unit on Saturday night, May 28th, 1988. The man had been stabbed multiple times in the heart and had been dead for about a week. Podnar, an unemployed baker, was a Yugoslavian immigrant who had come to Canada in 1970 looking for a better life.
No further information, but case was still unsolved when it was last mentioned in the paper in a year-end round-up of murder cases.

●On the night of Monday, January 4th, 1999, 23-year-old Courtney Paulwell became Toronto's first murder case of the new year. Paulwell, who was well known to police and currently facing drug trafficking charges, was shot execution-style when he was confronted by two men shortly before 10 p.m. on Driftwood Court in the Jane St. and Steeles Ave. W. area. The entire area was/is blighted by the gang and drug culture, and weary residents who heard the shots just kept their doors closed to the scene. No further information.

 

[CrimeSolver]

●At 8 a.m. on Monday, March 21st, 1988, employees arriving for work at National Refrigeration of Canada on Steeprock Dr. in the Dufferin St. and Finch Ave. vicinity, discovered the body of their boss, 50-year-old Walter Zoltan Andri, president of the company, lying on the floor of his office. He had been shot multiple times in the chest and head. Information on how long he had been dead was not released, but police were seeking witnesses to his whereabouts between 8 a.m. Saturday and the time his body was found.

●At 5:30 on the afternoon of Thursday, August 21st, 1975, two young boys riding their bikes on mounds of top soil on the grounds of German Mills Public School at 61 Simonston Blvd. in Thornhill, just north of Toronto, stumbled upon the dead body of a young woman. She was 18-year-old Tracy Kundinger, who lived with her parents on nearby Monsanto Ct. She had been strangled with a piece of twine. There was no sexual assault. She had not been reported missing because her parents were away on holiday and she was home alone.
Police believed Kundinger, returning from her summer job as a lifeguard at a pool in downtown Toronto, took a shortcut northbound through a park after getting off a Toronto Transit bus at Leslie St. and Steeles Ave. E. Wednesday night, and that her killer followed her as she made her way through the woods.
A few days later, police issued an appeal seeking a suspect. Described as a white male in his early to mid-20s, about 5'8" to 5'11", with a fair complexion and well-groomed light-brown hair combed over his forehead, he was the only other passenger with Kundinger on the bus on Wednesday night, and they got off at the same stop at about 10:50 p.m.
A solid suspect was later arrested, a 34-year-old mental patient who had an unusual interest in the crime, but the case against him fell apart in 1977 when it was established he had been fed details of the crime by a former policeman.

●Ann Lylyck, 69, was visiting Toronto in September, 1990, from her hometown of Omemee, when she and her black Labrador Retriever vanished. She had visited an ailing aunt at St. Joseph's Health Centre, and was last seen near the intersection of Parkdale Rd. and Glendale Ave.
Although neither her remains nor her dog's were ever found, Lylyck is believed to have been a victim of a man named James Behe, who lived with her at the time of her disappearance, and who was later suspected in the murder of another woman in 1992. He concurrently committed suicide, so there was no way to verify suspicions.

●45-year-old Anis (Ernie) Soueidan was shot to death at a townhouse on Dundas St. E. east of Parliament St. on the night of Tuesday, October 12th, 1999. A man was seen running east from the crime scene. No further information, but crime was unsolved as of January, 2000.

●On July 28th, 1977, 23-year-old Randal Frederick Chidwick, known to police as a small-time drug dealer, was stabbed through the heart during what was believed to have been an argument over drugs. He staggered from a laneway near St. George and Dupont Sts., where the interaction with his assailant took place, into a nearby backyard, where he died. No further information.

●Winsbert Malcolm, 34, was shot to death on November 5th, 1999 inside the The East Mall townhouse in Etobicoke, west Toronto, where he lived with his fianceé and her 16-year-old daughter. The stepdaughter had left the front door unlocked while home alone. Intruders burst in and held her captive for 30 minutes, punching her and demanding money. When Malcolm arrived, the demands for cash continued until Malcolm was shot.
Malcolm drove an expensive leased BMW, and police theorized his killers expected he may have had money stashed away in his house. Having searched Malcolm's townhouse, police found no sign of drugs whatsoever, so they concluded the killing was likely a simple robbery that went awry.

 

[CrimeSolver]

●At about 1:50 a.m. on Sunday, April 15th, 1990, 59-year-old Edward Cal Hearn was walking south on Church St. from Bloor St. when he was knocked to the ground and kicked repeatedly by at least two men. A witness intervened in the attack on Hearn, causing the assailants to flee. That witness claimed the attackers numbered two, while other witnesses said there were as many as four. Hearn underwent surgery in hospital for severe head trauma but succumbed to his injuries eight days later on April 23rd.
Earlier on the night of his murder, Hearn had been drinking alone in the Morrissey Tavern on Yonge St. south of Davenport Rd., and he was later spotted in a cafe called Donut World on Church St. He was likely headed home to his one-bedroom apartment on Sherbourne St. when he was set upon. No further information, including descriptions of suspects or whether a motive was ever ascertained.

●Siblings George and Marguerite Simpson, ages 40 and 58 respectively, were shot to death on their farm in dense bush near remote Hopetown, Ontario, about 300 km east-northeast of Toronto, sometime between Wednesday, September 9th and Saturday, September 12th, 1987. The bodies were found on the 12th by Marguerite's son. The victims, described as very private, almost hermitic, had each suffered several headshots from a high-powered rifle. Marguerite was found dead seated at the kitchen table; she had been shot while sewing a pair of men's pants. George was found sprawled in the farmyard. On Friday, September 25th, a search team combing through thick woods found a rifle near the Simpson farm. Police interviewed at the time believed it was connected to the crime, but no follow-up was conducted by newspapers to report on results of ballistics tests.
Police were concerned the Simpsons might have been the latest victims of a possible serial killer. Several other farm folk had been murdered in the same general vicinity in recent months and years. Homicides are extremely rare in such sparsely-populated areas.

●43-year-old Filippo Vendemini, a father of five whose wife was expecting a sixth, was shot to death in a parking lot behind his small shoe store on Bloor St. W. near Gladstone Ave. at about 2 a.m. on Sunday, June 29th, 1969. Vendemini drove into the lot, and when he got out of his car a gunman stepped out of the shadows, perhaps from behind a grocery store delivery truck that was parked nearby, and shot the victim twice in the head with a revolver. Vendemini's large family was asleep in the apartment above his store, but his wife Giuseppina found his body, and a neighbour called police upon hearing her screams.
Giuseppina told police her husband had received a call early on Saturday evening from a man he addressed as Vincenzo. Then, at about 8 p.m., Giuseppina saw her husband inspecting several boxes of shoes with a mystery man. The two men subsequently drove away in Vendemini's car. "Vincenzo" was later identified as Vincenzo Sicari, a Montreal pizzeria owner, and he, through his cooperation, was cleared of any involvement in the murder. Sicari asserted he and Vendemini had visited a mutual friend in Hamilton that night before Vendemini had driven him to the airport at 1:30 a.m. for his return flight to Montreal. Upon his return from the airport, Vendemini was shot in the parking lot.
Vendemini was associated with Salvatore Triumbari, who had been murdered in his driveway more than two years earlier (see case profiled earlier). Both emigrated from the same region in southern Italy in 1950, and Vendemini had once worked as a salesman for Triumbari's soft drink company. It was suspected both were members of the Siderno Mafia group and that Vendemini's killing was linked to members of the Montreal Mafia. Police had a strong suspicion who ordered the hit, but that suspect was himself assassinated before he could be interrogated.

● Gregory Knight, 22, was stabbed to death in the early morning hours of Thursday, January 21st, 1999 behind Scanty's Strip Bar at 800 Arrow Rd. near Hwy 400 and Finch Ave. W. Police arrived and assessed the scene. The victim had been knifed multiple times. His car, a two-door 1990 Eagle Talon, had been stolen. No word on if it was ever recovered.
Police interviewed over 60 witnesses inside the club without progress. Other business owners in the area said police had been called to the club many times, and that the establishment was overrun with drugs and prostitution. No further information, but the Knight homicide remained unsolved as of one year later.

●72-year-old Arpad Rethi was shot to death in the rooming house he owned and operated at 159 Huron St. in downtown Toronto on Saturday, November 19th, 1977. Several tenants found the dead man in his ground-floor apartment when he failed to show up for breakfast on Sunday morning. None of the seven tenants heard anything unusual the night before.
The following Saturday, the house at 159 Huron St. was the site of violence once again when a shotgun blast tore through the window of 66-year-old tenant Charles Geblovic's room. Geblovic said he was watching TV around 2 a.m. when the shot was fired; it barely missed the man, leaving a hole in the wall just above his head. Several witnesses saw a man fleeing through a nearby parking lot at Ross and Cecil Sts. It is not known if police were able to link the two shootings or develop any suspects.

 

[CrimeSolver]

●A young couple taking a stroll through the northeast section of High Park found the body of Elizabeth Kirby Boyington, 45, at 10 a.m. on Saturday, June 27th, 1959. The couple ran 200 metres north to Bloor St. W., where they found a pharmacist who called police. Boyington had been stabbed five times in the throat and neck with a long, sharp knife as she lay on her back in grass 10 ft. from a well-used dirt walking trail. One stab thrust had pierced her larynx, another her esophagus, and a third her jugular vein, while the other two wounds were non-fatal. It was speculated the killer sat on her chest and held her still with his left hand while stabbing with his right. It is not known if she was sexually assaulted, though her clothes were in disarray and part of her underclothes missing.
Dozens of police officers spent that steamy summer Saturday scouring the ravine where Boyington's body lay, adjacent to Parkside Dr. across from Ridout St., but neither the murder weapon nor much else of use was recovered. Detective work traced Boyington's last known movements to 9 p.m. Friday night, when she was refused admittance to a hotel at Avenue Rd. and Bloor St., five kilometers east of where she was murdered. Whether she met her killer there at that time or elsewhere later in the night is not known.
The case remained unsolved in January, 1960.

●On Tuesday, March 2nd, 1999, the body of Hung Van Nguyen, 36, was found in the eastbound curb lane of King St. W. at Jefferson Ave. He had died of a gunshot wound to the chest. It is believed Nguyen was walking a Rottweiler at the time he was shot. No further information.

●Shortly after 9 a.m. on Wednesday, April 6th, 1988, police were called to a crazy scene in a dilapidated rooming house on Queen St. W. near Ossington Ave. James Arthur Beaupre, 28, and Julianne Brunet, 19, were found unconscious in Brunet's blood-spattered apartment on the second floor. They had been battered and stabbed. They were rushed to hospital, but Beaupre died of stab wounds to the heart. Meanwhile, upstairs on the 3rd floor of the rooming house, Marjorie Yvonne Evers, 66, was found badly injured in her room. She had been brutally stabbed, slashed, and beaten apparently after complaining about the noise coming from the second-floor apartment in question. Both Evers and Brunet survived.
Police had initially been called to the scene by the manager of Harry's Laundromat, a business below the apartments. The manager had found all the victims. No further detail, but the case was still unsolved at the end of the year.

●Shortly before 2 a.m. on Wednesday, November 23rd, 1977, someone poured gasoline through the basement window of a house on Calumet Cres., in the Lawrence Ave. E. and Bellamy Rd. N. area, and set the accelerant alight. In the ensuing fire, 44-year-old Norma Stevens was trapped by flames in her bedroom and perished. Her two teenage children and a 24-year-old boarder managed to escape.
A gas container was found outside the home. Several suspects emerged, including Stevens's ex-husband, her current boyfriend, and some people who were involved in an altercation with her a few days earlier during a house party, but all were cleared of suspicion after questioning.

●34-year-old David James Gardhouse was found stabbed to death next to his car in a driveway on Lauder Ave. south of Rogers Rd. on Sunday, September 24th, 1978. One of the stab wounds punctured his heart. Gardhouse, who was unemployed, lived on Bloor St. E. in Mississauga, and none of the residents around the crime scene claimed to know him. A few residents did talk of hearing a commotion outside on the street at 2 a.m. Sunday.
Investigation led police to believe Gardhouse was carrying several hundred dollars, and there was informed speculation he stumbled upon a drug deal and was consequently attacked and robbed.
The case remained unsolved in 1984.

 

[CrimeSolver]

●On Thursday, February 25th, 1993, hard-working taxi driver Robert Nancoo, 42, an employee of Royal Taxi for four years, was found slumped in the driver's seat of his cab in a driveway on Hidden Trail, near Dufferin St. and Steeles Ave. W. A resident of the house in whose driveway Nancoo's cab was parked found his body at 7:45 a.m. Nancoo had been shot in the back of the head.
A fellow Royal driver spotted Nancoo sometime between 5 and 6 a.m. filling up his car at a propane gas station at Marlee Ave. and Eglinton Ave. W. The colleague saw four men get into Nancoo's car, after which Nancoo drove away. This was puzzling, since Nancoo was expected at downtown headquarters at 6:30 a.m., and he likely wouldn't have voluntarily accepted the fares.

●63-year-old Bernard Guay died on Wednesday, May 11th, 1977, five days after he was savagely beaten by a trio of teen ruffians in Allan Gardens, a downtown haunt of the homeless and marginalized. Since the attack, he had been kept alive in hospital by heart and lung machines. Guay, who was nigh-blind and an epileptic, was known to take night-time strolls near his Jarvis St. apartment. Although Allan Gardens was (and is) a hangout for winos, Guay did not drink or smoke.
Police figured robbery was the motive, since Guay's wallet lay next to his body. No further information.

●35-year-old Lorne Gibson was murdered in an area of downtown Toronto known as Cabbagetown on Thursday, October 27th, 1960. It appeared Gibson had been forced to stand facing a garage on Milan St. and was shot assassination-style in the back of the head and neck. The body was found at 5:45 a.m. by a man collecting recycling goods.
Gibson's car was found on O'Keefe Lane near Yonge and Dundas Sts. It had been ticketed for illegal parking. Investigation revealed he had been headed to a nearby tavern on the night of the 26th to meet a man. That man was questioned by police, to unknown effect.
Gibson, who lived with his sister on Huntsmoor Rd. in northwest Toronto, had a long drug-related criminal record dating back to 1941, and it was quickly assumed his murder was an underworld hit. Police learned from Gibson's friends that he claimed to have been severely beaten on two occasions in the weeks prior to his killing, once by men brandishing golf clubs, and there was information that his killer or killers were part of Montreal's underworld. Yet another recent incident involved Gibson's receiving a bad gash to the face from a woman swinging a broken bottle, and another possible motive that emerged was jealousy on the part of the boyfriend of the woman with whom Gibson had a scrap.

●Kevin Davis, 19, was stabbed to death in the hallway of an apartment building at 10 San Romanoway, near Jane St. and Finch Ave. W. on Friday, February 12th, 1999. His body was found just after 11 p.m. in a 14th-floor hallway. Davis lived in the building, but on another floor.
The victim, who held down a job and attended Seneca College as a freshman, was not known to be involved with drugs or gangs. No further information.

●On Saturday, September 20th, 1975, Ontario Provincial Police officers in Ayton, Ontario, a village approximately 150 km west-northwest of Toronto were called to one of the grisliest crimes they would ever face. Police found the viciously mutilated body of 59-year-old Alethia Jane Henning in the combination restaurant/gas station she operated. The middle-aged woman had been killed, an autopsy would later show, by merciless hammer blows to the head, which shattered her skull, but the depraved killer had taken the time to debase the victim further by gouging out her eyes, slashing her throat, and disembowelling her. Robbery appeared not to have been the motive, for the $500 in the till was untouched, as was Henning's purse.
The widowed Henning, whose husband had passed away five years earlier, had continued to run the modest business on her own. She had lived in Ayton for 22 years. No further information.

 

[CrimeSolver]

●On Monday, June 26th, 1972, 77-year-old Lillian (Lily) Dunsmore died of severe head trauma after someone beat her in her third-floor room in a rooming house on Gloucester St., near Yonge and Wellesley Sts. The killer did not ransack her room or steal anything, and police could not determine a motive or suspect. Dunsmore was described by a caretaker who knew her as a quiet and kind elderly woman. No further information.

Correction to this entry from post #19. While on the trail of other cases, I happened across info that two men, Peter Crampton and Terry Ghetti, were arrested soon after Dunsmore's murder and charged with it. They lived in the same house one floor beneath the victim.
Ghetti was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 1973, but murdered a fellow prison inmate, for which he was found guilty of manslaughter.
Crampton went on trial in 1977 and was acquitted because the jury believed his claim that he had taken part in the murder under duress.

I apologize for the misinformation in posting this as unsolved, but I can only be as thorough as the newspaper searches allow. For each case, I always make scrupulous attempts to verify the accuracy of information by plugging in different search words under parameters of different degrees of precision, but sometimes the newspapers' search engines don't perform ideally and there's just nothing I can do about missing important updates (the search engines must visually scan newspaper pages that are in some cases faded, and if a search term (eg. a name) is hyphenated and extends into a new line it simply doesn't show up in the results at all).