Crime Seen (12 page)

There were a couple of DIs whom I knew previously from when I was undercover or working frauds and they showed me the office ropes, but I got off to a slow start in my profiling business. I soon realized that an old boys’ club largely prevailed. The guys were a friendly enough bunch but offers to go for coffee, lunch, after-work drinks, or even to take a look at one of their unsolved cases were few and far between, at least initially.

I had a great deal of respect for the DIs and was confident that their dedication to do everything they possibly could to solve their cases would eventually outweigh their possible skepticism of the new “hocus-pocus” criminal profiler, and a woman at that. There were some dinosaurs with reputations for sticking solely to traditional methods of investigation, but eventually most of them came knocking on my door seeking input on their unsolved cases. I was happy when any of them did, even knowing that they likely were acting out of desperation or because the boss told them to. I know that at least one DI never did divulge to his co-workers that he had come to me to have a look at his unsolved homicide case and share my thoughts on it.

I wasn’t in the profiling saddle too long when I got a chance to compete for a DI position in CIB and was successful. Word got back to me that some of the guys were worried that because I was now a commissioned officer I would want to buy a “CIB ring” to signify my promotion to their rank. I was told wearing the ring was a very big deal to these guys and that, unofficially, the right to wear one was reserved for only those DIs that got a murder conviction in one of their cases. I thanked my insider for the whisper in my ear and at the next staff meeting set the guys straight that the only jewellery I was interested in having on my finger was a wedding ring. I also took the opportunity to bring up an issue of my own.

I’d been given a pager when I arrived in CIB and all the pager numbers in the office were sequential. I was getting regular late-night pages by a sultry-voiced young woman leaving messages about what a great time she’d had that evening. Given the commentary on body parts that obviously had nothing to do with me, the messages were clearly meant for one of my colleagues. She never left a number so I couldn’t call her back and set her straight. In the meeting I told the guys that I was proud to work in CIB, and particularly proud of the “work” of whomever these pages were intended for, but asked that they please ensure in future that they give out their correct pager number. The boys had a laugh, the pages stopped and from that moment on the boys seemed to accept me into their fold, even without the ring.

The eventual success of my burgeoning profiling business hinged on the overt support of my CIB colleagues and senior detectives from other police agencies, particularly the Toronto Police Service, which had been using the services of FBI profilers for years. Being asked to speak at their seminars and conferences was a great asset in introducing me and my services to police across Ontario. It also helped when my involvement in their cases was mentioned in the media.

After the release of
The Silence of the Lambs
movie and its five Academy Award wins, there was overwhelming public interest in criminal profilers and a television and movie industry anxious to exploit the interest and excitement. Since I was one of only two profilers in Canada, there were a significant number of media requests for interviews and to appear on radio and TV talk shows. It was all good for my business and my ego until I got burned on an arson case—if you’ll pardon my choice of words.

A serial arsonist targeting vacant and abandoned commercial buildings was on the loose and the fires were increasing in frequency as was the likelihood of someone soon getting hurt or worse. I got a call from a local newspaper reporter and was asked to comment on the investigation. I made it clear that I was not involved in the investigation but thought making some general comments on arsonist behaviours would be okay. I was wrong. The next morning the newspaper ran the story as though I had been commenting directly on the case, what the arsonist’s motive was and what his profile characteristics would be. I knew the investigators would be really annoyed and rightfully so. I called the detective in charge right away and apologized for my naiveté and said I hoped my comments had not been detrimental to his investigation. He was good about it, said the reporter was a “slime” and told me not to worry about it. My next call was to the journalist to share my displeasure. He couldn’t have cared less. Lesson learned.

Ron MacKay, my fellow Canadian profiler, drove down from Ottawa to meet with me shortly after I got back from Quantico. I liked his “tell it like it is” style and he and I became fast friends. Other than our both being in the same business and sharing a fondness for a cold Molson Canadian, we had little in common. There was truly a generation of difference between us. I was just five years old when Ron joined the RCMP in 1961. He was from Saskatchewan and all of his police postings were in British Columbia until he got the Ottawa profiling position. Most of his career had been spent working on violent crimes, including an investigative review of the 1985 Air India bombing.

In the early days we worked on almost all of our cases together. Ron always opted to look at the crime-scene photographs first and I preferred to hear or read about who the victim was and the details of the crime first and then go through the photographs. Ron would methodically work through the details of a case in chronological order, whereas I was more comfortable working backwards from the commission of the crime. Ron and I would independently reach the same conclusions in different ways, and sometimes for different reasons, which boosted our confidence in the opinions we were providing to police. We agreed that we made great partners.

I knew I would want Ron’s assistance when I was asked to do an equivocal death analysis on a case brought to me by CIB DI Mike Coughlin. Mike and I had worked together in Anti-Rackets Branch and knew each other well. His case concerned the death of a young male university student initially found unconscious at the bottom of a dormitory stairwell. It appeared he had fallen from the uppermost level of the staircase. He died a short time later in hospital from severe head injuries. Mike told me the teen was the nephew of a retired OPP officer, John, a former colleague who I was still friends with.

John and his family felt strongly that the death was a homicide. They were devastated not only by their loss but also by the decision of the local police to close the investigation with a finding of suicide. The OPP had been brought in for a coroner’s inquest, a legal inquiry into the medical cause and circumstances of a death.

I reviewed all the case material and prepared a preliminary analysis and opinion. Ron and I were going to a serial murder conference in Windsor the following weekend to co-present with our FBI instructor, Roy Hazelwood, so it was a timely opportunity for me to bring both Ron and Roy in on the case too and get a triple check of my opinion. Since I knew John, I also wanted to make sure my analysis would not appear to be biased. Mike came to Windsor as well and we all met in Roy’s hotel room one night for more than six hours going over the file material. At the end of the consultation we all had the same opinion as to the manner of death.

Given Roy’s pre-existing court-qualified expertise and credibility, it was agreed that he should be the behavioural expert witness to present the equivocal death analysis results at the inquest. Roy returned to Canada a few weeks later, and Ron, Roy and I holed up again in a hotel room, this time for three days, preparing Roy for his inquest testimony. We painstakingly reviewed every detail in the four-hundred-page case file, including police and forensic reports, photographs and witness statements from family, friends and fellow students at the university regarding the young man’s behaviour prior to his death.

No one residing in the area of the stairwell heard anything unusual the night of the incident. The student was described by some to be a loner, introverted, moody and with few close friends. There was information that he had been bullied and harassed by several students. He seemed to have had an interest in another female student, but nothing had come of it. His grades had been steadily dropping and he had recently lost a scholarship.

The police also had forensic evidence from the stairwell: the glasses worn by the deceased. They were found upside down on the top-floor landing as if they had been set there. The lenses were not scratched as you might expect if they had accidentally fallen onto the concrete floor during a struggle. The three of us considered not only this and other evidence found at the scene, but also what was absent. That is, in order to be firm in our opinion as to the manner of death, we also undertook to disprove the other possible manners of death, including the possibility of staging. We listed each piece of information and evidence that we had that was and wasn’t consistent with a possible manner of death. We even went to the university site so that we could see the scene for ourselves.

Roy was convinced that the time we spent preparing him to take the stand, which he estimated at collectively about 150 hours, was far better than being less prepared and spending those same hours answering questions in the stand. He was right. On the stand, Roy gave a thorough and complete overview of his analysis and findings in just three hours. It was the first time such an analysis was presented in a civil court proceeding in Canada. John represented his nephew’s family in the proceedings and had only a few questions for Roy.

When I came into the inquest room to watch Roy testify, I saw and spoke to John only briefly. By that time he was aware of my involvement in helping to prepare Roy to be a witness. We said hello, I expressed my condolences, he accepted them and that was it. It was uncomfortable to say the least.

In the end, the five-person jury found that the manner of death was consistent with ours and that the young man had taken his own life. Sadly, John and I never spoke again.

NOT AN ENEMY IN THE WORLD

“Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions.”

—Agatha Christie,
And Then There Were None

IN APRIL
1992
I RECEIVED A CALL
from DI Jim Hutchinson asking for my help with a homicide case he was working in Caledon. Hutch and I had known one another for a number of years, having met when I did some undercover projects for him when he was a corporal in the London Drug Enforcement Section. When I’d first got back from Quantico, Hutch and I had chatted in the office about my training and the types of cases that were appropriate for “unknown offender profiling.” He was anxious for me to take a look at this case as soon as I could. Hutch was working it jointly with the Toronto Homicide Squad, and asked that I meet him the next day at the scene of the crime.

An hour’s drive north of Toronto, Caledon is a predominantly rural area, boasting beautiful lakeside homes, sprawling country estates and quaint hobby farms. The property owned by Ian and Nancy Blackburn was just off a main regional highway on a quiet side road with farm fields and pockets of forests all around.

The Blackburns owned an upscale home on a quiet residential street in downtown Toronto, but their Caledon property consisted of a small unpretentious white clapboard house built overtop an original log building with a wraparound porch. It was tucked in a short distance from the road amongst a small grove of maple, elm and pine trees and an adjacent apple orchard. An unusual octagon-shaped barn, built in 1890, was situated a few hundred metres atop a small knoll overlooking the farmhouse. There was no grand gated entrance with electronic entry at this farm property, just a simple wooden gate secured with a length of chain and a padlock.

Ian Blackburn’s sister, Susan, and her husband, Orville Osbourne, also owned a home in Toronto as well as the property next door in Caledon. These two fifty-acre properties were willed to them by their father so they and their families could enjoy their own weekend retreats.