Town note
The region can be traced back about 8,000 years; many of the native trails became the area's main roads.
about 0:11:20The story
Strathroy, Ontario, lies in Middlesex County about forty minutes outside London and within three hours of Buffalo, Toronto and Detroit. It was settled by white colonists in 1832 and named after the Irish hometown of its founder, John Stewart of Buchanan. It became a village in 1860 and a town in 1872, and in 2001 it merged with Caradoc to form a municipality of just under 21,000 people, about 12,000 of them in Strathroy itself. Its economy rests on turkey and chicken hatching, farming and pharmaceuticals, and it hosts a Turkey Festival each June. The episode describes it as an old, average, low-crime town with a median household income of about $71,500 Canadian and a median home value of about $250,000.
The story starts on 1 March 1974. Judith Barksley, a nineteen-year-old, left a pizza restaurant on a freezing night and cut across railroad tracks to get home. Someone followed her, dragged her to the ground by the hair and cut her throat in a single quick attack. He fondled her as she died and robbed her. A man crossing the tracks to post a letter found her body at noon the next day, among litter that included a pizza box.
Fifteen months later, on 7 September 1975, eighteen-year-old Rosalie Winters was tackled on her way to Alexandra Park. Her attacker, who had long hair, said he meant to rape her and choked her. He grew furious when her zipper broke, choked her unconscious, groped her and left. She had seen his face.
He had also known Barksley and Winters. He forced her to the floor, tore off her pants and raped her, then stopped for no clear reason. While she was putting her clothes back on he strangled her with a black bootlace until she was unconscious and then slashed her throat. Her husband Dennis found her in the kitchen at five o'clock. A neighbour had seen a young man with shoulder-length hair stand outside the door for several minutes, and a yellow or cream Oldsmobile in the drive.
He tore off her clothes, hit her, raped her and choked her unconscious, then smashed a bottle over her head. She survived with a fractured skull and had seen him.
She was last seen at 1.30pm walking towards County Road 12. A forklift driver saw her climb into a 1975 Ford truck used locally to collect dead animals. She was raped, strangled with her own top, stabbed in the throat, chest and back and mutilated with a 20-centimetre cut. A farmer who thought he had spotted a dead animal found her body the next afternoon. His employer, the farmer Mel Veal, said he had been quiet and hard-working and that everyone was shocked.
He was committed to the Oak Ridge maximum security mental health facility. He told doctors he had confused sex with love. Together they accounted for thirteen confirmed killings.
In 2004 Dr Philip Clawson found a personality disorder, sexual sadism and fantasies of torture, necrophilia, cannibalism and dismemberment. At a review board hearing in May 2005 specialists put his chance of reoffending within ten years at 76%, and Dr Lisa Ramshaw said he should never get out. The board still approved a move to a medium security facility in Toronto. A provincial tribunal ordered his move on 13 May 2006, but on 17 May 2006 he lost his bid. The court found the review board had erred and ordered a rehearing. Jeffrey Shoules said he would attend every day.