Uncover - S3 "The Village" E6: Getting Away With Murder

Episode Date: April 5, 2019

The Village, Episode 6 - The American police who investigated Mark's murder open their files to Justin, who learns Mark's and Sandy's deaths were connected, in an unexpected way. A retired beat cop who worked the Village in the 70s shares his suspicion about who murdered Sandy. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/uncover/uncover-season-3-the-villiage-transcripts-listen-1.5128216

My name is John Cullen and I want to tell you a story. It's a story about a scandal, broken relationships, gossip, rumors, money, corporate rivalry, and curling. It's the story of Broomgate. How a single broom, yes, a broom, turned friends into foes and almost killed the 500-year-old sport of curling. It was a year I'd like to forget. Broomgate, available now. This is a CBC Podcast. Previously on The Village.

She said, that's one of those awful gay murders. We just can't believe that anybody hated him to that extent one of those awful gay murders. We just can't believe that anybody hated him to that extent to do what they did to him. The anniversary was a formal occasion. Everybody came all dressed up, and sadly it was in a tuxedo and giving out free champagne. I think I made some calls, some inquiries, and then I heard that he was murdered.

One of the guys got a phone call and said he's been killed in Detroit. My name is Justin Ling. This is Uncover the Village. Two years after Sandy LeBlanc was violently murdered in his apartment, his business partner met a similar fate. Two years after Sandy LeBlanc was violently murdered in his apartment, his business partner met a similar fate. Mark was killed in Detroit, just across the border. It was just very upsetting to me, that's all.

Because he was like a really, really gentle soul. That's John Weber, the DJ from David's. It just seemed too odd that they both were gone, that they both had been murdered. Why would somebody as far away as Detroit, why would somebody go to the trouble of murdering him as well? I find out Mark's last name, Lefkovsky. And I learn that Mark was murdered around 1980.

Trouble is, I can't find anything else. I'm scouring old Detroit newspapers, grave sites, cold cases. Who was this guy? Then I find an obituary. It's for a Mark Piasechny-Lefkovsky, died September 1st, 1980. He's the owner of Lefkovsky General Maintenance Company. He doesn't strike me as the money man behind gay bars in two countries. I hunt for a living relative, and I find a Samuel Piasetchny just outside of Detroit.

Hello? Hi, Samuel. Sorry for this sort of out-of-the-blue call. My name's Justin Ling. I'm a journalist in Canada. And I'm working on a story... I explain to Sam why I'm calling. The mark I'm looking at, I think, I think was murdered, actually. And that would not be your brother. That would be. Yes, it was.

He died of exsanguination. Exsanguination. I have to look that up. It's the technical term for bleeding out. Oh, OK. Do you know any of the details around what happened? He was shot and stabbed. Oh, God, that's awful. I'm sorry. Yes. My two sons found him. Oh, God, that's horrible.

Oh, geez, I'm sorry. Do you know if your brother spent any time up in Toronto? Yes, he did. He did? Okay, so it's the same guy. It's the guy I'm looking for. There was a bar up there, I believe he was part of. A gay bar, I know that. Yeah, yeah, it was a gay bar.

Do you know, was Merck gay? Yes, he was. Did they catch whoever did it? No. They didn't? No. Unsolved. Just like Sandy's murder, and so many of the Toronto murders.

Yeah, I couldn't tell you what happened. Probably had something to do with his being gay. I get a copy of Mark's death certificate. Date of death, September 1st, 1980. Labor Day weekend. Almost two years to the day that Sandy was murdered. It tells me something else crucial. Mark Lofkoski didn't die in Detroit proper. He died in Roseville, Michigan. It's about two stops on Interstate 94 before you reach Detroit.

They've got their own police department. So, a few weeks later, I'm in the car heading to Roseville. So we're on our way to the Roseville police department. Luckily they keep all of their records for 99 years. Hopefully there's something in there. They said there was a list of suspects that seemed to not pan out. Ultimately, there was no arrest.

This is a 35-year-old investigation that's long since closed, and they see the benefit of having attention paid to it. City of Roseville. Here we go. This looks like it. Justin? Hey, Raymond?

Hi. This is Detective Raymond Blarek. He's been tasked with walking me through the file. How are you? Is it a trap? No, it's all good. Raymond Blerick. He's been tasked with walking me through the file. As he lets me into the police station, through a steel door, down a long hallway, I'm just readying myself to be disappointed. Just like with the Toronto Police.

Need water? Need a restroom? Anything? No, we're good. Come on in. make yourself comfortable. I was wrong to be so pessimistic. An empty banker's box sits on a chair next to a long boardroom table. Its former contents are all laid out. I'm a little bit amazed that this much stuff fit into that box. There's interview notes, checkbooks, crime scene photos, transcripts, and there's a stack of Polaroids.

One of Mark hanging out in front of the Bay Department Store in Toronto. Photos of a road trip through Atlantic Canada. Yeah, these are all mostly inside David's. And there's Mark beside the statue of Michelangelo's David, at the club. Mark has been a mystery. A name I keep hearing. Suggestions that he was some kind of money man. A financier for Sandy.

But now I'm getting a sense of the man behind the rumors. I pop in to see his brother Sam while I'm in Roseville. Just one minute, let me grab his picture. Sure, yeah. He drags out this huge, oversized portrait of Mark. The picture is sepia-toned. Mark is a young guy. He's got this perfect smile on.

Chunky, black framed glasses, a tight t-shirt with a smiley face on it. It's a good look. I can actually imagine seeing Mark in a gay bar, dressed just like this, today. What year would that have been? The same year he was killed. I don't know what you have or the direction you're going in or whatever. At the police station, the detective seems genuinely interested in Mark's case. And Sandy's.

So is it still a cold case in, is it Toronto then? Yeah. Okay, a cold case in Toronto. Yeah. Do they have any suspects? So Canadian police are a little bit less cooperative than American police, so we don't really know to be honest. So why do you think it's just a coincidence? Because there are no such things as coincidences.

Exactly, that's right. So, you might have opened up a can of worms here. Maybe. I love a can of worms. I've got to say, Detective Blarek looks like he could have been a recurring character on Columbo. looks like he could have been a recurring character on Columbo. I can imagine him leaning out the window of a 1975 Plymouth Grand Fury, slapping a flashing siren onto the roof.

Chief, this is Justin. How are you? Good to meet you. As the detective and I are talking, the chief of police walks in. What are the odds? It's got to be infinitesimal to have two business partners killed a couple years apart, virtually the same manner, without some common thread here. They have a guy in custody for a serial killer,

and that's what they're looking at in reference to this. It would be great if somehow we could put together some type of case where after 40 years we can close this one. Maybe it came across the border for a whatever and met this guy, and he's your serial killer. Yeah, I mean, our thing is, you know, we know the cops are revisiting some of these cases because of the serial killer, but we're kind of saying maybe it's him, maybe it's somebody else. Either way, you know, no one's touched these cases for 40 years. These guys haven't heard from Stacey Gallant and the Toronto Cold Case team about Mark's case.

Or Sandy's. What's the guy's name again you said? Bruce MacArthur. Bruce MacArthur, okay. Well, wouldn't that be something if we found Bruce MacArthur is the name and phone number in here? That would be something. That would be something.

Couldn't get that lucky. Was your guy in Toronto shot or just stabbed? No, just stabbed. Okay, because this guy was shot six times and stabbed four times. So somebody meant business, yeah. I tell the detective that Sandy LeBlanc was stabbed 95 times. Wow. Yeah.

Usually that's a crime of passion, because it's overkill. Overkill, that's the word we keep hearing. You know, I'll run through everything I have here with you, and I won't go over it. He tells me the night before he died, Mark was home with his two teenage nephews, Sam's kids. Mark was telling them that he was going out to the bar that night. So they left, and as far as I know,

Mark went out to the bar to go meet somebody. They called in the morning, called several times. The phone kept ringing busy. Now they knew, everybody knew Mark was gay, everybody. And if Mark was busy or occupied with somebody else, he would take the phone off the hook because he didn't want to be bothered. So they assumed that's what was going on, that's what happened. After multiple times

of trying to get a hold of them, they did not. They went to the house. One of them peeked in the window of the front door and saw him laying there living, and saw blood all over him. So they kicked the door in and went in. These guys were both interviewed. Their father was interviewed, and the interviews are typed up right here.

Mark's brother, Sam. He was interviewed by police the day Mark died in 1980. And almost unbelievably, Roseville PD still have a recording on cassette tape. This is regarding the death of a Mark Edward Leftkowski. Approximate birthday, 5-3-1945. Can you tell us anything about your brother's personal life, personal habits, and so forth? He was gay. He was gay, okay.

He was very capable, independent. Now you say he was gay, but very capable. Mark's sexuality was no secret. He was discharged from the Navy because of it. He had been working on submarines. So his whole family knew, including his mother. Was she aware of his sexual preference? Oh, yes.

No problem there. She had accepted it. Yes. including his mother. better adjusted than the rest of us. Okay. Would you suspect anybody at this point with this crime? No, I don't. Okay. Would your brother have had any suicidal tendencies at all? None whatsoever. None whatsoever? In other words, he was happy and well-adjusted as far as you knew? Even though he was gay, he had no mental problems, to your knowledge?

It's awfully telling to me that this cop looked at this victim, with a wide circle of friends and a close-knit family, as well-adjusted even though he was gay. Okay. This is a good time to point out that up until 1987, homosexuality or anxiety around it, was considered by the American and Canadian psychiatric guidelines to be a mental illness. Here we go.

Name, gender, age, and then homosexual. Male, 35 years old, homosexual. Interesting, there was a whole classification. I find Mark's business card amongst his effects. It says Mark Lefkovsky, MD. In parentheses below, mechanical doctor, specializing in heating, cooling, and electrical. So Mark was a skilled tradesman and a guy with a sense of humor. On the other side of the card, I may not be smart or rich or attractive, but I'm available. Mark basically worked 16 hours a day.

He would start like at 10 o'clock in the morning. He'd work till night and he'd work. He had a contracting business. So 1, 2 o'clock in the morning. Yeah, he did work for a lot of local restaurants. Okay. So Mark wasn't some big-time financier from Detroit or some mafioso. He was a workaholic contractor.

Did he get in there on his finances? You have bank statements and all that? Yeah, he had money. He had money. He always had $1,000 on him, they said. Always. Everybody knew it. And he worked a lot and he felt that he made more money than he actually needed. He said he did work for a fellow in Toronto. Ray finds a police interview with a friend of Mark. This fellow owned a discotheque. After the work was completed, he couldn't pay Mark.

So Mark settled for stock in the business, and the fellow continued to manage the disco. He was not a very good manager, and so to prevent loss of the business, Mark took over complete ownership, and the fellow continued as manager. So Sandy hired Mark. And when he couldn't pay the bills, Mark took over the club. And according to that old police interview,

they both lost money when the club burned down on New Year's Eve 1977. He had a fairly large investment in a disco in Toronto. And he lost out on that investment. a fairly large investment in a disco in Toronto. And he lost out on that investment. And he just walked away from it. Just bad business? Right.

He couldn't get... He figured it wasn't worth trying to collect. He'd hired a lawyer and said everything. Your brother was... He wasn't vengeful. Okay. He didn't go after anybody. He didn't go after anybody.

Now, is David's Discoteque Enterprises, is that? That's the one. That's the one? Yeah. Okay, here's some paperwork from that. From an attorney's office. You may have heard that Sandy LeBlanc was murdered about 10 days ago. Is there anything you wish me to do? Signed by the attorneys. That's our guy. So there was a case. So we need to find that civil action, evidently.

I find those case files in the provincial archives. For some reason, David's Disco had insurance with seven different companies. Whatever the cause of the fire, the insurance companies never paid out. So, Sandy and Mark sued them. There's no mention of arson in the court documents, although, because of their deaths,

the case never made it to court. It seems to me that if Sandy and Mark were murdered over money, why kill them while they were still trying to collect the insurance? Keep digging. We spend hours going through every page, every photo, every notebook. And then we go through all of it again. The suspect list included a number of Mark's friends and ex-partners. One of them was Lyle Heinzelman. Lyle lived with Mark at the time of his death. The two were lovers.

Lyle lives in Florida now. Lyle remembers hearing the news. Well, I found out the next day from a couple of friends. They had seen it on TV and they came down and told me. I can imagine it must have been kind of jarring. I mean, you were living there and, you know, suddenly he was just gone. You have to give me a minute. Sure. I felt like my heart had been ripped out. Eight years of my life was gone.

And I'd never see him again. Did you get the sense that police were serious about solving this? No, I didn't think they were. It seemed like they put it on the back burner. I don't know if it was because he was gay or what, but it just didn't seem to me like they ever did anything to really investigate. I don't know, any big questions you had that kind of still are lingering? Why? I'd like to know why. I don't think it could have been an ex-lover. I can't imagine anyone being that cruel to shoot somebody that many times and then repeatedly stab them. and then repeatedly stabbed them.

But police were definitely interested in Mark's sex life. It came up in their interview with his brother Sam. Do you know if he occasionally would have a so-called one-night stand with a gentleman or something like that? Very few and far between. Yes, he would. Okay. You don't know of any other gay establishments he might have frequented? I never paid much attention.

Yeah, I know it's a line of questioning that's a little off, but we got to get into it. I wish I had. Yeah, I'm sure you do. Lieutenant Scott said the deceased, Lekowski, was in the habit of picking up homosexuals in Detroit and taking them home to the suburb of Roseville. He feels that in all probability, the deceased was killed by a homosexual lover. In the police file, a lieutenant wrote, Just like the cops in Toronto said about the murders there. We'll pick up hustlers.

Street hustlers. It's a very 1970s term. It means a male sex worker. But these street hustlers also had a more violent reputation. Some were responsible for robbing, assaulting, and even killing gay men. These pages can only tell me so much. Nobody on the force now worked this investigation back then. Also the officer's name is Sergeant Ronald McCool. But there's one name I keep seeing.

Ron McCool. One of the original detectives. Ron's got to be late 70s, I would guess. Yeah, he's got to be close to 80. He's still alive. Hello? Hi, I'm looking for Ron McCool. Speaking.

Hi, Ron. My name is Justin Lane. Seems to me we interviewed a number of people at a, I don't know how else to put it, a gay bar in Detroit. Like David Penny and some of the Toronto cops, McCool wasn't well-versed in the gay community. The bar he was at was, I never forgot that either. community. The bar he was at was, I never forgot that either. We went to this bar in Detroit and walked in and I was like in a state of shock because on one half the entire bar, it was all men dancing and making out and stuff. And on the right-hand side was all women doing the same thing. It was just something I'd never seen before. I remember my partner, Bill, saying, what side are we going on? I don't know about you, but I'm going on the woman's side.

But, you know, someone stabs somebody that many times and shoots them that many times, it's usually a real crime of passion. And I hate to say that, I mean, I don't want to lump it, but a number of the homosexual murders that I did handle, you get quite a rage when they do it. You get quite a rage when they do it. And you wonder if the person involved wasn't gay, and somebody comes on to them and they just go nuts or something, you know. Did you hit all other cases of kind of homosexual murder back then?

It just seems like the few I handled, they were like, threw a hissy fit or something over something, you know, and went nuts. I don't know how to explain it. Yeah. If I can be of any help, I'd be glad to, but I hope you come up with them. That'd be great. Oh, I'd be happy. Thank you. We're in a different city, but Mark's murder just looks so similar to the cases in Toronto.

Hal Walkley, Brian Latake, Duncan Robinson, and, of course, Sandy LeBlanc. 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.

Back in Toronto, there's one more lead from Sandy's murder that I want to follow up on. What exactly was Sandy's relationship with the police? Sandy's sister told me that he was known to them. There's that note in the Body Politic archives about Sandy meeting with cops at his restaurant. And Darlene Saylor, the bouncer at the club, remembers cops always hanging around David's disco. Including one named Marvin Blaha. How did you track me down? Marvin Blaha was a beat cop in the 70s. We had a couple of people tell us that there was always police hanging around Sandy's

club, Club David. That was probably me and my partner. Because we worked the area foot patrol and the 7 to 3 shift at that time, 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. But Marvin wasn't just policing the

gay village. He actually seemed to like it there. We worked most exclusively in the gay village. He actually seemed to like it there. We worked most exclusively in the gay area. We got along with everybody. Actually, I considered Sandy a friend. Obviously, you know, circa 1977, 1978, the relationship between police and the community was not... It wasn't so good. That's, yeah, it's an understatement.

Actually, we got along with them. We treated them with respect. They gave us a nickname, Alice and Mary. The male prostitute section, we used to cruise there and pick up informants, information from these guys, and they would all hang out at David's. All these guys hung out at David's.

And trust me, there was a lot of bad people, a lot of bad people going to David's Disco. What are we talking about here? Drugs, guns, it was all there. We made arrests for robbery, V&Es, everything. And these were people who were patrons at the club. Huh. And what sort of folks were these?

I mean, were these, you know, gay folks who just happened to be in the drug? Or were they people who knew that they wouldn't be scrutinized if they were hanging out at a gay club? Like, you know... Probably. The latter, you mean? Yeah. Yeah, okay. people who knew that they wouldn't be scrutinized if they were hanging out at a gay club? Probably. The latter, you mean? Yeah. Yeah, okay. Probably thought they wouldn't be scrutinized.

Was Sandy one of your informants? Occasionally. Yeah. Occasionally. He gave us access to the club. When we found out about his murder, we just got on that case. We turned in every lead, checked out every lead. We couldn't find anything.

However, we heard rumors. But, of course, you know, rumors aren't good enough. Yeah, we've heard some of those rumors, you know, people kind of whispering. What kind of rumors you heard? He was involved in the mob, you know, the American mafia was confronting the cash. No, absolutely not. Why don't you think it was solved? I don't know. I really don't know. I haven't got a clue.

Let me ask you, what do you think led to his murder? All I could think of was, you know, he picked up a hustler. Yeah. And the hustler did him in. I have an idea who did it. Really? Picked up a hustler. Yeah. And the hustler did him in. I have an idea who did it. Really? No way you could prove it.

Not in a million years. What kind of person is this? This guy was a bad apple. Dealt drugs. Had guns. Was vicious. A lot of assaults. He was a hustler.

Used speed. So he didn't look tough. He was just a little guy, but vicious too. I don't even know if he's alive. Fast Eddie. Fast Eddie? Eddie Wholeness. Oh. Fast Eddie. Fast Eddie? Eddie Holness. Oh. The guy by that name who killed some other gay guy.

In 1981, police arrested a 23-year-old sex worker named Edward Holness for first-degree murder. They found him at the St. Charles Tavern, where he was more commonly known as Fast Eddie. Fast Eddie had stabbed a man 25 times because he refused to pay for sex. It was so vicious he broke the knife during the attack. It was so vicious he broke the knife during the attack. Police allege that Fast Eddie and an accomplice, Gary Michael Hilton, were enforcers for male sex workers on Yonge Street. If someone had ripped off a sex worker, Eddie and Hilton would go collect.

Hilton always maintained his innocence and said it was Eddie who committed the murder, alone. Bad guys? I told you, bad guys are Davids. Three years before he was arrested for murder, Fast Eddie was a teenager hanging around Davids. We mention his name to David Penny, the homicide detective who investigated Sandy's murder. He doesn't remember it. So we don't know that Fast Eddie was responsible for Sandy's murder. And unfortunately, we can't ask him about it. In 1985, while in the recreation yard of the prison, Hilton stabbed Fast Eddie to death.

So if Fast Eddie did kill Sandy, he took that secret to the grave. So, are the murders of Sandy LeBlanc and Mark Lofkoski connected? I spent months going through old records, finding people who knew them, trying to come up with a single explanation or a single culprit. But it seems all the rumors that connected the murders to David's disco were just that, rumors. I did discover one thing that I wasn't quite expecting, and it's this. In Detroit, in the early 1980s, there was a rash of murders in the gay community. And, just like in Toronto, many remain unsolved.

There are no official statistics, but activists say the murders started not long after Mark's death. So it's possible that Mark and Sandy's killings were, in a way, connected. It's that they were both part of a wave of anti-gay violence, a pattern of killings that was not specific to any one city, but to society at large. Hey, Justin.

Nice to meet you. How's it going? Good, how are you? Good. Sorry I'm a tad late. That's okay. Do you want coffee, tea? Actually, I would love a coffee.

Okay. I'm going to get you a coffee. Okay. I'm going to get you a coffee. Okay. I'm going to get you a coffee. Okay. I'm going to get you. How's it going? Good, how are you? Good. Sorry I'm a tad late. That's okay. Do you want coffee? Actually, I would love a coffee.

Okay. This is Douglas Janoff. Today, he works in the civil service and has spent much of his career focusing on promoting human rights abroad. He is also an expert on anti-LGBTQ violence in Canada. Despite Canada's reputation as a beacon in the international struggle for gay rights, homophobia and homophobic violence remain major

problems across the country. He's reading from the book he wrote on exactly this issue. It's called Pink Blood, Homophobic Violence in Canada. That book is why I'm here at his home in Ottawa. Since 1990, hundreds of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people have been assaulted or murdered in Canada. The book tracked anti-queer violence in the 1990s.

It's a different decade than the one I'm immersed in, but it also speaks to why the violence happens. For Douglas, the project started with a personal experience. A guy I knew in Vancouver was gay-bashed in Stanley Park. And he was so battered that multiple surgeries had to take place over several months and it turned out that the the emergency room was filled up with gay bashings that night so can't really say this is an isolated incident this is part of a broader pattern what's going on you? The book starts with a necrology, a list of a hundred murders of queer people over a decade in Canada. So I actually went through how all these

victims were killed, you know, strangled and stabbed in the neck, kicked in the head ten times, burnt beyond recognition, beaten, stabbed 40 times, etc. We know that gay men tend to be killed in this over-the-top, extremely violent fashion. Do we have a sense of why that overkill actually happens? The closet has a lot to do with that. The fear of being associated with homosexuals, the fear of being outed in some way or another. The question on everyone's mind is are these killers and gay bashers, are they secretly gay and

they're just repressed and I really think that that's too simplistic. It's almost like we want to believe that, you know? I think it's a defense mechanism on our part. I think that it's hard for us to believe that someone would hate us so much that they would want to stab us 60 times. In the 1970s specifically, police had a specific designation for homosexual murder, right? So in a lot of cases it wasn't a robbery or it wasn't a sex crime. It was a homosexual murder.

Right, and what was missing was the framing of it as a homophobic murder. It was a homosexual murder in the eyes of police because that's what homosexuals do. They get themselves in those situations and then they get killed. There's layers and layers and layers of homophobia embedded in these crimes, in the motives of the killer or the mode of violence that the perpetrator used to go overboard against this victim. recite the news release verbatim for a bunch of different murders where so-and-so was found in his apartment, stabbed or beaten. He was last seen at this gay bar on the main drag. Pickup crime. Exactly.

A young hustler ended up in a gay person's apartment and thought, I can kill him and no one's ever going to notice or care. I would say most of the murders are pickup crimes where you meet someone in a bar, you go home with that person, and then that person is dead. But what's confusing about it is often that person is also robbed. Often that person is also sexually assaulted.

There's a lot of prostitution involved. There's a lot of drugs and alcohol involved. We just need to look at those things and not blame anyone, but kind of look for patterns. In the 1970s, George Hislop, the queer activist, also saw patterns. He had followed some of the murder trials. He told the Body Politic that most of the cases of murders of gay men involved robbery, fights over payment for sex, drugs, and alcohol.

But he also saw something else, the targeting of gay men. But he also saw something else, the targeting of gay men. Homosexuals are vulnerable in that many people lead secret lives, and there's an element who believe that you can rip off a gay person and nothing will happen, that the person won't go to the police, and unfortunately that's true. And sometimes it goes one step too far. What led to these violent murders is often revealed when the case goes to court.

And in almost every case that was solved in the late 70s, there is a pattern that is impossible to ignore. An accused killer snapped because the victim was coming on to him. In these cases, homosexual advances justified the killing. Newspapers printed quotes like, I just thought it was a fucking queer.

Homosexual panic defense. You're going to hear the same argument over and over and over again. Even in cases where it was found that the two men had sex. Even in cases where the two men were living together and knew each other. The guy knew he was gay. And to be clear, it's not just an argument. It works a lot. Yeah, it's an argument used in court in order to mitigate the consequences. The gay panic defense is rooted in a part of the criminal code that says that someone can't be convicted for murder if the killing was provoked. If a defendant can show they committed the murder because they lost self-control or thought that they were defending themselves against a victim's homosexual advances, they can beat a murder charge.

Instead, they'd be convicted of manslaughter, which comes with a lighter sentence. In other words, I was so provoked by a gay man coming onto me, I had to kill him. The gay panic defense was used extensively in Canada and the United States for decades. And up until the last few years, it was still being used on both sides of the border. In 1978, a man was given a six-year manslaughter sentence after he stabbed Gerald Douglas White to death because he, quote, made a pass.

In 1986, a new trial was ordered for a man convicted of second-degree murder in the death of Kenneth Jones. The appeal court ordered a new trial citing the victim's homosexual magazines as possible evidence of provocation. The killer struck a plea bargain, confessed to manslaughter, and served in total just three years in prison. Some of the victims were transgender. In 1978, a 20-year-old picked up Shirley Hauser at a party. He stabbed her 17 times when, according to him, he discovered she was transgender. He was sentenced to just six years in prison. One of the mitigating factors was homosexual panic.

While most courts in Canada no longer entertain the gay panic defense, it could still be used today. In the U.S., the defense has been banned in three states, and several others are considering doing the same. So when George Hislop says there's an element who believe you can rip off a gay person and nothing will happen, the gay panic defense proves him right. You could kill a gay man and quite literally get away with murder.

One thing that I noticed time and time again in the police reactions is this had nothing to do with hate. I think that for them, a hate crime is when it's very clearly the bad guys chasing the guy down the street, calling him a fag and beating him up. When they get challenged on these very difficult cases, including the MacArthur killings, the first thing they're going to say is, oh, this wasn't a hate crime.

How could it be a hate crime? He was in the gay community. How could it be a hate crime? He was in the gay community. The natural instinct when we start looking at these types of crimes is we want to say immediately it's a serial killer. Because we can't imagine that there would be 14 different people that would kill these 14 different victims. We want to believe that it's just this one screwed up individual who's doing all this. Despite fears of, as Robin Rowland put it, a mad stabber on the loose, I'm also not convinced

there was a serial killer in Toronto over those years. It's certainly possible, but maybe it's even more unsettling to think that there wasn't just one killer. That there were many. My sense in terms of killings of gay men is it's a constant stream. It's always happening. More common than we really care to think about. When I started looking at these cold cases, I thought Toronto was unique. But Douglas is right. This happens more than we care to think about.

In researching this story, I found examples of killings of queer people in other cities around the world that look really similar to the murders in Toronto. There's Detroit, but there's also San Francisco, Milwaukee, Sydney, London, and many other cities worldwide. wide. On a drizzly fall day, back in New Brunswick, Joanne and Alice brought me to the quiet cemetery where their brother, Sandy LeBlanc, was buried. So the funeral was here? The funeral was here. See the part of the back part of the church there with that little, right, the biryan? That's where the funeral was held. Do you remember people in the town talking after? Well, I guess because of the fact that he was gay,

they were probably horrified that somebody so close had a gay son, and he was murdered in Toronto. And it wasn't even talked about. But, I mean, the community knew. He just swept under the rug, actually, the whole thing. His name was practically never mentioned again. He was never mentioned. It was just like he never existed.

You know, that was like kind of putting a black mark or spot on the family, so it was just not discussed. And I guess the reason being because how many people know of gay people back then? It just wasn't discussed. We were told, you know, I don't remember exactly what Dad said, but he even made Mom put the pictures away of Sandy. I can only imagine how difficult that is.

To have your brother taken away, only to have him erased all over again. Because he was gay. His life was cut way too short. And I think of what would it be like if he was here today, what kind of person he would, you know, what would he be doing, what would he be like. And like I said, he was a special person, definitely in my mind, he was special. Even after 40 years, it's very hard. Coming up on The Village. Gay rights now! Gay rights now!

Smashed lockers, pushed in doors and broken windows, and a lot of angry homosexuals. And he whacked some guy over the head and the blood spurted onto me. I looked at this officer and he was just as shocked by what he had done as I was. There was an inquest to, well, as it turned out, to clear the police. It was like he was on trial. This can't be happening, you know. Baths had been raided before, but there's not like kind of this mass, like it just fell from all over the place.

And this was an attempt, a very blatant attempt, to shove us back into the closet. I'm sorry, we were out. We're not going back. The Village is written and produced by me, Justin Ling, Jennifer Fowler, and Aaron Burns. Cecil Fernandez and Mitch Stewart are our audio producers, and Sarah Clayton is our digital producer. Tanya Springer is the senior producer of CBC Podcasts, and our executive producer is Arif Noorani. And our executive producer is Arif Noorani. To see photos of Mark and other people in this episode, visit our website at cbc.ca slash uncover,

or join our Facebook group, Uncover, to be a CBC podcast. Check out the second season of Uncover, Bomb on Board, looking at one of Canada's largest unsolved mass murders, the story of Flight CP-21, which exploded midair in 1965, killing everyone on board. Subscribe to Bomb on Board wherever you get the village.