On the evening of Saturday, October 20, 1979, Micheline Ferland, 25, spoke to the Toronto Star on the steps of a house on Badgerow Avenue in east-end Toronto. Her left arm had been broken by a baseball bat that morning.
“He was after Diane in particular,” she said.
Diane Edwards was 36. At about 4:30 that morning she had been beaten and stabbed to death in the upstairs flat at 45 Badgerow Ave., near Dundas Street and Pape Avenue. The papers named her Brian William Edwards, and later Bryan William Edwards. The Globe and Mail reported that she was known to neighbours as Diane.
“It was a bloody mess,” Ferland said. “He came in like a lion.”
Edwards shared the flat with Ferland, Rose Marie Doohan and Doohan’s son, Casey, 6. Doohan had met Edwards at the hospital where Ferland’s mother was recovering from a hip operation, Susan Turgeon, a friend of Doohan’s, told the Star. “He . . . she . . . well, whatever, didn’t have a place to stay so she put him up,” Turgeon said.
The Star reported that Edwards had lived there three weeks, sleeping on the living-room couch. The Globe said she lived in a loft connected to the women’s apartment. Neighbours told the Globe the residents split the rent and went to a local bar together.
Turgeon called Edwards a “really nice person.” Edwards was to go into hospital on October 28, she said. “I suspect it was to be for the final operation.” A day later the Star attributed the hospital date to Ferland. Edwards had told her about an operation, Ferland said, and she took it to be the surgery.
The man police would charge had also stayed in that flat. Gregory Thomas Cooper, 25, also known as Robert Douglas Anderson, had been a guest of Doohan’s until about two months earlier. Then he moved to a basement room on Victor Avenue, in the same part of the east end. Ferland told the Star she had once dated him for about two weeks. Turgeon said she had met him several times. She remembered him in the backyard, helping Casey fix his bike.
Regis Mallaley, 51, lived in the main-floor flat. He told the Star the upstairs tenants were “quite a noisy bunch” and that he had given notice two weeks earlier.
Cooper drank about 20 bottles of beer that night, the court was later told. Staff Sgt. David Boothby testified that Cooper went back to the house to pick up clothes he had left there. Ferland said he told them he wanted his jacket.
Ferland gave the Star two accounts of how he got in. “We were all asleep until he kicked in the door,” she said. She also said she believed he had climbed along the roof of a nearby semi-detached house under renovation and come in through a third-floor window. At trial, police said he came in through a window. Mallaley told the Globe the upstairs windows did not open, and none was broken.
Ferland said the man went into the front room and put a butcher knife to Diane, who was asleep on the couch. “He went at her with a baseball bat first, then stabbed her with a butcher knife and kicked her in the face,” she said. Edwards rolled off the couch after the first blow, Ferland said. That was when “she was stabbed with the butcher knife.” He lifted her back onto the couch and kept beating her.
“Once he had finished off Edwards, he started coming at us,” Ferland said. “Most of our injuries were from protecting Casey.” Her arm was broken as she shielded Doohan. Doohan was taken to Toronto East General Hospital with serious head injuries. Casey went to the Hospital for Sick Children with a concussion.
Ferland told the Star the man had yelled that he was going to kill the “gearbox.” The Star printed the word with its own gloss in parentheses: “(homosexual).” He threatened to come back and kill them all if they told police, she said.
Downstairs, Mallaley gave the two papers different accounts. He told the Star he heard nothing unusual, only “the floors squeaking and the kid crying.” He told the Globe he heard “a little trampling and thumping around 4 o’clock,” and that the boy’s crying sounded different. It bothered him for half an hour, he said, and then he went back to sleep. The next thing he heard was the police at his door.
One of the women called police at about 4:30 a.m., the Globe reported. Police found a butcher knife in the apartment. A bloodstained bat that belonged to Casey was found in a narrow alley two houses away.
That Saturday night, members of the Metro Police morality bureau arrested Cooper after an investigation by the homicide squad, the Globe reported.
The Sunday Star went to press before the arrest was known. It reported a “massive hunt” for the “butcher-knife and baseball-bat killer of a 36-year-old male transexual.” Police would not name a suspect or comment on a motive. Ferland would say only, “All I can tell you is that police know who he is.” Asked whether the man had seemed high, she said, “No. He appeared pretty straight to me.”
The Star noted that the killing brought Metro’s murder toll for the year to 37, against 43 at the same point the year before. It was the third murder that month.
On Sunday, Cooper was charged with second-degree murder and three counts of attempted murder.
On Monday, the Star ran the story under the headline “Woman beaten by killer always took in strays.” The story was about Doohan. Fernand and Susan Turgeon told the paper she took in “every stray who needed a place to stay.” Edwards, the Star wrote, citing Mrs. Turgeon, was “one of Mrs. Doohan’s strays.” The paper described her as “the 6-foot, long-haired blond” and called the killing “bizarre.”
Mrs. Turgeon said she had seen Edwards only once or twice. “You know, it’s just not something I could explain to my 4-year-old son,” she said. “He was quite nice. He had a good figure.”
The Globe called Edwards a “transvestite” and “Mr. Edwards.” A Metro homicide officer told the paper that reports Edwards was a transsexual were incorrect. In the Globe’s words, he said Edwards “had not had a sex-change operation.” Mallaley told the Globe that “the other ‘girl'” had moved in after the women. “But he wasn’t really a girl. You know what I mean.”
Mrs. Turgeon had visited Doohan in hospital on Sunday morning. Doohan credited Ferland with talking the attacker out of killing them all, Turgeon said. “If Mich (Miss Ferland) hadn’t been able to talk him down, they could all be dead.” Doohan had 17 gashes on her head. The Turgeons said she told them she was going to stop taking in guests.
Edwards’ body had not been claimed from the morgue. Police had not located her two brothers, the Star reported, so they asked Ferland to identify her.
On Monday, Doohan was taken off the critical list, the Globe reported. Casey was in fair condition.
In November, the Star reported that a preliminary hearing had been set for January 29. It called Edwards a “transexual.”
Cooper went on trial for second-degree murder in May 1980 in the Ontario Supreme Court, before Mr. Justice John Osler. He pleaded not guilty. His lawyer, Alan Glass, asked the jury to find him not guilty by reason of insanity.
On Monday, May 26, psychiatrist R. Wood Hill testified that Cooper had experienced “a command hallucination which can be an overwhelming and overpowering direction.” Hill said Cooper “recalls seeing his hand raised with the knife in it and assaulting the victim.” There was never any “clear reason” or “valid motive” for the killing, Hill said. Cooper would need years of treatment.
Boothby, of the Metro homicide squad, testified that Edwards was also known as Diane Edwards. The Star reported his evidence that Edwards “wore women’s clothing and was in the process of going through a sex-change operation at the time of his death.”
Boothby told the jury Cooper found Edwards asleep on a chesterfield and stabbed her. When Ferland and Doohan came to help, he hit them with a baseball bat. He struck Casey. The jury was told that he then drank a beer and threatened to kill the boy and the two women. He stabbed Edwards again and hit her three times on the head with the bat. When she moaned, he stabbed her in the throat with a steak knife. He left after warning the women not to tell police “what really happened.”
The court also heard that once inside the house, Cooper began to hallucinate and felt threatened, and took a knife from the kitchen. The Star’s reports of the trial do not mention the “gearbox” threat.
On May 28, a jury of 10 men and two women deliberated for less than three hours. It found Cooper not guilty of murder by reason of insanity. Osler found him not guilty by reason of insanity on the three attempted-murder charges. He ordered Cooper held indefinitely at the maximum-security hospital in Penetanguishene, with his case reviewed every year.
“I agree entirely with the verdict you have returned,” Osler told the jury. The court was told Cooper might have brain damage and would need years of treatment for mental illness.
The Star reported the verdict under the headline “Transvestite knifed to death by insane man, jury finds.”
The record disagrees with itself. Edwards appears as Brian and as Bryan. Doohan appears as Rosemary, Rose and Rose Marie, aged 29, 30 or 36. In their own reporting, the papers called Edwards “he.” Micheline Ferland called her Diane, and “she.”
Vital statistics
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Name | Diane Edwards; also reported as Brian William Edwards and Bryan William Edwards |
| Age | 36 |
| Gender | Trans woman |
| Date of death | October 20, 1979 |
| Manner of death | Stabbing and blunt force |
| Location | 45 Badgerow Ave., Toronto |
| Accused | Gregory Thomas Cooper, 25, also known as Robert Douglas Anderson |
| Charge | Second-degree murder; three counts of attempted murder |
| Defence counsel | Alan Glass |
| Judge | Mr. Justice John Osler |
| Verdict | Not guilty by reason of insanity, May 28, 1980 |
| Disposition | Held indefinitely at the maximum-security hospital in Penetanguishene, with annual review |
Sources
- Toronto Star (Sunday Star), October 21, 1979, pp. A1 and A3
- The Globe and Mail, October 22, 1979, p. 4
- Toronto Star, October 22, 1979, p. A3
- The Globe and Mail, October 23, 1979, p. 2
- Toronto Star, November 8, 1979, p. A3
- Toronto Star, May 27, 1980, p. D6
- Toronto Star, May 28, 1980, p. A25
- Photographs: Jim Wilkes, Toronto Star (45 Badgerow Ave.); Don Dutton, Toronto Star (Micheline Ferland)
Murder Village Map