advanced the way police search for suspects, going far beyond the days of wanted posters papering the walls of police stations and post offices. Just as criminals have kept pace with technology, so have police agencies, which frequently use the latest tools to apprehend criminals. It is not uncommon for police to incorporate social networking websites like YouTube and Twitter to inform the public and the media about murder or bank robbery suspects, or help locate missing children. As technology progresses, friends and families of murder victims also pay tribute to their lost loved ones through websites like MySpace and Facebook.
This book has been an emotional experience from the beginning, and I cannot say “from beginning to end,” since there is no end, at least not yet. Unsolved crimes don’t reach their conclusion with the death or disappearance of a loved one, they reach their end with the perpetrators being caught. Even in cases like the murder of Sharin’ Morningstar Keenan where there is only one suspect: Dennis Melvyn Howe. For many people, the case will never be closed until he is located, alive or dead.
My intention with this book is to keep the names of the murdered and the disappeared alive, and possibly resurrect memories from someone, anyone, who has information in whoever committed these crimes so that they can be brought to justice.
Every effort has been made to paint as complete a picture as possible, from the times the crimes took place to the present day. In a number of cases new information was made available shortly before the book was published and has been incorporated. All the cases in this book should be here and deserve to be solved, not just for the victims but for the families left behind.
One final note: Some of the cases in this book have been the subject of numerous theories; a few of these theories are plausible, while others are highly unlikely. Unsolved is based on facts made available to the author up to the time of publication. In order to create as accurate a picture of the crime(s) and subsequent investigation(s) as possible, a number of these theories are included in the book. They are clearly stated as “theories” or “speculation” in the text and are not the belief of the author or the publisher. They have been included to provide the reader with the greatest amount of knowledge possible about each case.
Visit Robert J. Hoshowsky’s website at www.truecrimecanada.com.
Chapter 1 Richard “Dickie” Hovey and Eric Jones (1967)
BACK IN 1967, THE WORLD WAS A vastly different place than it is today. While every generation can stake a claim to a decade as their own, anyone coming of age in the sixties remembers it as a period of unprecedented social change. In the United States, citizens were challenging not only themselves but their government and its policies as race riots were sweeping throughout the county, and fifty thousand men and women protested against the war in Vietnam at Washington’s Lincoln Memorial. In Canada, the country united in celebrating its centennial at Expo 67 in Montreal — and threatened to divide when French President Charles de Gaulle proclaimed “Vive le Québec libre!” (“Long live free Quebec!”), enraging English Canadians and sowing the seeds of separatism. Shouts of equal rights for all were heard as legions of young women, blacks, gays, and lesbians took to the streets, demanding respect. The generation gap was widening, as legions of bewildered parents realized that the expression “Don’t trust anyone over thirty” was not intended for someone else, but for them. Sons and daughters, wearing suits and dresses only a few years before, were discarding their sensible, conservative clothes for tie-dyed T-shirts, ripped jeans, sandals, and scraggly hair. It truly seemed as though the planet had changed overnight, leaving legions of exasperated parents and rebellious teenagers in its wake.
Across America a new age had dawned, and the cosmic epicentre was San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district. Named after the intersection of the two streets, the Haight was the perfect place to rent a cheap apartment in one of the area’s massive, old wooden houses. A popular gathering place for students, poets, writers, musicians, and philosophers, the Haight soon became the beating heart of the counterculture movement in America. “Make Love, Not War!” was the chant of the young, as thousands of idealistic, wide-eyed teenagers converged on the area, lured by the promise of free love, cheap drugs, the right to free speech, and music many of them never imagined could even exist. Just a few years earlier, kids and their parents were listening to vinyl records by moral and non-threatening artists like Neil Sedaka, Connie Francis, Pat Boone, and Bobby Vinton. By the mid-sixties these acts were seen as antiquated and boring. A new musical tide was rising, led by reactionary musicians like the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, and the Doors, fronted by the sexually hypnotic and deeply disturbed singer-songwriter, Jim Morrison.
In the late sixties, rock ’n’ roll was still king but a new monarch was coming to court. Her name was Grace Slick, and her band was Jefferson Airplane. The release of the group’s innovative 1967 album Surrealistic Pillow was nothing less than a psychedelic sonic overload. Regarded today as one of the finest acid rock records ever recorded, Surrealistic Pillow spawned the hits “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit,” a two minute and thirty-two second aural experience referencing many of the otherworldly characters in Lewis Carroll’s book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, such as the dormouse and the hookah-smoking caterpillar. The song became an anthem, if not the anthem, for the hippie generation. Back then, no one could predict that Jefferson Airplane would morph into Jefferson Starship before finally landing on the airways as Starship almost twenty years later with their pop hit, “We Built This City,” arguably one of the most reviled songs of all time. San Francisco, once the centre of the psychedelic universe, became, with breathless exclaim, “The city that rocks, the city that never stops!”
Back then it seemed as though the new ideals would last forever. It was a defining period in history, an age of sexual liberation that became known as the Summer of Love. For some Canadians, the year would be known not as a time of peace, love, and understanding, but for things dark, terrifying, and murderous. Over forty years later, many would come to remember Canada’s summer of 1967 as the Summer of Death.
Slender, energetic, and still just a boy at seventeen years of age, Richard James Hovey — “Dickie” to his friends — was one of the many thousands of young men and women who flocked to Toronto in 1967. America may have had San Francisco as its counterculture oasis, but Canada claimed its own musical Mecca in the streets of downtown Toronto. The States had bands like Jefferson Airplane and the Quicksilver Messenger Service, but Canada boasted plenty of its own talent, including future legends like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, many of them playing live in Toronto’s Yorkville area. Hovey came from out east for the musical experience; others were hippies looking for a place to stay, or draft dodgers from the United States, who came because they didn’t believe in the war in Vietnam. Whatever the reason, Yorkville was the place to be that year.
(Ontario Provincial Police)
Richard “Dickie” Hovey, lead guitarist for Teddy and the Royals, with his prized guitar, an inexpensive Sears model that he painted white and modified to look like an expensive Fender. Hovey’s skeletal remains were not identified for almost forty years
Today, the area’s narrow, boutique-lined streets bear little resemblance to the Yorkville of forty years ago. The borders remain the same, decades after the sonic and cultural revolution of the sixties: Bloor Street to the south, Avenue Road to the west, and Yonge Street and Davenport Road to the east and north. The section near downtown is the home to a number of luxury hotels, condominiums, and countless famous designer shops like Vuitton, Boss, and Chanel, exclusive places where money is no object, and if you need to ask the price you should be buying somewhere else. One of the world’s top shopping destinations, rents in Yorkville are among the highest in North America today, averaging a minimum of several hundred dollars per square foot, depending on what side of the
