Shirley Hauser – Swimming Leads To Murder

At 7:05 a.m. on Saturday, August 19, 1978, Nick Yasynowycz, 69, was walking his dog across the grounds of Western Technical-Commercial School on Evelyn Crescent. Near a flower bed on the west side of the school, he saw someone lying on her side.

“I thought she was asleep at first,” he told the Sunday Star. Then he saw the blood. His dog ran to the body and began whining. A white purse lay a short distance away, unopened. Yasynowycz, a retired factory worker, went home to call the police and an ambulance.

The dead woman was Shirley Hauser, of Westminster Avenue. Police said she had been stabbed in the back, neck and abdomen. A wound to her neck had cut the jugular vein.

The papers named her as Peter Christopher Hauser. Police said she also went by Christine. She was wearing women’s clothes, and her purse held female hormone pills. Dr. Luciano Sereno, who performed the post-mortem, said the pills were “way above the therapeutic dosage.” He called her physician and learned the drugs were meant to bring about sexual changes. The Globe and Mail reported that police and hospital staff believed for several hours that the body was a woman’s.

There was more blood. A wavering trail led from the school grounds down several stone steps to Glendonwynne Road. It went about 250 feet up the street, along a driveway between two houses and into a backyard. The blood lay in pools in at least four places. Police confirmed it was not Hauser’s and began checking Metro hospitals for anyone treated overnight for cuts or stab wounds.

The woman whose driveway and backyard held the blood had moved to Toronto from St. Catharines the week before. She told the Star she was up until 3:30 a.m. washing dishes with the windows open. At about 4 a.m. she heard a thump. When she looked out, she saw nothing.

Police said Hauser had gone to the school with a man at about 4 a.m., and a fight followed. The two had met earlier that evening at the Sunnyside swimming pool.

The search led to an apartment building on Bloor Street West, between Keele and Dundas, about two miles away. There was another pool of blood outside, and a blood-spattered motorcycle and white helmet in the driveway. The superintendent told police she had spent the morning cleaning blood off the front steps and the stairs to the second floor. Early that morning, an ambulance had been called to the building for a man with wounds to his left arm. He was admitted to St. Joseph’s Hospital.

At the hospital, he said a stranger had cut him after the two shared a marijuana cigarette on Yonge Street. Police linked him to Hauser’s death later that day.

He was William Richard Andes, 20, of San Romano Way in North York, near Jane Street and Finch Avenue. He was charged with second-degree murder.

The Sunday Star’s caption under the photograph of her body called her Shirley Hauser. On Monday the Globe and Mail’s headline read “Transsexual, 20, killed with knife.” Its story called her Mr. Hauser and “he,” and reported that she had well-developed breasts and lacked facial hair.

That fall, the Star reported more killings of men police described as homosexual. On September 4, Colin Nicholson, 41, died of a fractured skull after inviting three men to his St. Joseph Street apartment for a drink. Three North York men were charged with second-degree murder. On September 20, Alex (Sandy) LeBlanc, 29, a discotheque manager, was found stabbed to death in the bedroom of an apartment on St. Joseph Street. Police called it another homosexual murder. On November 28, William Duncan Robinson, 24, was stabbed to death in his apartment on Vaughan Road. By year’s end, neither LeBlanc’s killing nor Robinson’s had been solved.

On January 1, 1979, the Star counted 51 killings in Metro in 1978, 11 of them unsolved. Hauser’s was listed among those where a charge had been laid. Police said she was dressed like a woman and undergoing a sex change, the entry read.

Shortly before the case came to court, Staff Sergeant Thomas Moclair wrote about homosexuality in the Toronto police union’s monthly newsletter. If society allowed it, he asked, why not condone murder, assault and rape? “Those people are sick in the head, too,” he wrote.

On March 6, 1979, Andes pleaded guilty to manslaughter in Ontario Supreme Court before Mr. Justice Robert Rutherford. The Body Politic reported that the plea followed plea-bargaining.

Sgt. Robert McLean, the homicide investigator in charge, testified about Andes’ statement to police. Andes said he believed Hauser was a woman and took her to the school to have sex. When he discovered as they caressed that she was not, “I exploded and walked away,” McLean quoted him as saying. “Somehow she got my knife and stabbed me. I took the knife and stabbed her, I don’t know how many times. It was self-defence.”

Andes told police he had been drinking beer with friends at Sunnyside beach when Hauser came along. Within “five seconds,” he said, she went off with one of the men and performed oral sex on him. Andes then offered her a ride on his motorcycle.

McLean testified that Hauser was stabbed 17 times, four of them in the back. Some of the wounds were inflicted after death. Biologist William Towstiak testified that she was lying on the ground when the injuries were inflicted, and that there was no evidence of a struggle. She was wearing a girdle and pantyhose.

Psychologist Al Long testified that Andes’ actions would have been “of a reflexive or automatic nature,” aimed at getting away from a threat. He said Andes was not normally violent. He could see Andes using his fists, Long said, but did not see him as a homicidal person.

Probation officer Heather Hase testified that Hauser introduced herself as Shirley and seemed to take great pleasure in passing as a woman. Hase said Hauser often picked up men in “straight” bars and had claimed to work as a prostitute from time to time. She described her as a drug user who was frequently depressed. At least once before, Hase testified, Hauser had been assaulted by a man who discovered she was not female.

The only account of the night came from Andes, read into the record by a detective.

The next morning the Globe and Mail’s headline was “Man admits killing after sex discovery.” The Star’s was “Transvestite stabbed 17 times, trial told.” The Star printed Andes’ word for Hauser, “her,” inside quotation marks.

Sentencing came on April 9. Psychiatrist Jerry Cooper testified that for any man, discovering that a partner was not a woman would be “very traumatic, upsetting and anxiety provoking,” a “unique psychological assault.” For Andes it would be worse, Cooper said, because he lacked the self-control of mature people. The Body Politic noted that Cooper had been one of the Crown’s expert witnesses in its prosecution of the magazine.

Crown Attorney Bob Valentine told the court that whatever problems Hauser had with her sexual identity, she did not deserve to die. Defence counsel Ian Collins asked for two years less a day in reformatory.

Rutherford said he did not believe the self-defence story. He found that Andes inflicted the first stab wound, and that the cut on his arm was “self-inflicted while you were stabbing the deceased.”

“I look on it as a vicious attack on the victim, who was lying on the ground,” the judge said. He sentenced Andes to eight years in penitentiary. Andes threw his head back against the prisoner’s box.

His mother, named in the Star in the style of the day as Mrs. Ludwig Andes, sat two rows back. She burst into tears. The Globe and Mail reported her words as “Oh, no. Don’t punish him for the homosexual. Oh please, he is the victim.” The Star reported “Not for the killing of a homosexual.” Family members led her from the courtroom.

Collins said after court that he would appeal the sentence as excessive.

The Body Politic reported the sentence under the headline “Killer gets 8 years.” It quoted Rutherford: “The people of this country must be satisfied the administration of justice will not tolerate such actions.”

In July, Weekend Magazine retold the case in a feature on gay San Francisco. Ken Lefolii set Moclair’s newsletter and the Andes case against that city’s politics. He wrote that Andes had learned during the encounter that he had been deceived. He gave the mother’s words a third way: “he’s the victim. Don’t punish him. Not for killing a homosexual.”

The papers gave Shirley Hauser’s age as 20 and as 23. A grave marker for Peter C. Hauser reads 1959 to 1978.

Vital statistics

Field	Detail
Name	Shirley Hauser; also Christine; named in the papers as Peter Christopher Hauser
Born	1959, per grave marker
Age	20 or 23, as reported
Gender	Female
Date of death	August 19, 1978
Manner of death	Stabbed
Location	Western Technical-Commercial School, 125 Evelyn Crescent
Accused	William Richard Andes (also reported as Richard William Andes), 20, of San Romano Way, North York
Charge	Second-degree murder
Defence counsel	Ian Collins
Crown counsel	Bob Valentine
Judge	Mr. Justice Robert Rutherford, Ontario Supreme Court
Verdict	Guilty plea to manslaughter, March 6, 1979
Sentence	8 years, April 9, 1979

Sources

• Sunday Star, August 20, 1978, p. A3
• The Globe and Mail, August 21, 1978, p. 5
• Toronto Star, January 1, 1979, p. A11
• The Globe and Mail, March 7, 1979, p. 5
• Toronto Star, March 7, 1979, p. C21
• The Globe and Mail, April 10, 1979, p. 3
• Toronto Star, April 10, 1979, p. 16
• The Body Politic, May 1979, p. 15
• Weekend Magazine, July 7, 1979, p. 10
• Photograph: Boris Spremo/Sunday Star (removal of the body)

 

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Murder Village Map

 

 

Vital Statistics