On Thursday, December 15, 1977, Neil Wilkinson’s employer called Metro Toronto police. He worked the midnight-to-8 a.m. shift at the Royal Bank, and he had not been to work for four days. Calls to his home had gone unanswered.
Police went to his second-floor apartment on Charles St. E., near Church St. They found him nude on his bed. He had been beaten and robbed, and the apartment had been ransacked.
He had been dead for several days. The body was decomposing, and the autopsy could not establish the time of death.
Neil Robert Wilkinson was 35. He was a balancing clerk at Royal Bank Plaza on Wellington St. W.; other reports called him a data processor. The Toronto Sun reported that he was single and lived alone in a rooming house apartment.
The Sun counted him as Metro’s 53rd murder victim in what had been a record year for homicides. Eight of the killings were unsolved. Homicide investigators William McCormack and Herman Lowe were studying three earlier cases to see if they could find a link.
The Toronto Star went further. Its headline on December 16 read “Homosexual killer may be stalking city.” The Star said Wilkinson might be the fifth victim in two years, and that all the victims had been robbed and none of the killings solved. Police said Wilkinson and Brian Latocki, 24, had both frequented homosexual bars on Yonge St. Latocki had been tortured and killed in his Erskine Ave. apartment on January 25.
Police told the Star that three other men may also have been killed by men who preyed on homosexuals to rob them. Bernard Guay, 62, had been beaten and robbed in Allan Gardens. James Robert Kennedy, 49, was found nude and strangled in his Jarvis St. apartment on September 28, 1976. James Douglas Taylor, 41, was killed in his North York home in February 1976.
On the same page, the Star reported that the Ontario government was moving to widen its clampdown on sex shops, with higher fines for operators who broke the law.
On December 23, police released a photograph of Wilkinson. Sgt. Herman Lowe said police had found two friends who left the Parkside Tavern with him at 1:30 a.m. on Saturday, December 10. The Parkside stood on Yonge St. at Breadalbane. Wilkinson was last seen alive walking south on Yonge.
Police asked anyone who had seen him with another man to come forward. That man, they said, “probably took him to his apartment.”
Lowe said the autopsy showed Wilkinson had been severely beaten, but that he died of asphyxiation.
On January 5, 1978, the Globe and Mail reported that Insp. George Sellars of the homicide division had tied Wilkinson’s death to three others. The Globe’s list differed from the Star’s. It named Latocki and Kennedy, and Arthur Harold Walkley, a part-time lecturer at the University of Toronto, who was killed in February 1975.
Sellars said he could not prove the killings were the work of one person. “They sure are similar,” he said. He said the first three victims were homosexuals, and that he did not know Wilkinson’s sexual orientation. He added that Wilkinson “was known to hang out at” the Parkside and St. Charles taverns.
The police statement described what Wilkinson was wearing when he was last seen: an expensive-looking brown leather jacket, blue jeans and light beige leather snowboots. It said he had left his two friends outside the Parkside and walked south on Yonge alone.
The Globe reported that he had been stabbed and beaten to death. The stabbing appeared in the papers through to the sentencing. The pathologist’s evidence at trial, as the Star reported it, described a beating.
On Monday, January 30, Constables Ross Downton and John Clarke arrested a suspect in the Parkside Tavern. Police said the two officers had spent weeks working undercover in bars and taverns frequented by homosexuals. James Allan Walker, 24, of no fixed address, was charged with first-degree murder. The Star described him as a transient. Its headline called Wilkinson a banker.
In March, the Body Politic reported that Wilkinson’s death brought to four the number of similar murders of gay men in Toronto since 1975. Asked about the arrest, Staff Sgt. McCormack would not say whether police still believed the cases were related.
The same issue reported that Dorothea Crittenden, the new chair of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, had called gay rights a “non-issue.” The Star had quoted her as saying that because of the Jaques murder trial, this was not the time to deal with the question.
Walker went on trial on October 10, 1978, before Mr. Justice Donald Morand of the Supreme Court of Ontario. On the first day he offered to plead guilty to manslaughter. Crown attorney John Kerr would not agree. He said the Crown wanted the jury to hear all the evidence before it reached a verdict. Morand ordered the trial to proceed.
A first-degree murder conviction carried an automatic life sentence. The sentence for manslaughter was up to the judge.
On October 11, Staff Sgt. Bill McCormack testified about what Walker told police after his arrest. “He just got to me (and) I lost control and I beat him up,” Walker said. “It was just like a trigger.”
Walker told police he was not a homosexual. “I’ve had homosexual experience before but I don’t go that way,” he said. He said he met Wilkinson in the Parkside, which the jury had been told was a homosexual meeting place. The two went to Wilkinson’s apartment, drank and smoked marijuana. Walker said he lost control after Wilkinson began talking about his fantasies and what he liked in sex. He said he took a television set, a coat, two watches and some money.
McCormack testified that the body was in “an advanced state of decomposition.” The nose and upper jaw appeared to have been broken.
The defence then turned to Wilkinson’s private life. Hal Dwyer, 35, a long-time friend, testified that before his death Wilkinson had become interested in “bondage.” He agreed that whips “can be” a part of it, and that “to a degree” sadism and masochism were part of Wilkinson’s sexual activities. The Star identified Dwyer as a homosexual.
The next day, defence counsel Arthur Whealy questioned Sgt. Lowe about a painting found hanging in Wilkinson’s bedroom. It showed a figure with a man’s naked body and a lion’s head. Lowe called it “bizarre,” and said there was “no way” he would have such a painting in his own home. The jury was told that Wilkinson was usually “the aggressive party” in his relationships.
On October 13, pathologist John Hillsdon-Smith testified that Wilkinson choked to death on his own blood. His broken nose and jaw were consistent with stomping and kicking, possibly by bare feet.
Kerr suggested to psychiatrist Brian Butler that Walker had kicked and stomped Wilkinson to death, showered in his apartment, taken his watch and television and “calmly” left. Butler agreed that was the impression Walker had given him. Butler had interviewed Walker several times. He said Walker was “very cold and indifferent” about what had happened.
Walker testified on Monday, October 16. He said he stomped Wilkinson because Wilkinson told him he liked to tie up young boys and have intercourse with them. “I just exploded and I lost control of myself,” he said.
He said he had no interest in sex with Wilkinson, but that Wilkinson was “continually coming on at me.” When Wilkinson talked about his sexual fantasies, Walker said, his heart beat fast and his arms and legs were vibrating. He admitted hitting, kicking and stomping him. “I couldn’t stop. I was too mad,” he said.
He said he cut his feet on Wilkinson’s teeth. Both men were naked. Asked by Kerr why he had undressed, Walker said, “I don’t know.” Later he said he thought that if he took off his clothes, Wilkinson would stop trying to undress him.
The Star described Walker as a one-time male prostitute. He testified that he had been the victim of a sexual attack as a child. He said he wanted to hurt Wilkinson but did not mean to kill him, and did not know Wilkinson was dead until he was arrested. He said he took $17.
Kerr put it to him that he had “behaved like a vulture in the desert. You picked the corpse.”
That was the defence. Wilkinson was presented to the jury through his sexual interests, his painting and his role in bed, and Walker’s account of an advance and a claim about young boys. A verdict of manslaughter would have left the sentence to the judge.
The Crown’s psychiatrist, John Atcheson, testified that Walker’s explanation for undressing made no sense. He described Walker as a dangerous, violent person with a serious personality disorder and limited impulse control, but not criminally insane.
The Sunday Sun reported that on October 16 the jury found Walker guilty of second-degree murder.
On November 10, 1978, Morand sentenced him to life in prison. Second-degree murder carried a mandatory life sentence, and the judge could set parole eligibility at between 10 and 25 years. Morand set it at 12. He said he felt there was some hope for rehabilitation, but that the nature of the crime compelled him to add to the minimum.
The Globe and Mail ran the story under the headline “Toronto man jailed in homosexual killing.” In the Sunday Sun, the sentence ran as a short item in a narrow column beside a full-page furniture advertisement.
The papers gave the killer’s name as James Allan Walker, James Allen Walker and John Walker.
Neil Robert Wilkinson is buried in Terrace Lawn Cemetery in North Bay.
Vital statistics
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Name | Neil Robert Wilkinson |
| Born | 1941 |
| Age | 35 |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Balancing clerk (also reported as data processor), Royal Bank of Canada |
| Date of death | December 10, 1977 |
| Manner of death | Blunt force; beaten and stomped, choked on his own blood |
| Location | His apartment, Charles St. E. near Church St. |
| Accused | James Allan Walker (also James Allen Walker, John Walker), 24, of no fixed address |
| Charge | First-degree murder |
| Defence counsel | Arthur Whealy |
| Crown counsel | John Kerr |
| Judge | Mr. Justice Donald Morand |
| Verdict | Second-degree murder, October 16, 1978 |
| Sentence | Life, no parole eligibility for 12 years, November 10, 1978 |
Sources
- Toronto Sun, December 16, 1977, p. 2
- Toronto Star, December 16, 1977, p. C1
- Toronto Star, December 23, 1977, p. A4
- The Globe and Mail, January 5, 1978, p. F6
- Toronto Star, February 1, 1978, p. A13
- The Body Politic, March 1978, pp. 1 and 9
- Toronto Star, October 10, 1978, p. A4
- Toronto Star, October 12, 1978, p. A7
- Toronto Star, October 13, 1978, p. A17
- Toronto Star, October 14, 1978, p. A14
- Toronto Star, October 17, 1978, p. B18
- The Globe and Mail, November 11, 1978, p. 5
- The Sunday Sun, November 12, 1978, p. 13
- Find a Grave memorial no. 166769181, Neil R Wilkinson, Terrace Lawn Cemetery, North Bay, Ontario
Murder Village Map
Vital Statistics
Name: Neil Robert Wilkinson
Age: 35
Gender: Male
Date of Death: December 15, 1977
Manner of Death: Asphyxiation
Location: Charles St. East
Suspect Name: James Allan Walker
Conviction & Sentence: second-degree and sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 12 years