1967, Yorkville wasn’t about expensive handbags, salons, and shoes, it was about the music. It was the place where countless Canadian artists got their start, like Murray McLauchlan and Neil Young. “You could walk down Yorkville Avenue and see Joni Mitchell on her front doorstep playing guitar,”1 said David Clayton-Thomas, lead singer for Blood, Sweat & Tears. Back then, Yorkville was a place without pretension, where you could go to any of the local European-style coffee houses or bars and sit for hours on end, listening to one great folk or rock artist after another. Yorkville was a veritable who’s who of music, where the country’s finest congregated: Young, Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, and Bruce Cockburn to name a few. Many American artists also flocked to play at one of Yorkville’s many clubs and cafes, like future funk legend Rick “Super Freak” James, Blues singer and guitarist Buddy Guy, and folk musician Mike Seeger.
The names of clubs soon became as legendary as the musical acts they hosted. There was the Riverboat, a coffee house featuring a mix of established and up-and-coming Canadian bands. Nearby were the Mousehole and the Purple Onion. One of the most famous was the Mynah Bird, known in equal parts for the calibre of the musical talent and the eccentricity of the surroundings. Yorkville had a lot of great clubs where you could catch the latest groups, but the Mynah Bird was the only one featuring a real talking bird, barely dressed go-go dancers grooving to the music, and live grass literally growing up the walls. The Mynah Bird was the place to see and be seen. It was also where Richard Hovey played his guitar for a few weeks back in 1967. Hovey’s style of dress was decidedly more mod than hippie. He kept his dark blond hair swept forward, and favoured turtlenecks, expensive-looking jackets, and narrow trousers over long, unwashed hair and sloppy clothes. When “Dickie” dressed in his royal blue jacket, his look resembled one of the early British Invasion bands that landed on the shores of North America a few years earlier, like the Kinks, the Beatles, or the Moody Blues.
Like many boys in their teens, Hovey’s face — with its high, arched eyebrows, turned-up nose, triangular jaw, smooth skin, and compact mouth — was still very delicate, almost feminine. As the Kinks song goes, he was a dandy, a handsome young man concerned with his appearance, and why not? At just five and a half feet tall, Hovey was not much larger than many of the girls who clamoured after him as he played guitar in Yorkville or back home in Marysville, a suburb of Fredericton, New Brunswick. Out east, Hovey had been playing lead guitar in a band called Teddy and the Royals since he was fifteen and still attending school. The group was popular, playing dances for local kids. They were named after Teddy Brown, the band’s eighteen-year-old vocalist; the “Royals” part of their name came from the clothing the five members wore onstage, sharp-looking royal blue jackets. The band was profiled a number of times in the local papers, complete with photos and references to one of their influences, Johnny Rivers, famous for his song Secret Agent Man.
For Richard Hovey, Marysville was home, the place where his family, friends, and bandmates lived, but Toronto’s emerging music scene was calling. When he left New Brunswick in 1967, Hovey hitchhiked his way to Ontario, taking few possessions except for a couple of dollars and his prized electric guitar. He was passionate about music and making it big, and if it was going to happen it was going to be in Yorkville. In time, the name Richard Hovey might have been mentioned in same venerated breath as Neil Young or Gordon Lightfoot, except that at some point in 1967, soon after arriving in Toronto, the young musician literally disappeared without a trace.
Most of Hovey’s friends from Marysville knew he’d gone to Toronto, and didn’t think it was strange when they didn’t hear from him, at least not for awhile. It was the sixties, after all, and travelling across the country for weeks at a time wasn’t all that unusual back then. Still, some of his family and friends became concerned when the weeks turned into months without a word, not even a letter, a long-distance collect call, or even a hastily-scribbled postcard. Some assumed Hovey settled down and was living a normal life in Ontario, but his parents, Melvin and Phyllis, weren’t so sure. Melvin took his concerns about Richard to the local branch of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but for reasons unknown the information was never properly filed as a missing persons report. His parents knew their teenaged son made it to Toronto, guitar in hand, but what became of him? Years went by, turning into decades of uncertainty over the young man’s fate. Melvin passed away in 1991, followed by Phyllis in 2003. Both parents went to their graves never knowing what happened to their son. It would be almost forty years before young Richard Hovey’s fate, and name, would be revealed.
On May 15, 1968, a farmer was plowing his field in Tecumseth Township near Schomberg, about twenty-five miles north of Toronto. It was an isolated area, surrounded by tall grass, dense brush, and overgrown trees, certainly not a place you’d go to unless you had a very good reason. Troubled by a foul smell he thought was coming from his septic tank, the farmer went to investigate and saw something that would haunt him forever. Near a rusty wire fence in a hedgerow were the rotting remains of a young man. The naked body, reduced by decay, insects, and animals to a skeleton, was laying face down in the earth. A few pieces of dried, blackened skin could still be seen here and there, and some hair still remained on the scalp. Although almost all the flesh was missing, a white shoelace remained intact, tying the hands of the body behind its back. With no signs of clothing present and the hands restrained, this clearly was no accidental death.
As disturbing as the discovery was, it was part of a larger problem: this was the second body found in a remote area, in a similar advanced state of decay. On December 17, 1967, less than six months prior to the remains being discovered by a farmer near Schomberg, the skeletal remains of another male were uncovered in a lonely, wooded area of Balsam Lake Provincial Park, about ninety miles north of Toronto, south of Highway 48, near Coboconk, Ontario. In time, Ontario Provincial Police would refer to this body as the “Balsam Lake Victim.” Forensic tests revealed the remains were those of a young man, likely fifteen to eighteen years old, twenty-two at most. It was believed the remains had lain in the same spot for about six months. A forensic examination revealed that the teeth were in exceptionally good condition, and had recent fillings in the left and right lower first molars. Remaining hair on the head was straight, light brown, and of medium length. Unlike the discovery near Schomberg, this skeleton displayed a number of unusual characteristics. Instead of twelve thoracic vertebrae, this body had a thirteenth vertebra, and an additional thirteenth rib on the right side. If these physical anomalies were known to the victim’s family or friends, it could help identify the remains.
Like the body found near Schomberg, this young man was also naked. No clothing was found except for a pair of white, low-cut, size seven, tennis-style shoes made in Czechoslovakia. The hands were tied together, just like the other victim. Instead of binding the hands with a shoelace, however, they were tied with an eleven-foot length of twine. The remains were those of a small man, no more than five feet three inches tall. Police did not know the identity of either of these nameless young victims, yet they were united in many ways, like brothers in death.
“The bodies were linked by victimology,” said David Quigley, a deputy inspector with the Ontario Provincial Police and lead investigator in the cases. Details about both young men, along with those of many other cases, are online as part of the OPP Resolve Initiative, a website created in 2006. In partnership with the Office of the Chief Coroner, the site features hundreds of cases, divided into missing persons and unidentified bodies/remains. In just a few years, the Resolve Initiative has become a successful example of the powers of the Internet, generating hundreds of tips from the public, and receiving between four and six thousand hits per month.
From time to time, the OPP reviews cold cases, such as the unidentified remains found near Schomberg and the skeleton discovered close to Coboconk. For almost four decades, the unclaimed bodies of these two young men sat on a shelf in numbered boxes at the coroner’s office in Toronto. Both victims had much in common: they were male, small, likely still in their teens, and found in secluded areas within the same general time period, late 1967 to mid-1968. The hands of both victims were bound, and since no clothing was found except for a pair of tennis shoes in the area of the Schomberg victim, the murders appeared sexual in nature. As part of the resurrected investigation,
