●At 8 a.m. on Friday, March 19th, 1993, the body of 41-year-old Barbara Brodkin was discovered by her 6-year-old son after he awoke; the boy called 911. The woman had been stabbed in the heart in the Balliol St. apartment where she resided with her son. She had been murdered sometime during the night as her child slept nearby. Brodkin was known to be a marijuana dealer, and police speculated the motive for her murder was robbery since a small cosmetics case belonging to the victim, containing drugs and money, was missing.
●On Thursday, September 1st, 1983, 23-year-old Toronto prostitute Claire Samson was seen in front of the Essex Hotel on Jarvis St. getting into a large, beige car driven by a balding older man. Samson was never seen alive again, and her body was found the following day in a wooded area off Oro Sideroad 20/21 near Highway 93, just north of Barrie, Ontario. She had been shot in the head with a small-calibre gun. In 1987 and 1989, this murder case was publicized by Crimestoppers, and a reward was offered, apparently to no avail.
●Anthony Carnovale, 30, was killed by shotgun blasts that hit his heart and lungs on Friday, January 11th, 1980, as he sat on a couch watching TV in his girlfriend’s apartment on Keele St. near Lawrence Ave. W. The two 12-gauge shotgun blasts that tore through the window of the apartment around 11 p.m. also wounded Carnovale’s girlfriend, Cathleen Pereira, in the shoulder and neck, but she survived. The gun was later determined to have been fired from no farther than 10 feet away. Neighbours saw a silver or grey Cadillac with a black vinyl roof fleeing the scene moments after the shooting.
At the time of his death, Carnovale was on parole and facing trial on drug trafficking charges. Police believe the killing was gangland retribution for something illicit in which the victim was involved. This crime was still confirmed unsolved in 1984.
●The body of Maladevi Latchman (age unknown) was found in the Humber River behind the Old Mill banquet hall on Tuesday, November 15th, 1994. An autopsy showed she had been brutally beaten, and it appeared her body had been thrown from a bridge over the river. No further information.
●At midnight on Tuesday, March 25th, 1969, 23-year-old Yvonne Dorion was walking home on Ferrier Ave., near Danforth and Pape Aves., just steps from the rooming house where she lived, when a tall man wearing a long coat jumped from the shadows of an adjacent parking lot and stabbed her in the back between the shoulder blades. Dorion survived the attack but was left partially paralyzed. An hour-and-a-half before the stabbing of Dorion, an elderly woman was attacked and robbed of her purse on the same street. She was physically unhurt. Dorion’s stabbing and recovery was a cause célèbre in the Toronto media for several months, but her assailant was never caught.
