CANADA Canada - Toronto Crimes Discussion

[CrimeSolver]

Hi, CanManEh. It looks like an identikit sketch, where the victim looked at sets of eyes in a binder, chose one that matched best, and the police artist pasted them on top of the facial sketch.

 

[CanManEh]

What did you think of the W5 show about meriem i wont attempt the last name but the young girl missing from toronto she was here for about a month i think went to school never made it and has never been seen since .I didn't know anything about the father going off the deep end like he did thats pretty bizare. I like sue and W5 thay do some good stuff on missing person cases..

 

[CrimeSolver]

I like Sue Sgambati a lot. She's an excellent, serious journalist, and I wish she would get a good cold case show of her own. She used to have one on CourtTV (Crime Files: Cold Case Edition), but it was kind of barebones. Sgambati would basically interview a detective for half an hour. Her W5 episodes have been much more interesting.
Still, I decided to skip the episode about Mariam Makniashvili because I assumed there would be nothing new to report, and I didn't want to see an hour of rehashed info. The father and family are suspicious, but I wouldn't rule them in as suspects. She could be a runaway or the victim of a sex kidnapper, but the latter is made less believable by the discovery near Yonge/Eglinton of her knapsack months after her disappearance.

 

[CanManEh]

Yes I agree I also watched her show when it was on court tv and your right thats just how every case was told it was allways the same thing just different people. I said that on a unsolved canadian crime site kinda like this that we needed a good show like a nancy or jane valez but for canada. And your right there was nothing new other then what the dad has done to complicate matters .Myself i just can't see her being a runaway unless she somehow went back to her home land here she just didn't know enough people .

 

[CrimeSolver]

Well, I believe there were unconfirmed sightings of her in Calgary or somewhere else out west. You're right, though. By all accounts she was very shy, and wouldn't have been the type to run away on her own.

 

[casseole]

I watched the W5 episode about Mariam.I love Sue's reporting.

I'd heard so much about the case randomly when it was fresh in the news but it fizzled out a lot after the lack of leads. It was nice to see all of the information in one place and understand the case a little better.

I personally feel she either ran away or her father may have had something to do with it.

 

[CrimeSolver]

I love Sue's reporting.

Yeah, I love her style. Earnest, and with few of the annoying mannerisms (head nods, hand movements, props, etc.) most reporters use. I hate those.

I personally feel (Mariam) either ran away or her father may have had something to do with it.

I agree, but we can't exclude the possibility, however remote, that she was taken by a sex predator.

 

[CanManEh]

Somewhere along time ago in a meriam thread I had said that one of the things she had done was set up a facebook account when she came to canada also a seperate email address that had a password but her mom knows that password now ,My point is with her using facebook she would have talked to alot of people in the immediate area and she was a very pretty girl , I had put it out there that its very common for where her familly is from that when a girl does anything sometimes its rediculious and simple as showing her face and this some how brings shame upon the familly and very often she will be killed in what they call a Honor killing and with meriam using facebook and being a pretty girl i wonder if just conversation made the father go off the deep end and say she had brought shame upon the familly and did something about it like they would do back in thier home land.. and usually its the father and the brother or the fathers son i mean that carry it out. and the son her brother was the last one to see meriam...But i had said this theory when the case first happened ,,Its plosible exspecially after seeing what the old man did to 3 innocent people almost killing each one with a huge butcher knife.............

 

[RubyRed]

I like Sue Sgambati a lot. She's an excellent, serious journalist, and I wish she would get a good cold case show of her own. She used to have one on CourtTV (Crime Files: Cold Case Edition), but it was kind of barebones. Sgambati would basically interview a detective for half an hour. Her W5 episodes have been much more interesting.
Still, I decided to skip the episode about Mariam Makniashvili because I assumed there would be nothing new to report, and I didn't want to see an hour of rehashed info. The father and family are suspicious, but I wouldn't rule them in as suspects. She could be a runaway or the victim of a sex kidnapper, but the latter is made less believable by the discovery near Yonge/Eglinton of her knapsack months after her disappearance.

She lost her credibility as a serious journalist during the W5 show. Had she done her research she would of known Mariam's father had a deviant sex charge in California, and would have questioned LE when they said the family checked out clean.

Why he was even allowed into Canada with that charge i has me wondering " Do we even care who comes into this country "? Obviously not.

Tough questions were not asked in that interview. It all came across as a mediocre interview.

 

[dotr]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2011/12/16/donna-proian-charges.html

"Toronto police are expected to announce new details Friday in a 30-year-old cold case involving the killing of a secretary who originally hailed from Estevan, Sask.

Donna Anne Proian, 30, was found dead in her penthouse apartment on St. Patrick Street on June, 23 1981.

The University of Toronto secretary had been stabbed and strangled. News reports published shortly after her murder said Proian's husband, Charles Proian, found her sprawled in the hall of their apartment.

He had told police that on the morning his wife died, he left for work at 8:05 a.m. to walk to his office at Bell Canada headquarters. His wife usually left for work at 8:30 a.m.

Charles Proian told police he received a call at work from his wife's employer at 11:30 a.m. saying she had not arrived.

He returned to the apartment and found her sprawled in the hallway. News reports published after her death said Charles Proian told police he had to unlock the door when he returned to the apartment.

Some of her clothing had been knotted around her neck and she had been asphyxiated, the Toronto Star reported.

There was no sign of sexual abuse and nothing had been stolen from the apartment.

New reports published after Proian's death said she had worked in the registrar's office of the University of Regina in the early 1970s.

At the time of her death, Proian had been working as a secretary for the vice-dean of arts and sciences at U of T
"

 

[CrimeSolver]

^^Interesting. That's a case I wrote about early in this thread. I'm looking forward to the update.

 

[Hazel]

Police on cold case LIVE streaming

Toronto Police news conference about a cold case they may have solved

http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/Local_News/1221258968/ID=2177051662

oh no! missed it!

 

[Hazel]

Police announce arrest in cold case
Fri Dec. 16 2011 2:25:58 PM |Chris Fox, cp24.com

On Friday, police announced that Ernest Westerguard has been charged with first-degree murder in her death.

Westerguard, who was already in police custody for unknown reasons, lived in the suite next to Proian's at the time of the murder.

According to Det Sgt Steve Ryan, Westerguard has been a suspect in the case from the beginning.

Ryan said forensic science plays a part in charges finally being laid.

Westerguard is seen in a courtroom sketch. (Submitted) - - - - - - - A police handout shows the suspect in a 1981 murder. (CP24)​

http://www.cp24.com/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20111216/111216_Cold_Case/20111216/?hub=CP24Home

 

[dotr]

http://www.torontosun.com/2011/12/16/toronto-cops-make-arrest-in-1981-slaying
"Homicide Det.-Sgt. Steve Ryan credited colleagues’ “diligent” investigative work and the Centre of Forensic Sciences for the first arrest in the June 23, 1981 slaying of Donna Anne Proian."



"Ryan thanked the Centre of Forensic Sciences staff for being “instrumental for the conclusion we reached today,” adding that “technology has changed” and great strides have been made in crime scene analysis in recent years.

Ernest William Westergard, 61, was charged with Proian’s first-degree murder and appeared briefly in a downtown court before the media briefing.

Westergard, who had lived in an adjacent apartment to the 1981 victim, was convicted of the first-degree murder 17 years ago of Sonya Run, the wife of a Mississauga jeweller.

Run, 47, was beaten, raped and strangled to death.

Westergard had “been on the radar right from the onset of the investigation,” Ryan said.

Ryan said he hopes families of cold case victims take comfort whenever an arrest in a long-unsolved case that their loved one’s murder will be solved.

“We never give up,” he said.
"

 

[CrimeSolver]

Great news. Thanks for the updates. I haven't seen a newscast yet today.

 

[Hazel]

CBC NEWS VIDEO : http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/Canada/Toronto/1305549802/ID=2177583217

Charge laid in cold case
December 16, 2011News > Canada > Toronto
Toronto Police charged Ernest Westergard, 60, with first-degree murder on Friday, in THE 30-year-old murder case of Donna Anne Proian, thanks to new forensic technology,

 

[dotr]

More capsulized case descriptions:

●On Tuesday, June 23rd, 1981, 30-year-old Donna Anne Proian, a secretary at the University of Toronto, was stabbed and strangled to death inside her luxury penthouse apartment in the Village on the Grange complex on St. Patrick St. in downtown Toronto. Her husband Charles found her body soon after he received a phone call from the university at 11:30 a.m., informing him she had not shown up for work. Concerned, he walked home from his nearby workplace and discovered her body. He had last seen her shortly after 8 a.m. when he left for work. She would normally leave the apartment for work at 8:30 a.m.
According to the victim’s husband, the front door’s deadbolt was locked when he arrived, which would have required the killer turning a key from the outside. No one in the building reported hearing anything suspicious on the morning of the 23rd. Prioan was found with some of her clothing wrapped tightly around her neck, but there was no evidence of a sexual assault.

●On Monday, July 12th, 1982, on her 21st birthday, Claudia Geburt was viciously stabbed to death in a second-floor sitting room of her rented house on Leslie St., six doors south of Dundas St. Her fiancé found Geburt’s nude, blood-spattered body facedown on the floor when he called on her mid-afternoon.
On September 2nd, Geburt’s fiancé and best friend died in a murder-suicide pact. They had been extremely depressed in the wake of Geburt’s murder. Despite this bizarre, suspicious turn of events, police were never able to definitively solve the murder of Claudia Geburt, but police speculation at the time was that the killer was someone who had spotted the victim sunbathing on her deck.

●Vasilios Andriankos, 30, was shot to death by an armed robber on the night of Thursday, November 4th, 1971 in a Becker’s convenience store he managed on Vaughan Rd. at Kenwood Ave. A female customer who witnessed the shooting said the robber was enraged that Andriankos was only handing him $1 bills. Police later found the sawed-off shotgun used in the murder on the roof of a nearby garage, and a stolen car used by the killer was found still running behind 80 Vaughan Rd., ½ kilometre south of the murder scene.

●At 3:30 a.m. on Sunday, July 27th, 1997, club patrons Michele Gonzales and Ruddin Dexter Greaves, both 22, were killed after being hit by gunfire outside the Calypso Hut 3 at 1230 Sheppard Ave. W. A crowd of people was standing outside the club when a gunman opened fire with abandon, killing the two partygoers and injuring a third person. The three suspects were all described as Tamil-speaking male Sri Lankans in their early 20s, and may have been disgruntled patrons ejected earlier in the night. The Calypso Hut 3 had been the scene of previous trouble, including a murder in 1994, when it was under a different name and different ownership.

●Julia Ann Cox, 92, was found murdered in a closet in her basement flat on Queen St E. near Beech Ave. on Sunday, June 14, 1970. The elderly woman, who weighed only 77 lbs, had been dead about 1 week when police broke down her door based on concerns from the victim’s 84-year-old sister, who lived nearby. The killer, who entered through a street-level bathroom window, ripped off Ms. Cox’s clothes, then garrotted her with cord and clothes hanger and stabbed her in the head with a screwdriver. There was no apparent sexual assault. The attack must have happened in the evening or at night, because Ms. Cox’s lights were still on when she was found.

Here is Crimesolver's original post concerning Donna Proian. It is such great news that this case was solved, giving hope to all the families of other "cold cases"!

 

[CrimeSolver]

Here is Crimesolver's original post concerning Donna Proian. It is such great news that this case was solved, giving hope to all the families of other "cold cases"!

Exactly. If a case this cold can be solved then there's hope for all others. Before I posted the Proian case a few years ago, I Googled her name - as I do with all cases - and not a single search result came up. That some indication of how cold it was.

Same goes for another thread I started in early '07: The Holmes Beach Murders in Florida. An unsolved quadruple murder from 1980 and the only Google search result was a small write-up of the case on a local Florida sheriff's website (which no longer exists). Since then the case has heated up again and many people are interested. Amazing what the internet can do.

 

[dotr]

Lots more to this article.
Erin Gilmour, 22, was violated in her Hazelton Lanes apartment on Dec. 20, 1983.

Her half-brother Sean was 13 and says the pain does not heal -- especially when a sex-killer remains free.

"It's particularly hard at Christmas time," he said. "Finding her killer would be like a strange gift to our family. Our dream is to have it solved so I was relieved for the Proian family to get some news."




http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Crime/2011/12/29/19177601.html
There are many unresolved murdered women in Toronto during that time -- including Lori Marilyn Pinkus and Cheryl Nelson in 1991, Patricia Ann Stewart in 1990, Kelly Mombouraquette in 1987, Lorelei Brose in 1985, Christine Prince in 1982, and Donna Stearne and Wendy Tedford in 1973.

All these cases remain unsolved and there is nothing to link any of them to Westergard.

"With every unsolved case we look for connections, " said Ryan. "We always keep an open mind."

OPP Commissioner Chris Lewis said his cold case squad also looks for matches for similar unsolved cases across Ontario.

As of now the cases of Gilmour, Tice and the others remain unsolved.

Who knows what 2012 brings."

 

[CrimeSolver]

●Archibald McDougall, 61, was found stabbed to death on June 11th, 1971. A caretaker at Loreto Abbey private girls’ school in the tony north-Toronto enclave of Hoggs Hollow, McDougall was knifed and robbed of 75 cents on a walking path that runs through a wooded area between the school - which is on Mason Blvd. - and a pub on Yonge Street. The path is adjacent to McGlashan Rd.

Researching another murder case (Carol Lynn Millar (1976)), I came upon some information on the above-quoted murder. Police consider it solved, even though the suspect was never charged. At least he is (hopefully) still behind bars.

By Mark Bonokoski
For the Toronto Sun
Tue, March 1, 2005

http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Toronto/Mark_Bonokoski/2005/03/01/94593\
8.html

On the day Archie McDougall's body was found, his face horribly mutilated by a
knife, two of his nephews were rousted from their mother's home as suspects in
his murder.

Larry Mullins was 21, his brother John 19. They were also innocent.

The night before, however, they had been drinking with their uncle at the old
Jolly Miller Tavern in Hog's Hollow. 'The next morning, the stabbed body of the
much-loved custodian at the Loretto Abbey private school for girls was
discovered by a school nun in a park across the street.

As far as the police were concerned, the two were the last to see their uncle
alive, and therefore the prime suspects in a murder that had all the brutal
ugliness of psychopathic overkill.

But they weren't.

The last person to see him alive had also been drinking in the Jolly Miller that
night, unnoticed and therefore undetected, and would follow him up the path
towards the school grounds where McDougall boarded and knife him to death for
what amounted to pocket change.

And that person was Douglas Lawrence McCaul -- a once-closeted transvestite and
psychopath who was ruled criminally insane years ago but who has since returned
to the public fore as the appellant in a writ recently presented to the Ontario
Court of Appeal.

McCaul, now 52, wants to be transferred out of the maximum-security wing of the
Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre and moved to a medium-security mental
facility, where he can have more freedom.

He has been inside Penetang, virtually non-stop, since being found not guilty by
reason of insanity for the 1976 beating death of Carol Millar, a 26-year-old
alcoholic whose frozen body was found in a compost heap.

But this is not about McCaul; this is about the man he killed five years before
he killed Carol Millar. This is about Archie McDougall.

Loved family, kids

"Archie was very, very kind, much like all my father's brothers," said his
niece, Mary Mullins, mother of the two original suspects. "His life was his
family. He loved family and he loved kids."

Larry Mullins, now 56 and a successful real estate agent, sat in his mother's
house the other day and reflected on the uncle whom he and his brother last saw
at the Jolly Miller Tavern.

"My brother and I asked him if he wanted us to walk him home," he said. "But he
said no, even though he didn't like walking through that park at night.

"And I still feel guilty to this day. And so does my brother, John. If we had
only walked him home ... if, if, if."

For almost 12 years, the Mullins family believed the murder of Archie McDougall
was in a cold-case file -- unsolved.

Then, in 1987, they read in my column about how a man in the maximum-security
wing at Penetang had summoned homicide officers and how, at the end of that day,
the cops had the man who killed Archie McDougall.

'I pray at night'

And that man was Douglas McCaul.

"I pray at night that McCaul's appeal will be denied," said Virginia Kanary,
another of McDougall's nieces. "No member of our family can see a day where
McCaul could ever be considered rehabilitated.

"For the injuries he inflicted on my uncle, and to show no mercy or remorse, and
then to go and do the same to Carol Lynn Millar, well, this is a very sick, sick
man."

McDougall was born in the Cape Breton town of Glace Bay, the last of seven boys.

He was wounded overseas in World War II, returned home to work the Cape Breton
coal mines, where his face was smashed in during a mining accident -- a face
broken so badly that steel wires and a metal plate were required to reconstruct
it ... the same steel wires and metal plate that Douglas McCaul would later
gouge out with his knife.

After that, he joined a brother working the ships on the Great Lakes, then it
was off to Toronto, where he worked for years as a meter reader and then
custodian for Consumers Gas before signing on at Loretto Abbey.

And they loved him so much there that they ran his picture in their yearbook.

"Uncle Archie would never come visit without a roll of quarters in his pocket to
hand out to the kids," recalled Larry Mullins. "A quarter was a lot of money
back in those days. You could buy a chocolate bar and a pop and still have
change left over."

Looking back, Larry Mullins still carries anger over how the police treated him
and his brother when they were considered the prime suspects.

'We're all there'

What angers him the most, however, is how he and his family spent all those
years thinking Archie McDougall's murderer was still on the loose -- only to
find out in a newspaper column penned by me in 1987 that his killer had
confessed back in 1976.

"I don't believe for a moment that attempts were made to get in touch with us,"
he said. "All the police had to do was go to the phone book. We're all there."

Because he had already been found not guilty by reason of insanity for the death
of Carol Millar, McCaul was never officially charged with Archie McDougall's
murder.

It has nevertheless been marked "solved."