Uncover - S3 "The Village" E3: Meet Me Under The Clock

Episode Date: April 8, 2019

The Village, Episode 3 - A string of unsolved murders in the 1970s share a disturbing pattern. A retired homicide detective has regrets about not solving one case: he had evidence and a sketch. But a victim's sister says police had blind spots when the victims were gay. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/uncover/uncover-season-3-the-villiage-transcripts-listen-1.5128216

The music teacher says it was consensual sex. His former students say it was rape. He had sex with me once in the classroom, in a closet. Something happened to me too. I thought he was our little predator. Why wasn't he stopped? These women seek answers and justice. I'm Julie Ireton, host of The Banned Teacher.

It's available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. Just that somebody could be this diabolical. This is a CBC Podcast. Previously on The Village. Everybody in the room was saying, is there a serial killer and was he in the room with us? This morning at approximately 10.25am, police arrested 66-year-old Bruce MacArthur. It was the worst thing I've ever heard in my life. It's a serial killer, alleged serial killer.

We knew that people were missing and we knew that we didn't have the right answers but nobody was coming to us with anything. Our investigative team are currently reviewing 15 homicide cold cases from 1975 to 1997. We are tracing his whereabouts as far back as we can go essentially. My name is Justin Ling. This is Uncover The Village. Hi, how's it going? I'm Justin.

Oh, you're waiting for Don. Sure. I'm not sure who I'm waiting for, but that sounds about right. It's a few months after the Toronto Police announcement. Cops have said they're going back to 1975 to review a string of unsolved murders and open missing persons cases. All to see if Bruce MacArthur's fingerprints show up. I figure, if Toronto police are dusting off a bunch of cold case murders, so will

I. You're Justin. I am, yeah. How's it going? Good, how are you? That's what brings me here, to Canada's LGBTQ2 plus archives. They have things set up for you upstairs already, so you're going to want to listen to some tapes and so on. The archives are housed in a square three-story yellow brick building just outside the village.

It's the largest independent queer archive in the world. So I'll let you get at it then. Perfect, thanks so much. It's run by a dedicated team of volunteers who have been painstakingly cataloguing and digitizing the queer history of the entire country. There's, you know, a hundred different bankers' boxes and sort of file folders all kind of piled up halfway to the ceiling all across the room. These are tapes, magazines, all mostly from the 70s and 80s,

compiling gay newspapers, coverage of the gay community, oral histories of people from the community. I'm particularly interested in the boxes and boxes of notes and newspaper clippings. They're the records of The Body Politic, arguably the most important queer publication in Canadian history. The Body Politic covered arguably the most important queer publication in Canadian history. The Body Politic covered the early days of queer liberation. Everything from police repression of the community to the AIDS crisis. The paper's archives are meticulous.

Seemingly every scrap of paper that came in and out of their office. What I would like to do is find a copy of that, that edition of The Body Politic about all these murders. I spend hours in the archives, opening one box after another, sifting through these stacks of loosely categorized papers. There's headline after headline for the 1970s about murdered gay men. There are clippings from Toronto's various daily newspapers. Brutal stabbing death of Metro's 51st homicide victim is a classic case of overkill. Police admit they are stymied when investigating homosexual murders because homosexuals' witnesses are often afraid to come forward.

They may have been in the closet or simply fearful of everyone, from employers to family members, learning of their sexual lifestyle, police say. With the help of the archives, I try and add up all of the murders of queer people in Toronto. I immediately notice a spike in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but there's a three-year window between 1975 and 1978 that really jumps out. Two gay men were murdered in Toronto in 1975. Three were murdered the year after, and three the year after that. In 1978, six queer people were killed, five gay men and one transgender woman. I expect that there are many other victims, people of colour, sex workers, immigrants,

victims whose deaths were even less publicised than the ones I'm reading about. But what really hits home is just how few were solved. I count 14 murders in those years, and only six were solved. Toronto police boasted a solve rate of about 85% back then. But when it came to queer murders, they solved less than half. In other words, they were way more likely to solve a straight murder than a queer one. Problem with information. People not coming forward. I find some reporter's notes about a conversation with police

that sounds awfully familiar. It's actually funny. These look similar to the notes that I was taking when I was talking to cops. Wouldn't want to limit the investigation. Have their own theories. They won't want to share them. This is almost word for word the quotes the cops were giving me a couple years ago about the guys I now think were killed by Bruce

MacArthur. There's a box of cassettes, most of which look like they haven't been touched in years, maybe even decades. In one box, there's a tape with a handwritten note on it. It reads, In one box, there's a tape with a handwritten note on it. It reads, Interview with a friend of Hal Walkley. I recognize the name from some of the newspaper clippings, so I pop it in the tape player.

Could you tell me when you met Hal? I met Hal the summer of 1967. I stayed with him for about three months that summer. Hal, or Harold Walkley, was murdered February 18, 1975. This could be the earliest cold case Toronto police have reopened. His friend remembers police knocking at the door. And I said, is there any problem? They said, yeah, well, he was attacked.

Hal Walkley had been attacked early that morning. He'd been out the night before. His friend asks, is he all right? The cops say, no, apparently he's dead. He's dead. A reporter from The Body Politic is interviewing a friend of Hal. The two discuss Hal's job as a lecturer at the University of Toronto, his political views, how he first met Hal, even Hal's love life. Yeah, he would go to the bars fairly frequently, and also to the baths.

He would have brought home a lot of people he didn't know that well. Oh yeah, sure. They had sort of a hard time understanding the fact that Hal might pick up someone on the street, might take someone home that he didn't know. His friend says police had a hard time understanding that Hal might pick up someone off the street, or that he might take someone home from a bar that he didn't know. It's something I would see again and again. Cops investigating murders of gay men like they were total aliens.

They just couldn't wrap their heads around that foreign, strange lifestyle. It just seemed beyond them. How was the kill? Stabbed. I think five times through the back and once through the heart. Stabbed. Five times through the back and once through the heart.

I considered him one of my best friends. The day after Hal's murder, there was a tiny item in the Globe and Mail with the headline, U of T lecturer dies after being stabbed. He was pronounced dead on arrival at 4.15 a.m. There's an obituary a few pages after. It reads, on February 18. That's the whole obituary. Nothing about his career as a professor or the students he inspired. Nothing about his friends or other family. or the students he inspired.

Nothing about his friends or other family. A month later, police would offer a $2,000 reward for information on his murder. Police told the Globe and Mail that his apartment was ransacked and that, quote, Mr. Walkley returned to his home with a man at 2 a.m. after spending the evening in a Yonge Street tavern. Months go by. The reward goes uncollected.

I imagine at the time, Hal's murder just looked like a one-off. Maybe a robbery gone wrong. An unsettling mystery. But police would soon have to give Hal Walkley's homicide a second look. Walkley had been stabbed several times, but no weapon has ever been found. A number of credit cards were also stolen. This is a CBC News story from 1977, two years after Hal Walkley's death. Walkley was a history teacher. He was involved in community organizations and was highly regarded by his neighbours.

The second murder occurred nearly a year later and also involved a Yonge Street gay bar. Two more gay men had been murdered. Suddenly there appeared to be a pattern. James Kennedy, a 49 year old civil servant, was last seen at the bar September 19th, 1976. Kennedy's nude body was found the following day. He had been beaten and a towel was knotted around his neck. Credit cards were missing from his wallet. The third killing took place January 22nd this year

in this apartment building on Erskine Avenue in the Young Eglinton area. Brian Latake was last seen at the same bar where it's believed James Kennedy met his killer. The 24-year-old was found tied to his bed. His head was badly beaten. He was lying in a pool of blood. Police say the investigation into the three killings is virtually at a standstill because of a lack of information. lack of information. Hal Walkley, James Kennedy, Brian Latake. Three years, three exceptionally violent murders.

Three murdered men had all come here, to the gay bars on the Yonge Street Strip. The Yonge Street Strip was a seedy drag in Toronto's downtown. It included a couple of beer halls that were known meeting places for gay men. This is years before the village became an established neighbourhood just a few blocks over on Church Street. They each met someone, and that person turned out to be a vicious killer. Why is it that you're having so much trouble getting information on these three killings? 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. That's Detective Sergeant Bernard Nadeau.

In the late 1970s, he ran the homicide squad for the Metropolitan Toronto Police. It's been more than 40 years since these murders. Unfortunately, many of the officers have died. Others aren't keen to talk about the killings, or say they simply don't remember. Hello? Hello, Bernard? I'm in. Bernard Nadeau does remember.

Bernard? Yeah, Bernie. Oh, Bernie. Yes, sorry. Yeah, how's it doing? Bernard lives in a two-bedroom apartment in a senior's residence about an hour's drive north of Toronto. That's where I meet him. It's nice out here. I've never been up to Bolton. I never thought I'd live in a place like this, but it's not bad.

I spot a birthday card on the table. He's about to turn 88. He's sitting in a blue recliner while we talk, a cane in his hands. There's not many of you guys still around. They don't look after themselves the way I do. Bernard has been retired for years, but he's never stopped being a cop. His whole apartment is covered in police memorabilia, awards, and souvenirs from his time on the force. He even still looks like a cop.

from his time on the force. He even still looks like a cop. He's got neatly trimmed white hair, a plaid shirt on rolled up to his forearms, and he's got a thick watch on his left wrist. What year did you retire? 52. 92. That's not that old.

I'd been retired almost as long as I was a policeman. Since he left the force, Bernard has avoided the media, just like lots of cops I know. But now, he feels it's finally time to talk about one murder he remembers very well. Brian Latake, the 24-year-old accountant who was beaten, strangled, and stabbed to death in his apartment. And Latake, I remember more than the rest of them because it's unsolved and there were some significant clues there that should have been successfully cleared up and never was. Brian Latake had just moved to Toronto from Winnipeg. He came to work in finance at the Toronto Dominion Bank. He was just a young guy embarking on a new life in a new city.

So tell me about that case. I mean, do you remember first hearing the name Brian Latake? Yeah, he lived on Erskine Avenue, which is near Mount Pleasant and Eglinton. And he had gone to the St. Charles Tavern that night and picked somebody up there and then drove them home. What do you remember about the St. Charles Tavern? Well, it was a homosexual tavern. The St. Charles was hard to miss. It was a two-story grey slab of a building

with its name written in red cursive font just above the doors. Above that was a tower with a timepiece at the top, which made it the tallest building on the block. In the 1970s, Meet Me Under the Clock was gay code for, hey, let's grab a drink at the St. Charles. But before it became a prime meeting spot for the gay community, the St. Charles was a rough and tumble place. Drug dealers, thieves, and bikers. Even as it became basically the village's neighborhood pub, it was still rough around the edges. It's also the last place anyone recalls seeing Brian Latake alive. He didn't show up for work and the police were called

and it was found that he was dead in this room. It appeared that whoever he brought home had tried to strangle him because there was ligature marks on his neck and on his, if I remember correctly, his wrists and his feet. Ligature marks on his neck, just like Andrew Kinsman and Selim Esen.

But when we got there, there was no rope or anything marks on his neck, just like Andrew Kinsman and Slee Messon. But when we got there, there was no rope or anything or nothing to indicate he was other than the ligature marks. What does that tell you? Why would someone... Somebody tied him up. There were also plenty of similarities to Hal Walkley's murder. But in this case, police had leads. I think he had a Seiko watch, which was stolen.

We had a serial number of that, which we posted. And had it ever been brought in for repairs, we would have been notified. And his car was stolen as well, which had been parked outside in the parking lot in the back. Somebody was seen taking the television set. outside in the parking lot in the back. Somebody was seen taking the television set. He was seen going down the elevator carrying the television set. And then the car was recovered shortly after, a very short distance away, which would indicate the suspect lived probably very close by.

Neighbors remember seeing someone carrying a TV into the elevator of Brian Latake's building. Bernard had an artist create a sketch of the man. So I spent a lot of my time in the St. Charles Tavern after that trying to spot somebody that looked like that and talking to a lot of people that might have seen him there that night. But we were not too successful in getting him identified. The sketch is slightly alien. He's got a thin mustache, a wide crooked smile, and high cheekbones.

His hair rises directly upwards, giving the impression of a dark flame at the head of a match. I stare at the sketch for a bit. Could it be Bruce MacArthur? Probably not. He's too skinny for one. Even if I squint, it's just not his face. I keep reading. Police say that he was East or West Indian. Bernard thinks he may have been Filipino. Between 25 and 27 years old.

5'9", with, quote, thin features and medium brown complexion. So, not Bruce MacArthur. Does that mean MacArthur isn't responsible for this killing? Or did police identify the wrong suspect? Either way, it does feel like someone would recognize this guy if he ever walked into the St. Charles Tavern again. So, what happened here? if he ever walked into the St. Charles Tavern again.

So what happened here? Most of the homosexual murders, you could identify that it was a homosexual murder from the brutality, the overkill. If they were stabbed, they weren't stabbed once, it might be a hundred times. And that was one of the things that made it pretty sure it was a homosexual murder. Tell me about that. I mean, is that particular to homosexual murders? Yes, it was to me.

So you'd pretty well know from that with the number of times this is a homosexual murder. And it turned out usually you were right because the history of the person would come up during the investigation. Oh, so you would go into some of these rooms and look at the scene and say, yeah, I think this is a homosexual killing. No, you'd think, I think it is. Right, so I think it is, and then you'd go and confirm that. But you'd almost know just by looking at the crime scene.

Yeah. Huh? Yeah. What did that say to you? Well, we talked to a lot of psychiatrists during these investigations, and the psychiatrist seemed to pretty well indicate that the person had not come to terms with their sexual problems and went along with it and then became so angry that this is what occurred.

But whether that's true or not, I don't know. But that came up time and again. Overkill. It's a word I would hear over and over again. It means using more force than what's necessary to kill someone. And there is evidence that the murders of queer people are unusually violent. But defining overkill as a murder by someone

who hasn't come to terms with their sexual problems, that feels too simplistic. Do you think that maybe you had your own blinders on? I mean, looking back, would you have dealt with those cases differently? I might have looked at them differently, but I wanted them the worst way to solve it. I hated having unsolved cases. It still bothers me every one I had.

But if you talked to a member of the public at that time, it would not be unusual to hear them say, well, he was only homosexual anyway, which is wrong. But I'd consider it wrong even then. It's hard for me to accept that there were no cultural blind spots that may have hampered the investigation. But it's not hard to believe that Bernard really did try and solve Brian Latake's murder. Latake, with his watch, we had the serial number, and we were hoping that would be pawned.

We had the pawn squad that if he had pawned it, we would have been notified right away. And it never showed up. At the same time, the odds may have been stacked against the cops from the beginning. I remind Bernard what he told the CBC back in 1978. It's the reluctance of the people in the gay community, fear of exposure to their families, their friends. Was that a big thing? You think people, they didn't want their boss, their family to know? I think that's true.

How much harder did that make it? It makes it very difficult. Most of them would not disclose to anybody that they were homosexual, and they didn't trust the police and thought he probably told my boss or told my wife or my mother, so we weren't trusted.

I had no dislike for them. They were their own community. I didn't want to be part of that community, but it was their way of life and I wasn't going to change them no matter what my feelings were. And you couldn't change them. At that time everybody thought it was an acquired way of life. We don't think that way now. It's fair to say maybe you didn't understand the community. Is that fair?

Yeah, that's right. Absolutely right. We're going to get into this a lot more later, but I should say that there were good reasons why the community didn't trust police. Lots and lots of good reasons. A big one? Many queer people were afraid of taking the stand at trial. Being outed could ruin your life.

You could be evicted. You could be fired. You could even be disowned by your family. And I think the reason that Latake stands out in my mind so much is I thought for sure we were going to solve that case. And I'm still disappointed that it's not solved. And every time I hear of another one, I try to connect it. So you must have seen the news when Bruce MacArthur was arrested.

Yes. And what did you think when you saw that? I thought Lataki right away. And then I thought, no, the circumstances seem a little different than Latake, but still in your mind. Because if I hung around the St. Charles Tavern during these investigations, I'm sure I would have seen him. Bruce MacArthur was 66 years old when he was arrested. In 2010, when he killed Skanda, he was 58. Some criminologists say it's very unlikely he would have started killing that late in life.

So was a 25-year-old Bruce MacArthur hanging out at the St. Charles Tavern the night Brian Latake was killed? We didn't think too much of serial killers at that time. I think today we think more along that line from what has happened since. And there were serial killers then too, but I never really arrested anyone who was a serial killer as far as I know. Thanks again. We'll stay in touch.

Okay. Good talking to you. I wish I could have helped you a little more. I leave Bernard's apartment a bit conflicted. It's obvious that he wanted to solve the case, but why didn't he? Police had witnesses who could describe a likely suspect. They knew what goods were stolen from the apartment. They knew where the suspect met Brian Lutake the night of his murder. There was a reward for information. Just how did this case go unsolved? In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons,

but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. A year later, 24-year-old Duncan Robinson didn't show up to his job. A year later, 24-year-old Duncan Robinson didn't show up to his job. Robinson was found in his apartment on Vaughan Road by his sister after his employer queried why he hadn't reported for work. His sister Catherine called police,

and they later classified the murder as a homosexual killing. Hi, Justin. how are you? Very nice to meet you. Catherine Robinson is still in Toronto. I head over to her house, just north of the city's downtown, to talk about her brother. And these are a couple of friends of mine. Hi Justin. Catherine has some friends here for support during the interview.

She says talking about her brother's death 40 years later is still hard. It's still close to the bone. Her dog Alice is here too. I've had her for nine years, and she still had some pup in her when I got her. Come on in. I thought we would do it in here. We sit at one end of her dining room table as Alice sits on the floor nearby, staring at us the entire time. First off, thanks for doing this. I know it's not the most pleasant thing in the world to go and revisit, but maybe we should start at the beginning.

I mean, can you tell me a bit about growing up? We had a comfortable, I guess, middle-class family existence in London, Ontario. Kathy and Duncan were five years apart and only really became close after Duncan finished high school. And he had studied German at high school and he decided to go and spend some time in Germany. Then I went over there and we spent some time traveling around together and I'd say that's when we really became close. He met people over there and ended up in a relationship

with someone over there. But I certainly became aware when I arrived that he was in a same-sex relationship with someone else there. It seemed to be a very happy and comfortable relationship. He was still a young person at the time. He would have been, I guess, 18 or 19. At that time, you didn't know people who were in same-sex relationships.

That wasn't part of the social environment. I don't think I knew anybody who was in a gay relationship. It was completely hidden away. And considered to be quite unacceptable. I ask Kathy if she has any photos of Duncan, and she brings one out of her bedroom. She looks at that photo every day. This is a picture of him.

Oh, this is not long before he died. Great smile. And I had bought this T-shirt some flea market someplace. And he loved that T-shirt, wore it all the time but to me that captures Duncan. When Kathy tilts a framed picture of Duncan for me to see I finally get a grasp of who her brother was. In the photo he's got rosy cheeks and a huge head of curly hair. His eyes are almost closed but his mouth is wide open. It looks like he's in the middle of a big laugh. Oh, that brings me a lot of joy because he was happy. We were having a good

time together. He was enjoying life. And, you know, he's somebody who loved to laugh and that captures him. Kathy and Duncan bumped across Europe on the cheap. Eventually, she went back to Canada and Duncan went back to Frankfurt. But when his work permit wasn't renewed, he was forced to come home as well, even if he didn't want to. Living in a city at the time, Toronto, where one really couldn't live as an openly gay person. That wasn't something that happened. So in a sense when he came back from Germany he had to go back in the closet? Yes, he was, he had a double life and I think that became one of the things that he struggled with. At the time that was very common. People didn't know that someone else was gay but

there was a community. It was the mid-1970s, and Toronto's gay community was just beginning to make itself known. So do you get a sense of how he was dealing with that? I mean, obviously he was going to school, and for everyone's purpose he was straight, but was he going to bars at night? Yeah, that was the social life. One of those bars was the St. Charles Tavern, the same bar that connected several of the other victims,

the same bar that Bernard Nadeau visited to find witnesses. Friends remember that Duncan was a bit of a bar fly, which isn't unusual. For the gay community, especially in the 1970s, bars were often the only places where you could be yourself. Duncan seemed to have this social life outside of our little world, and that was one thing that I remember sort of being a little envious of him. Bill Sixay went to school with Duncan at the University of Toronto. They studied at Victoria College, a liberal arts wing of the university. He was also somebody who, he had a good stereo back in those days and had a

good record collection. He had a strange taste in music, for us anyway. He was an early adopter of disco I think and so he would have some disco music that we played. It was one song, Honey Bee Come Sting Me was sort of one of the repeated lyrics and we used to get a big kick out of that one. You're my honey bee, you're my honey bee, come out and sting me, you're love is sweet as can be It was also Elton John time and Yellow Brick Road. We'd often play that really loud in Duncan's room and we'd all be singing. Yellow Brick Road Duncan was a bit older than the rest of us.

He was a fan of Nana Muscuri, and we all became fans of Nana Muscuri, and these four or five of us went off at Duncan's organization and sat in the front row of Massey Hall to hear Nana Muscuri in a concert, which was really sort of strange, but we had a great time. In his first couple of years at university, Bill remembers getting an invite to go check out a Halloween parade with Duncan's friends.

And I remember some of the older guys in the residence on Halloween coming saying, let's go to the gay parade. And we had no idea what that was about. So we all took off over to Yonge Street. And I remember getting there and seeing the sidewalks were just packed with people close to the St. Charles there. You know, what the heck's going on? The traffic was still going up and down Yonge Street, and it was slow and bumper to bumper.

And then every once in a while, a drag queen would come out of the St. Charles and walk down the center line of Yonge Street. Going back to the 1960s, every Halloween, partygoers would flock to the St. Charles on the park side. Pre-program for the drag show. Pre-program. The short walk between the two taverns became a kind of runway for drag queens to strut their most outrageous outfits. What an audience. Thousands. It's so crowded. There's lots of action, lots to drink.

And it's just fantastic. It's really great. And it's just fantastic. It's really great. The bigger the party got, the more attention it attracted. We find some CBC footage from the early 70s. It could well have been the night Bill Sixay was there. The tape opens on an array of flashing lights.

It pans up to a well-lit sign that reads, St. Charles. It cuts to a drag queen. Huge, frizzy red hair. Bright red lipstick. She's got a white dress on with fringes that sway as she moves her arms. Picture a mid-70s Dolly Parton. She gives the jeering crowd one last look,

then whirls around and heads into the bar. There's men handing out leaflets to the crowd. Some are smiling and taking the pages. Others look sort of bemused. Others look totally skeptical, maybe even a little hostile. There's one drag queen in a checkered top, which is mostly open. She's got a Jackie Kennedy pillbox hat on.

She walks up and wraps her arm, painted nails and all, around the neck of another queen in red gingham dress. The crowd erupts. Jesus, we're dead! Not everyone is into the show. It bothers me, and I'm, you know, like, and I'm not queer. Let's put it that way, alright? It was supposed to be a party. It's a faggot!

But it had a darker side. And people would yell and scream and yell abusive things, that people were throwing eggs at them. So on Halloween, it was a big event at St. Charles. I had this gorgeous blonde wig and a silver dress. This is Michelle DuBarry, the world's oldest performing drag queen. She remembers the walk into the St. Charles on Halloween night. Well, the crowd was like thousands out on the street, and a lot of them were out there

to see the queers and yell and scream at them and all that. And I got ink thrown at me. So all I did was go home, change my dress and my wig, and came back out again. I mean, you couldn't stop me from doing what I wanted to do, ever. and came back out again. I mean, you couldn't stop me from doing what I wanted to do, ever. The police didn't even try to restrain the mob. Mostly, they stood by and watched. You know, we were taken over there as sort of an entertainment kind of thing. And to their credit, my friends and I, we were horrified by what we saw. We couldn't

believe what was going on. And we all left. We just said, let's get out of here. This isn't cool. And took off back to the residence. At the end of our second year, we had noticed that Duncan didn't seem to be doing his schoolwork, and something seemed to be going on with him, something troubling him. And his roommate from first year and I cornered him. I guess it was sort of an intervention in the common room late one night. And that was the night that Duncan came out to me. He kept saying, well, why don't you guess what's going on? And I kept saying, I'm not going to guess. And he kept saying, no, you guess. You can guess. You can figure it out.

And the more he said guess, the more I thought, oh, I know what's going on. Do you remember what he would have said in as many words? Did he actually say, you know, I'm gay? Well, it was couched for a long time. I think the words were finally spoken. I think I finally got that out of him. And I remember he did say, you know, at some point in the conversation, well, you could be too and I know I just changed the subject and we

talked about other things. It took a few years, but Bill finally managed to return the favor. I think in sometime in the spring of 1978, I finally came out to him and he said, we're going out for a drink. And we went to the St. Charles and sort of wondered why I hadn't been there before.

And I think he had given up on me at that point. I think he was surprised and shocked because, you know, it had been such a long time and I hadn't come out to him. So he had quite a surprised reaction to it. He thought you were a lost cause. Well, I may well have been, but he didn't articulate it that way. Do you remember anything kind of particular about the St. Charles? You know, we've talked to a lot of people who have kind of some vivid memories and some hazy memories of the St. Charles. Do you remember inside?

I remember walking in and there was a little sort of vestibule and there were some guys standing there sharing a joint. So my first memory is marijuana being offered a toke as I walked through the door. And, you know, it seemed a friendly way to walk into a public space. And then I just, what I remember is sort of a typical sort of 1960s, 70s beer hall. But that night when Duncan and I, you know, we finally had my conversation, we got quite drunk and I think we ended up back at his place

and I think we passed out in his bed. I don't think anything more happened. Duncan and I were never lovers. But I have that memory of being back in his place after this conversation or after this night out at the St. Charles. That was a big night for Bill. I imagine it was significant for Duncan too. It wasn't easy to come out in the 1970s.

Hell, it's still hard to come out for many queer people. But here they were, two friends who managed to break out of the confines of the closet. Just a few months after Bill and Duncan celebrated at the St. Charles, Kathy Robinson would get a call. Duncan hadn't shown up for work. I was obviously very concerned. And I called the police and I explained what had happened. And I asked them if they could come to his apartment with me.

And one of my other brothers came with me as well, picked him up on the way, and we went to Duncan's apartment. And we found that he was dead, and that it was that he had been murdered. and that it was that he had been murdered. Kathy doesn't want to talk about what she found that day in Duncan's apartment, and I can totally understand why. Newspaper reports describe the scene as gruesome.

Bill learned of his friend's death on the late night news. And I remember seeing the story of a murder in Toronto, and I think they called it a homosexual murder or of a homosexual. Today, police are continuing their investigation of this latest murder, which again has caused concern amongst the homosexual population in Metro. I remember seeing this apartment building, and I remember seeing a body being brought out of this building on a stretcher,

and I remember thinking, that building looks familiar. Neighbors reported hearing loud music in the apartment on Sunday night. That's when police think he was stabbed to death. And then I heard the name, and they were talking about William Robinson. Another neighbor believed he saw Robinson in the St. Charles Tavern on Yonge Street on Saturday night. It's a known hangout for homosexuals. And then I remembered that Duncan's name was William Duncan Robinson. He used his middle name and I thought, oh, I couldn't believe it.

With his 13th murder involving a homosexual in the past three years, so far no arrests have been made. You know, I guess there's probably no good way of finding out that somebody close to you or that you care about has died. But seeing it in that way was really kind of horrible. What happened next has stayed with Kathy for 40 years. So I was asked to go back to the police station. They asked me some of the places he socialized.

They were certainly very interested in the bars that he went to. And I remember very clearly the impression that I got from the police was, you know, really, what did you expect? You know, he was hanging around in places like that. Bill remembers the same sentiment from closer to home. I remember telling my parents. I remember at one point one of them saying, why do those people have to behave that way? The implication being that somehow because you're gay and because of the way you lead your life,

this kind of violence or something is to be expected. The stereotype was because they're out sleeping and screwing around and picking up strange people, they're living a dangerous lifestyle and it's to be expected when something like this happens. The classification of gay murder seemed to define Duncan's case, just like it defined Brian Latake's murder. When Kathy went to the police station, she remembers thinking the cops wrote off her brother's death, because he was gay.

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. And in fact, that's how the news was put out when it was put out.

And I just felt that his death was not treated with the same dignity and respect that would have been accorded to if it had been me who had been the victim. And that upset me because I felt and I feel my life should not be more valuable than someone else's who has a different sexual orientation. Kathy is still pretty guarded throughout our whole conversation. And she's pretty upfront about that. This is all still painful for her. Close to the bone, as she said. But when she talks about the cops, she gets angry. If this has been over time,

the most difficult thing for me to accept is 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. Not once. member of my family ever heard from the police again. Not once. Not once to say, look, we're still looking at this. We want you to know that this is an active investigation. We're following leads. And I find that astounding and unacceptable.

Do you have any sense of what happened in the days afterwards, or was this just sort of this mystery? Yeah, I think it's mystery. I think the proposition was that he picked somebody up at a bar and this is what happened, but I don't think anybody really knows what happened. I certainly have no idea. I remember they published a composite drawing of a suspect. And, you know, that image was sort of burned into my brain.

Witnesses saw that man leaving the St. Charles with Duncan the night of his murder. The sketch shows a thin guy. He's got long, unkept hair. The police describe it as brown and greasy. He has a scraggly goatee, a long, thin nose, and high eyebrows. The report says he's 27 to 30 years old, 6 foot 5 to 6 foot 7. He's got sloping shoulders, dirty hands. He walked in a clumsy manner and had, quote, extreme body odor. He was wearing a maroon v-neck pullover, a white t-shirt,

a bulky dark jacket, khaki work pants, tan work boots, and a blue toque with a tassel on top. Again, this guy looks nothing like Bruce MacArthur, and he's way taller than the man suspected of killing Brian Latake. So just how many killers were there preying on men in the village? In Duncan Robinson's case, police were looking for an incredibly tall guy with a very particular outfit and an outrageously bad smell. Even if it was a bizarre description, it stuck with Bill. I remember one night on one of my walks down Yonge Street, I saw a guy that I thought looked like this,

and I followed him for blocks, and I'm wondering, is it him? What do I do? Do I phone the police? Do I keep following him? And finally I convinced myself that it wasn't him, and I actually probably think it wasn't him to this day, but that was rolling around in my brain. Did you get the sense that the community was being targeted? Well, I think you always got the sense that you were being targeted. I mean, one of the fears of coming out was that somebody was just going to wallop you when they

found out or that somehow you were going to get attacked on the street or that kind of thing. And I think there was always that fear out there that violence would be done to you. That was one of the things you had to get over when you were thinking about coming out and probably still is to some degree. When all of that happened, it was like, I can't be quiet about this anymore. I had this incredible kick that said, you've got to get out there and start doing something about all of this. This injustice has to be addressed and you have to be part of working on that. So for me, it was a real turnaround and directly as a result of what I saw with Duncan's murder. The inspiration that struck Bill after Duncan's death would prove to be a powerful force. Shortly after, Bill left Toronto for Vancouver.

He would join the seminary. He knew full well that, as a gay man, he would never be ordained. So he started a fight to fix that. It took 20 years, but Bill and others won. The United Church changed its policy to allow for openly gay ministers in the 1990s. There's an absolute line between Duncan's murder and my activism and what's happened since then. And I think there's a line between Duncan's murder and some of these important changes in Canada, not just because of him. Even though he helped start that fight, Bill wasn't destined for the United Church.

He ended up turning to politics. I was the first person to be openly gay and elected at the time of my election. Right. We all claim our little piece of the historical pie. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I'm pleased to have this opportunity to speak in the debate on Bill C-393, an act to amend the criminal code. As a member of Parliament, during a debate on legislation that would increase mandatory minimum sentences for certain crimes,

Bill told the story of Duncan's murder. Almost 30 years ago this fall, a close friend of mine died as a result of a knife attack. He was stabbed almost 39 times. No one was ever charged in that crime. You know, I often think about what Duncan would have become, what kind of life he would have had. And he never had a chance to have the life that he deserved and that anybody who loved him would have wanted him to have.

He was a warm, compassionate, funny, intelligent, great person. And I miss him. It's been decades, but Kathy says certain things can trigger memories about her brother. Well, certainly recently we've heard about other killings in the gay community in Toronto, and that really brought everything back for me in a big way. I ended up with the impression that this was a chapter that was repeating itself, especially when I read in the paper that there were members of the community who had come forward and said,

look at their people who are disappearing and there's something going on, and it continued. And I think sometimes when we throw a label onto something, we say it's a gay murder or it's a person who was transsexual. We make a person into something that's somehow different than we are and not as worthy of protection. And I feel really sad that 40 years later, it seems to be something that is still going on. Something that is still going on. Thank you so much, Amanda. It's great to meet you. Very nice to meet you. I need a hug. I need a hug. Thank you so much.

So many people I talk to are quick to note the similarities between these murders and the more recent killings in the village. So, where was Bruce MacArthur in 1978? I think he liked working there. I don't know why he left. Karen Fraser remembers talking to MacArthur about the work he did before he was her landscaper. He talked a bit about Eaton's, working there. Eaton's was a department store. But I think he enjoyed it and talking about downtown Toronto in the 70s and, you know, just casual conversation. Oh, so that's something he brought up, Toronto in the 70s. He definitely spent time here. Anything in particular you recall about him bringing it up? No, it was part of a

conversation, just talking about Toronto because I had worked in Yorkville and he worked I think the College Street Eaton's so we talked about that and about the history of Eaton's College Street a bit and that was it. The Eaton store that Karen is referring to is long gone now but But in the 1970s, it sat on the southwest corner of College Street and Yonge Street, just a few doors down from the St. Charles Tavern. Coming up on The Village. 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. All we want to do is 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 to all human beings. You don't start killing at 66. You just don't start killing when you're an old man. The Village is written and produced by

me, Justin Ling, Jennifer Fowler and Aaron Burns. Cecil Fernandez is our audio producer. Sarah Clayton is our digital producer. Additional production on this episode by David McDougall. Thank you to Lisa Mayer, Saman Malik, Leslie Morrison, and Andrew Colbert of CBC's The Fifth Estate for their research. Tanya Springer is the senior producer of CBC Podcasts,

and our executive producer is Arif Noorani. For archival footage of the Halloween drag walk and a look at that defining image of Duncan Robinson, join our Facebook group Uncover or follow C a CBC podcast. Another series we think you might like is Someone Knows Something. In Season 5, host David Ridgen travels north to Thompson, Manitoba to investigate the unsolved 1986 murder of Carrie Brown. Subscribe wherever you get The Village or visit cbc.ca slash sks.

For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.