Feb. 18, 1975: Police attended the apartment of Arthur Harold Walkley, 52, in response to a 911 call at 3:50 a.m. that day. His roommate discovered his naked body, stabbed several times in the back and chest, though no knife was ever recovered by police. His wallets and credit cards were stolen during the attack on Borden St. near Bloor St. W. Walkley, a part-time University of Toronto lecturer, died shortly after arriving in hospital.
Dec. 20, 1975: Frederick John Fontaine was 32 when he died. Fontaine was found in the washroom of the St. Charles Tavern, a former bar with a landmark clock tower, popular in the early days of Toronto’s Gay Village. Officers attended the scene about 9 p.m., and found the CBC technician suffering from blunt force trauma. He died several months later in hospital, on July 15, 1976.
Feb. 11, 1976: Forty-two-year-old painter and decorator James Douglas Taylor was found beaten with a baseball bat in his North York apartment near Yonge St. and Sheppard Ave. He was also robbed. Neighbours told police at the time that a pickup truck was seen at the house, where he lived alone.
Sept. 20, 1976: Police discovered the body of James Stewart Kennedy, a federal income tax employee, at 8 a.m. on a Monday. The 59-year-old was strangled with a bath towel and suffering from blunt force trauma in his Jarvis St. apartment. He was dead by the time police arrived.
Jan. 25, 1977: Described in some media coverage as “shy and new on the gay scene,” 25-year-old Brian Dana Latocki, a financial bank analyst, was found tied to a bed in his apartment, strangled, and stabbed to death. Police responded to the scene on Erskine Ave., near Mt. Pleasant Rd. and Eglinton Ave. E., at 9:40 a.m. that day. The night before he was killed, he was last seen leaving the St. Charles Tavern.
Sept. 20, 1978: Perhaps one of the most high-profile deaths was of club owner Alexander “Sandy” Romeo LeBlanc, 29. He was found at 7:20 p.m., stabbed more than 100 times from head to foot. “As police walked around the body, the carpet squished from the sound of absorbed blood, and bloody footprints led to an open window,” Robin Hardy wrote in 1979. Despite attempts to resuscitate him, LeBlanc was pronounced dead in his apartment on St. Joseph St.
Nov. 28, 1978: Just after 2 p.m. that day, police responded to a “check address” call for a resident near Bathurst St. and St. Clair Ave. Inside an apartment, they found William Duncan Robinson, 25, dead from stab wounds. His sister made the call to police after he didn’t show up to work for two days. At the time, police believed he may have gone to a gay bar in the Yonge and College Sts. area, and returned home with the killer. A neighbour reported hearing a “strange hollow sound” coming from his apartment.
