On Saturday, July 15, 1967, a farmer named Antonio De Freitas found a body in one of his fields near Markham. It was a young man, naked, lying in grass three feet high.
The coroner, Dr. Ralph Johns, examined the body where it lay. He said the death “might well be a murder,” the Globe and Mail reported.
The body was badly decomposed. There were tattoos on both arms and a voodoo tiki necklace around the neck. Nothing found with him gave a name. An autopsy at the Attorney-General’s forensic laboratory found no cause of death. That week the young man was buried, unnamed, in a Markham cemetery, the Toronto Daily Star reported.
He was Robert Wayne Mortimore, and he was 17. He was the son of Mr. and Mrs. Harry Mortimore of Sarnia. A few months earlier he and his brother Reginald had come to Toronto. The two shared a room in a rooming house on Gloucester Street.
Earlier that year Mortimore had been convicted of breaking and entry and theft, and Metro police took his fingerprints. He was released from jail in the spring. The Globe and Mail first reported that he worked as a labourer. Four days later it said he had been working as a copying machine operator.
Reginald last saw his brother on Friday, July 7. On July 13 he reported him missing.
On July 14, the day before the body was found near Markham, William Howell, 21, was found in a roadside ditch north of Barrie. He had been stabbed in the throat, and his hands were tied behind his back. He survived. Howell told police he had accepted a ride at Yonge and Carlton streets from a man in a white sports car, the Star reported. Police traced the car through a traffic ticket. On July 16 they arrested James Henry Greenidge, a computer operator who lived on Cambridge Avenue, at his apartment.
No one yet connected the man in the Barrie jail to the body in the Markham field.
At the forensic laboratory, fingerprints were lifted from the dead man’s right hand. A Metro detective working through the files found a match. The tattoos confirmed it. One of them read “Born to Raise Hell.” On Sunday, July 23, police named Robert Mortimore.
The police did not yet agree on how he had died. Det. Clifford Cox of Markham police said the youth might have died of a drug overdose and been dumped in the field. Metro Homicide Det.-Sgts. James Crawford and Jack Evans joined the case. “He may have been known in the Yorkville area,” Crawford said.
That same Sunday afternoon, a free concert by the Jefferson Airplane at Nathan Phillips Square ended with young people wading into the reflecting pool and police making arrests. Over the weekend, police held three people in a marijuana crackdown in Yorkville. On Monday the Star ran both stories on the same page as Mortimore’s photograph.
Detectives searched the brothers’ room on Gloucester Street, took some articles for examination and padlocked the door. They could not find Reginald over the weekend. On Monday night they did. A detective told the Star police hoped he could tell them “who his friends were.” Police now said the boy might have died in Toronto and been carried to the farm. The Star ran the story on July 25 beneath its coverage of the riot in Detroit.
On Thursday, July 27, police found a courtesy car in a downtown Toronto garage. That day Greenidge was charged with the murder of Robert Mortimore. Police now believed Mortimore had been killed in the field. They were still looking for his clothes: blue-and-white checked bell-bottom trousers, a mod-style belt two and a half inches wide, a neck chain with a cross, and two signet rings.
On January 10, 1968, at Barrie, Greenidge pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of Howell and was sentenced to 10 years. Crown Attorney John Murphy told the court the two men had met in a theatre “known as a meeting place for homosexuals,” the Canadian Press reported.
On January 23, Greenidge, 28, appeared at Richmond Hill on the Mortimore charge and was remanded for another week. The Star reported that he had secured a legal aid lawyer only that day.
On May 15, a man ploughing a field near Schomberg found a skeleton against a fence. It would be 2006 before it was identified as Richard Hovey, 17.
On June 25, 1968, Greenidge stood before Mr. Justice W. A. Donohue and pleaded guilty to manslaughter in Mortimore’s death. Crown counsel James Crossland accepted the plea to the lesser charge. Directed by the judge, the jury returned its verdict without leaving the box.
Inspector W. H. Armstrong of the provincial police said Mortimore had been identified through his fingerprints and through part of a birth certificate found in Greenidge’s car.
The court heard Greenidge’s statement to police. He said he and Mortimore drove to a gravel road off Markham Road, where Mortimore asked him for $20.
“He said it would cost me money and I sneered at him. He made a slice at me with a small penknife. I slapped him. I got out and started punching him. I grabbed the knife and poked him with it a couple of times,” Greenidge said.
“I didn’t take the kid out with the intention of doing him in. It was not premeditated.”
Defence counsel Arthur Maloney then questioned the inspector. Armstrong told him it was known that Mortimore “supplemented his earnings by homosexual activities.”
In 1968, sex between men was a crime in Canada. The plea was already settled, so the answer could not change the verdict. It changed the account of the death. In the record the court heard, a 17-year-old asked a man for money, pulled a knife and was killed in the struggle. The only witness to that account was the man who killed him.
Crossland told the judge that Greenidge’s record included convictions for theft, rape and assault. Greenidge was sentenced to seven years for manslaughter. The Globe and Mail reported the sentence as consecutive to the 10 years he was already serving.
The Globe’s report on the sentencing did not mention the remains found at Schomberg six weeks earlier.
Nearly four decades later, the Ontario Provincial Police reopened the Schomberg case and an unsolved case from Coboconk, where a young man’s bones had been found in December 1967. In November 2006, police would not name the man convicted in 1968. The Star’s sources named his teenage victim as Robert Mortimore.
By then Greenidge was known as James Gordon Henry and was serving a life sentence for the 1981 murder of a young woman in Vancouver. In 2006 police described the young men as victims of a sexual predator with a type. Columnist Rosie DiManno called them “boy-men” who may have gone with their killer willingly at first.
In 2009 the Coboconk remains were identified as Eric Jones. Police called Greenidge a person of interest in the deaths of Jones and Hovey. The Star’s account that year said Mortimore had been stabbed to death.
Robert Wayne Mortimore is buried in Eckardt Cemetery in Markham.
The record disagrees with itself. His body was found on July 15, 16 or 17, depending on the paper and the year. One report calls him Robert James. His brother Reginald was 18 or 19. Greenidge was 30 or 28, and was charged with capital or non-capital murder. Howell appears as Howells. The sentence was reported as consecutive in 1968 and as concurrent in 2006. The 1967 autopsy found no cause of death. What the court heard about how he died came from Greenidge.
Vital statistics
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Name | Robert Wayne Mortimore (Robert James in one report) |
| Age | 17 |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Labourer or copying machine operator |
| Date of death | Between July 7 and July 15, 1967 |
| Manner of death | Stabbed, according to the accused’s statement; the 1967 autopsy found no cause |
| Location | Field in Markham Township, northeast of Markham Village |
| Accused | James Henry Greenidge, later James Gordon Henry, 28 or 30, of Cambridge Avenue |
| Charge | Murder (capital or non-capital; sources differ) |
| Defence counsel | Arthur Maloney |
| Crown counsel | James Crossland |
| Judge | Mr. Justice W. A. Donohue |
| Verdict | Manslaughter (guilty plea) |
| Sentence | 7 years, consecutive to 10 years for attempted murder, June 25, 1968 |
Sources
- Toronto Daily Star, July 17, 1967, p. 46
- The Globe and Mail, July 24, 1967, p. 5
- Toronto Daily Star, July 24, 1967, p. 21
- Toronto Daily Star, July 25, 1967, p. 2
- The Globe and Mail, July 28, 1967, p. 5
- Winnipeg Free Press, January 11, 1968, p. 47 (Canadian Press)
- Toronto Daily Star, January 23, 1968, p. 28
- The Globe and Mail, June 26, 1968, p. 2
- Toronto Star, November 10, 2006, p. B4
- Toronto Star, November 15, 2006, p. A2
- Toronto Star, February 5, 2007, p. A2
- Toronto Star, March 10, 2009, p. GT4
- Photographs: Robert Mortimore, Metro Toronto police photograph, February 28, 1966; James Henry Greenidge, as published in The Globe and Mail, July 28, 1967; grave marker, Eckardt Cemetery, Markham
Murder Village Map