Stories of Murder in Toronto's Gay Village
On Monday July 14, 2008, sixty-four-year-old William Ross Magill was pronounced dead at his home on 40 Delisle Avenue. He had been stabbed. Magill, how usually went by Ross Magill, had been a gifted interior designer prior to his three-year descent into sex and drugs and alcohol. Friends said he had begun to bring home … Read more
Lawrence “Larry” Roosevelt Callahan was born in Botwood Newfoundland on July 13. 1941. He died at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto on June 10, 2006, after being savagely beaten in his home. It took more than a month for the police homicide unit to be called in to investigate his death. Callahan, 64, was found … Read more
On August 25, 2003, Cassandra Do, 32, was found in her bathtub sexually assaulted and murdered in her 60 Glouster Street apartment by police who were responding to a call. An autopsy showed she was manually strangled. She had been scheduled to meet a client that day. Do, a preoperative transsexual who had once worked … Read more
David Buller was murdered at his desk at the University of Toronto’s Visual Studies department at 1 Spadina Crescent. On January 18, 2001, he was stabbed repeatedly and died in his office, to be found by a caretaker the next day. Det. Sgt. Ken Taylor said that despite Buller, 50, having been stabbed repeatedly in … Read more
Instead of celebrating a shared birthday with her twin brother, Mary Perra spent her 38th birthday burying him. Paul Armstrong’s charred body was found December 16, 1996, in the garbage behind an industrial complex. He was last seen by his roommate in their Leverhume Crescent home on Saturday morning, who said Armstrong left their house … Read more
Dennis Joseph Colby, 47, was murdered in his home at 185 Cosburn Avenue on September 9, 1995 but it wasn’t until September 12 that police were called to the residence. Colby was described as an eccentric former Toronto school board trustee, a position he held for some time after his 1974 election. One Toronto newspaper … Read more
On Sunday, December 4th, 1983, high-school art teacher Thomas Cahill. 44. was stabbed to death in his own home at 199 Berkeley St. At 4:45am, tenant and friend Charles Furlong, 47, heard Cahill call out his name. When Furlong responded, he found Cahill in a pool of blood and the front door open. Police were … Read more
After going out for drinks to Boots, a gay bar, and then dancing at the Stages disco, Graham Hugh Pearce, 36, and a friend headed up Yonge St. to Wellesley St. where, at about 3:30am on March 20, 1983, they parted company. Pearce headed west along Wellesley toward his 1973 Plymouth. His body would be … Read more
Nirmal Rawle Ramnanan, 35, was found stabbed to death in his 939 Avenue Road apartment on Saturday August 7, 1982. He was found nude and bound to a chair, stabbed, by building authorities after a neighbour complained of loud music all night long. Because the loud music continued Saturday morning, building personnel used a passkey … Read more
On Tuesday, November 28, 1978, Duncan Robinson failed to turn up for work for the second day in a row. His sister, Catherine, asked police to check on him. Officers forced their way into his apartment on Vaughan Rd. and found his body in the bedroom. Toronto police records give the time of the call … Read more
On the evening of Wednesday, September 20, 1978, three men kicked in the door of an apartment on St. Joseph Street in downtown Toronto. Their friend had not answered their knocks or their phone calls. They found him in the bedroom, the Toronto Star reported. The Toronto Sun said he was lying in a pool … Read more
Just after midnight on Thursday, May 5, 1977, three youths attacked a man in Allan Gardens. They beat him and kicked him in the head. When people came toward them to help, the three ran. The man’s wallet was left on the ground beside him. At about 12:15 a.m., police were called to the area … Read more
On the morning of Monday, September 20, 1976, John Fretz, the superintendent at 262 Jarvis Street, went into a sixth-floor apartment. Another tenant had complained that its door had been open since Sunday. It was unlocked. Inside was the nude body of the man who lived there, James Stewart Kennedy. “When I found him he … Read more
On the morning of Wednesday, February 11, 1976, a young man went to a rented bungalow on Elmhurst Avenue in Willowdale. He had lived in the house himself until about seven months earlier. He found James Douglas Taylor dead in the bedroom. The Toronto Police Service file records a call at about 10:20 a.m., and … Read more
At about 8:50 on the evening of Saturday, December 20, 1975, police responded to a 911 call at the St. Charles Tavern, 484 Yonge Street. The Toronto Police Service recorded that the victim was inside the tavern, suffering from blunt trauma. Homicide detectives later told the Toronto Star that he had been found in the … Read more