Marlon J. McCrae – Killed by Homicidal ‘Drag Hooker’

The Toronto Star reported that a resident of an apartment building at 35 Wynford Heights Crescent, in North York, found a man lying in a pool of blood just inside the doors of the underground garage. It was about 4:45 on the morning of Sunday, March 1, 1981. The man had been stabbed several times in the neck and chest.

He carried no identification. Police took until Monday morning to identify him as Marlon John McRae, 42, comptroller of MCA Records (Canada), where he had worked for 15 years. The Star reported that people in the building, where he had lived for nine years, had trouble recognizing him. The superintendent, Christopher Walsh, went to the morgue and still could not identify him, his wife told the Star. Carmel Walsh said she looked at the picture herself and said, “that can’t be him.”

Homicide detectives told the Star that McRae’s car had been stolen and that his wallet and apartment keys were missing. His apartment had not been ransacked. Police said he was apparently attacked in the driveway and staggered into the garage. A post-mortem found that he died of a massive hemorrhage from multiple stab wounds to the neck and chest. No weapon was found.

The Star’s first report was headlined “North York man slain in mugging.” It said McRae was apparently the victim of a mugging. It described him as a bachelor and a chartered accountant. His mother lived in Cornwall, police said, and he had a married sister in Vancouver. In the same issue, the Star reported that police had been “under fire from homosexual and civil rights groups” since February 5, when four bathhouses were raided and more than 300 people arrested.

On March 3, the Star quoted friends and co-workers who were horrified at the death of a “quiet, nice guy.” McRae’s boss at MCA, Eric Pertsch, called him “a friendly, gentle kind of guy.” The Star called the building “posh” and adults-only. Staff Sgt. Tom Milne of homicide told the Star, “There are no peculiar overtones to his death.”

On Monday, Walter Cameron, property manager of the Metro Catholic Children’s Aid Society, saw McRae’s blue 1974 Mercury Cougar in the society’s parking lot on Maitland Street. He called police after he found that the licence plate matched one the Star had published. The Star called the car “blood-splattered.” Police asked anyone who had seen McRae downtown on Saturday evening or Sunday morning to call the homicide squad.

In April, Sgt. David Dicks of homicide was reluctant to confirm to The Body Politic, Toronto’s gay liberation magazine, that McRae was homosexual. McRae’s sexuality had not been known to his family, the magazine reported in September. On June 12, police offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to a conviction.

On July 4, in a story about another killing, the Star counted McRae’s as one of two killings of homosexual men in Toronto that year, and as unsolved. It counted eight “mysterious” killings of homosexual men in five years. On July 14, the Globe and Mail reported that McRae’s was one of only three of the 28 homicides in Metro that year in which police had been unable to arrest a suspect, according to Staff Inspector James Crawford, who heads the homicide squad.

The Body Politic reported in September that Dicks would not say whether McRae’s killing was linked to the other unsolved killings. It said all eight men were victims of “overkill,” extremely brutal, frenzied attacks. It reported speculation in the Toronto press and in the gay community that hustlers had killed McRae and one other victim, possibly because both had been robbed. Dicks would say only that he had “gut feelings” and no hard evidence that a hustler was responsible.

The Body Politic reported that Andrew Guy Ritchie, 22, of Scarborough, was arrested on September 18 and charged with first-degree murder. The Star of September 20 called him a part-time laborer. Dicks later told the Globe that McRae’s killer had been at large for six months when an anonymous caller directed police to Ritchie. In November, The Body Politic wrote that police had worked on the theory that McRae and one other victim had met their killers in downtown bars, and had taken photographs of the victims to the bars to find witnesses. It called Ritchie’s arrest, with one other that fall, the first breakthrough in the eight unsolved killings.

By November 28, 1982, Ritchie was on trial in the Ontario Supreme Court before Mr. Justice John O’Driscoll and a jury. He had pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder. The Star reported that the jury was told that on February 28, 1981, Ritchie strapped a knife to his leg and another to his hip, dressed as a “drag hooker” and went out to collect a debt. The Crown maintained throughout the trial, the Star later reported, that he went looking for “homosexuals to slash up.”

The Star’s reports of the trial said Ritchie met McRae somewhere on Yonge Street and went with him to his apartment to smoke marijuana. When it turned out there was none, McRae offered to drive Ritchie back downtown. Ritchie stabbed him in the garage as they were leaving. He drove off in McRae’s car and later parked it in the Catholic Children’s Aid Society lot, across the street from his ex-wife’s apartment building.

The Body Politic, which spelled the surname McCrae, reported that Ritchie never denied killing him. Ritchie testified that he and McRae met on Yonge Street and that McRae invited him back to the apartment to smoke hashish. He said he was carrying two knives because he was looking for a man who had “ripped him off” in a drug deal and he feared violence. He said he became angry when McRae ran his fingers through his hair and suggested sex, that he pushed McRae away, and that a struggle followed. “I just don’t recall what happened,” he said.

In December 1982, the jury found Ritchie guilty of second-degree murder. Ten of the 12 jurors recommended that he not be considered for parole for 25 years, the Star reported. The other two recommended the minimum, 10 years. Crown counsel Ken Anthony called the request a “saw-off” between two factions of a badly divided jury, the Globe and Mail reported.

Mr. Justice O’Driscoll sentenced Ritchie on February 11, 1983. The Globe’s account opened by calling McRae “a homosexual record-company controller.” The Star’s opened with a murderer “with army training in how to use knives and inflict pain.”

The judge said the jury’s request was unique and that he had “never seen one like this before.” He said the second-degree verdict was, in his view, “charitable.” First-degree murder would have required the Crown to prove Ritchie planned a killing, and carried 25 years before parole eligibility. He called the crime “viciousness personified.” Describing how Ritchie strapped two knives to his body and headed downtown, he told him, “You decided you were going to get and kill a gay.” McRae, he said, was “in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

McRae had eight stab wounds in the upper torso and five defensive wounds to his hands, the judge said. The first wound was probably in his back.

The judge quoted a psychiatric report that described Ritchie as arrogant and self-centred and said he lacked remorse. The Globe reported that it also said he had a sexual identity problem. The report found “marked antisocial features” and a violent disposition that made him a risk to the community on release.

Ritchie, 23, was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 18 years.

Vital statistics

Field	Detail
Name	Marlon John McRae (spelled McCrae in The Body Politic, January/February 1983)
Age	42 (41 in one report)
Gender	Male
Occupation	Comptroller, MCA Records (Canada); also described as a chartered accountant
Date of death	March 1, 1981
Manner of death	Stabbed
Location	35 Wynford Heights Crescent, underground garage
Accused	Andrew Guy Ritchie, 22 at arrest (printed once as Anthony Guy Ritchie in the Star)
Charge	First-degree murder
Crown counsel	Ken Anthony
Judge	Mr. Justice John O’Driscoll
Verdict	Second-degree murder, December 1982 (December 20 per the Star; December 6 per The Body Politic)
Sentence	Life, no parole eligibility for 18 years; February 11, 1983

Sources

• Toronto Star, March 2, 1981, p. A3
• Toronto Star, March 3, 1981, p. A3
• The Globe and Mail, March 3, 1981, p. 5
• Toronto Star, March 4, 1981, p. A3
• Toronto Star, July 4, 1981, p. A3
• The Globe and Mail, July 14, 1981, p. 5
• The Body Politic, September 1981, p. 14
• Toronto Star, September 20, 1981, p. A3
• The Body Politic, November 1981, p. 15
• Toronto Star, November 28, 1982, p. E27
• The Body Politic, January/February 1983, p. 15
• The Globe and Mail, February 12, 1983, p. 1
• Toronto Star, February 12, 1983, p. C23

 

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