At about 8:30 on the morning of Tuesday, September 12, 1995, the superintendent of an apartment building on Cosburn Avenue, near Pape Avenue in East York, let a Metro police officer into a third-floor apartment. A friend had asked police to check on the tenant after no one heard from him over the weekend, the Toronto Sun reported.
Dennis Joseph Colby, 47, was dead inside. His head had been beaten in. An autopsy that day found he died of “extreme trauma to the head, consistent with a beating,” the Sun reported. The paper described him as “a diminutive 113 pounds and 5-foot-6.” Newspapers were piled outside his door and his mailbox was full, the Toronto Star reported. Homicide Det. John Line told the Sun there was evidence of “an altercation” in the apartment. Forensic officers searched it with “a fine-toothed comb.”
The Toronto police cold case file gives September 9, a Saturday, as the date of the killing and says Colby was last seen alive between 10 and 11 that morning. The Star reported that he had gone to his mother’s home that day for a regular visit. The Sun’s first reports gave an earlier time. It said another tenant last saw him on the Thursday, and that detectives believed he was killed late Thursday or early Friday.
Colby had been a public figure. Ahead of the school board election of December 2, 1974, the Globe and Mail’s editorial of November 28 cited “the remarkable devotion of Dennis Colby to education affairs” and said it should be rewarded with election in Ward 8. He won, and he sat on the Toronto board until he lost his seat in the November 1978 civic election. The Sun later called him a “penny-pinching trustee” who fought most, if not all, budget increases.
On July 5, 1976, a plainclothes police constable spotted Colby at the Hanlan’s Point beach. Colby testified that he was changing from his bathing suit to street clothes with a towel wrapped around him. “At no time was I exposed,” he said. The constable said Colby had been nude, and had stood and stretched before putting his clothes on. On September 10, a provincial court convicted Colby of undressing in a public park, in violation of a Metro bylaw, and fined him $50. He filed a complaint with the Metro Police Commission alleging that the arresting officer had threatened to punch him in the face. He told the Globe and Mail he would appeal and did not expect the case to hurt his re-election campaign because “I’m innocent.” The National Post wrote in 2018 that the beach was, in the 1970s, “a hotspot for gay men.”
On August 14, 1978, Colby walked out of The Vineyard Restaurant on Hayden Street with a half bottle of wine. Employees tried to stop him from taking it, and a fight broke out. Crown counsel Robert Ash said Colby smashed the bottle against a car and scratched the face of the restaurant’s manager, then went back inside and smashed up the interior. The owners put the damage at more than $800. Another fight followed, a patron was assaulted and police arrested Colby. Ash said Colby kicked two policemen in the head and shoulders from the back seat of the cruiser.
That October, the Star profiled him in a piece on the school board races, which it said attracted “political curiosities.” Colby, it wrote, “smokes dope,” “gets charged with beating up people” and “generally enrages other board members.” The Star wrote that he giggled as he said, “I figure I’m a pretty normal guy.” The following month he lost his seat.
On January 10, 1979, Colby pleaded guilty before Provincial Court Judge Jack Climans to five charges: bodily harm to the restaurant manager, assaulting the two police officers who arrested him, assaulting a patron and mischief for the damage to the restaurant. Three other charges were withdrawn. He was fined $250, put on probation for two years and ordered to pay the restaurant for damage it could substantiate with receipts. The judge said Colby’s behaviour was out of character and that he appeared to have been under pressures he couldn’t handle. Colby told reporters he had pushed over a rack of wine bottles and put the damage at about $200. Calling himself “very romantic,” he said he had a right to the wine and meant to take it to the beach the next day. He said the incident and his public position favouring relaxed marijuana laws contributed to his defeat. He was working as a host at a private club.
In September 1979, the Globe and Mail reported, Colby spent a night in jail and was released on $500 bail. He had been taken to 51 Division after being seen walking along Yonge Street carrying a “Buckle Up for Safety” sign. He faced two counts of assaulting police, one at the station and one at police headquarters while he was being photographed and fingerprinted, and a charge of possessing property obtained by crime. A constable was taken to hospital with a back injury. The Sun reported in 1995 that Colby was sentenced to 60 days in jail in March 1980 for kicking a policeman.
On the evening of Sunday, May 24, 1981, Colby and an acquaintance left 18 East, which Colby later described in court as “a bisexual and homosexual bar well known to the police.” Constable Bruce Kane and another officer asked them to identify themselves. Kane testified that Colby punched him in the face twice and that it took six policemen to get Colby into a cruiser. Colby testified that he did not punch Kane and that Kane and other officers assaulted him, and the court was shown a bloodstained shirt he said he wore that night. On November 6, Provincial Court Judge Walter Hryciuk acquitted him, saying the evidence on both sides was “fraught with inconsistencies” that left a reasonable doubt.
In the 1988 municipal election, the Star reported in 1995, Colby said seniors should not have to pay school and property taxes. In 1991 he was one of six candidates for two Ward 1 seats on the East York board of education, and the Star’s election preview called him “a former Toronto trustee.” His platform, the Star said, was better curriculum for children with learning disabilities, and he advocated legalizing marijuana. In 1995 the Star called him “the single East York man.”
After his body was found, the Sun’s headline on September 14 read “Gay-sex line may be tied to killing.” Metro homicide detectives would be “delving into the world of telephone gay-sex contact lines,” the paper said. It wrote that Colby did not frequent the downtown gay community and made his contacts through an ad he had placed in a Toronto newspaper. It called him “a heavy drinker” who would call newspaper staff and East York politicians at any hour to discuss issues. “He was a lonely guy, apparently,” Line said. Line and his partner, Det. Rolf Prisor, were not sure whether the killer was a stranger, but Line said it was one scenario they were studying. Friends had been calling the homicide squad with background since Colby “faded into obscurity,” the Sun wrote, after the 1978 loss.
On Monday, September 25, Prisor told the Star that police wanted to talk to a man who had stayed at Colby’s home just days before the body was found. His first name was believed to be Mike, and he had been living there on or before September 7. Police had learned of him through a source. Prisor said he was known to smoke crack cocaine and was a frequent resident of hostels. Prisor said it was possible Mike had come to know Colby through the newspaper ads Colby placed for companionship.
The Sun’s headline on September 26 read “Crack junkie sought in ex-trustee’s murder.” Line told the paper that none of Colby’s friends had met the man, but that Colby had said his name was Michael and that he used crack and lived in hostels. Line said police hoped the man could fill in blanks in Colby’s final movements. He said Colby let “street-type people” stay with him for periods of time and had advertised for partners in a phone-sex contact service. The Sun wrote that Line and Prisor were hampered by the fact that Colby “was sexually aggressive and had numerous sexual partners on a weekly basis.” The Star gave the man’s age as 25 to 30, and the Sun gave it as 25 to 35. Both described him as clean-shaven with short light-brown hair.
In 2016, Toronto police’s cold case squad reopened the investigation as part of a review of homicides committed before 2000, when Canada’s National DNA Databank began. Investigators submitted material collected in 1995 to the province’s Centre for Forensic Sciences for testing.
Bruce McArthur was arrested in January 2018 in the killings of men from Toronto’s gay community, and police began re-examining unsolved homicides from 1975 to 1997. At an April news conference, Insp. Hank Idsinga was asked whether the victims in those cases were all gay men. “The majority of them are of gay men,” he said, the Post reported. That June the Post published a list of 22 unsolved cases, Colby’s among them, and wrote that there was no evidence connecting them to McArthur. It reported that friends had described Colby to the Star as “an eccentric bizarre man who lacked social graces.” James Dubro, a crime writer and former friend, told the Post, “I wasn’t surprised when he was killed.” The Post also reported that Colby had been convicted for smoking pot.
On February 28, 2019, Det. Insp. Stacy Gallant, head of the cold case squad, announced that the case had been solved. Late in 2018, he said, testing had produced a DNA profile that matched an entry in the national data bank. It belonged to a man from the Toronto area, whom Gallant described as “a drifter” and who was 26 when Colby died. His profile was in the data bank because of earlier convictions for more than one violent offence. He died in the Toronto area in 2015. Gallant declined to name him, saying he would never have an opportunity to defend himself in court. Had he lived, Gallant said, he would have been arrested and charged with second-degree murder.
The Star reported that the DNA showed Colby’s death had nothing to do with McArthur, and that it is believed to have been committed by a man Colby allowed into his home. Gallant said Colby lived alone and was known to invite relative strangers into his home for extended stretches. “He was a gay man living alone,” Gallant said. The Star’s story included the police composite sketch published in September 1995 of a man who had been staying with Colby. Gallant said the man identified by DNA is not considered a suspect in other cold cases.
Vital statistics
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Name | Dennis Joseph Colby |
| Age | 47 |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Former Toronto school board trustee (Ward 8, elected 1974, defeated 1978) |
| Date of death | September 9, 1995 (Toronto police); early Sun reports said late September 7 or early September 8. Body found September 12 |
| Manner of death | Blunt force trauma (beating) |
| Location | Third-floor apartment, Cosburn Avenue near Pape Avenue, East York (Toronto police give 185 Cosburn Avenue) |
| Accused | None charged. In 2019 police said DNA matched a man who died in 2015; they did not name him |
| Charge | None laid. Police said the man would have been charged with second-degree murder had he been alive |
Sources
- The Globe and Mail, November 28, 1974, p. 6
- The Globe and Mail, September 11, 1976, p. 12
- Toronto Star, October 22, 1978, p. A7
- The Globe and Mail, January 11, 1979, p. 4
- The Globe and Mail, September 8, 1979, p. 5
- The Globe and Mail, November 7, 1981, p. 5
- Toronto Star, November 10, 1991, p. A2
- The Toronto Sun, September 13, 1995
- The Toronto Sun, September 14, 1995
- Toronto Star, September 26, 1995, p. A6
- The Toronto Sun, September 26, 1995, p. 18
- Toronto Police Service, Cold Case Files, Homicide #35/1995
- National Post, June 16, 2018, p. A11 (online June 15, 2018)
- Toronto Star, February 28, 2019: https://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2019/02/28/cold-case-reviewed-during-bruce-mcarthur-investigation-has-been-solved-police-say.html
- Photographs: Toronto Police Service (Colby, as credited in the National Post, June 16, 2018, and the Toronto Star, February 28, 2019); Toronto Star files (1995 composite sketch, as credited in the Toronto Star, February 28, 2019)
Murder Village Map