At about 10 a.m. on Friday, January 20, 1967, Toronto police answered an emergency call to a rooming house at 103 Hamilton Street, near Broadview Avenue and Dundas Street. A fellow roomer had found Bruno Max Seidel dead in his room.
Police at first thought the three knife wounds in his chest were self-inflicted, the Toronto Daily Star reported that day. Then they found two more stab wounds in his back.
The Greek family who owned the house could not understand police questions, and the investigation was delayed until an interpreter could be found, the Star reported.
Seidel’s wallet was missing. Police identified him from personal papers in his room. His landlady, Mrs. Katina Lazaroy, had seen him alive on Thursday evening. He had lived in the room for three months. She was not sure of his full name.
The Star wrote that he had “lived quietly.” The Globe and Mail described him as a man almost unknown to his neighbours.
Homicide Inspector Robert Bamlett said Seidel had come to Canada from Germany in 1953. He had no relatives in Canada. He had a son in Germany.
He had come on a government-assisted passage and worked as a farm helper near Mount Forest, the Star later reported. For the last 18 months he had worked as a labourer at an east-end factory. The Star also described him as a former farmer and sandblaster.
Police canvassed around Broadview and Dundas for anyone who knew him. They searched laneways and garbage cans for the weapon.
On January 24, Metro police posted a $2,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of his killer. They said they were looking for a young man known to have been in Seidel’s room between 6:30 and 8:30 p.m. on Thursday, January 19. Seidel had been stabbed five times with a long knife.
No one claimed the body. Authorities held it for 10 days, trying to find friends or next of kin. They found none. On January 31, Seidel was buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery at Metro’s expense, after a Lutheran service at a chapel on Spadina Avenue.
The Star reported the burial the next day under the headline “Slain man’s life still mystery.” Detectives, the paper said, were still trying to unravel it.
They had found the place he drank. Seidel frequented the Dennis House, a beverage room on Broadview Avenue. All of its waiters went to the coroner’s building to view the body. They identified him as a customer who “frequently left in company with younger men.”
Through Interpol, Toronto detectives learned that Seidel had two prosecutions pending against him when he left Stuttgart in 1953. Both, the Star reported, involved homosexuality.
Police believed the wounds had been made by a knife with an eight-inch blade, an inch and a half wide. They had not found it. They were also trying to locate a young man seen running from the Hamilton Street house the night before the body was found.
The same story turned to another killing police had not solved. On January 6, two weeks before Seidel died, Salvatore (Sammy) Triumbari, president of a soft-drink company, had been shot outside his home in what the Star called a gangland-style killing. Police thought a shakedown scheme was behind it.
On February 18, the Globe and Mail reported that the Metro Police Commission had added $4,000 to its outstanding rewards for crimes that year, bringing the total to $9,000. The list included $2,500 each for the Triumbari murder and for “the killing, Jan. 20 of Max Seidel.”
On May 3, two traffic officers spotted a car on Edith Drive. The driver jumped out and ran while the car was still running. It ploughed across a lawn. The officers saw the driver dive under another car, and they dragged him out from under it.
The car was registered to Bruno Max Seidel. Police said it had been bought from an east-end dealer soon after his body was found. They said the driver had identified himself as Seidel, using cards that had belonged to him, and had written cheques on his bank account.
The driver was Russell Bursey, an apprentice machinist from Blue Grass Boulevard in Richmond Hill. The Globe gave his age as 18; the Star, 19. He was charged with three counts of fraud. On May 4 he pleaded guilty before Magistrate Charles Drukarsh and was sentenced to 14 days in jail.
The Globe called Seidel’s death one of two unsolved murders in Metro that year. His landlady told the paper he occasionally had visitors.
On December 23, 1967, the Star added up the year. Metro’s homicide squad had had its busiest year, with 21 murders. Three were unsolved: Triumbari; Mrs. Agnes Biberian, stabbed to death in her home on Queen Street East; and Seidel. In 1966 there had been 13 murders, none unsolved.
The Star gave the police view of Seidel’s death in a single line. He was “thought to have become homosexually involved with a youth,” who had killed him to rob him of his wallet. The explanation for his death was placed in his own sexuality. No one was charged.
Toronto police list the case in their cold case files as Homicide #2/1967. The file gives the date as January 20, 1967, and says no further information is available.
The papers do not say who was in Seidel’s room that Thursday evening. They do not say whether the young man in the room and the young man seen running from the house were the same person. They never named his son. They do not say how Bursey came to have Seidel’s cards, or whether police questioned him about the killing. Beyond the word “homosexuality,” they do not say what the German prosecutions were.
The record disagrees with itself. Seidel was 57 in the Star and in the police file, 55 in the Globe, and 58 in the Star’s report of Bursey’s sentence. The Globe spelled his name Siedel. The first report counted three wounds in the chest and two in the back; later reports said five. The reward appears as $2,000 and as $2,500.
Most of what the record keeps of him came from strangers: a landlady who did not know his full name, and the waiters who watched him leave with younger men.
The case remains unsolved.
Vital statistics
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Name | Bruno Max Seidel |
| Age | 57 (also given as 55 and 58) |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Labourer |
| Date of death | January 20, 1967 (found; last seen alive the evening of January 19) |
| Manner of death | Stabbed |
| Location | 103 Hamilton St., Toronto |
Sources
- Toronto Daily Star, January 20, 1967, p. 2
- The Globe and Mail, January 21, 1967, p. 5
- Toronto Daily Star, January 24, 1967, p. 2
- Toronto Daily Star, February 1, 1967, p. 23
- The Globe and Mail, February 18, 1967, p. 4
- The Globe and Mail, May 4, 1967, p. 5
- Toronto Daily Star, May 4, 1967, p. 40
- Toronto Daily Star, December 23, 1967, pp. 1 and 21
- Toronto Police Service, Cold Case Files, Homicide #2/1967
- Photographs: Google Street View, February 2018 (103 Hamilton St.); portrait of Bruno Max Seidel [source to confirm]
Murder Village Map