On Wednesday, July 17, 1963, a black convertible carrying two youths went through a police speed trap on Lake Shore Boulevard West. Constable Grenville Dawkins chased it through Long Branch. He later testified that he was suspicious of the car.
The driver turned onto a side street, pulled the keys from the ignition and ran.
A Mrs. Tobias spotted him crouching behind a bush in a back yard on James Street. Walter Tobias, 40, and John H. West held him until police came. Tobias testified that the boy swore at them and said, “You called the police. I will kill you.” West said he put up little resistance and seemed glad to be caught.
The boy was Glen John Seip, 15. He told Toronto Township Detective William Teggart that he had found the car parked on Sherway Drive near Queensway General Hospital, with the keys in the ignition. He blamed his capture on the woman. “Then a nosey woman got out of a car, pointed at me behind a bush, and I was caught,” Teggart quoted him as saying.
His companion, Lorne Snider, 18, of Ossington Avenue, was arrested nearby. Seip was charged as a juvenile delinquent with stealing the car.
The car belonged to Ronald John Grigor. Police tried to reach him to say it had been recovered. His apartment was locked. They called his brother, George, who asked the landlord to check on him.
Grigor and his wife rented the basement apartment in a North York house on Shelborne Ave. The owner, David Brown, testified that he opened the door on Thursday, July 18, and saw human legs on the bed. He left and called police. The Globe and Mail had first reported that Brown’s 13-year-old son, Harold, unlocked the door.
The officer who answered the call found Grigor nude in a bloodstained bed, a yellow blanket drawn up to his chest. Dr. H. Terry Van Patter performed the autopsy. He said death was caused by multiple penetrating head injuries. The Toronto Daily Star later reported 20 head wounds.
Grigor was 31 in the first reports and 30 by the time of the trial. The Globe and Mail described him as assistant manager and accountant at the Toronto-Dominion Bank branch at Dufferin Street and St. Clair Avenue West. Later reports called him a bank accountant. He was on vacation and had booked a flight to New York for that Thursday. His brother said he planned to see some baseball games.
He and his wife, Ina, 28, had been married four or five years. The reports differ. They had no children. They had moved into the basement apartment about a month earlier to save on expenses. Ina had left her job as a bank teller and worked as a receptionist at a hairdresser’s. On July 7 she left for her brother’s wedding in Winnipeg. She later testified it was the first time they had been apart. Police reached her in Cochrane on her way home.
In the first days, police said Grigor had been killed with a crowbar of the type railway workers used to remove track bolts. They speculated that he was killed for his vacation pay and his car. Forty officers were assigned. They searched the lakefront at Long Branch, where the youths said they had thrown the car keys. The weapon turned out to be a heavy two-foot wrench. Brown testified that one of the workmen who built the house had left it behind, and it was kept in the basement laundry room.
On Saturday, July 20, after a 34-hour investigation by Detective-Sergeants James Crawford and Irvine Alexander of the Metropolitan Toronto Homicide Squad, the 15-year-old was charged with capital murder. Snider was held as a material witness. The papers did not yet print the boy’s name. The Globe and Mail reported that he was a ward of St. John Training School at Uxbridge.
Seip appeared in juvenile court on July 22 and July 26. Walton C. Rose acted for him. Crown counsel Lloyd Graburn was expected to ask that the case be moved to adult court. The Globe and Mail pointed readers to the case of Steven Truscott, the boy tried as an adult and sentenced to hang for the murder of a 12-year-old girl near Clinton. In August, Juvenile Court Judge Lorne Stewart ruled Seip an adult. He would be tried as one.
The preliminary hearing opened before Magistrate Joseph Addison on August 27. Snider testified that he ran into Seip, a boyhood friend, outside City Hall on July 16. Seip was driving a black convertible. Snider asked where he got it. Seip said he “got the car off a queer.” Snider knew him as Glen Blackburn.
Snider found three $5 bills in the ashtray. They split the money and picked up two girls, Valerie Jean Head of Port Credit and Bonnie Bell of Triller Avenue, both 16. They drove the girls to Kitchener and took them home. That night the two boys drove to Wasaga Beach and stayed over. The next day they came back to Toronto and took the girls out again. The chase came after they dropped the second girl at her home in Port Credit.
Snider testified that Seip hid a driver’s licence, a service station credit card and gas receipts in Grigor’s name under a garage wall. Snider buried the car keys behind an apartment building. He said he went along with the theft “because I didn’t want him to take all the rap, buddies are buddies.” Under cross-examination by Rose, Snider said Seip had told him he got the car from a “gearbox.” Snider explained it was slang for a homosexual.
The girls confirmed that Seip said he got the car from a “queer.” They would not repeat aloud what Seip had told them about his activities with the car’s owner. They wrote it down for the magistrate instead.
The hearing showed where the defence was going. Crown counsel Herbert Langdon asked Grigor’s brother, George Andrew Grigor, whether Ronald had ever shown homosexual tendencies. “This is ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous,” he replied. “I knew everything about my brother.” Rose then asked about his brother’s habit of driving downtown in the early morning hours. “I have known him to do this,” George Grigor said.
Ina Grigor told the court their home life was “normal.” She denied her husband had any homosexual tendencies. Under cross-examination she agreed that he often left the apartment late at night and did not come back until the early hours of the morning.
Seip was committed for trial and named in the papers for the first time. He lived on Foxley Street and turned 16 on August 30. On September 10, a grand jury returned a true bill for capital murder.
The trial opened on Monday, November 18, before Chief Justice James C. McRuer of the Ontario Supreme Court. McRuer ruled it would proceed as a normal trial, although Seip had been 15 when Grigor’s body was found. The Star described Seip as neatly dressed, with a tattoo on the back of his left hand. He pleaded not guilty. Rose challenged 12 men. Langdon made eight challenges, four of them women. The jury of 12 men was made up of engineers, salesmen, merchants and an accountant.
On the second day, Rose admitted that the car was Grigor’s and that Seip had been driving it. Snider and the two girls repeated their evidence. Snider said Seip had also taken shirts and other things from the car’s owner, including the sweater he was wearing. Seip told him he had been driving the car since 4 o’clock that morning. Bonnie Bell said Seip told her the owner had given him the ownership papers and that he took the credit card. “He said he got it out of the guy’s pocket,” she testified. “Glenn said the guy wouldn’t know any difference. He said he was stunned.”
On November 25, Seip took the stand. He testified that Grigor picked him up in his car at Dundas Street and Ossington Avenue. He said he did not suspect Grigor was homosexual, because they set out to find some girls in the Jarvis and Dundas area. When that failed, they went to Grigor’s apartment. Seip said he had three drinks of whisky while Grigor undressed for bed. He felt numb from the whisky. He got into bed when Grigor promised to drive him home in the morning.
Seip testified that he twice resisted Grigor’s advances. He got out of bed to look for his clothes. When he could not find his jeans, he told Grigor he had to go to the washroom, and on the way he found the wrench. He said Grigor told him he would not bother him any more. Seip hid the wrench beside the bed. He said that after Grigor attacked him a third time, he took the wrench and struck him.
“I went crazy,” Seip said. “I don’t know how many times I hit him.”
He said he could not stand the sight of Grigor’s body, so he covered it with the bedspread and put a pillow over the face. He wrapped the wrench in his jacket, put on some of Grigor’s clothing and drove the car to his home on Foxley Street. He meant to get rid of the car, Grigor’s suitcase and the wrench in the lake. Then he met Snider.
Seip sobbed and buried his face in his hands. McRuer cut him off. “You went out an hour or so after this with a girl friend, driving his car. I don’t think you need to put on a demonstration,” the judge said. “Just answer the question.” Seip’s mother was crying in the spectators’ section. Seip denied that he had ever taken part in homosexual activity before.
The lawyers made their closing addresses on November 27. Rose called the case tragic. He told the jury that on the surface Grigor was a credit to his community, but underneath there was “another personality” that “set out in a cold-blooded manner to seduce Seip.” The Globe and Mail summarized Rose as describing a married man who seemed decent and likeable but was “actually a degenerate.” After three drinks of whisky at Grigor’s urging, Rose said, Seip reacted as any 15-year-old would. “He was like any other 15-year-old, and defended himself from a violent homosexual attack.”
The Crown also used Grigor’s sexuality. Langdon argued that Seip went to the apartment to rob Grigor, knowing he was homosexual. He reminded the jury that Seip had admitted he had no money that night and thought right away, when Grigor offered him a ride, that Grigor was homosexual. That was not what Seip had said on the stand. Langdon claimed Seip had taken part in homosexual activity before. He noted that Seip later boasted to his friends about Grigor’s activity with him “without any sign of revulsion,” and that he went through Grigor’s pockets for money after the killing. He called Seip “an accomplished liar” who used “grossly excessive force” and asked the jury to find his actions “deliberate and cold-blooded.”
Because Seip was under 18, a conviction for capital murder could not bring a death sentence. It would mean life imprisonment. The jury could also return non-capital murder or manslaughter.
On the night of Thursday, November 28, the jury acquitted Seip of capital murder and found him guilty of non-capital murder. McRuer sentenced him to life imprisonment. Seip put his head in his hands and wept. His mother and a girlfriend broke down.
“This does not necessarily mean you will never be out of prison again,” McRuer told him. He said everyone felt sympathy for Seip, “but the law must be enforced against those who commit violent acts.” He hoped Seip would get training in prison that would let him return to normal life. The Star noted that the parole board could release him whenever it decided he could finish his sentence outside prison.
The daily papers printed “homosexual” in the lawyers’ words and “queer” in the witnesses’. Coverage of Seip leaned toward sympathy: the “curly-haired youth,” the “tattooed boy,” the “well-dressed youth” who “wept as he was sentenced.” The Canadian Press carried the verdict in a few lines to papers in Winnipeg and Medicine Hat.
The record disagrees with itself on details. Grigor appears as 30 and as 31. He appears as an assistant bank manager and as a bank accountant. The papers credit both David Brown and his son with opening the apartment door. Police first estimated that Grigor died 20 to 26 hours before he was found, which would place his death after Seip was already in custody.
Vital statistics
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Name | Ronald John Grigor |
| Age | 30 or 31 |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Assistant manager and accountant, Toronto-Dominion Bank, Dufferin St. and St. Clair Ave. W. |
| Date of death | July 16, 1963 (body found July 18) |
| Manner of death | Blunt force (two-foot wrench) |
| Location | Basement apartment, Shelborne Ave., North York |
| Accused | Glen John Seip, 15 (16 at trial), of Foxley St. |
| Charge | Capital murder; tried as an adult |
| Defence counsel | Walton C. Rose |
| Crown counsel | W. H. (Herbert) Langdon |
| Judge | Chief Justice James C. McRuer, Ontario Supreme Court |
| Verdict | Not guilty of capital murder; guilty of non-capital murder |
| Sentence | Life imprisonment, November 28, 1963 |
Sources
- The Globe and Mail, July 20, 1963, p. 5
- The Globe and Mail, July 22, 1963, p. 5
- Winnipeg Free Press, July 22, 1963, p. 9 (Canadian Press)
- The Globe and Mail, July 23, 1963, p. 5
- Toronto Daily Star, July 26, 1963, p. 16
- The Globe and Mail, August 28, 1963, p. 5
- Toronto Daily Star, August 28, 1963
- Winnipeg Free Press, August 28, 1963, p. 1 (Canadian Press)
- Toronto Daily Star, September 10, 1963, p. 22
- Toronto Daily Star, November 18, 1963, p. 1
- The Globe and Mail, November 20, 1963, p. 5
- The Globe and Mail, November 21, 1963, p. 5
- The Globe and Mail, November 26, 1963, p. 5
- The Globe and Mail, November 28, 1963, p. 5
- Toronto Daily Star, November 28, 1963, p. 3
- Toronto Daily Star, November 29, 1963, p. 27
- Medicine Hat News, November 29, 1963, p. 2 (Canadian Press)
- Winnipeg Free Press, November 29, 1963, p. 12 (Canadian Press)
- Photographs: Toronto Daily Star photo, November 29, 1963 (Seip); The Globe and Mail, July 20, 1963 (Grigor)
Murder Village Map