At about ten o’clock on the morning of Saturday, August 7, 1982, Robert Thomson used a passkey to open an apartment door on Avenue Road, near Eglinton Avenue West. Thomson was acting as superintendent of the building for the weekend, the Toronto Star reported. A neighbour had complained all night about loud music from an apartment the Star described as normally quiet. The music was still playing.
Thomson found the tenant’s body slumped in a corner of the bedroom. “At first I figured he was drunk or asleep,” he told the Star. Firemen who arrived on an emergency call moments later told him the man was dead. The Globe and Mail reported that the man was naked and covered in blood on the bedroom floor.
The dead man was Nirmal Rawle Ramnanan, 35. The Globe and Mail and the Star gave his first name as Hirmal in their reports of Monday, August 9. An autopsy showed he had bled to death from stab wounds to the chest and abdomen. The Star described the body as nude, bound and stabbed. On August 19 it wrote that he had been tied up and stabbed several times. On August 29 it reported that he was found tied to a chair.
Ramnanan was an immigrant from Trinidad. He had come to Canada about four years earlier, the Star reported on August 19. He worked at Syd Silver Formal Wear on Yonge Street, in the shipping department according to the Star on August 9 and as a fitter according to its report ten days later. Neighbours told the Star he had lived in the apartment about three years. One said he did not talk to many people and that “I don’t think anybody here really knew him.” The National Post wrote in 2018 that he worked to help support his widowed mother.
The Post also reported that on the evening before his body was found, Ramnanan finished a shift at the tuxedo shop and drove to his sister’s apartment in east-end Toronto. He stayed about fifteen minutes and said he had to meet someone. His brother-in-law rode the elevator down with him and said goodbye. The brother-in-law, the Post wrote, later told the Toronto Sun that he did not go outside, and that if he had, he might have seen whether Ramnanan had a passenger in his Thunderbird.
Homicide investigators spent Sunday interviewing Ramnanan’s neighbours, the Star reported, trying to reconstruct his last hours. A police spokesman told the Globe and Mail that there were no suspects. Ramnanan’s was Metro Toronto’s 28th killing of the year. The Star counted 33 at the same point in 1981.
The Globe and Mail also reported on August 9 that Police Chief Jack Ackroyd had confirmed an imminent shake-up of homicide squad personnel. The head of the squad, Staff-Inspector James Crawford, and the chief of detectives, Superintendent Robert Bamlett, were to be transferred. Asked whether the changes were connected to a recent run of unsolved murders, Ackroyd said, “No, not in my opinion.” The Body Politic wrote that the Metro Toronto Police Commission announced the changes on August 12 and that they appeared to respond to growing public concern about unsolved murders in the city.
On August 19 the Star reported that police were asking for the public’s help. Sgt. Vaughan O’Toole, the homicide detective in charge, said investigators had been unable to determine a motive. Police were puzzled that Ramnanan had two telephones with different numbers in his apartment. They had learned that he had several female and male visitors. A special telephone line was set up, and the Star said the identity of anyone who called would be kept confidential. His was the sixth of the year’s 28 killings in Metro in which police had made no arrest. On August 29 the Star repeated the appeal and said detectives especially wanted to hear from anyone who had seen or talked with him on the night of August 6.
His sister later told the Toronto Sun, the Post reported, that people with “hard-luck stories” could easily persuade him to let them stay in his apartment overnight. “He trusted people,” she said. The Post also reported that police believed he let his attacker in. It wrote that he was tied to a chair and stabbed with a kitchen knife.
The Body Politic, a gay and lesbian magazine published in Toronto, reported Ramnanan’s death in its September 1982 issue. The item appeared under the headline “Killers sentenced, new cases unsolved.” It said the apartment showed no sign of forcible entry and that police believed he was killed by someone he had invited up. Police had found no motive and made no arrest. The same item covered the unsolved stabbing of Kevin McBride, 47, an interior decorator found in his Sheppard Avenue East apartment on May 17. It wrote that until McBride’s death the homicide squad had enjoyed “a string of remarkable successes” in solving the killings of gay men over the previous year. Two men had been sentenced to life in July for the murder of the artist David Murphy. In June Lawrence Perrault had been convicted of the October 1981 murder of George Roach in Allan Gardens. Perrault, who “admitted to being a hustler,” testified that he was defending himself against violent sexual advances by Roach. The jury was not convinced.
The Body Politic did not say whether Ramnanan was gay. Neither do the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star reports. The magazine’s coverage is the reason he appears on this site.
In June 2018 the National Post examined 186 unsolved Toronto homicides from 1975 to 1997. Toronto police had said they were reviewing decades-old cases for any connection to Bruce McArthur, who had been charged with the murders of eight men between 2010 and 2017. The Post narrowed its list to 22 victims, including Ramnanan, and listed what it saw as similarities. Ramnanan was an immigrant, like most of McArthur’s alleged victims. McArthur was alleged to have tied men up during sex, and Ramnanan was found nude and tied to a chair. His killing also fell within the period police had cited for the cold cases under review. The Post wrote that there was “no evidence connecting the cold cases to McArthur.”
The record varies on details. The Globe and Mail and the Star’s first reports spelled his first name Hirmal, and the Body Politic called him Rawle Ramnanan. The 1982 papers gave his age as 35. The Post and the Toronto Police Service cold case file say 36. The Post spelled Thomson’s name Thompson.
Vital statistics
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Name | Nirmal Rawle Ramnanan; printed as Hirmal Rawle Ramnanan in the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star on August 9, 1982, and as Rawle Ramnanan in The Body Politic |
| Age | 35 (1982 newspapers); 36 (Toronto Police Service; National Post) |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Syd Silver Formal Wear, Yonge Street (shipping department, Toronto Star, August 9, 1982; fitter, Toronto Star, August 19, 1982) |
| Date of death | August 7, 1982 (date the body was found; police asked for information about the night of August 6) |
| Manner of death | Stab wounds to the chest and abdomen |
| Location | 939 Avenue Road, Toronto (Avenue Road near Eglinton Avenue West) |
Sources
- The Globe and Mail, August 9, 1982, p. 5
- Toronto Star, August 9, 1982, p. A6
- Toronto Star, August 19, 1982, p. A6
- Toronto Star, August 29, 1982, p. A3
- The Body Politic, September 1982, p. 14
- Toronto Police Service, Cold Case Files, Homicide #28/1982
- National Post, June 15, 2018 (online), “Are the unknown victims of alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur hidden among these 22 cold cases?”
- National Post, June 16, 2018, p. A10
Murder Village Map