At about 6:58 a.m. on Friday, January 19, 2001, Toronto police were called to 1 Spadina Crescent, a University of Toronto building north of College Street. A caretaker had found a man on the second floor. Emergency crews tried to save him. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Det. Ken Taylor, the lead homicide investigator, told Maclean’s years later that his first impression was suicide. The man lay on his right side on the floor beside his desk. There was very little blood and few signs of a struggle. Taylor expected to find a knife or a gun under him. He waited while identification officers photographed and filmed the room, then touched the body. There was no weapon.
The dead man was David Buller, 50, a senior lecturer who had taught painting at the university for 15 years. The Canadian Press reported that he had graduated from the Ontario College of Art in 1973 and shown his work in galleries across Canada and in Paris. His last finished painting carried a line from W. H. Auden: “History counsels patience,” Maclean’s reported. A series called Strip, which he had put on the Web, combined painting and photography. In a statement on it, quoted by the Globe and Mail, he described “homoerotic icons of leather and denim.”
The Toronto Star’s first report, on January 20, said Buller was single, lived alone in an apartment building on King Street West and was “well known in Toronto’s gay community.” It said his work carried a sense of sexuality, especially male sexuality. It noted that his was the fourth homicide in the city that year. At the same point the year before there had been one.
Police released little. Taylor told reporters that a student last saw Buller at about 1 p.m. on Thursday, January 18, in the building’s elevator. He was due to teach at 6 p.m. and never arrived. Taylor said he was always in class before his students. Police had found no sign of a break-in.
A university spokesperson, Susan Bloch-Nevitte, said nothing from police suggested the campus should worry about someone dangerous at large. The Canadian Press reported that the building had no on-site security guards and no video surveillance. Bloch-Nevitte said Buller had a key and “was there late at night.”
On Saturday, January 20, Buller’s niece, Karyn Sandlos, 32, stood with family members at police headquarters and asked anyone with information to come forward. His friend Paul Casselman, a photographer, told the Star that he had spoken to Buller by phone just before noon on Thursday and found him optimistic. When the Star asked about Buller’s homoerotic Web page, Casselman said that calling him principally a gay artist overlooked the man.
The coroner, Dr. Barry McLellan, declined that day to give a cause of death. On Monday, January 22, autopsy results gave the cause of death as multiple stab wounds to the torso, the Globe and Mail reported. On January 27, more than 400 people filled the Great Hall at Hart House for a memorial, Xtra reported. Sandlos gave the eulogy.
On February 3 the Globe and Mail quoted Taylor saying that Buller appeared to be the target, because his office was not easy to find. The killer, the paper wrote, knew him or knew of him. Taylor called the case one of the hardest in his eight years in homicide. The same article reported two complaints about how the death was being covered. Xtra’s managing editor, Eleanor Brown, said the mainstream media was dancing around Buller’s sexual orientation. Gerald Hannon of Now magazine had written a piece titled “Gay Face of Murder Victim,” arguing that homosexual life was still dangerous in Toronto in 2001.
The Report, a newsmagazine, ran its story on February 19 under the subhead “controversial gay artist.” It asked whether Buller had gotten himself into a personal situation he could not get out of. It said the allure of the self-destructive was a constant theme in gay intellectual life. It quoted Donald Lake, a Toronto gallery owner, who said there was a stereotype of what had happened: a gay man photographing young men in their underwear. Lake added, “who knows?” He also said Buller was not the type to force himself on anyone. The Report cited the National Post for a report that a disgruntled former student had recently been seen near the building. It said Buller left a mother, a sister and a male roommate.
By April the investigation had stalled. The Globe and Mail reported on April 9 that Taylor had told university staff the team had done 180 interviews, about twice as many as in any earlier case of his. Police had no leads and no suspects. A poster campaign near Buller’s King Street residence, in the gay community and on campus had brought one telephone call, which produced nothing firm. The university added emergency telephones and lighting.
On January 18, 2002, the first anniversary, the Star reported that police had conducted 230 interviews. RCMP computer experts had examined Buller’s computers and found mainly art. Taylor had also gone online under the name “Taylorman,” posting his own photo to a chat site called Men 4 Men 4 Sex with the caption “I have what you want.” About 100 replies came back. One was from a man who had exchanged sex chats with Buller and was ruled out. Police searched 193,000 images on Buller’s computer for the man in a partly nude photo found in his apartment. They located him and dismissed him as a suspect. The Star said there was no evidence for a jilted lover, a disgruntled student, a homeless man from the Scott Mission or a day patient from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. Taylor said he hoped the killer woke each morning expecting to be arrested. The Star counted seven stab wounds and said Buller’s killing was one of 27 from 2001 that remained unsolved. His family planned to mark the spot where his office had been with lilies, in honour of his 91-year-old mother, Lily. A scholarship fund in his name had raised $28,000.
In March 2004 Sandlos wrote in Xtra about the early coverage. The media had reported that a professor “known to the gay community” had been murdered. In the months after, she wrote, there was speculation about risks he might have taken, an assumption that he was the victim of a hate crime, and leading questions about his art, as though the canvases held hints of what had happened to him. The first David Buller Memorial Scholarship was awarded that year. A $50,000 reward was on offer.
Xtra’s “Cold Cases” article of May 8, 2008, listed Buller among unsolved killings of queer and trans people. It quoted Douglas Janoff, author of Pink Blood, who counted 107 queer-related murders between 1990 and 2004, more than 20 of them unsolved. Xtra also quoted Taylor and a detective named Saunders. Police believed the attack happened between 1 p.m., when Buller was seen near the building, and 6 p.m., when he was due to teach. Taylor called the crime scene “pristine” and said robbery was ruled out. Saunders said there was no usable DNA and no security camera in the building at the time, and that the killer likely knew him. Police had looked into his relationships, students, colleagues and his online life, including the chat site M4M4Sex, and had found no suspects.
Early on Thursday, September 10, 2009, a 29-year-old woman fell four storeys to her death at 1 Spadina Crescent. The Windsor Star reported that she and her date, whom she had met online, were walking home from a restaurant when they decided to explore a building they had heard was haunted. Sources told the paper that they climbed through a washroom window into the locked building at about 2 a.m. and went to the top floor. The man crossed an open shaft. The woman followed and fell through chicken wire covering it. Const. Tony Vella said the wire had no support. Investigators labelled the death “death by misadventure.” Police said they might consider trespassing charges. None had been laid. The Canadian Press, reporting the same day, said police first called the death suspicious but had no reason to suspect foul play, and gave the man’s age as 34. It said a wire the woman was holding gave way. Both reports linked the building to Buller’s unsolved killing. The Canadian Press wrote that it may have fed rumours that the building was haunted. The university said it was unaware anyone thought so.
On January 18, 2011, the tenth anniversary, family and friends gathered again where his office had been. The Star reported that detectives in the cold case squad had told the family they were discussing whether to review the evidence. Toronto police did not comment. The Star said no evidence had been found for any theory about the killer, including one that Buller, who was gay, led “a risky lifestyle.” In March 2011 Allan Lanteigne, 49, who worked at the University of Toronto, was killed in his home on Ossington Avenue. Sandlos wrote that the family wondered whether the two deaths were connected and contacted the detectives. In May, Taylor and Saunders met them. Police had considered the same question, Sandlos wrote, found the comparison inconclusive and now believed the cases unrelated.
In November 2013 Maclean’s published the first detailed account of what Buller’s computer recorded. It reported that he arrived at his office shortly after 1 p.m. on January 18 and switched on his Mac at 1:09. A dozen employees of another department were holding a baby shower directly below. Some later told police they heard a loud commotion upstairs between 1:15 and 1:45. At 2:02 someone at the keyboard opened Appleworks, a sketching program. The drawing was saved at 2:21:16. It showed a bald man with glasses and a grin looking at a second man, his face blurred, with his arms tied above his head. Someone printed it at 2:24:48. The printout carried words the saved file did not have. Police have refused to release them. Seconds later the computer was unplugged, when a leg of Buller’s chair pulled the cord from the wall. Maclean’s wrote that this happened as he fell, presumably as his killer stabbed him. The office door had been closed.
Taylor told Maclean’s in an unpublished 2006 interview that the drawing appeared to show Buller on the left, looking at a man in bondage. “This, I believe, is the motive for the murder,” he said. Police believed Buller was killed because of it but did not know why.
In January 2014 Sandlos told the Toronto Sun that a Halifax production company had given Toronto homicide detectives new evidence while preparing a television special. The family gave no details. Sandlos said it seemed very likely the killer knew Buller and knew the building. Her family had ruled out a jilted lover, a homophobic attacker and a homeless intruder. Casselman told the Sun he believed a jealous colleague had killed Buller. He said Buller was stabbed first in the back of the shoulder, then repeatedly in the chest, which suggested the killer stood behind him. The Sun reported that Toronto police did not return its calls.
The show was To Catch a Killer, an eight-episode series for the Oprah Winfrey Network in Canada. Mike Arntfield, a 15-year veteran of the London Police Service who teaches at Western University, had assembled a team of civilians with no formal police training. No police agency would give the team its files, Postmedia News reported on February 26, and the team worked from open sources such as autopsy records and federal parole reports. Sandlos said the family had turned down an earlier invitation from America’s Most Wanted because their emotions were still raw. They joined this series because the producers seemed sincere and the show might generate leads. She said the team developed one or two new theories and connected a number of dots the family had not been able to connect coherently. Toronto police spokesman Mark Pugash said investigators were open to new information. Of the results, he said “there is nothing new.” He said he worried the show might inflate the hopes of victims’ families. The family’s website said the Buller episode was set to air on March 15, 2014. Sandlos wrote there that the family had long worried police assumed early on that it was a homophobic hate crime. They had never been satisfied with that explanation.
In April 2015 the Globe and Mail reported that Mark Saunders, a detective in his first year in homicide when he came to the scene in 2001, had been chosen as Toronto’s next chief of police. The paper said the Buller case still bothered him more than any other in his 32-year career. Sandlos recalled that he shook her hand at their first meeting and told her this would not be like “an episode of Law and Order.” She said the family met the detectives early to raise their concern about sensational coverage of Buller’s art. They would not have been talking about his sexuality, she said, had he been heterosexual. In her account the police seemed willing to learn. The Globe and Mail wrote that the university began locking more doors and installed cameras.
The record disagrees with itself in places. The Star counted seven stab wounds, while the autopsy finding released in 2001 said multiple wounds to the torso. The Star’s first reports put the body outside Buller’s office, and Taylor described it beside his desk. The Star said Buller lived alone, and The Report said he left a male roommate. Police put the attack between 1 and 4 p.m. in 2002 and between 1 and 6 p.m. in 2008. Maclean’s, working from the computer’s record, tied it to a few minutes after 2:24 p.m. The Toronto police cold case file gives the date of death as January 19, the day he was found.
Vital statistics
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Name | David Buller |
| Born | August 1950 |
| Age | 50 |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Senior lecturer in visual arts (painting), University of Toronto; artist |
| Date of death | January 18, 2001 (the Toronto police cold case file lists January 19, the day his body was found) |
| Manner of death | Stabbing; multiple stab wounds to the torso |
| Location | Connaught Building, 1 Spadina Crescent, University of Toronto, Toronto |
| Accused | None charged |
Sources
- Toronto Star, January 20, 2001, pp. B1, B3
- Brandon Sun, January 20, 2001, p. A8 (Canadian Press)
- Lethbridge Herald, January 20, 2001, p. 24 (Canadian Press)
- Toronto Star, January 21, 2001, p. A2
- The Globe and Mail, January 23, 2001, p. A15
- The Globe and Mail, February 3, 2001, p. A24
- The Report, February 19, 2001
- The Globe and Mail, April 9, 2001, p. A14
- Toronto Star, January 18, 2002, p. B5
- Xtra, March 18, 2004 (Karyn Sandlos): https://www.dailyxtra.com/remembering-david-buller-42215
- Xtra, May 8, 2008: https://dailyxtra.com/cold-cases-15871
- Brandon Sun, September 11, 2009, p. 7 (Canadian Press)
- The Windsor Star, September 11, 2009, p. C1 (Canwest News Service)
- Toronto Star, January 17, 2011
- Maclean’s, November 2013, “Portrait of a Life Cut Short” (Michael Friscolanti), in the special edition “Canada’s Greatest Unsolved Mysteries”
- Toronto Sun, January 18, 2014 (Terry Davidson)
- The Gazette (Montreal), February 26, 2014, p. A8 (Douglas Quan, Postmedia News)
- The Globe and Mail, April 24, 2015 (Selena Ross)
- Toronto Police Service, Cold Case Files, Homicide #4/2001
- Friends of David Buller, “The Case” and “Updates”: http://www.friendsofdavidbuller.info/the-case ; http://www.friendsofdavidbuller.info/updates
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