from their skeletal remains, such as approximate age, sex, physical stature, and race, known as “the big four” to forensic anthropologists. Our bones and teeth reveal vast amounts of information about our age through the epiphysis, caps on the ends of long bones that fuse completely once we leave our teens. Epiphysis on bones in other parts of the body, such as the clavicle, fuse later in life, around age thirty. From then on, signs of bone loss, deterioration, and work-related injuries become more evident. Someone who lays bricks or pours concrete for a living will have a much different bone structure and density than another person who works as a personal assistant in an office.
Tests of the bones revealed that the Markham victim was white, and about twenty-five to forty years of age. In life, the man would have been small with an extremely light build — somewhere between one hundred and 120 pounds at the most — and a thin, even gaunt, face. Considering the weathered condition of the boney remains, the body and clothing would likely have been in the woods for about two years by the time they were found, placing the time of the man’s death at around 1978. The time frame coincided with a period when Greenidge was out of jail.
It is believed the victim wore the items found around him at one point, but was not wearing them at the time he died. Later testing revealed there were no signs of decay inside the clothes, such as the socks and pants, which meant the man was left to die naked in the woods, women’s clothing on the ground beside his body. Since the body had been reduced to a skeleton, investigators at the time were unable to determine an exact cause of death. Police say the remains did not reveal any signs of edged weapons being used or blunt force trauma. Could the Markham victim have been strangled, as was the case with many of Greenidge’s other victims? Police aren’t saying.
(York Regional Police)
A museum quality facial reconstruction of the face of the Markham victim, unveiled in December 2009. Found off the side of a rural road in the Town of Markham, Ontario, on July 16, 1980, it is estimated that the body remained undiscovered for two to three years. The victim, a male twenty-five to forty years old, is believed to have been transgendered or a cross-dresser and has yet to be identified.
Adding to the mystery is the question of what became of the remains of the Markham victim? Unlike the bodies of Richard “Dickie” Hovey and Eric Jones, which sat properly stored in numbered boxes at the office of the coroner in Toronto for decades, the unidentified male discovered in the woods was, for some unknown reason, buried in a pauper’s grave at Toronto’s Mount Pleasant Cemetery on Christmas Eve 1983, along with the clothes. The reasons for interring the remains and the female garments found near the body have not been revealed.
In 2007 the cold case of the mysterious Markham victim was resurrected by York Regional Police and the skeletal remains — which had been buried in the cemetery for years — were disinterred and reexamined using the latest available technologies. “We felt that it was necessary to exhume the body,” said Douglas Clarke, a homicide detective-constable with York Region. “We had photographs but we didn’t have the actual items.”5
The initial belief by police at the time the body was discovered was not that this was the body of someone who was murdered, but a young male who wandered into the brush and died, or the unfortunate victim of a car accident. The original coroner’s report is confusing, and allegedly states the man was possibly struck by a car, sailing over the road and into the trees, where his body remained for several years until it was found in 1980. The notion has since been revised, since it doesn’t take the obvious question into consideration: why would the victim of a hit and run be found naked in the woods, with clothing near his body? It is not unusual for the victim of an auto accident to literally be knocked out of their shoes by the tremendous force of the impact, but to suggest that the rest of the clothing — jeans, socks, and blouse — would also be wrenched off is absurd, and makes one question the professionalism of anyone foolish enough to suggest such a ridiculous scenario, or allow the clothing to be buried with an unidentified body. York Regional Police have revised the earlier notion that these are the remains of an accident victim, and now believe the young man met his demise as a result of foul play.
Following the exhumation of the remains, police were able to obtain something not available to them at the time the bones were discovered in 1980: DNA. Even though the technology exists, there was still no guarantee that precious DNA would be recoverable. The body had been in the woods for at least two years by the time it was found, and subjected to insect activity, animals, wind, rain, the blistering heat of summer, and the ice and snow of winter. Conditions following burial at Mount Pleasant Cemetery would have been better, but only slightly, since the skeleton would still face the cold and damp conditions of the grave.
Fortunately it was possible to extract DNA from the disinterred bones and teeth, which was collected and compared with missing persons reports across the province. York Regional Police recently had a close call with the family of a missing gay man from Montreal. The physical description was very close and the man disappeared around 1978, approximately the same time as the male victim died in the Markham woods. Hoping for a break in the cold case, Detective-Constable Clarke drove to Montreal and obtained a blood sample — unfortunately, it wasn't’ a match to the remains. Police are hopeful that the DNA sample they now have on file can be used to compare the Markham victim’s remains to those of a living relative, and that one day a match will be made.
(York Regional Police)
A recent artist impression of the male Markham victim, based on clothing found near the body in 1980. In life, the man was no more than 120 pounds and five and a half feet tall. A red blouse, women’s blue jeans, red and pink high-heeled shoes, frilly, white socks, and a woman’s powder compact led police to believe the body was that of a male cross-dresser.
Like Hovey and Jones, the victim found in 1980 recently had a clay bust recreation made of his face, which was unveiled to the media and posted online at the York Regional Police website in December 2009. Considering the actual skull that the reconstruction was based on had been buried for many years and became damaged and misshapen due to extreme cold, the final result is remarkably lifelike. The three-dimensional clay portrait was sculpted by an artist after the skull was scanned using a brand new technology, and is so accurate that it has already been described as museum quality.
“We hope it looks pretty close to this and that someone comes forward,” said Clarke, who unveiled a drawing to the media of what police believe the victim looked like in life: a slender, effeminate-looking young man with dark hair about four inches long, wearing red and pink, pointy-toed, high-heeled shoes, white frilly socks, form-fitting blue jeans, and an open-collared, red, short-sleeved blouse.
“It’s my belief that he was transgender, possibly in the sex trade down in the Toronto area which … was a bit of a haven, in the 70s, for gays,” said Clarke, who also speculated that the young man may have come to Toronto years ago to live his life as part of the city’s large gay, lesbian, and transgendered community. “In my opinion, I think he was picked up in the city, taken to [Markham], endeavours occurred and then he was killed and left there,” repeated the detective-constable, calling the wooded area “a dumping ground.”6
Considering the viciousness of his earlier crimes and his repeated pattern of picking up young men in downtown Toronto, driving them to remote areas, assaulting and choking them, then leaving their naked bodies to rot in the wilderness, all eyes are looking once again at the seventy-two-year-old James Henry Greenidge. Currently serving his time at a prison in British Columbia for the horrific 1981 murder of young Elizabeth Fells, Greenidge was denied parole in 2007, but has another shot at freedom in 2010. Some may feel Greenidge is an old man who
