Area serial killer identified
Repost
London
Free Press newspaper:
Wednesday, February 16, 2000
Area serial killer identified
By ROXANNE BEAUBIEN, Free Press Crime Reporter
A man jailed for the 1971 murder of a Chatham woman is the serial
killer
behind just-closed police files on two other area murders, The Free
Press has
learned.
Yesterday, a cold-cases police squad probing unsolved homicides in
Southwestern
Ontario dating back to 1956 said it has closed the books on three more
killings
-- all three women, two of them from London and another from Merlin,
near
Chatham.
Although the two killers are dead, Project Angel officials won't
identify them
because of restrictions under privacy law.
But a police source confirmed the joint OPP-London police team has
pinned the
deaths of two women -- Londoner Jane Woolley, 62, and Edith Authier, 57,
of
Merlin, on Gerald Thomas Archer.
Both women were viciously stabbed and beaten -- Woolley in 1969, Authier
the
following year.
The same source confirmed the man police have nailed for the third death
is
Sandor Fulep, a Torontonian found to be insane when he confessed to the
1964
killing of Victoria Mayo, 32, of London.
Sandor's body was exhumed from a Toronto cemetery last November, The
Free Press
has learned. DNA collected from the body matched blood and semen
collected at
Mayo's apartment.
Archer was 40 when convicted of the non-capital murder of Belva Russell,
57, a
Chatham woman killed in 1971 in the same manner as Authier and Woolley.
Sentenced to life in prison, Archer -- while marching out the courtroom
past
his wife -- said: "That's not the end of the ball game. That's just the
first
strike."
Whether Woolley and Authier were the second and third strikes is
something that
will never be tested in court. Archer died in 1995 of an apparent heart
attack.
At a news conference yesterday, the head of Project Angel said the man
they've
pinpointed in the two cases confessed killing Authier to his wife and
daughter
a couple of years after the murder.
Evidence gathered indicated the man's family knew about Authier's
murder, said
OPP Det. Insp. Mike Coughlin. "When confronted with this (they) did
admit it,"
he said.
"The background of the three deceased ladies were so similar in nature.
He met
them in bars probably, they all were cleaning-type ladies in hotels and
he
moved around, so he knew all of them," said London police Deputy Chief
Jim
Balmain.
Though frustrated the men will never face trial, Balmain said: "I think
for
closure purposes -- that you know these predators are no longer out
moving
around the community -- that should bring some sense of satisfaction."
Woolley was a chambermaid at the London House on Dundas Street. Her
naked and
brutally beaten body was found Feb. 3, 1969, by police and a friend
after she
failed to show up at work for several days. She was known to visit
downtown
hotel bars after work.
Authier lived in the former police village of Merlin, part of
Chatham-Kent. A
chambermaid at the William Pitt Hotel in nearby Chatham, she was found
by a
neighbour -- stabbed and beaten to death -- on Sept. 5, 1970.
Two bloody butcher knives were found at the scene.
Mary Gray, who found Authier's body on Sept. 5, 1970, said she's
relieved the
investigation is over but wishes police would release the killer's name.
"I found her in the back room where she had been killed. I don't even
like to
think about it. It wakes up a lot of old, bad memories," she said.
Russell, the woman Archer was convicted for killing, was a Chatham hotel
maid.
She and her boyfriend had made the rounds of hotel bars Jan. 23, 1971.
Her
boyfriend left her to change clothes, but she was gone when he returned,
trial
testimony showed.
The boyfriend later returned to their apartment and found the woman half
nude
and beaten to death. Fingerprints and the boyfriend's testimony about a
fleeing
man cinched the case.
Mayo, the victim in the third Project Angel case announced closed
yesterday,
was found dead in her London apartment in 1964. In what's believed to be
a
Canadian first, Coughlin said DNA from blood and semen collected at the
murder
scene was matched to a man who died in 1996.
His body was exhumed last November. Testing by the Centre of Forensic
Sciences
confirmed the match, Coughlin said. Fulep, his remains in Toronto's
Mount
Pleasant cemetery, walked into a Toronto police station in 1967 and
confessed
to killing a woman in London three years earlier.
Charged with Mayo's death, he was sent to a mental hospital in
Penetanguishine
for a psychological assessment -- after which the charge was dropped.
He was charged again but the case was thrown out because of insufficient
evidence.
Mayo, mother of a five-year-old boy, was found Aug. 6, 1964, face down
on her
bed in her basement apartment at 194 Sydenham St. Wearing a nightgown,
she was
stabbed in the back several times. A large hunting knife was found in a
nearby
sewer.
Yesterday's announcement brings to five the number of cold cases closed
by
Project Angel.
In January 1998, police began reinterviewing witnesses and family
members of
victims found beaten, stabbed, strangled or shot between 1956 and 1983.
Detectives at the time said they hoped new investigative techniques,
including
DNA testing, databases and behavioural profiling, would help close the
files.
Last month, Donald Spindler, a 60-year-old former London bus driver, was
charged with second-degree murder in the 1978 disappearance of Irene
MacDonald,
his common-law wife. Another former wife, Katherine McCoy, 58, also of
London,
is charged with obstructing justice.
Last year, police charged Edward Gratton, 66, of London with culpable
murder in
the 1967 disappearance from the Parkhill area of 16-year-old Glenda
Tedball.
Coughlin said nine of the remaining Project Angel probes are being
suspended
because detectives have gone as far as they can. Investigators have
collected
168 DNA samples from suspects for testing. Coughlin said victims'
families in
newly resolved cases expressed relief.
For investigators, seeing results is bringing a much needed boost. "It's
a
tremendous lift to the investigators within the project. A long
investigation
into this many cases is emotionally draining for the officers," he said.
DNA: CRIME-FIGHTING ALLY
Police are increasingly turning to high-tech tools to solve old murders
and
violent crimes. One method is by using DNA, the unique genetic code each
person
has in their cells -- and may leave at a crime scene. How the process
worked in
the case of Londoner Victoria Mayo, 32, found stabbed to death in her
apartment
in 1964:
- Investigators carefully collect evidence from the body and the crime
scene
that may link to the killer. Samples gathered include the suspect's
blood and
semen.
- At the time of the killing, DNA profiling wasn't even conceived of,
London
police Deputy Chief Jim Balmain said. Now, science has progressed to
where a
single pin-prick of blood is enough to conduct a DNA test.
- Investigation of the Mayo case leads cold-cases squad detective
working in
Project Angel to a suspect who died in 1996.
- Police ask for permission from Ontario's attorney general to exhume
the man's
body to collect a DNA sample. Lead investigator OPP Det. Insp. Mike
Coughlin
says there's enough supporting evidence.
- In November 1999, the body of a man buried in Toronto is exhumed.
University
of Western Ontario anthropologist Michael Spence says a DNA sample could
be
taken from almost any part of the body, including brain tissue, flesh or
even
any remaining hair roots. "Getting DNA from (a body) that recent is well
within
the realm of modern science."
- Testing of blood and semen from the Mayo crime scene and the sample
from the
exhumed body is done at Toronto's Centre of Forensic Sciences.
- The results -- showing a match -- are sent to investigators who are
now able
to close the case.
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