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Uncover S3 Episode 4

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[Crickets chirping and footsteps]

VOICE 1: On March 20^th..

VOICE 2: Run!

[Heavy breathing and running]

VOICE 1: ..only one movie experience this year will make you afraid to breathe.

VOICE 3: You won’t survive.

VOICE 2: We have to try.

VOICE 1: A Quiet Place: Part II. In theatres March 20^th. Tickets on sale now.

[Music]

ANNOUNCER: This is a CBC podcast.

[Music]

JUSTIN: Previously on The Village.

REPORTER: The three murdered men had all come here, to the gay bars on the Yonge Street strip. They each met someone and that person turned out to be a vicious killer.

[Music]

BERNARD: Most of the homosexual murders you could identify that it was a homosexual murder from the brutality. The overkill.

BILL: You always got the sense that you were being targeted. One of the fears of coming out was someone was just going to wallop you when they found out

KATHY: On that Tuesday afternoon after I walked out of the police station, neither I nor any member of my family ever heard from the police again

JUSTIN: My name is Justin Ling. This is Uncover: The Village.

[Music]

JUSTIN: Stacy? How are you? Good, Justin.

STACY: Nice to meet you.

JUSTIN: Good, you too.

STACY: We have a small crew.

JUSTIN: For the past few months, I've been investigating a series of unsolved murders from Toronto's gay village dating back to the late 1970s. They share a lot of similarities. Some of the victims even went to the same bars the night they were killed. Many were robbed. All of the killings were extraordinarily violent. Toronto Police are also revisiting these cases. They're looking for any evidence that accused serial killer Bruce McArthur could be involved. That's why - for months - I've been trying to get a hold of the detective heading up the cold case investigation.

Thanks for doing this.

STACY: Hopefully I can answer some of your questions. I don't know how many I can answer, depending what your questions are

JUSTIN: In early December, 2018, I finally manage to sit down with Detective-Sergeant Stacy Gallant. He runs the cold case team for the Toronto Police Service. I want to know how he's choosing which cases to re-open.

Was it simply to say you know this victim we believe was gay and therefore - you know - was in Toronto at the time or was it looking at you know how cause of death, was it looking at bars frequented, things along those lines, was there more specifics?

STACY: Time frame was one aspect. Whether or not the person was gay or not, that was one aspect. The area, the type of murder it was.

JUSTIN: Gallant's team is reviewing 21 cases from 1976, right up to the 1990s. It's a bigger number than police originally released.

Can you give any kind of breakdown in terms of cases, of those 25, that you've said, “OK we're very confident that Bruce McArthur was not involved” versus cases where you're saying it's still a possibility?

STACY: We're not done our review of all these cases. It takes a long time just to review one case and go through it and read every note in it and do a summary of it from a case dating back into the 70s. It takes months to do. We also then have to look at any evidence that may have a possibility of having DNA. So it's a long, long process.

JUSTIN: Back in the 1970s, police didn't have the ability to run DNA tests. But we do know that some of these victims died in a struggle - meaning their killer's DNA from blood, or skin, could have been left at the scene. If samples were collected, cops could get a hit in the national DNA database. And they could potentially match that DNA to Bruce McArthur or someone else. That is, if the samples survived.

STACY: We could have a case that we put everything in and we get no DNA profiles from, whether it was blood evidence or anything like semen or saliva or anything like that and it was degraded too much, then it couldn't be tested then you know we're no further advanced. And it's of no fault of anyone other than the passage of time and the way things were collected.

JUSTIN: The second part is obviously looking at whether or not Bruce McArthur was potentially tied to any of these cases or could be responsible for any of them. Have you been able to pin down more accurately where his movements and where he may have been for that stretch of time? He could have done this one or because he was up the block you know at that exact hour because we you know we have his time stamp from Eatons.

STACY: That definitely is something that's looked at to see “Where was he? Was there any potential of involvement? Did he live in the city? Was he around at that point in time?” Those are all still things that we're looking at…

JUSTIN: It's become pretty clear that Gallant is going to be sending a lot of my own questions right back at me.

STACY: But I can tell you at this point in time, we've had nothing jumping out at us in any of these cases right now that would suggest any involvement by him at this point.

[Music]

JUSTIN: Toronto Police aren't willing to share all 23 names on their list of cold cases. But I've got my own list of murders victims from 1975 to 1978. Names like Hal Walkley, Brian Latocki, and Duncan Robinson

STACY: There are certainly some potentials within these cases that we're uncovering that further needs investigation.

JUSTIN: Can we talk about a couple of specific cases?

STACY: In some regards I can talk about the cases. I really can't go into any great specifics about the cases.

JUSTIN: Okay, well let's see what we can talk about. (Laughs) Let's try that. So maybe even go almost more or less chronologically. One of the first ones we're looking at is a guy named Harold Walkley from ’75.

Harold Walkley is the university lecturer who died in 1975. Police said he'd brought someone home, and was killed in his apartment.

REPORTER: Policesay the investigation is virtually at a standstill because of a lack of information.

JUSTIN: Obviously there must be a much more difficult time in terms of finding kind of living relatives and living friends. But have you made any progress in terms of kind of pinning down what may have happened in his last days?

STACY: Contacting friends and relatives at this point really don't come into play for these cases, unless it was to advance to the point where we have a usable DNA profile then we have to start trying to track people down.

JUSTIN: These murders happened at a time when there was incredible distrust between cops and the community. If investigators were to make a new call-out today for witnesses and information, maybe something would shake loose. Gallant doesn't seem to agree.

STACY: The original investigations in all of these were done as any homicide would be done today. It's a fulsome investigation. Every lead was examined at the time. There was really nothing left to do with the case back then.

JUSTIN: “There was nothing left to do with the case back then?” I don't think even the retired detective Bernard Nadeau believes his own investigation was "fullsome." He told me people with information often didn't come forward for fear of being outed.

BERNARD: Most of them would not disclose to anybody that they were homosexual and they didn't trust the police and thought “Well, he'd probably tell my boss or phone my wife or my mother” and so we weren't trusted.

JUSTIN: And I bet Kathy Robinson would find it absurd to suggest that every lead was followed in her brother's murder.

KATHY: The interview was perfunctory, at best. It didn't last very long. It didn't get into very many details. My impression was that the detective had formed a conclusion almost instantaneously that this was a gay murder.

[Music]

JUSTIN: She hasn't heard from police in 40 years. It's becoming pretty clear that the Toronto Police Service cold case team is going to be equally tight-lipped.

STACY: There are possible advances in a number of these cases, but am I willing to talk about those advances and tell you what they are in each specific case? No.

JUSTIN: So, to sum up -- not much to tell me, and even if there was, he wouldn't.

[Music]

STACY: I may have some conclusions or some further information in the months to come.

JUSTIN: We'll stay in touch.

STACY: Yeah sure check back.

JUSTIN: I am, to say the least, disappointed. Maybe I was naive, but I was hoping police would actually want to share these details. Renewed attention could bring new information. New information might even help solve the cases. It seems to me that police pleaded for the public's help. And now, even decades later, there's a chance to reach some of those witnesses who may have stayed quiet all this time. Why not take the opportunity?

[Music]

JUSTIN: I mean you know this is I guess what you expect from Canadian cops, which is you know, tight-lippedness. You know the belief that if you say anything about a case ever, that it's going to come to bite you in the ass and that the public will never help you with anything It's what they were doing at least for missing persons cases. That's what they're doing now. It's kind of police M.O.

[Music]

JUSTIN: Gallant says these investigations were fulsome. But I wonder - if that's the case - why are so many of these murders still unsolved? I want to know why these investigations were so hampered.

BRENT: Hey, Justin. Hi Justin I'm Brent. Nice to meet you.

JUSTIN: To do that, I go to see Reverend Brent Hawkes. He's been a fixture of the community for more than 40 years. He even officiated Canada's first same sex-marriage.

BRENT: Now we have some dogs that they won't bite you but they might lick you to death. But John's going to take them upstairs and babysit them so.

[Dogs barking]

JUSTIN: One of his dogs likes me. The other, not so much.

[Dog barking]

[Music]

JUSTIN: He lives in a gorgeous, ornate home in the gay village, just behind the 519 community centre. To be honest, I'm a little confused as to how a retired reverend could afford such an incredible two-story home, especially in this neighbourhood. Brent seems to read my mind. He tells me they had it redone on a home renovation show. He was on TV and everything.

BRENT: So if you go onto iTunes, Love It or List It Brent and John, you can download it…

JOHN: Also the stain glass is, well, plastic cheat. [Laughs] It's just from Home Hardware.

JUSTIN: Brent's husband, John, walks upstairs with the dogs under his arms.

BRENT: John's an artist so most of the pencil drawings are his. And sculptures are his. He said “We gotta move those nude sculptures.” I said “We'll move them if we need to, don't worry.”

JUSTIN: Oh whatever we're audio. That's fine.

Brent retired last year, but he's still active in the Metropolitan Community Church - it's a denomination that has been emphatically pro-gay since the 1970s. Brent still wears his white collar.

BRENT: Okay would you like some water or anything to --

JUSTIN: Water would be great, thank you…

Brent is originally from New Brunswick, but came to Toronto to be a pastor in 1977.

BRENT: It was a very different time. And I think when you're around for 40 years like I've been for 40-plus years, you see the changes…

JUSTIN: He's a hand-talker. He punctuates everything he says with a jab in the air, or short sweeps of his palm. Sometimes, it even seems like he's playing a tiny, invisible piano.

BRENT: I mean the mid 70s were just a few years after same-sex sexual behavior was decriminalized. You know up until 1969 gay people were thrown in jail for simply having consenting adult sexual activity. And so people were still living with that, that fear of being arrested and going to jail just simply for making love to somebody of the same gender.

[Music]

JUSTIN: Fifty years ago, in 1969, then-prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau reformed the Canadian Criminal Code and formally decriminalized gay sex. There were still plenty of criminal charges that were used to target gay men and some were on the books until very recently, but this was a big step. You've might have heard Trudeau's famous quote leading up to the decision.

TRUDEAU: This thing on homosexuality. The view we have here is there's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation. What's done in private between adults doesn't concern the criminal code.

JUSTIN: Not everyone was in favour of the change. Notably, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police.

[Music]

JUSTIN: At their annual meeting, the association voted overwhelming to oppose the changes to the law. The Chiefs said, and I'm quoting, "The search by homosexuals for partners often leads to assault, theft, male prostitution and murder." The Chiefs lamented that decriminalizing consensual relationships between same-sex couples was an erosion of morality, and attack on decency, and so on. In other words, the police Chiefs believed gay sex should remain a crime and that there was something inherently criminal about homosexuality.

REPORTER: They called it gay day and billed it as the first Canadian homosexual rally.

JUSTIN: Decriminalizing sex between consenting adults was a start. But there were many other ways in which people were forced to stay in the closet.

REPORTER: They say amendments to the criminal code years ago legalized their sexual relations but did little to alleviate the oppression of homosexuals in everyday life.

JUSTIN: In 1971, that oppression spurred Canada's first gay rights protest on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.

REPORTER: They chanted slogans such as --- “Two, four, six, eight, gay is just as good as straight.”

JUSTIN: Barely a hundred people marched in the rain with signs that read "Gay Action" and "Support your local monarch. Hire a queen."

SPEAKER AT RALLY: Canadian homosexuals are having their careers ruined, being kicked out of their churches, having their children taken away from them, and being assaulted in the streets of our own city. What have we have done to deserve this? Love. All we want to do is to love persons of the same sex. And live our lives as we decide, for ourselves. We're fed up with the lack of basic respect due all human beings.

[Chanting]

REPORTER: The homosexuals were demanding such things as an end to discrimination in the immigration act, equal right to government employment, including the armed forces, an end to homosexuality as grounds for divorce, and in divorce, equal right to child custody, and they want public officials to work actively to end all other forms of discrimination against them

SPEAKER AT RALLY: Gay is proud. Gay is good. Let us say it wherever we go. Gay power! [Crowd shouts “Yay”]

BRENT: And there were no human rights protections. so people were also routinely fired from their jobs. When it was found out that they were gay or even rumored that they were gay, you didn't have to prove that they were gay to fire them. People always had to be careful where they were in public and what they were seen to be doing holding hands or not holding hands or looking gay.

[Music]

BRENT: I mean the social scene, frankly, consisted of the bars. People went to the bars to socialize, to cruise, to meet people, to see their friends. And so outside of the bars and even some of the bars weren't safe because some of the bars were straight-owned, miserable places in terms of how they were managed.

JUSTIN: Both the St Charles and Parkside taverns were owned by a straight man named Norman Bolter. Someone once asked him whether it was odd that a straight man owned two gay bars. He replied, quote, "a gay person shouldn't own a place like this, he'd get too emotionally involved." These places, obviously, weren't exactly ideal. But the world outside the bars wasn't much better.

BRENT: We used to say to people after various demonstrations that they had to leave in groups because they either were afraid that the skinheads would beat them up or the gay bashers in those days would beat them up or the police would.

JUSTIN: I can only imagine you must be hearing from people from the community who said “I was jumped in an alleyway last night. I went to the police and they didn't do anything.”

BRENT: Yeah, and not just that people wouldn't do that the police wouldn't do anything, that they would find the police pushing back and they would be more fearful. So there they weren't just victimized by being gay bashed they were victimized by how the police responded to it by either laughing or joking or dismissing and not taking it seriously. The repercussions of that in terms of policing issues would work that people wouldn't report crimes that were happening to them. So if their home was broken into or if they were beaten up on the street they weren't likely to call the police because they were afraid of the police and what the police would do if they found out that they were gay. And similarly if they were witness to a crime they would think twice about whether or not to report that. So all of society was poorly served by that kind of a culture at the time.

[Music]

JUSTIN: At the same time, homicide cops are pleading with the community for information about a dozen murders of gay men. And admitting to reporters that they're not getting any.

REPORTER: Why is it that you're having so much trouble getting information on these killings?

NADEAU: It's the reluctance of the people in the gay community to supply any information to us. All we can do is ask for their assistance.

JUSTIN: It does seem like the cops in the 70s recognized their own obstacles. The Body Politic quoted one detective saying they would give anonymity to any witness - if they would talk. But, honestly, it's no wonder people didn't come forward.

What would the reaction have been to read those sort of quotes at the time?

BRENT: You know, I think people would not believe that, frankly. The police in general did care about sexuality and they cared about it in a way that they wanted to victimize the community. You know, they weren't neutral. Yes, there were some good cops in those days. But the institution as a whole could not be trusted. So why would anybody go to the police and volunteer information? Why would they say, you know, “I might have seen somebody with one of those guys”? When they're afraid for themselves. It would take a pretty courageous person to do that.

[Music]

JUSTIN: It wasn't just that people in the community didn't trust the cops, or didn't like the uniform and the badge. They actively saw the Toronto Police Service as a threat to their safety.

[Music]

BRENT: I knew a guy in our church who was a senior job in a bank, very conservative guy. He was on his way home one day and he went in to buy groceries and he notices this cute guy paying attention to him, and he looked at the guy the guy looked at him. They nodded, etc. Thought, “Oh, that's kind of cute.” So the guy got groceries and he left, and as he left he noticed the guy following him. Right? And a guy didn't want to like lead him to his home. He didn't know what how safe that was. So he went into a washroom. And he went up to the urinal to use the washroom and the guy came up and stood beside him the next stall to use the washroom and kind of gave him the eye, etc. And as soon as my friend showed any kind of attention to the guy, the guy arrested him.

[Music]

BRENT: And it was horrifying for this guy. If it had gone public that he had been arrested he would have lost his job, his career would have been over, he probably would have had to come out to his family which he hadn't at that point. He would never have you know gone into a washroom cold and cruised some guy in the washroom. He did it because the guy in the grocery store showed attention, followed him down the corridor, followed him into the washroom showed some interest at the urinal. And so when the guy reciprocated, he was arrested. That's entrapment! that would never have happened otherwise.

[Music]

JUSTIN: Many of the men murdered throughout the 1970s and 1980s, were middle class. Bankers, accountants, professors. And their friends were lawyers, teachers, and businesspeople. Now, normally, having a well-off and comfortable friend circle should be a big help to a homicide investigation. In these cases, however, it seemed to be a liability. The people who may have known the most also had lots to lose. Some of the potential witnesses had wives, kids, or jobs that they could lose for being outed as gay.

[Music]

JUSTIN: You know one of the narratives that came out of the spate of murders was somewhat dismissive. It was you know “What do you expect when you bring a stranger you know back to your apartment?” But kind of what I'm hearing from you is that nowhere was safe. And that may be the safest place of all even given your options. Was your was your home.

BRENT: Well no. I think the safest place of all was the baths. Right.

JUSTIN: And we were raided too.

Maybe you have no idea what Brent means when he says "the baths." They are, in short, men-only clubs with saunas, swimming pools, jacuzzies, and a bunch of private rooms. They really started cropping up in a time when there were few actual gay bars. Bette Mider even used to put on shows in the baths in New York City. She earned the name Bathhouse Betty. They were incredibly important community hubs. Above all else, they were spots where men can have sex, discreetly. Or, at least, it was supposed to be discreet.

[Music]

JUSTIN: In December 1978-- just days after the murder of Duncan Robinson -- Police raided a Toronto bathhouse and arrested the 23 men found inside for committing an indecent act. That raid wasn't the first, and it wouldn't be the last. I'm going to come back to the bathhouse raids, because they are really important for the queer history in Canada. But for now, suffice it to say, the community felt like there was no door that police wouldn't kick down. One event, in the summer of 1977, put a particularly sharp point on that fear.

REPORTER: In Toronto today police released the grim details about the murder of 12-year-old Manuel Jacques, the shoeshine boy whose body was found yesterday on the roof of a Yonge Street sex parlour. Young Manuel had been sexually assaulted…

JUSTIN: On August 1^st, 1977, police discovered the body of a 12-year old boy. He was found, murdered, on the roof of a massage parlour on Yonge Street. His name was Emmanuel Jacques.

REPORTER: Also charged in the murder are three men who were employed as bouncers at the body rub parlour.

JUSTIN: Three gay men were convicted of his murder.

REPORTER Police say he was drowned in a sink full of water after being held captive for 12 hours.

JUSTIN: The three men had sexually assaulted and drowned him. It's still heartbreaking to read about. His death led to calls to "clean up" Yonge Street. To get rid of the porn theatres and the sex shops. To arrest the sex workers. A child had been murdered. The demands for change were understandable.

[Chating]

REPORTER: While speakers urged the crowd to demand that provincial officials along with the city clean up Yonge Street, there was strong feelings about the death penalty being returned. Many in the crowd were urging to march on Yonge Street itself, in a form of vigilante action…

JUSTIN: But the aftermath of his murder had very dark implications.

[Woman crying]

REPORTER: The shock and anger generated by Manuel's death was evident today at his funeral. One of the largest ever in Toronto.

JUSTIN: The murder seemed to reinforce what police had been saying about queer people for years. That they were deviants. Dangerous. Different.

[Music]

BRENT: It was scary. The backlash against the broader gay community was -- it was really scary. I remember I was out one night with a friend and we were walking up Young Street. We gone past St. Charles, we're getting up of the park side, and there was this car that stopped and about four or five guys with baseball bats jumped out the car and I don't know if I “looked gay”, whatever that means, or my friend did - I don't know why - But they came after us with the baseball bats and I started we started running down. I guess we must be a close to the St. Charles down Yonge Street and just got close to the St Charles and this enormous black drag queen came out of St. Charles and she looked at me and him she looked at him and she said “You two in there” and she say “You guys get the fuck out of here.” And they stopped and left. She may have saved me. I don't know if I would have gotten in before they got to us with a baseball bats, but that was the kind of fear in the community. And I remember that Sunday at church people were very really afraid, horrified by what happened. No question. And afraid of the backlash.

JUSTIN: And the backlash wasn't just delivered with baseball bats. A year after the Emmanuel Jacques murder, the Ontario human rights tribunal suggested adding sexual orientation to that province's human rights code. It would've made Ontario the second province to do so, after Quebec. This was the reaction.

REPORTER: While a recent public opinion poll shows that more than half of all Canadians feel that homosexuals should get legislative protection, in Ontario the Jacques's trial has obviously made this an unpopular subject, despite evidence that sexual assaults against children are more prevalent among heterosexuals.

REPORTER: Do you feel that homosexuals should get protection under the Ontario Human Rights Act?

FEMALE 1: No.

FEMALE 2: No, I don't think I do.

REPORTER: Do you feel more strongly about it since the Jacques trial?

FEMALE 1: Oh, definitely.

MALE 1: The people are sick they need treatment. And this was just proven by the terrible thing that happened to that poor little kid.

MALE 2: People should have rights whether they're gay or heterosexual or whatever.

MALE 3: We should shoot these people or hang them.

JUSTIN: It's pretty jarring to hear someone just openly suggest that gays should be shot or hanged. But, as this CBC reporter says, gays weren't going anywhere.

REPORTER: As repugnant as homosexuality may be to many people, the issue will not die. As more homosexuals declare their gayness, the pressure for recognition and equality will increase. And the voices will become louder.

JUSTIN: Looking back, there's a really sad irony here. More than a dozen gay men are violently murdered. But the police and the city government totally reject the idea that there's any broader, systemic issues at play. It's just what happens when gays go looking for love, they say. It seems to me that all of these murders should have been a wake-up call to address the underlying issues behind the violence. Not to foment more hate.

BRENT: So I think that that the gay community suffered because of the Emmanuel -- I don't want to be I don't and I don't want to sound like I'm diminishing the death of that young kid at all, and the horror for his family, but what the gay community suffered for years and years and years afterwards because of that. You know, and like you know I would be asked “What do you think of the Emmanuel Jacques murder?” in a way that you know an average heterosexual pastor would never be asked. You know about a straight murder. There are there are things that give permission to hatred.

JUSTIN: “There are things that give permission to hatred.” Like the angry mobs that formed outside the St Charles tavern on Halloween.

[Crowd noise on street]

JUSTIN: Brent remembers those nights.

BRENT: And it started out as a wonderful thing the crowds would gather and people would cheer and applaud and stuff like that and then it started to turn angry, ugly, when queer bashers would come and they would you know they would buy eggs in the local store and throw eggs. It continued and the police would do nothing, absolutely nothing. And then people were getting beaten up on the side streets right because the queer bashers would be looking for people on Halloween to beat -- beat them up and became very dangerous…

[People cheering and whistling on the street]

JUSTIN: If the police were going to do nothing, the community was going to protect itself.

[Film reel clicking]

JUSTIN: In the CBC archives I find this old news story on film. It's Brent in 1977.

BRENT: For instance we're going to provide protective activities if gay people want to go from one area to another and feel they need protection, they'll have five or six gay people to join with them. As protection. We plan surveillance where people will be going through the crowds with cameras taking pictures of people who are throwing eggs, rocks or whatever. And reporting people to the police and trying to get the police take some action. And if the police don't take action, we will be taking names and badge numbers of the police and trying to have that report and take care of later on.

JUSTIN: But Brent knew that the community would never be safe without the institutions that were supposed to protect them. He wanted to build bridges with police, not burn them.

BRENT: And so George and I tried to get a meeting with the police.

JUSTIN: He's talking about George Hislop. He was sort of the unofficial mayor of Gay Toronto. And like Brent, George was on speed-dial for the city's reporters.

GEORGE: The harassment and the attitudes of the law enforcement agencies haven't changed.

JUSTIN: George founded the Community Homophile Association of Toronto - or, just CHAT - one of the main gay rights groups at the time.

[Phone rings]

MALE VOICE: Good morning, CHAT. Well, what is the problem? You think you're a homosexual, I see. And you'd like a little more information about this. Well, we'd be delighted to talk to you about it. And be as helpful as we can.

JUSTIN: Unfortunately, he died in 2005. Brent and George were quite the tag team.

BRENT: You know people think that we were, like, media hungry which is not the case. We just happened to be conveniently available. George was an actor and wasn't busy as an actor so his partner paid the bills and stuff so George had time free. And I was the pastor of the church so I had time during the day. I was in the office working so when the media needed to interview people we were easy to get a hold of.

JUSTIN: They had a message for police about controlling the crowds at Halloween. Do your job. And they were persistent.

BRENT: They wouldn't meet with us. They wouldn't even give a meeting the first year so we pressured some politicians and eventually somehow basically got the message to police that they needed to meet with us. And so that year George and I went and met with the police and I think there were three senior police officers who sat down, and they didn't have any notes or paper. They didn't they said “OK go ahead. State your piece.” So we spoke and “Okay, thank you.” Didn't ask any questions didn't engage at all, were just there because they had to be there. But George Hislop was brilliant. The next year when we met, before we even sat down, he would say to one go “Hey, your son just I just graduated university. Congratulations! What's he going to do?” and another one “He just got a new dog” -- what you know. And he'd researched information and so that began to break down this kind of barrier. And they saw that -- looked reasonable.

JUSTIN: He's pointing to his white collar. Brent wasn't just some gay, he was a pastor. And, it worked. By 1977, the drag queens had better police protection.

REPORTER: Although hundreds of people line Yonge Street four deep for several hours this year they only had a few brief glimpses of the costumed transvestites. Participants this year arrived early and enter the tavern through a rear door, all heavily guarded by police.

[Music]

BRENT: So we began to talk to them about how if they could just keep the crowd moving, if they could just say to the grocery stores in the area “Don't have eggs that day,” you know there could be a few things that could begin to dissipate the situation because it was getting really dangerous ; it was an awful situation

REPORTER: So far, efforts by police to control the crowd have been enough to thwart any possible anti-gay outburst. One senior officer says he hopes it stays that way through the small hours of the morning.

[Music]

[Music]

JUSTIN: All of this - the gay bashings, the police entrapment, the bathhouse raids, the backlash from a young boy's murder, and the intense and sometimes violent homophobia in the city, this is the environment in which more than a dozen gay men were murdered, in just a few years. And many of their killers escaped justice.

BRENT: People have asked me about the difference between the murders recently and the murders back in the 70s. And I want to be careful how I phrase this, but today people are horrified of the possibility of being a serial killer and gay people being murdered. In the late 70s, it was not unusual. You know? People were beating up, gay bashing, gay people were murdered. It was not unusual. So it didn't horrify us and horrified society because of the ongoing violence that existed at the time.

[Crickets chirping and footsteps]

VOICE 1: On March 20^th…

VOICE 2: Run!

[Heavy breathing and running]

VOICE 1: ..only one movie experience this year will make you afraid to breathe.

VOICE 3: You won’t survive.

VOICE 2: We have to try.

VOICE 1: A Quiet Place: Part II. In theatres March 20^th. Tickets on sale now.

[Music]

JUSTIN: In 1978, the murder of gay men was becoming, unfortunately, familiar.

REPORTER: Police were called to this apartment building late yesterday after friends of the dead man, Alexander Sandy Leblanc, broke into his apartment and found his blood covered body.

[Music]

JUSTIN: Another murder. Another case of overkill. Alexander Sandy LeBlanc.

[Music]

REPORTER: Leblanc had been involved in several homosexual clubs in Toronto, and police are checking this angle for a possible motive for the brutal murder. This latest homosexual slaying has caused additional fear within the gay community of metro.

[Music]

JUSTIN: Sandy was openly gay. He was a known figure in the community. This was probably the most high profile murder of a gay man Toronto had seen.

[Phone ringing]

JUSTIN: One of the lead detectives on the case was David Penny. He's still around, so I give him a call

DAVID: Hello.

JUSTIN: Hi. I'm looking for David Penny.

DAVID: Speaking.

JUSTIN: Hi David. My name is Justin Ling. I'm a journalist with the CBC. I'm reaching out to you cause I'm hoping you have a couple minutes to chat.

DAVID: Yeah.

JUSTIN: David knows exactly why I'm calling.

I was hoping to get to…

DAVID: Sandy Alexander LeBlanc.

JUSTIN: That's right. So I was hoping that.

DAVID: I heard it on St. Joseph's I believe.

JUSTIN: It was on St. Joseph St.

DAVID: I remember that when he was stabbed about 80 times. I remember.

[Knocks on door]

DAVID: C’mon in!

JUSTIN: Hey!

DAVID: Hey, how are ya?

JUSTIN: Good.

David is a pretty relaxed guy. He doesn't scream 'cop' in the same way Bernard Nadeau did.

DAVID: I played hockey in Peterborough; until I was 71 years old. Now I play, I lawn bowl. I traded my hockey sticks in for -- they call 'em bowls.

JUSTIN: How old are you?

DAVID: 75.

JUSTIN: You don't look 75.

DAVID: I'm one of the young ones.

JUSTIN: David is one of those former cops who has an endless supply of stories. Everyone used to call him batman, because he was one of the first cops on a motorcycle and he was always first on the scene. He was on 60 Minutes, once, with Morley Safer because his partner was the first black officer on the force. Just story after story. But, obviously, there's a specific story I'm asking about.

DAVID: So I was in the homicide squad from ‘78 to ‘83. This is the era that I guess you're here for because in the -- we didn't use the word “gay” in those days, but in the homosexual community, I did about half a dozen homicides. The reason I remember Alexander LeBlanc was killed on St. Joseph Street because it was my first homicide. So that's why I remember him. Unfortunately with the homicides that I did in that community, never solved any of them.

REPORTER: Police say that Leblanc died of multiple stab wounds. His friends kicked in the door of his apartment after failing to reach him by phone. They discovered bloody footprints in the hallway of the apartment, leading to a window facing on an alley.

DAVID: Sandy was stabbed at least 70 or 80 times, which is something that a couple of more of the homicides I did in that community, seemed to be a common theme. Killed violently and with an awful lot of stabbing.

JUSTIN: Do you remember the conversation would have been immediately kind of after you got in there? Whether, obviously it told you a fair bit about what type of murder it was

DAVID: Just that it was overkill. Quotation marks, Overkill, quotation marks. Holy moly. That's an awful lot of stabbing. I mean, that's -- that would jump right out at you. The same as with heterosexual murders. Usually that means -- that's personal. It means that somebody's had a relationship with a boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife. It's usually overkill. Like, random murders do not take 80 stab wounds. Random murders are one or two stabs and you run away. So to me it was, it was personal.

[Music]

JUSTIN: Can you think of other cases you dealt with that were overkill?

DAVID: Not outside the gay community. I always, always used to say “It's overkill in the gay community when they kill each other.” That was a common thread with my five years in the homicide squad.

JUSTIN: It's interesting when you say they kill each other.

DAVID: Yeah. Well, what do you mean?

JUSTIN: Well I mean, in the cases that you dealt with was it usually either someone who was openly gay or in the closet or whatever, killing another gay person?

DAVID: Well, all our suspects in the gay community would have been gay.

[Music]

JUSTIN: This is tough. I've looked at dozens of murders over decades in the queer community. And in some of 'these cases, where the killer was caught, yes, he was gay. But in many others - the killer wasn't. He was straight. And homophobic. Sometimes it was a robbery. Sometimes it was a hate crime. Sometimes the victim made a pass and that person blew up.

So what can I say about these unsolved cases? I still don't know if they were the work of a serial killer. But it strikes me that when police were looking for connections, the victim's sexual orientation told them all they needed to know.

DAVID: I'm pretty sure our superintendent said look I'm going to give you a number of a fellow called George Hislop, because quite honestly I never heard of the guy until this particular homicide. Said “You're going to need his help or you're not going to get anywhere investigating this.”

JUSTIN: George Hislop, the unofficial mayor of gay Toronto.

DAVID: We took him out to lunch and told him we would like him to take us around to three or four the clubs so that we could you know investigate this and he was great. He was great and he had such respect in that community that we were treated really, really good. I'm still a little kind of nervous going to places like that. You know, we were ignorant in those days so I wouldn't eat anything or have a drink or anything like that. I remember George's laugh and say “You know we don't poison the food here, poison the drinks, but…” you know I was skittish with that. George Hislop was invaluable to us. He gave us access to the nightclubs that we wouldn't have been welcomed to at all investigating the suspects that we had. Because of the bathhouse raids and what have you, the police were not that welcome at the time and we're the author of our misfortune I guess as far as talking about the way the uniform guys treated them.

[Music]

JUSTIN: The cops being the author of their own misfortunate feels like a bit of an understatement. And I'm, again, torn. Here's David saying, “Hey, we did our best.” But also he was afraid to even eat or drink in a gay bar. At the same time, he had the good sense to work alongside someone in the community itself. I think David is as conflicted as I am.

DAVID: I'll confess now, society was homophobic. I mean we made fun of the people. We've changed the systemic racism, homophobia. In the ‘60s and ‘70s it was there, but we we crossed our T's and dotted our I's as far as trying to solve any of the homicides we had. Because I mean our attitude was pristine. So there was no homophobic attitude in the homicide squad.

JUSTIN: Let me ask you this. You kind of admitted that even going to these clubs, like, this is pretty foreign to you.

DAVID: Oh absolutely. Like I said I wouldn't eat or drink there.

JUSTIN: So it's fair to say that there might be some -- there's bias there, even if not homophobia, it may be a lack of knowledge, a lack of familiarity?

DAVID: Back then yes.

JUSTIN: It's funny because you're kind of saying police back then weren't homophobic. But you're kind of admitting that you kind of were.

DAVID: Well I'm admitting that the relations -- well I shouldn't say the police were homophobic. I'm saying that the relationship between the uniform and the gay community back then was very, very strained. Very strained. Who am I to say that somebody is homophobic?

JUSTIN: Yeah. You know you're saying you know we had four, five, six unsolved homosexual murders and a lot of them look the same. Right. A lot of them were stabbings.

DAVID: Yeah and violent and numerous stab wounds.

JUSTIN: Did the phrase serial killer come up?

DAVID: No, no. I know where you're going with this with McArthur but no it didn't. I don't know if McArthur was interviewed by me because I don't have access to my memo books. I lost them in a flood.

[Music]

JUSTIN: So what are the chances that police actually did come across Bruce McArthur in the 1970s? I know that McArthur worked not far from the St Charles tavern where many of the victims were last seen. But there's something else that might tell me about McArthur's past. In 2001, Bruce McArthur pleaded guilty to attacking a male sex worker with a lead pipe. The court ordered a psychiatric evaluation. It's a really troubling read, knowing what he's done. But, back then, the assessment concluded he was not a danger to anyone. That stress led to the assault.

The report has a summary of what McArthur said about himself. McArthur was born in a small-town Ontario. After graduating high school, he went to business college about an hour north of Toronto. McArthur knew at a young age he was attracted to other boys, but quote "chose to ignore these thoughts and feelings."

[Music]

JUSTIN: Then, in 1974, He marries his high school girlfriend. The report confirms he worked for the department store Eaton's for four-and-a-half years, before being laid off. I do know that by 1979 he and his then wife settled down in a suburb an hour outside the city. McArthur started working as a sock and underwear salesman. But there's something else in this report.

[Music]

JUSTIN: Quote, "The subject began practising gay sex." When he was forty years old. So Bruce McArthur said the first time he had sex with a man was in 1991, more than a decade after these murders took place. Prior to that, McArthur claims he was firmly in the closet. Is it possible that McArthur lied to this psychiatrist? Absolutely. David is as curious about all of this as I am.

DAVID: If forensic had stored the evidence, especially that one about Sandy, all they would have to do, if, it's a big if, if we've got that box containing the blood, it would be so easy to because we've got a McArthur's DNA. It would be easy to solve that. It would be easy to link it to him.

JUSTIN: David says he hasn't heard from Stacy Gallant. He has no idea if the Toronto Police cold case team is using the DNA he collected back then, or if it's even still good. But he'd sure like to know.

DAVID: And whether that guy was McArthur, who would be 26 at the time, because you don't start killing at 66.

[Music]

DAVID: You'd start killing when you're in your late teens or early 20s. Social scientists will tell you that, police will tell you that, common sense would tell you that. You just don't start killing when you're an old man.

[Music]

DAVID: Maybe he'll just open up. You know confession is good for the soul. Maybe he'll open up and they might -- you know might answer some of the questions we have.

[Music]

JUSTIN: Coming up on The Village.

JO-ANN: Like, right away I thought “He could have murdered Sandy.” Right away I thought that.

JUSTIN: He'd been stabbed a hundred times from head to toe. Someone asked “ow did you get home in those bloody clothes?”

JOHN WEBER: It really bothered me that he was killed the way he was. Nobody deserves that.

DARLENE: And they said “It's Bruce.” And I went “Bruce, Bruce.” He goes “The gardener.” I went “shut up.”

[Music]

JUSTIN: The Village is written and produced by me, Justin Ling, Jennifer Fowler and Erin Byrnes. Cesil Fernandes and Mitch Stuart are our audio producers and Sarah Claydon is our Digital Producer. Additional production on this episode by David McDougall. Tanya Springer is the senior producer of CBC Podcasts and our executive producer is Arif Noorani. We'd love to know what you think of The Village. If you can, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

[Music]

[Music]

JUSTIN: Uncover The Village is a CBC Podcast. Another show we think you might like is “The Shadows”, a fiction series about the anatomy of a relationship by award-winning audio artist, Kaitlin Prest, of The Heart. Subscribe wherever you get The Village, or visit cbc.ca/theshadows.

ANNOUNCER: For more CBC original podcasts, go to cbc.ca/originalpodcasts.

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TRANSCRIPT: UNCOVER: THE VILLAGE - EP4

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