At about seven on the morning of Monday, February 13, 1978, Bill Petkos arrived for work at the Toronto Lawn Tennis Club on Price Street. On the second floor he found his co-worker Donald Rochester dead. Rochester had been shot in the head. He was wearing only his undershirt. The rest of his clothes were in another room.
Rochester, 46, had gone to work at 11 p.m. the night before. He worked the graveyard shift at the club, alone. The Toronto Star described him as a porter and part-time bartender who had been there 14 years. The Globe and Mail, quoting police, said he had been a bartender and general handyman for 15. Members called him Don.
The next day the Star reported that police had no leads. An autopsy showed two shots to the head. Police said robbery may have been the motive, because his wallet was not in his clothing. Then they found the wallet locked in the trunk of his car. It held more than $100. Little money was kept at the club, because members paid by cheque.
Police speculated that the killer or killers had made him strip so he could not give chase. The Sunday Star reported overturned furniture and a door ripped off its hinges, and wrote that Rochester had fought back. He was nearly six feet tall and lifted weights.
He was born in Jamaica. He lived on Montrose Avenue, a minute’s walk from Christie Pits, with his wife, Venetta, and their two children. On the night after his death, about 100 friends came to the house. Many told the Star that he had helped them come to Canada. His nephew, Delbert Rochester, was a Metro police officer. He said his uncle had brought him over and encouraged him to join the force. Joan Kelzs, who had arrived from Jamaica with nothing and was now a nurse at the Hospital for Sick Children, said he had been a father to the people he helped.
On Saturday, February 18, Rev. S. D. France of Ossington Avenue Baptist Church conducted the service at the Cook-Thompson Funeral Home on Bloor Street West. Rochester was buried at Mount Pleasant Cemetery. Mourners came in more than 200 cars. Roy Francis, a friend since their days in Jamaica, told the Sunday Star that many of them had come to Canada for a better life, and asked whether it had been worth it.ar.
At the club, members talked about capital punishment. One wondered aloud whether the killer was someone Rochester knew. After so many years working that shift alone, he said, maybe he had visitors.
The investigation stalled. On January 1, 1979, the Star counted 51 killings in Metro in 1978, 11 of them unsolved. Rochester’s was one. The paper listed him as “the Montrose Ave. father of two.” In the same list, police had described four men killed that fall as homosexual: Colin Nicholson in September, Gerald Douglas White and Alex (Sandy) LeBlanc later that month, and William Duncan Robinson in November.
On January 22, 1980, Leon Lloyd Frederick Savage turned himself in to Metro police. His lawyer, Niels Ortved, took him to headquarters, where he was charged with second-degree murder. Savage had been 16 at the time of the killing. Staff-Sgt. Edward Hill of the homicide squad later testified that until that day Savage was “not even a suspect.”
The public learned what Savage had told police on November 21, 1980. That day he pleaded guilty to manslaughter before Mr. Justice John O’Driscoll of the Ontario Supreme Court. There was no trial. Crown attorney A. D. Cooper, Sgt. Julian Fantino and Staff-Sgt. Hill set out the facts, drawn from Savage’s statement.
Fantino joined the Metro Toronto force in 1969. He went on to serve as chief of police in London, Ontario, from 1991 to 1998, where he presided over Project Guardian. In that investigation more than two dozen gay men were arrested over a purported child pornography ring that was never found. He was later chief in York Region and in Toronto, commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police, and a federal cabinet minister.
Hill told the court that a police investigation had found Rochester frequently picked up young men and took them back to the club for sex. The Globe and Mail reported the Crown’s version: Rochester was “in the habit of finding young men” and bringing them to the club.
Savage had first met Rochester in 1976, on Yonge Street. He was 14 or 15. Rochester was in his mid-40s. Hill testified that Savage went back to the club with him, and that Rochester performed oral sex on him. Rochester offered him money. Savage refused it. “It made me feel like a prostitute,” Hill quoted him as saying. Savage said he was angry and ashamed.
The abuse was reported to police. The Globe said his parents called them; the Star said Savage reported it himself. Police could not find the place. Savage’s description was vague, and he had thought the club was a health club. In 1976, the law permitted sex between men only in private, between two consenting persons aged 21 or over.
The Globe reported that Rochester had “seduced” him. Neither paper described the 1976 encounter as the abuse of a child.
Savage said he did not see Rochester again until the night of the killing, when he went back to the club with him. According to Cooper, Savage resisted, and Rochester produced a gun to make him go along. Hill testified that Savage said the gun came out when he refused to perform certain acts. During the sexual acts, Rochester put the gun down. Savage grabbed it and fired. The shot missed. Hill said Savage called it an accident.
Rochester kept coming toward him. Savage fired again and hit him in the head. Then he went to where Rochester lay on the floor and shot him twice more in the head. “I knelt down and let one or two (more) shots into him,” he told Fantino. Afterward he went over to the bar, sat down against it and cried.
He left the club by jumping off a balcony. He threw the gun down a sewer. It was never recovered.
Fantino said that after the killing Savage and his father went to live in New Brunswick for a while. Savage told police he had dreams about killing Rochester. Eventually he told his father what had happened, and his father brought him back to Toronto. Father and son went to a lawyer, who sent them away. They were under no obligation to talk to anyone about it, he told them. Savage then told a teacher, who put him in touch with Ortved.
Cooper told the court that Savage had committed offences as a juvenile, including car theft and breaking and entering, but had no adult record. Ortved said Savage was a slow learner of borderline intelligence and had been in psychiatric treatment since February. Savage, he said, had used excessive force defending himself from Rochester’s sexual advances, but the incident could almost be described as self-defence.
Both lawyers called the case tragic. They jointly recommended a reformatory term instead of the penitentiary sentence usually imposed for manslaughter. The judge noted that the Crown had taken a compassionate view. Cooper said that if Savage had not surrendered, he would likely never have been arrested.
O’Driscoll sentenced Savage to two years less a day in reformatory, the maximum reformatory term. He added three years’ probation, ordered psychiatric treatment as required, and barred Savage from possessing a firearm for the rest of his life. “You are being treated leniently,” the judge told him. He said Rochester may not have been perfect, but that did not justify taking his life.
The Globe and Mail ran the story under the headline “Killer of homosexual gets reformatory term.” The Sunday Star said Savage had shot Rochester while fending off “a homosexual attack.”
In March 1981 the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board rejected an application from Rochester’s widow. The board heard that Savage admitted to homosexual acts with Rochester but said they had quarrelled when he refused certain acts. After Rochester threatened him with the gun, it was placed on a table. Savage grabbed it, shot Rochester three times and fled.
The Star described the killing as “a 1978 homosexual dispute.” The Body Politic, a magazine for gay liberation, reported that Rochester had been shot with his own gun after he had “allegedly threatened the boy.” Under the Compensation for Victims of Crime Act, the board found that Rochester had contributed to his own death through his illegal behaviour.
The record disagrees with itself. Rochester appears as 46 and as 47. He is a porter, a bartender, a handyman, a night watchman and a cleaner. He was shot twice in the head, or three times. Savage appears as Frederick, as Leon, and as Leon Lloyd Frederick.
Vital statistics
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Name | Donald Rochester |
| Born | Jamaica |
| Age | 46 or 47 |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Night porter and part-time bartender, Toronto Lawn Tennis Club; later described as night watchman |
| Date of death | February 13, 1978 (found) |
| Manner of death | Shot |
| Location | Toronto Lawn Tennis Club, 44 Price Street |
| Accused | Leon Lloyd Frederick Savage, 16 at the time |
| Charge | Second-degree murder |
| Defence counsel | Niels Ortved (also spelled Neils) |
| Crown counsel | A. D. (Al) Cooper |
| Judge | Mr. Justice John O’Driscoll, Ontario Supreme Court |
| Verdict | Guilty plea to manslaughter |
| Sentence | Two years less a day in reformatory, three years’ probation, psychiatric treatment, lifetime firearms prohibition; November 21, 1980 |
Sources
- The Globe and Mail, February 14, 1978, p. 4
- Toronto Star, February 14, 1978, pp. 1 and A3
- Sunday Star (Toronto), February 19, 1978, p. A3
- Toronto Star, January 1, 1979, p. A11
- The Globe and Mail, November 22, 1980, p. A5
- Sunday Star (Toronto), November 23, 1980, p. A22
- Toronto Star, March 11, 1981, p. C21
- The Body Politic, no. 73, May 1981, p. 14
- Photographs: Toronto Lawn Tennis Club (TLTC); Donald Rochester (Toronto Star)
- On Julian Fantino: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Fantino
- Related: https://murdervillage.com/1969/06/27/decriminalization-of-homosexuality/
Murder Village Map