Hidden Among Us

“It was the coldest of cold cases. Lucy Johnson, a 25 year-old married mother of two, had last been seen by a neighbour in Surrey, B.C., in September 1961. Fifty-one years and 10 months later, in late June 2013, the Missing Persons Unit at the Surrey detachment of the RCMP decided to knock the dust off her file.”

Eva Holland – Up Here – December 2013

Not Criminally Responsible

“Sualim’s crimes—a series of mid-level robberies, followed by a speedy arrest—were always of limited interest, and the story would have disappeared from the public record had it not been for a series of events last summer that had little to do with him. First, in early June, Kleiton Da Silva, who’d been given NCR status after killing a man in a street brawl, went missing from CAMH and allegedly robbed a bakery. A month later, Zhebin Cong, who’d been found NCR for stabbing a man to death in a boarding house, went AWOL and then fled the country. In late July, Sualim also left CAMH under the supervision of a hospital staff member and then walked off on his own.”

Simon Lewsen – The Local – October 2019

The Girl Who Vanished

“Fifteen-year-old Sharmini was scheduled to begin a new job that morning; her parents wanted to drive her to work, but they were called away unexpectedly to help a sick relative. They asked her to leave the number and address of her employer. She had told them it was a position answering phones just a few blocks away. But Sharmini had told her close friends another story: that a police officer had offered her a $12-an-hour job as an undercover drug operative.”

Michelle Shephard – Toronto Life – October 2019

We are the cops

“Once upon a time, London police officers told a story about a woman who woke up wild in their station. She kicked and bit, lunged and spit, police said. Officers were hurt. So police had to charge her with assault. Off to court she went. The end, police said. But that wasn’t the end. That wasn’t the whole story. That wasn’t the real story. Left out of the real story was the fact the woman was assaulted.”

Randy Richmond – The London Free Press – September 2019

Why does any Canadian need a handgun?

“Mr. McLeod is a retired Toronto Police officer who spent three decades with a gun on his hip. He’s also a life-long Conservative supporter, whose backing wavered slightly when the government under Stephen Harper scrapped the long-gun registry, a measure he felt had become a vital investigative tool. But that all changed in July, 2018. For years, Mr. McLeod lived by the gun. Now, he’d rather live without. ‘My personal opinion? We should have no civilian handguns in Canada,’ he says.”

 

Patrick White, Tom Cardoso – The Globe and Mail – September 2019

After a grisly murder-suicide, a small Ontario town looks back at missed signs of dangerous obsession

“For months, trouble had been brewing on Starratt Road: harassing letters, nasty confrontations, an allegation of sexual assault. Ms. Conway had long known about Mr. Jones’s dangerous obsession with Paul’s mother. But she’d never imagined it would come to this.”

 

Molly Hayes – The Globe and Mail – August 2019

The Whistle-blower Who Got It Wrong

“Facing him were four investigators looking into several complaints levelled at ministry researchers. The investigators had come to believe that potentially personally identifiable data had been copied to a flash drive for MacIsaac’s use in his dissertation—a privacy breach he denied. If caught lying, MacIsaac was warned, he could be hauled up on criminal charges.”

Kerry Gold – The Walrus – August 2019