On Monday afternoon, May 24, 1999, an anonymous phone call sent Toronto police to a 15th-floor apartment at 200 Wellesley Street East. Anthony Charles Dowding, 56, was dead inside, beaten.
The Globe and Mail reported that police found a trail of blood leading away from the apartment door. Homicide Det. Larry Linton said the attacker may have been cut. The Globe reported severe head injuries. The Toronto Star reported that an autopsy found a blunt force head injury and that the weapon had not been found.
Dowding was born in Guyana. The Star reported that his only known living relative was a sister there. The Toronto Sun wrote that he had no known family in Canada.
Police told the Star they had no suspects, no witnesses and no possible motive. There was no sign of forced entry, and the killer was likely someone Dowding knew. The Star reported that police were anxious to learn more about his life.
They went to the gay community for that. The Globe’s account said police were appealing to “the city’s gay community” for help. It added that Dowding lived alone and frequented the area around Church and Wellesley Streets. Linton told the Star that police knew Dowding “maintained a gay lifestyle.” They were assuming, he said, that the people in that community “will best know him.”
The Star counted the killing as Toronto’s 23rd homicide of 1999, against 17 at the same point the year before.
On Tuesday, June 1, the Toronto Sun reported, police arrested David Ali Sageri, 30, outside his Toronto home. The Star’s June 3 edition said he had been charged the day before with second-degree murder and was due in College Park court that day.
The Sun’s headline read “Suspect arrested in murder of gay man.” Its story said investigators with no family to turn to had few clues. They did know that Dowding was gay and that he frequented bars near Wellesley and Church Streets, which the Sun called the hub of the city’s gay community.
On June 2 a man was shot dead in a west-end pool hall on St. Clair Avenue West. The Star counted it as the city’s 24th homicide of the year.
When the Star tallied the city’s 1999 homicides on January 3, 2000, it listed 48. Dowding was number 23: a beating on Wellesley Street East, with charges laid.
In October 2000 the Star returned to the address. Its feature on 200 Wellesley described a 29-storey tower with 711 apartments and close to 1,000 residents. Seven people had been killed there since 1990. No other address in the city had as many. The next closest was a Kipling Avenue building in Etobicoke, with five.
The Star’s graphic placed Dowding’s death in Suite 1512 on May 24, 1999. It named the other six victims as Leroy Beckford, Emmanuel Johnson, Kenneth Sharp, Cathy Clark, Norma Derosie and Gerrard Morin. The Star wrote that the seven “did have more in common than their address.” They were all, it said, “in precarious positions in life.”
Vital statistics
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Name | Anthony Charles Dowding (the Star’s June 3, 1999 brief printed Anthony James Dowding) |
| Born | Guyana |
| Age | 56 |
| Gender | Male |
| Date of death | Found dead May 24, 1999 (the Toronto Sun gave May 25) |
| Manner of death | Blunt force head injury |
| Location | 200 Wellesley St. E., 15th floor (Suite 1512 per the Star) |
| Accused | David Ali Sageri, 30 |
| Charge | Second-degree murder |
Sources
- The Globe and Mail, May 26, 1999, p. A11
- Toronto Star, May 26, 1999, p. B2
- Toronto Star, May 27, 1999, p. B2
- Toronto Sun, June 3, 1999 (text as reposted to the Matthew Shepard Update List, Yahoo Groups, June 4, 1999)
- Toronto Star, June 3, 1999, p. B2
- Toronto Star, January 3, 2000, p. B2
- Toronto Star, October 7, 2000, pp. B1, B4
Murder Village Map