On the evening of Wednesday, September 20, 1978, three men kicked in the door of an apartment on St. Joseph Street in downtown Toronto. Their friend had not answered their knocks or their phone calls. They found him in the bedroom, the Toronto Star reported. The Toronto Sun said he was lying in a pool of blood.
He was Alexander “Sandy” LeBlanc, a discotheque manager. Most reports gave his age as 29. The Sun said he was about 30, and the Star’s front-page summary put him in his early 20s. The papers spelled his name LeBlanc and Leblanc. The Toronto Police Service file gives it as Alexander Romeo Le Blanc.
In the spring of 1975, LeBlanc and Jay Cochrane opened David’s, a discotheque at 16 Phipps Street, behind the Sutton Place Hotel. Jim Burroway of Box Turtle Bulletin has described it as one of the first gay-owned clubs in Toronto. It admitted only men at first, Burroway wrote, then opened to everyone. Without a liquor licence, it let in patrons as young as 16. An advertisement in The Body Politic that November promised a discotheque “for everyone” where “there are no strangers.”
Later, with a licence, David’s became a stage for the city’s punk scene. In August 1977, the Viletones and The Curse played two nights there, at $3 admission. On New Year’s Eve, 1977, David’s burned during a show.
LeBlanc had lived at St. Joseph’s Court for less than a year, the Sun reported. The Star placed David’s not far from his apartment. The building superintendent, John Burke, 48, told the Sun that LeBlanc had once managed a club across the street, since closed, and now managed one in the Carlton-Church area. Police told the Star it was the Studio II discotheque, at Carlton and Church streets. A later Sun edition called him manager and part-owner of several “homosexual clubs.”
On August 27, Colin Nicholson, 41, and his roommate took men they had met in a St. Nicholas Street tavern back to their apartment. The Star called the tavern a known hangout for homosexuals. The two were beaten and robbed. The Globe and Mail reported that the weapon was a heavy iron skillet. Nicholson died of head injuries on September 4.
Early on Sunday, September 17, Gerald Douglas White, 39, a salesman, took a young man back to a Rosehill Avenue apartment he was looking after for a friend on vacation. Police said White was struck on the head during an argument. He was found dead of a fractured skull on Monday.
At 3:15 on the morning of Wednesday, September 20, LeBlanc’s three associates saw him for the last time, they told police. That afternoon, police arrested Paris Colin Rogers, 23, of no fixed address, and charged him with second-degree murder in White’s death.
That evening the three men broke into LeBlanc’s apartment. Police were called at about 7:20 p.m., according to the Toronto Police Service file. The Star gave the time as about 7:30. LeBlanc was pronounced dead at the scene.
The three men told police they found bloody footprints on the living room carpet, leading to an open window that faced an alley, the Sun reported. The Star, citing police, said the prints led from the bedroom carpet to a window overlooking the alley. On the front lawn, police found a bloody handkerchief.
As the news spread through nearby bars, gay men began gathering outside St. Joseph’s Court, the Sun reported. A man named Doug Chin told the paper he had heard LeBlanc “was in for it for the past year.” Chin said he knew something about certain people not liking LeBlanc’s business.
The next day, the Star reported that LeBlanc had been stabbed more than 100 times. Its front page called it 100. Sgt. Julian Fantino of the homicide squad told the Sun only that he had been stabbed “many times.” One edition of the Sun reported at least two stab wounds to the back. The autopsy, done early on Thursday, found multiple stab wounds, the Globe and Mail reported. It gave no count.
Fantino later served as chief of police in London, Ontario, in York Region and in Toronto, as commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police, and as a federal cabinet minister. As London’s chief, he presided over Project Guardian, in which more than two dozen gay men were arrested over a child pornography ring that was never found.
The Star reported that police called LeBlanc’s death the third homosexual killing in Toronto that month. The Globe and Mail and the Sun called it the second in a week. The Sun ran the story under the headline “Homosexual slayings…” and counted eight in two years. Its fuller edition opened by telling readers that “Metro’s homosexual community is living in fear.” It noted that LeBlanc “fancied fast cars and bikes” and owned a 750cc Honda motorcycle.
On Friday, the Globe and Mail reported that three North York men had been charged with second-degree murder in Nicholson’s death.
On Tuesday, November 28, a 24-year-old accountant named Robinson was found stabbed in the bedroom of his Vaughan Road apartment. The Star called him Duncan Robinson on November 29 and William Robinson on December 2. It counted his death as the 14th homosexual-related slaying in Metro in three and a half years, half of them unsolved. LeBlanc’s name headed its list of the unsolved cases.
On December 2, the Star reported that Metro’s homicide detectives faced a record 12 unsolved murders that year. The paper described a rise in “stranger murders.” Insp. Norman Hobson, head of the homicide squad, said the problem reflected “changing values in our lives.” The Star listed LeBlanc as a disco manager “believed to be a homosexual,” found “mutilated” and stabbed 100 times. The investigators were Fantino and Constable David Penney.
The Sun had reported that LeBlanc’s was the 41st homicide in Metro that year. The Toronto Police Service lists it as Homicide #41/1978. No one was ever charged.
Vital statistics
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Name | Alexander Romeo (Sandy) LeBlanc; also Alex Leblanc, and Alexander Romeo Le Blanc in the police file |
| Age | 29 (about 30 in the Sun; early 20s in the Star’s front-page summary) |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Discotheque manager, Studio II; co-founder of David’s |
| Date of death | September 20, 1978 |
| Manner of death | Stabbing |
| Location | 16 St. Joseph Street (St. Joseph Court), Toronto |
| Accused | No one was charged |
Sources
- Toronto Police Service, Cold Case Files, Homicide #41/1978 (Alexander Romeo Le Blanc)
- The Body Politic, November 1975, p. 16 (advertisement for David’s, as reproduced by Box Turtle Bulletin)
- The Toronto Sun, August 3, 1977, p. 25 (advertisement)
- Toronto Star, September 21, 1978, p. A1 and p. A16
- The Toronto Sun, September 21, 1978, p. 5 (two editions)
- The Globe and Mail, September 22, 1978, p. 4
- Toronto Star, November 29, 1978, p. A3
- Toronto Star, December 2, 1978, p. 6
- Jim Burroway, “Today’s Agenda Is Brought To You By…”, Box Turtle Bulletin, June 10, 2016
- Photograph: Toronto Police Service (LeBlanc)
- On Julian Fantino: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Fantino
Murder Village Map