Stories of Murder in Toronto's Gay Village
Julie Berman was an internationally known trans rights activist living in Toronto. Fifty-one-year-old Berman was found in her Brunswick Avenue and Harbord Street area home on Sunday, December 22, 2019. Police had been called to the scene, where they found her suffering from “significant” face and head injuries. She was pronounced dead in hospital. Berman … Read more
Christopher John Andrew Skinner was 27 when he was purposefully struck and killed by an SUV on October 28, 2009. He was killed in Toronto’s Entertainment District at Adelaide St. East and Victoria Street and police immediately began searching for CCTV and security video footage from businesses in the area. He was engaged and planning … Read more
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
Police Constable Glen Wilson was the first officer into the 17th-floor apartment on Jackes Avenue, near Yonge Street and St. Clair Avenue East, on Tuesday, January 6, 2004. He described what he found to the jury at a murder trial in February 2006, the Toronto Star reported. A 78-year-old man lay face down on the … Read more
At 12:45 a.m. on Tuesday, May 23, 2000, a Toronto police cruiser spotted a black 1998 Volvo near police headquarters at Bay and College streets. The Toronto Star reported that the driver ran when he saw the cruiser. Officers stopped him a few blocks away, at Toronto General Hospital, at University Avenue and Gerrard Street … Read more
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 … Read more
At 1:30 p.m. on Friday, October 28, 1994, a woman’s body was found behind the Palais Royale dance hall on Lake Shore Boulevard West. The Toronto Star reported two days later that she had been strangled. She was Virginia Lee Coote, 33, known to her friends as Flex. The Star said the body had washed … Read more
On Monday, September 19, 1994, at about 5 p.m., an ambulance crew climbed to a 14th-floor apartment on Sherbourne St. A friend had gone there looking for Harry Ronald Isaac, 50, who had not turned up for work at a hotel on Lombard St. The friend found him dead. The Toronto Star reported the next … Read more
Prostitute Julieanne Middleton, 23, was working the Parkdale neighbourhood when she was murdered. Police suspect she is a victim of serial killer Peter Dale MacDonald. She was found July 7, 1994 in Lake Ontario, just a few minutes’ walk from the Palais Royale at 1601 Lake Shore Blvd West, along Toronto’s western waterfront. Middleton was … Read more
Just before midnight on July 30, 1993, a trail of blood led tenants of an 80 Charles St. East apartment building to the viciously beaten body of Norman Bernard Rasky, 62, a retired dentist. Residents followed the blood trail from the lobby of one building to the underground locker room of another, adjoining building. He … Read more
At about 10 a.m. on Friday, October 27, 1989, Metro police were called to an 11th-floor apartment at 800 Richmond Street West to investigate a “person who was ill,” the Toronto Star reported. Ambulance attendant Annie Cavally later testified about what she and her partner found. “He was cold,” she said. “He was very pale. … Read more
Charles Albert Lizotte’s body was seen being tossed out a speeding U-Haul truck on October 4, 1988. The dumping of the 30-year-old man, who lived on Shuter Street, was seen by a 9-year-old boy playing in an Ontario Hydro right-of-way in Pickering. Lizotte had been shoved into a sleeping bag thrown to the side of … Read more
Police were called to a ninth-floor apartment on Gilder Drive in Scarborough at about 11 p.m. on Friday, January 6, 1984. The Toronto Star reported later that they found Christine Clifford, 29, with several stab wounds in her abdomen. Alanna (Maume) Smith, 25, who lived in the apartment, was unconscious on the couch. Clifford was … Read more
Former Alderman and accountant Donald William Weir died on April 5, 1983. He was found naked in his bathtub with more than 40 injuries. A banana had been shoved in his mouth. Weir, 50, was found by firefighters who had rushed to his apartment in response to a security staff person’s call: a fire alarm … Read more
Twenty-four-year-old Torontonian Charles Edward Palmer was shot in the head and chest with a .22 calibre rifle at his family cottage on Bob Lake near Minden, Ontario. He bled to death. Several rifles, a gold bracelet and his wallet were stolen. Palmer, who lived on Shier Drive in Scarborough, was found lying dead on a … Read more