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rfmcdonaldYesterday, I read a provocative article in The Guardian that made the claim that the southwestern Ontario city of London was, from the 1960s into the 1980s, a serial killer capital.
This collection was used by Arntfield as the basis for researches which led to the new book Murder City. The causes for this concentration were explored by Jane Sims in an article in the London Free Press, rooted at least partly in the desire to avoid wrongful convictions whatever the cost.
It was also suggested to me, by someone with experience in the area, that local racism might explain a willingness to brush certain kinds of crime aside. (Eternity Mathis' Vice article this spring was widely cited.) If entire classes of people are disdained by large portions of a city's population, I suppose it might not be impossible that certain classes of crime are likewise ignored.
What say you all? Does this make any sense to you? What are your experiences of the Ontario city of London?
Known as the Forest City, the town is the birthplace of Justin Bieber, Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams. And between 1959 and 1984, it was home to the largest known concentration of serial killers in the world.
Over the course of 25 years, the town was shaken by 29 gruesome murders. Thirteen of those murders were attributed to three killers who were eventually caught and convicted: Gerald Thomas Archer, known as the London Chamber Maid Slayer, Christian McGee, known as the Mad Slasher, and Russell Johnson, known as the Balcony Killer.
Sixteen of the murders have remained unsolved, but a new book based on recovered police files offers a new theory on this bloody chapter in the town’s history, unmasking two alleged serial killers in the process.
Dennis Alsop, a detective sergeant with the Ontario provincial police, was based in the London area between 1950 and 1979. He kept all of his notes and research on the murders hidden until he died in 2012.
“It’s unclear when it all came together, but [Alsop] established this compendium of his original diary entries from the 60s and 70s: old documents from a bygone era, Photostats, teletype transcripts and documents created from now extinct technologies that were thought lost to history,” said Mike Arntfield, a local detective with the London police service and professor at the London-based University of Western Ontario. Alsop left the cache to his son, who ultimately turned them over to Arntfield.
This collection was used by Arntfield as the basis for researches which led to the new book Murder City. The causes for this concentration were explored by Jane Sims in an article in the London Free Press, rooted at least partly in the desire to avoid wrongful convictions whatever the cost.
The Truscott hangover of bad publicity from what became a lesson in poor police investigation techniques caused “a chilling effect” in the OPP, Arntfield argues, making it more cautious about laying charges without exhaustive proof.
That led to a lack of support for Alsop, who worked alone and sometimes used unconventional techniques that were coincidental precursors to modern criminology. Often, he was stonewalled not just by suspects but by senior police management who wanted him to focus on other work, Arntfield argues.
Meanwhile, geography and demography made London a choice destination for violent crime.
A test city for consumer products, nestled along the busy Highway 401, Arntfield said criminals quickly learned through “the jungle telegraph” that London was a great place to get away with their activities
Alsop was left with the investigations when killers would scoop up victims in the city, policed by its own force, and dump their bodies in OPP territory knowing there was little information sharing between police forces.
It was also suggested to me, by someone with experience in the area, that local racism might explain a willingness to brush certain kinds of crime aside. (Eternity Mathis' Vice article this spring was widely cited.) If entire classes of people are disdained by large portions of a city's population, I suppose it might not be impossible that certain classes of crime are likewise ignored.
What say you all? Does this make any sense to you? What are your experiences of the Ontario city of London?
