Unsolved - Robert J. Hoshowsky

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one cannot be calculated. Some will stay together for months, even years, while others — especially parents of murdered children — blame their partner or surviving sons or daughters for not “being there for them,” and not protecting the victimized child from a violent predator. Many couples divorce and surviving children sometimes become estranged from one another, as attention focuses on the dead instead of the living.

      Wherever possible, I conducted interviews with family and friends of missing persons and murder victims for Unsolved. Very early on I was amazed at how many were not just willing but eager to talk, sharing not only their memories but their feelings, often of guilt, anger, and remorse.This often meant resurrecting painful details about how their loved ones died. The reason for many of them: to keep the stories of the dead and missing alive and let the world know they are not forgotten — and neither are their killers.

      Following a homicide many people become involved in the process. There are the families of the victim, friends, witnesses, and police who investigate the crime. There are the detectives, the searchers, volunteers, and the media, who often play a large part in disseminating details about the crime and the possible suspects. Trying to catch a killer is a complicated process involving police working on many levels. There are the uniformed officers who are often the first to arrive and cordon off areas to protect the integrity of the crime scene, which can be as small as a room or as large as several city blocks. There are the detectives who come in and direct officers to search here and there, or go door-to-door to find witnesses, anyone who heard or saw anything that could help in the investigation. In the case of a missing child, there are the officers who go wherever the search takes them, from police divers in the muddy waters of an old gravel pit to abandoned buildings, dense forests to rundown rooming houses. Depending on the case there are often countless people involved in trying to catch a killer, including forensic artists, private investigators, ballistics experts, child find and missing persons agencies, and pathologists.

      Writing a book about unsolved cases brings with it a host of challenges. There is the need to ask the cold, dispassionate, and often grisly specific questions: How long did it take them to die? What type of weapon was used? What was the exact cause of death? Was the weapon recovered? Were they sexually assaulted? These types of questions were best left to police officers, veteran detectives, private investigators, and others possessing first-hand knowledge of the crime. Family and friends of murdered and missing persons were better able to fill in details about their loved ones and his or her personality traits, likes, dislikes, successes, failures, goals, and aspirations.

      The genesis of Unsolved was in conversations I had with some of the talented editors at Dundurn, namely Michael Carroll and Tony Hawke. After the publication of my first book, The Last to Die: Ronald Turpin, Arthur Lucas, and the end of Capital Punishment in Canada, in 2007, I had a number of ideas for my next project. Several outlines were written, and a number of ideas were tossed back and forth. One of them was suggested by Tony: “Why not write a book about unsolved crimes?” Tony is perhaps one of the most knowledgeable people I’ve ever met when it comes to the subject of Canadian mysteries, having overseen and edited countless books on strange goings-on in Canada. He possesses not only genuine warmth of character but an almost childlike enthusiasm and eagerness for potential projects. A number of older cases were mentioned, such as the unusual circumstances surrounding the 1917 death of artist Tom Thomson, the unexplained disappearance of Toronto theatre magnate Ambrose Small in 1919, and the mysterious murder of millionaire Sir Harry Oakes in his Bahamas mansion in 1943. All were mesmerizing cases about larger than life figures who have become an integral part of the Canadian consciousness over the decades, and a collection of these old stories would surely become a valuable reference book.

      At the time my feelings were mixed. Having a familiarity with all of these cases, I know that all of them have been the subject of numerous books published over the years, along with documentaries, movies, plays, even entire websites devoted to a single case. I was reluctant to write a book about these and other older crimes unless I could bring something new to the reader, as I had with my first book, such as previously unknown letters, hidden or suppressed government documents, never before published photographs, or interviews with individuals who had not spoken to the media in decades, if at all.

      My interest as a writer has always been bringing together stories from the past with interviews from the present. After several weeks of searching through my own memory, missing persons websites, true crime blogs, police cold case websites, newspaper files, books, magazines, archives, and talking to friends, I began working on an outline for a book on Canadian crimes, which eventually became Unsolved.

      All writers, from first-timers to professionals, need guidelines and structure, or their work is likely to float off into the heavens like an untethered balloon. To satisfy my needs, I came up with a number of parameters for all of the cases. It didn’t matter if the victims were male or female, rich or poor, known or unknown, or if their deaths or disappearances were widely covered in the press at the time or have been forgotten. The words still solvable kept echoing through my head as I was researching and writing this book, and I settled on a timeline: no case could be more than approximately forty years old. The rationale behind this? Even if a case is decades old, there is still a chance the killer — even if he or she is now a senior citizen — can still be caught and convicted. Assuming a murder or disappearance took place back in the late sixties, there could still be people who remembered the victim or victims, as was the case with Richard “Dickie” Hovey and Eric Jones, who recalled seeing these young men getting into a car with a stranger, most likely their killer. All the murders and disappearances in this book are still open, and in many cases, leads continue to trickle in to the police years later.

      Unsolved is unlike many other true crime books. There are many things it is, and many things it is not. It was never my intention to create an “encyclopedia” of unsolved Canadian crimes, since such an endeavour for one writer — let alone a team of writers, researchers, editors, proofreaders, photographers, and fact checkers with years to spare and an unlimited budget for resources — is simply not possible. Across the country, there are literally thousands of cold cases waiting, pleading to be solved, some of them going back decades.

      Many major police departments in Canada have websites devoted to unsolved cases and murder suspects, including the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.In Toronto,the Homicide Squad Unsolved Cold Cases website (www.torontopolice.on.ca/homicide/unsolvedcold.php), which went online in 2008, currently features dozens of cases along with summaries of the crimes, photos, maps, videos, applicable reward and contact information, and other related materials. It is their intention to post hundreds of other unsolved murders on the site, estimated between three hundred and 350, going back to 1957, the year Toronto Police Service was formed. The number of hours required by police, computer technicians, web designers, and others to write the summaries, scan and post the photos, update, and maintain the website is tremendous. The Resolve Initiative, a website created by the Ontario Provincial Police (www.missing-u.ca), works in partnership with the Office of the Chief Coroner. Featuring hundreds of cases, divided into missing persons and unidentified bodies/remains, the site went online in 2006 and receives thousands of hits per month. These sites, regularly updated and maintained, provide up-to-the-minute accounts of cold cases that cannot possibly be covered in one book.

      Likewise, Unsolved is not a traditional “anthology” that true crime aficionados are accustomed to reading. Unlike the majority of compilations, which assemble dozens of short, previously published articles, usually culled from newspapers or magazines, into book form, all the cases presented here are original, researched and written expressly for this book, and have never been published in any other form — book, magazine, or on any websites — until now. During the course of researching and writing this book every effort has been made to paint as complete a picture as possible, from the time the crimes took place to the present day. In a number of cases new information was made available shortly before the book was published and has been incorporated into Unsolved. This need to include information that is as up-to-date as possible resulted in several unavoidable delays, and I am grateful to my publisher, Dundurn, for realizing the importance of presenting this material in the book.

      Books based solely on repackaging old stories are informative — and heaven

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