Crime Seen (20 page)

Jen liked to remember the funny stories, but there was another side to her uncle. As Rusty grew older, his life started to spiral downward. He was plagued with mental health problems and was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia and spent time in a hospital. His heavy drinking only exacerbated his illness.

Jen joined the US Armed Forces when she was nineteen and moved away. She heard through her family that Rusty got married and then divorced, was living by himself in a small apartment and barely surviving on his disability pension. He had associations with a local motorcycle gang, was abusing drugs as well as alcohol and had a criminal record.

Rusty was thirty-six when his mother died in the spring of 1992. A short time later he received a message that he was not included in her will, although it wasn’t true—his mother had actually arranged for him to receive a monthly allotment managed by his sister and brother. Family members tried to notify Rusty, but he’d dropped out of sight, as he was often prone to do. It wasn’t till more than a year later, in June 1993, that Rusty’s social services caseworker officially reported him missing, advising that his mail was unclaimed and his social assistance cheques had not been cashed.

Jen’s family didn’t know what had happened to Rusty. “We didn’t know if he was avoiding us or if perhaps because of some of his associations and involvement in criminal behaviour he might have been killed. We didn’t know where to look. We felt so helpless.”

In 2005, after a difficult marriage breakup, Jen was back living in the Niagara area, a single mother with two young children. She saw first-hand how hard it was for her mother to have a brother missing, and for the whole family not to know whether Rusty was dead or alive. Jen searched hundreds of American Internet sites and missing persons’ directories but found nothing. Some sites contacted her with offers of assistance, in some cases asking as much as a thousand dollars. Desperate to find answers for her family, Jen ended up being taken in by one—she was determined not to let it happen again.

In December 2005, Jen placed a short message about her uncle on the “I Care” message board, an interactive site for posting and commenting on cases relating to missing and unidentified persons, as well as unsolved homicides.
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Using the alias “Sidhfaerie,” Jen posted a message that her uncle was mentally ill, had red hair and that he was missing a pinky finger from a childhood accident. She requested that anyone with information contact Niagara Falls police.

Kim Peters, the manager of BSS’s ViCLAS Unit, was aware of the frustrations people like Jen had when searching for their missing loved ones. He said, “The seeds of an idea started in 2005 when I was sitting in my carport one night smoking a cigar and thinking about a missing person’s case that I was working on in ViCLAS. We had a lot of information in the ViCLAS database about missing persons but we didn’t have a lot of unidentified human remains entered, especially the older ones. I decided to do some research to see how many missing persons and unidentified remains we had in Ontario. I found out there were about fifteen hundred people in Canada listed as missing on the CPIC [Canadian Police Information Centre] website but very few unidentified remains were on the system.”

Kim knew from his experience in managing the ViCLAS Unit that a centralized database of violent crimes allowed his analysts to successfully search for information and link similar crimes. The same searchable-type database for missing persons and unidentified bodies could make links as well, especially if the information previously held only by police and coroners could be made electronically available for linkage analysis by the public.

Together with Ontario’s Office of the Chief Coroner, BSS contributed staff and funding to research, develop and launch an analytical software program known as the Resolve Initiative. On May 6, 2006, the OPP announced the publicly accessible website, the first of its kind in Canada.
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Kim took on the additional responsibility of running the OPP’s newly formed Missing Persons Unidentified Bodies (MPUB) Unit which was inputting all of the data and managing the program. Police and members of the public were able to conduct inquiries relating to persons’ physical characteristics like height, weight, hair and eye colour. Search parameters included when and where they were last seen and distinctive features such as scars and tattoos. When the site went live, it had over three hundred cases entered in the system.

Media coverage of the OPP’s website launch was crucial in making the public aware of this new tool. One person who was particularly intrigued was a young Toronto resident named Jordan. He was employed in the media industry but, as a hobby, spent many hours searching for missing people on the Internet. He began to peruse the cases on the OPP site in his spare time. On several occasions Jordan contacted the MPUB Unit to pass on information he had turned up on the web. Jordan developed a reputation with those working in MPUB as a knowledgeable and reliable tipster. And there was one entry on the website that kept nagging at Jordan.

CASE
#: 20060020

DATE FOUND
: 5/15/1993

AGE (ESTIMATED)
: 35–50

GENDER
: Male

RACE
: Caucasian

HEIGHT
: 165 cm: 5 ft 4 in

WEIGHT
: 86 kg: 189 lbs

BUILD
: Heavy-set

DENTAL
: N/A

HAIR
: Blond/red hair with tight waves, short at the front longer at the back, Red;

FACIAL HAIR
: Moustache

EYES
: Blue

UNIQUE FEATURES
:

• Healed semi-circular scar on right knee approximately 13 cm long

• Missing small finger on left hand

• Metal plate in right clavicle with 6 screws

• Right thumb is short and fat

• Nicotine stains right index and middle fingers

• Tattoo of name “RUSTY” on chest

HABITS
: N/A

CLOTHING
:

• Pants, Jeans, Blue

• Socks, White, Wearing a double pair of white socks

• Shirt, T Shirt, White, Logo is a diamond shape with a skier and wording “No Guts, No Glory, from Whistler, BC”

• Belt, Brown, Silver coloured belt buckle with a picture of a bear on it

• Footwear, Running shoes, White, White with blue trim

• Sweater, White, Size Large, With brown and yellow transverse stripe across chest and arms, picture of a buffalo on upper left chest

PERSONAL EFFECTS
:

• Green “Bic” lighter

• Black comb

• Vinyl change wallet

SUMMARY
: The body of this adult male was found near a foot bridge at Rosedale Valley Road.

LOCATION FOUND
: Toronto, Ontario

POLICE SERVICE
: Toronto Police Service–51 Division

CONTACT US
:

1-877-9FIND ME (1-877-934-6363) Toll Free in

North America

[email protected]

(705) 330-4144 for local or outside of North America or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477)

Jordan knew he had seen that missing finger mentioned somewhere before. He went back and searched through the many missing person sites he had scanned in the past. He eventually made his way back to the “I Care” website and located the posting. He didn’t want to communicate with the person openly on the site, so he set about searching to identify the alias, “Sidhfaerie,” that was used in the original message. A Google search resulted in him finding a post on a US Armed Forces message board, with the same unique alias, as well as an email address.

In the early evening of February 21, 2008, Jen received Jordan’s first message about her missing uncle, not through the “I Care” site, but directly to her email address. It read, “Hello. I’m not sure if I’m emailing the correct person or not so forgive me if this sounds a little strange. Are you “Sidhfaerie” from the icaremissing website?” Jen sent back, “Yes, I am Sidhfaerie … in search of Russell Pensyl from Lockport, NY.”

Jen replied to Jordan’s anonymous email by stating that she was unsure of his intentions and had no money to pay for information. She told him that she was the missing man’s niece and wasn’t even sure if her uncle would want to be found or even if he was still alive.

Jordan told her he understood her apprehension and was not interested in any payment for information. He explained how he’d discovered details of a man that was missing a pinky finger and that they matched the description of her uncle. He ended his message with, “I understand your trust concerns. Here I am a stranger, emailing you out of the blue and it looks weird. I really just want to help.”

The two corresponded back and forth over the next several hours. With each piece of additional information she sent him, Jordan realized that he was getting closer and closer to confirming the sad reality that this family’s missing relative died in Toronto almost seventeen years earlier. Jen wanted to know where Jordan lived. He told her and said he would have a detective contact her by email.

The next morning an officer contacted Jen and directed her to the MPUB website. She was devastated with what she found but was ultimately grateful to Jordan for helping them find their loved one.

Ident was able to obtain fingerprints from the US and use them to positively confirm the dead man as Russell Pensyl. Jen was advised that, since her uncle Rusty remained unidentified for so long, he had been buried by Toronto Social Services on February 26, 2001, in a cemetery just north of the city. Jen looked up the burial location on the Internet and wrote one last message to Jordan, “The cemetery is so beautiful, and it would be a shame to disturb his final resting place. He should stay … And I thank you again for giving me a little faith in humanity back.”

I later spoke with Jordan and he mentioned that it would have been nice if he and Jen could have met in person. I told him to leave it with me. When I talked to Jen by phone she was excited not only to accept my invitation to travel to Canada and meet Jordan and me, but also have an opportunity to visit her uncle’s grave. I chose a restaurant for the three of us to meet for lunch in the north end of Toronto. The cemetery was just down the street.

Jen and I arrived first and were both laughing at one of her childhood stories of her uncle when Jordan arrived. He and Jen hugged one another like old friends. For the next few hours they shared stories about each other’s families and reminisced about the night they met online. They both shared with me the struggles that families and friends have in trying to locate loved ones and the need for better systems and centralized databases to assist in their searches. They were pleased to hear what I could tell them on the progress of the federal government’s initiative to establish a national missing persons’ and unidentified remains database.

After lunch, Jen and Jordan said goodbye with promises to stay in touch. I had Jen follow me in her car to the cemetery and we located the area in which her uncle was buried. She became quite emotional and told me that she would like to spend some time alone. I told her I understood and gave her a small glass replica of a Canadian Inuit inukshuk as a gift to thank her for travelling to Canada and agreeing to meet with Jordan and me. On hearing that the stacked rocks were considered a symbol of hope and friendship, she said she would always keep it as a symbol of what Canadians did for her family.

BROKEN DREAMS

Not everyone knows how it feels to have your whole world ripped out from under you in less than a day. No hugs, no “see you later,” no goodbyes, just a part of my heart ripped out … My sister was the only person I had to talk to, someone that felt what I felt, cried when I cried, laughed when I laughed, and now I feel alone, like the world is playing a sick trick on me …

—From the victim impact statement of thirteen-year-old Daryn Stafford, brother of Tori Stafford

I ARRIVED IN WOODSTOCK
on the evening of May 21, 2009, shortly after eleven o’clock. The town of 38,000 is about 150 kilometres west of Toronto in the heart of dairy farming country. Many of its blue-collar residents work at area automotive and supply companies. Like most towns’ streets, there were lots of changeable-letter-board signs outside churches, stores and restaurants. But instead of inspirational gospel quotes, sale prices or special dinner features, for the last six weeks the signs had advertised nothing but hope for the safety of a little girl. The signs read, “Tori we love you,” “Tori we are praying for you,” and “Tori please come home safe.” The evening I arrived in town the signs had all been changed again. They now expressed sorrow and support for the family of a little eight-year-old girl named Victoria (“Tori”) Elizabeth Marie Stafford, now believed to be dead.

I was so taken with the displays that I didn’t go straight to the hotel that CIB DI Bill Renton and other OPP detectives had filled to capacity over the last six weeks. Instead I felt compelled to drive around town to look at more of the signs. Their messages demonstrated such profound community solidarity. It appeared as though the whole town was in mourning. When I finally checked in to the hotel, I left a message for Bill to meet me for breakfast the next morning.