66 y.o.man is arrested & charged w/1967 Halloween day murder of 16 y.o.girl,who vanished without trace from her home,in Canada,ooks like Edward may have been trying to perform an illegal abortion on the 16 year old
Joe1orbit
It's that time of the month again, folks. No, I'm not talking about a
menstrual cycle, but rather my regular monthly trip. I leave in about 66 hours
or so, and unfortunately have a VERY busy day ahead of me today, and will be
somewhat busy both Wednesday and Thursday too, thus resulting in severe
limitations on the number of Usenet and Mailing List posts that I'll be able to
make. Hopefully other folks will pick up the slack, so that NO serial or mass
killer or other societal victim turned predator, will be ignored or overlooked
at ATC or my Mailing List, due to my lack of posting time.
Interesting case that COULD involve serial murder, is unfolding in Canada, A
66 year old fellow named Edward Gratton is under arrest, and charged with
murder, in connection with the 1967 kidnap-murder of a 16 year old girl, who
was snatched on HALLOWEEN day! Edward got away scot-free with this murder for
32 YEARS, once again showing how OFTEN and how relatively easy it is for
enraged societal victims who are IN CONTROL of themselves, and utilyze good
tactics, to get away with murder.
The body of 16 year old Glenda has NEVER been found, but cops are assuming
she is dead. She was last seen right at her HOME. The lack of a body MIGHT help
Edward out at trial, in terms of trying to win an acquittal. This arrest is
being credited to a special task force that was set up in the province of
Ontario, to try and solve TWENTY or more murders that have occured in the same
area on Ontario, between 1956 and 1983. This arrest represents the FIRST that
the Task Force is able to claim credit for, despite the fact that it's been
operating for 3 years already. Police are now DIGGING at several sites, hoping
to find the body, but it's unclear exactly what led to Edward's arrest.
There is no immediate indication or police claim that they suspect Edward of
committing OTHER murders, and it's certainly possible that he only did this
one. But when a fellow in his middle 30's slaughters a 16 year old girl,
complete stranger to him, and does such a fine tactical job of disposing of the
body and avoiding all police suspicion, and then REMAINS free for the next 32
years, the vibe that I get is that there is a DECENT chance, at least 50/50 in
my book, that IF Edward did carry out this 1967 Halloween murder, he also may
have carried out additional killings through the years.
Well, I just found some VERY interesting updates, that change the complexion
of this case quite a lot. Edward's SISTER is now saying that police tell her
that16 year old Glenda died of complications from an illegal abortion that was
being performed on her, presumably BY her brother Edward. So maybe he had no
overt homicidal intent towards her, and simply buried/hid the body because he
knew that he would face criminal charges, perhaps even a murder charge, if he
notified authorities and admitted to performing the illegal abortion that
turned out to be fatal.
We get confirmation that Edward has absolutely NO criminal record of any
kind. I must admit that these new details greatly REDUCE the liklihood that
Edward is a serial killer. But I guess I'll go ahead & post this to my List
anyway. If he made a HABIT of performing illegal abortions, and wasn't very
SKILLED at it, it's certainly possible that other pregnant gals could have died
at his hand.
It's also nice to get a DETAILED listing of many of the other 20 unsolved
murders that the task force is focusing on. SOME of those murders are MORE than
likely the work of a serial killer.
Take care, JOE
The following appears courtesy of the 9/27/99 Canadian Press news wire:
Sep 27, 1999
Arrest made in 30-year-old case
LONDON, Ont. (CP) - A man has been charged with first-degree murder in the case
of a southwestern Ontario teenager who disappeared on Halloween more than 30
years ago.
Glenda Tedball was 16 years old in 1967 when she went missing from her home
near Thedford, about 45 kilometres northwest of London, on Oct. 31.
A body was never found but police are continuing to search for one.
The arrest of 66-year-old Edward Gratton, of London, on Friday is the result of
an ongoing joint investigation by the Ontario Provincial Police and London city
police known as Project Angel.
Project Angel is looking into 20 unsolved murders in southwestern Ontario
dating between to 1956 and 1983.
The arrest of Gratton for the 1967 murder is the ``first significant
development'' for the police task force since its formation three years ago,
said London police Chief Al Gramolini.
He said he is ``very pleased we've been able to successfully conclude one of
those cases, not only for the community, but the families involved.''
Tedball went missing from her family farm home after going out for a walk in
the morning. She had been home sick from classes at North Middlesex District
High School in Parkhill, near Thedford, and was last seen walking toward the
woods on the 50-hectare farm.
Despite exhaustive searches and pleas from her family, no trace of the teen was
ever found.
Neighbours reported police were digging Sunday at part of the old foundation of
the farmhouse near Parkhill, once owned by Tedball's family.
The farmhouse burned down some time after Glenda's disappearance and was never
replaced.
After the house fire, the family sold the farm and it has since been used only
for crops.
Project Angel went public with its investigations two years ago when it
announced it was starting to gather DNA and other forensic evidence from the
Centre of Forensic Sciences in Toronto.
Since then, officers have interviewed families and witnesses and made public
appeals for tips.
Gratton, who recently moved to London from Belleville, grew up in Thedford,
about 10 kilometres from where Glenda Tedball lived, his brother Louis Gratton
of Stratford said last night.
Gratton was to appear in a London court today. (London Free Press)
----------------------------------------------------------
The following four news articles all appear courtesy of the London Free Press
newspaper:
Tuesday, September 28, 1999
A list of cases under review in Project Angel police effort
By ROXANNE BEAUBIEN, Free Press Crime Reporter
The list of cases being reviewed by Project Angel, a joint effort by OPP and
London police examining unsolved murders in the London region:
- 1956 -- Susan Cadieux, 5, of London, was playing with friends when a man who
appeared to be going to visit St. Mary's school stopped to talk to her on Jan.
6. She vanished a few minutes later. After a search, her body was found the
next morning on the CP Rail tracks near William Street. She had been sexually
assaulted.
- 1959 -- Real Tessier, 33, was last seen alive March 31 at the Empire Hotel in
St. Thomas. He was found shot dead beside a vehicle outside the city less than
an hour later .
- 196 * -- Margaret Sheeler, 20, left her London home in December 1963. Her
partially clothed body was found nearly a month later in a field beside Kipps
Lane. Killed by head injuries, she showed signs of being sexually assaulted.
- 1964 -- Victoria Mayo, 32, was found dead of multiple stab wounds on Aug. 6
in her basement apartment on London's Sydenham Street. Entry to the apartment
had been forced.
- 1967 -- Glenda Tedball, 16, was last seen walking into a bush on Halloween
day near her RR 4, Thedford, home. She has never been found but police have
charged Edward Gratton, 66, with first-degree murder in her case.
- 1968 -- Jacqueline Dunleavy, 16, of Byron, was a Grade 10 student at
Westminster secondary school when she was killed in January. She was strangled
with either her scarf or a belt and struck on the head. Her partially clothed
body was found in the driveway of what was then Katherine Harley school, near
the London Hunt and Country Club. There is evidence she was sexually assaulted.
- 1968 -- Frankie Jensen, 9, of London, disappeared on his way to Westdale
public school on Feb. 9. His body was found two months later in the Thames
River near Thorndale. He had a fractured skull and was partially clothed. It is
unclear if he was sexually assaulted.
- 1968 -- Scott Leishman, 16, of RR 1, Thorndale, was missing for three months
before his body was found in Port Burwell harbour on May 15. There were no
signs of violence but some of his clothing was disturbed. It is unclear if he
was sexually assaulted.
- 1968 -- Helga Beer, 31, of London, was found in the rear seat of her car in a
parking lot off Carling Street near Dundas Street. She had been beaten,
strangled and sexually assaulted. She was last seen alive leaving a friend's
downtown apartment Aug. 6 with an unknown man.
- 1968 -- Lynda White, 19, of Burlington, was a student at the University of
Western Ontario who disappeared after writing a French exam on Nov. 13. Her
remains were found five years later in a shallow grave near St. Williams in
Norfolk County. Police were unable to determine the cause of death.
- 1969 -- Jane Wooley, 62, of London, was found partially clothed Feb. 3 in her
apartment on York Street three days after she was killed. She had been brutally
beaten. She was last seen leaving the London House on Dundas Street where she
was a chambermaid. There was no evidence of sexual assault.
- 1969 -- Patricia Anne Bovin, 22, of London, was found stabbed and strangled
April 24 on the second floor of the King Street apartment where she lived with
her two young sons.
- 1969 -- Robert Bruce Stapylton, 11, of London, disappeared from his
Piccadilly Street home June 7. His body was found in a woodlot in London
Township, six kilometres from his home. Police could not determine the cause of
death and there was no evidence of sexual assault.
- 1969 -- Jacqueline English, 15, of London, was last seen getting into a car
Oct. 4 at the cafeteria of a store at a shopping plaza on Wellington Road, near
the London Ice House. Her nude body was found five days later in Big Otter
Creek near Tillsonburg. She had been sexually assaulted and killed by a blow to
the head.
- 1970 -- Soraya O'Connell, 15, of London, vanished after telling friends she
was hitchhiking from a camp at the Fanshawe Youth Centre in northeast London on
Aug. 14. Her body was found four years later in an old dump south of Stratford.
Little clothing was recovered but it is unknown if she was sexually assaulted.
- 1970 -- Edith Authier, 57, of Merlin in Kent County, was found stabbed,
beaten and sexually assaulted in her home Sept. 5.
- 1972 -- Priscilla Merle, 21, of London, was last seen getting into a car
outside her sister's home in London on March 4. Her left arm was found two
weeks later in Kettle Creek, north of Port Stanley. Her upper torso was found
beside a Kettle Creek marina a month later. For the next several months, police
continued to recover pieces of her body in the area.
- 1975 -- Irene Francis Gibbons, 66, of Strathroy, was found dead in the
bedroom of the bungalow where she lived alone. She was strangled but not
sexually assaulted and no valuables were stolen.
- 1978 -- Irene MacDonald, 36, of London, was last seen in September. She was
reported missing five months later and has never been found.
- 198 * -- Donna Jean Awcock, 17, of London, was last seen leaving a
convenience store near her Cheyenne Avenue housing complex. Her strangled,
partly clad body was found about 15 metres down an embankment overlooking
Fanshawe Dam. She had been sexually assaulted.
------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, September 28, 1999
Abortion tied to Glenda's death
The 1967 search for missing teen
By JONATHAN SHER, JOHN HERBERT AND ROXANNE BEAUBIEN, Free Press Reporters
A home abortion gone terribly wrong is how police described the death 32
years ago of Glenda Tedball, says the sister of a London man charged with
murder.
Edward Lee Gratton, 66, of Kipps Lane, spoke in court yesterday through a video
link from the Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre and is expected to do the same
tomorrow. He's charged with culpable murder, a since-replaced offence that in
1967 included planned and unplanned murders.
His sister, who asked not to be identified, told The Free Press an investigator
with Project Angel told her Tedball had been pregnant and had died after an
abortion at home.
But Project Angel's lead investigator, Ontario Provincial Police Det-Insp. Mike
Coughlin, refused to discuss the abortion scenario.
"Anything in relation to what transpired and how the death occurred is left to
the court of law and is not in a public domain and that's my position," he
said.
"I'm not going to try this case in the media."
Gratton, a frail man who struggled to hear questions asked of him in court, was
the first person arrested in Project Angel, a joint effort by OPP and London
police investigating 20 unsolved murders in the London region.
Dressed in standard-issue orange jumpsuit at his video remand in court
yesterday, Gratton appeared a tiny man, shrivelled with age. His thinning, grey
hair was combed straight back and his black, bushy eyebrows formed a ridge
above his wire-framed glasses.
"I'm a little hard of hearing here," Gratton said loudly into the camera at a
guard's urging.
Justice of the peace Len Obokota raised his voice for the proceedings, but
Gratton still struggled to catch the words.
After the hearing, Gratton's defence lawyer, Michael Barry, said he'd seek bail
for his client.
"This is such an unusual case," said Barry, who didn't elaborate.
But Barry did suggest the murder charge might change.
Coughlin refused to discuss details of the case, including why or when the
probe turned to Gratton, who lived about 10 kilometres from the farm where
Tedball shared a home with her mother and stepfather, Norma and Charles Poore.
Gratton only arrived back in London three months ago -- his second stint in the
city -- after a handful of years in Belleville in eastern Ontario. He and his
wife moved into an apartment next to his sister, who looked after the frail
couple.
Norma Poore died in July. Charles Poore died in the late 1960s. But Norma
Poore's ex-husband -- and Glenda's biological father -- still lives in
Thedford.
For 32 years, Glen Tedball didn't know what had become of his daughter.
Yesterday, he struggled to speak, his eyes glossy and red.
Tedball last saw his daughter on her 16th birthday April 12, 1967. Later that
year, she disappeared Oct 30.
Asked about the abortion scenario, Tedball said: "That's still to come . . .
that's going to come out.
"I'm just too shook up now to say anything."
Gratton, Tedball said, was a frequent visitor to his ex-wife's home around "He
was over there quite often," he said.
Now 73, Tedball said he was relieved OPP had finally made an arrest.
Police descended on Gratton's apartment Friday, taking him to London police
headquarters where he was questioned and arrested.
Investigators spent the weekend excavating the foundation of the Poore house on
Boot Hill Road between Thedford and Parkhill.
The house burned to the ground in a fire in the years after Tedball disappeared
and the home's remains were buried under what has become a farmer's field.
Coughlin said several items were seized and are to be sent to the Centre of
Forensic Sciences in Toronto for testing.
He refused yesterday to say what was found or how it was found more than 30
years after Tedball disappeared.
"Evidence can be found by a variety of different methods that weren't available
then," he said.
He refused to say if project investigators had planned to dig up the site
before the Friday interview with Gratton.
Gratton, who has no criminal record, had met with investigators "a few times"
before Friday's arrest but Coughlin refused to say when the man became a
suspect.
The original investigation was for a missing person and there were no suspects
identified in the case, he said.
---------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, September 28, 1999
Glenda's story just gets sadder
By Julie Carl, Free Press Columnist
PARKHILL< -- The 300 or so kids walked at arm's length from each other,
fanning out from the Tedball home.
Across the fields the students walked. Among the woodlots, through the tall
grass, along the river, they searched.
All day long, they looked and looked and found not a sign.
For 32 years, no one found a single sign of 16-year-old Glenda Tedball.
The students' search will forever be etched in schoolmate Joyce Van Ryn's
memory.
She remembers so clearly walking the fields around this tiny town in search of
the young girl, an acquaintance at North Middlesex District high school, who
disappeared Oct. 31, 1967.
Hundreds of searchers retraced the students' steps in the weeks after Glenda
disappeared.
And still they found no sign of her.
Tomorrow, Edward Lee Gratton, 66, makes his second court appearance, charged
with Glenda's murder.
Over the weekend, after questioning Gratton on Friday, police looked for Glenda
somewhere the students never searched: the family home. Police used a backhoe
to excavate the foundations of the farmhouse, destroyed by fire two years after
Glenda disappeared.
"Some articles" were found and sent for analysis, but it's still not clear if
there was any sign of Glenda.
Townsfolk's surprise at an arrest in the long-ago disappearance pales compared
with their shock at whispers Glenda disappeared after a botched abortion in her
family home.
"That's so sad," Van Ryn said when told.
Van Ryn, two years ahead of Glenda and in a different program at school, didn't
know her well.
Glenda suffered from asthma and epilepsy. She also suffered from shyness, Van
Ryn remembers. She was a bit of a loner.
There were no close girlfriends to giggle with in the halls. No one to share
secrets with after school.
No one remembers the girl having a boyfriend.
At first, some thought Glenda had run away from a less-than-perfect home life.
When she didn't return, some expected her body would be found close to home.
But it wasn't. And the mystery continued.
Over at the Parkhill Gazette, staffer Joyce Hayter looks at the front page from
Nov. 9, 1967, the week after Glenda disappeared.
Glenda smiles from the top of the page. She looks pretty in a school photo, a
chain holding a heart-shaped locket frames her face.
The stark reality of her story shows in a picture at the bottom of the page.
It's of police officers pumping out a drainage pond, scuba divers standing by
to recover her body.
Customers at the Parkhill Variety yesterday talked of nothing but Glenda's
disappearance, said manager Charlie Shin. They came in whispering her sad
story.
Yesterday, a driveway full of cars at Glenda's brother Mike's house belied
friends and family gathering at his home.
A haggard-looking man answered the front door. His eyes looked haunted as he
politely told reporters he had no comment.
All in this town are grieving again for the girl no one knew who disappeared
from their midst so long ago.
Van Ryn, a nurse in Detroit, said 30-plus years ago school support services
that might have helped Glenda simply weren't available in the rural area.
"I know there'd have been help for her today," she said adamantly.
And that makes Glenda's story even more tragic.
The mother of one of Glenda's schoolmates said she's never forgotten the girl.
Every time the woman, who asked to not be identified, drove by the site of the
Tedball home she'd think of her.
It's a cruel thing when a young girl just disappears with no trace.
"We've all lived with that mystery all these years," the woman said.
It seems, as Glenda's story unfolds, her story, her mystery, will just get
sadder.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, September 28, 1999
Family worries about suspect's health
The death of Glenda Tedball
By JONATHAN SHER, Free Press Reporter
Edward Gratton may meet his maker before he gets his day in court, his family
worries.
The 66-year-old Londoner, who has endured a decade of decline and a brush with
death, lacks the physical, emotional or mental strength to survive
incarceration or a murder trial, they said.
"Ed is a sick, sick man. This is going to kill him. He's 66 and you'd think
he's 86," said his sister, who spoke to The Free Press from her modest Kipps
Lane apartment in London.
Gratton and his wife had just returned to London three months ago after years
in Belleville caring for his wife's mother. They moved into the apartment next
to his sister, who performed chores and shopping the older couple can't handle
for themselves.
All three were there Friday when police arrived at Gratton's apartment,
whisking him to London police headquarters. They returned that afternoon and
took in the women for questioning.
"The cop stood up to tell his wife that her husband had been charged with
murder," said the sister, who asked not to be identified. "You might as well
have used a knife to cut my heart out," she said.
Gratton has always been a gentle man, his sister said. "If he took a fly
swatter and killed a fly on the wall, that would eat his heart out," she said.
Twenty-two years into his second marriage, Gratton hasn't had a cross word for
his wife, his sister said. During that time, he has fought a losing battle with
his body, almost dying in a Kingston hospital.
Since his arrest, Gratton has phoned his wife and sister several times from the
Elgin Middlesex Detention Centre.
His sobs haunt them. "The emotional stress that man is under is just pitiful,"
the sister said.
His sister -- who prides herself as the strong one in the family -- is afraid
to go, for fear she might break down and cry.
She bit her lip to hold back tears when her husband phoned yesterday from the
Montreal area where he'd just learned of the murder charge.
A truck driver, he had been unaware until a daughter phoned with the horrible
news.
"I'm fine. What can I do?" the sister told him. She hung up the phone and broke
down, admitting she had put on a show of strength because she worried about her
husband, who at 69 still drives a truck.
Gratton was on the move much of his life, but not on a truck.
He worked five years as a building superintendent at an apartment in Cranbrook,
B.C., before arriving in London in the 1980s. After three stints with security
companies, he retired because of poor health and has survived since on
disability payments.
That's a far step from the early 1950s, when a young Gratton served in the
Canadian military's Royal Canadian Artillery, according to a resume he left
with employers.
Days of health are now a distant memory.
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