How A Couple Of Stranger Murders Shook Eighties Toronto

Editor’s Note: The content of this story deals with graphic detail and talks about sexual assault.

Christine Prince was very alert when she went to see a movie in downtown Toronto with friends. Jenny Isford, a nineteen-year-old cheerleader for the Toronto Argonauts, had been raped and murdered less than a month earlier and the killer had not been caught.

“Don’t worry, I’m very careful,” Prince told his friends.

The Welsh nanny didn’t need to be warned. She was by nature a caring person.

That was one of the reasons the GTA attorney’s family valued her so much that they hired her as a babysitter to help with their three-year-old daughter.

At five-foot-five and forty-five kilograms, the 25-year-old Prince was not physically imposing, far from it.

She was friendly and cautious.

The night of Sunday June 20, 1982 was rainy and she carried an umbrella that gave her a kind of weapon.

After watching a movie on Yonge and Bloor, he chatted with his friends at a downtown restaurant.

At around 1:30 a.m. Monday morning, he caught a streetcar from Clair Avenue West and got off five blocks from his employer’s house on Pinewood Avenue.

What happened next continues to baffle the police.

Perhaps a stranger asked for help while walking home, pretending to need help.

“We believe the perpetrator or perpetrators were waiting in a vehicle,” said Det. Sergeant. Toronto Police Stephen Smith said in a video police made to draw attention to the case. They may have called her. Being a good person, he came over to give them directions or whatever. “

His umbrella was found in the middle of Pinewood Avenue.

“If I had willingly gone with them, I would have taken their umbrella,” Smith said. “So we think they took her straight off the street.”

At the time, dash cameras and CCTV were not ubiquitous, so police do not have a description of the vehicle or the suspect.

It’s very possible that two or more people abducted her, Smith said, noting: “It would be very difficult to dominate someone and drive.”

The attacker (s) led her through the city, through a wooded area near the Metro Toronto Zoo to a popular lover’s area.

The rugged terrain there made investigators wonder if the killer had a four-wheel drive vehicle.

For a time, researchers thought they had a promising edge through tire tracks, but it led nowhere.

There were multiple sightings of his naked and battered body later Monday morning, as he lay face down in shallow water in the West Rouge River in Scarborough in full view of motorists on a nearby Sewells Road bridge.

“Is this the ideal dump site?” Smith asked. “I would say not.”

Later, police heard reports of a woman screaming in the area early that morning.

Investigators cannot be sure if she was killed near the bridge or in a residence. They also wonder why their attacker drove across town to dump the body in an area where it was quickly and easily found.

After their murder, the killer (s) crossed the city again, as a highway worker found their wallet, which contained identification and $ 2, on Highway 401 west of Morningside Avenue.

“Obviously, they had knowledge of this area, as well as the downtown Toronto area,” Smith said.

Investigators wonder if the killer or killers were stupid and lucky when they dumped the body and wallet.

“They didn’t care to cover their tracks,” Smith said. “They may have panicked when they found out that she had passed away.”

Immediately after Prince’s body was found, comparisons were made to Isford’s murder.

They were both young.

Both were sexually assaulted.

No effort was made to hide any of their bodies.

They were both caring people with a lot to live for.

They were both killed on rainy nights.

Prince and Isford were getting out of TTC vehicles when police believe they were attacked.

Isford had spent much of the night of Thursday, May 27, 1982, practicing cheerleading dance routines at the German Canadian Club.

He then shared a drink with more than a dozen Argonauts reinforcements at the Tramps restaurant, before taking a trip to the tube station.

Isford transferred from a subway to a Bayview Avenue bus that brought her almost home.

Several hours later, her partially naked body and scattered clothing were found five doors from her parents’ North York home.

Interestingly, their shoes were left side by side.

They had raped and strangled her.

Police thought Isford was likely followed home from the Bayview Avenue bus stop around 1:30 a.m. on May 28, 1982.

Prince and Isford were considered victims of strangers, the most difficult homicides to solve.

“The hardest murder to solve is the blitzkrieg sexual assault,” Insp. Wayne Oldham, a former member of Metro’s homicide squad, told the Star at the time.

“What makes our job so difficult is that in a weird-to-weird situation like that, there is no evidence to identify the offender.”

Prince had come to Canada the previous October from little Porthcawl on the South Wales coast and planned to spend a year in Toronto and then possibly attend college.

“She was a good girl who just wanted to help people,” her father told the Star shortly after the murder. “She was really interested in working with disabled children and only took the job in Canada so she could work with children.”

While in Toronto, she met an English chef and they got engaged to be married in October.

Her fiancé cooperated fully with police, including giving a full statement and a DNA sample, police said.

The unsolved murders brought a greater sense of vulnerability for women across the GTA.

The media reported a boost in self-defense classes and lessons offering safety tips for women.

Police investigated known sex offenders, including one in Saskatoon.

The city’s police commission established a committee to find ways to eliminate violence against women and children in the streets.

When the commission was established, Police Chief Jack Ackroyd said that only one in 10 rapes is reported to the police.

There was also hope that the new laser beam technology could detect fingerprints from the bodies.

In the end, Prince’s body was flown back to Wales, and a tribute to Prince was held near Pinewood Avenue in Humewood Park, where he loved to spend quiet moments.

There a tree was planted in his honor.

A spokesperson for the group that planted the tree told the Star that “neighbors often saw her enjoying walks in the area and in the park and appreciated her cheerfulness and warm smile. Neighbors hope that Christine Prince’s tree will remind everyone that we live in a safe and welcoming place. “

In 1993, police took a fresh look at the Prince and Isford murders after Paul Bernardo was arrested for the murders of Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French.

Nothing went right there either, but William Brett Henson was convicted in 1997. Henson was a clerk at an appliance store who lived with his mother. The court heard that he had a long criminal record for sexual assault and robbery. He sexually assaulted three women after murdering Isford.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Prince’s murder remains unsolved.