Climate for Murder (1995) - full transcript
The murder of a gay man on stuns the city of Montreal, but it is only a sign of things to come during a particularly violent summer. A string of attacks on members of the gay community go largely unsolved as public outrage grows.
(Multicom Jingle)
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] It's four
a.m. in downtown Montreal.
23 year old Joe Rose gets on the night bus
after working late at a bar.
He's on his way home.
(dramatic music)
As the bus leaves downtown,
four teenagers taunt Rose
because he has pink hair.
One pulls off his hat.
Rose starts to get off the bus
but the driver tells him to stay on,
saying it's safer.
The teens continue harassing Rose.
(dramatic music)
At the end of the line,
Rose tries to get off
but the teens surround him.
They punch and kick him.
The 16 year old stabs him in the back,
puncturing his heart
with a six inch knife.
Joe Rose bleeds to death on the bus floor.
(dramatic music)
The slaying of a gay man on
a public bus stuns Montreal.
It's a sign of things to come.
(suspenseful music)
(upbeat music)
57 year old hospital worker, Harry Dolan,
is found stabbed to death
in his Montreal apartment.
The body is discovered
by his skinhead neighbor, Annai Nelson.
(speaking in foreign language)
Harry Dolan died from stab
wounds to the neck and chest.
(speaking in foreign language)
Police suspect Nelson and
bring him in for questioning
but his fingerprints don't match those
at the scene of the crime.
- I don't want take my fingerprint.
Police told me, I wring his neck.
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Narrator] Harry Dolan's
murder remains unsolved.
Joe Rose is the first victim
and Harry Dolan the latest
in a string of 17 gay
killings that shock Montreal.
Most of the murders
revolve around a half mile
stretch that's known as the Gay Village,
home to an estimated
20,000 gays and lesbians.
It's a diverse area
where bars, restaurants
and shops thrive.
But it has a dark side.
It's one of the city's
poorest neighborhoods,
a no man's land of street
kids and prostitutes.
(dramatic music)
The village is an oasis
of freedom for gays
but also an easy target
for those who hate them.
Police blame the string
of murders on a series
of violent robberies.
Some murders involve cocaine.
Others, male prostitutes.
Some say a serial killer
is stalking gay men.
Still, others implicate
neo-Nazi skinheads.
As 10 of the 17 murders remain unsolved,
fear escalates within the gay community.
- In Montreal you really
have this basic area
where it's closed in and this is called
the Gay Village and this
is where some white powers
come here at three o'clock in the morning
with baseball bats and a car
and just get out of the car,
beat the shit out of one
and then they just take off.
- I usually carry a whistle.
- There were 10 or 12 of
them getting out of van
with baseball bats and hitting, you know?
They had a lot of fun.
- I met some policemen around back at 410
and they told me, "tell your people
"not to go there by
night, it's dangerous."
I answered him "tell your
guys to go there more often
"because it's dangerous."
- I personally found
the murders so shocking
and so surprising because this city seems
so completely tolerant
that it's very amazing
to hear of these 14 or 15 gay men killed.
(mumbles) was also deeply
shocking and unnerving.
It's such a tolerant place, Montreal,
that I find those murders
particularly out of place.
(sirens blaring)
- [Narrator] The same
day Joe Rose is murdered,
28 year old Richad Galan is
found in the Gay Village,
his throat slashed.
Unsolved.
26 year old Laotian doctor,
Edward Yong Sua Mok,
bound and stabbed to death
in his downtown high rise apartment.
Unsolved.
46 year old sales rep, Gaetan Ethier.
Beaten and stabbed to death
in his St. Andre flat.
Superintendent Michele
Pasquier finds the body.
(speaking in foreign language)
Unsolved.
59 year old retired school
teacher, Robert Assaly,
stabbed to death in his
Nuns Island apartment.
Unsolved.
44 year old businessman, Normand Gareau,
beaten to death with a blunt object
in his Sherbrooke Street apartment.
Unsolved.
30 year old unemployed Garfield Walker,
stabbed in the back in his rundown flat
on Henri Julien Street.
Neighbor Charles Upton believes there is
a reason why murders like
Walker's remain unsolved.
- Because he was a transvestite,
there's no way to trust
trying to solve the murder.
- [Narrator] In Montreal,
the growing number
of unsolved murders only fuel suspicions.
- Homophobic person.
- Homophobia.
- Homophobia.
- Homophobia.
- Homophobics.
(speaking in foreign language)
- Fascism.
- I don't know.
- I don't think you
need to have one person
as a serial killer.
I think what you create is a climate.
- Then these particular
crimes may be unrelated
in terms of the perpetrators,
but the phenomenon is the same.
- Homophobia.
- I think it's an issue
of hit motivated violence.
- It's also maybe has
something to do with poverty.
He's frustrated with his own situation
and his own life and he has
to take it out on someone.
- Young people that are sick.
- Punk looking like extra right-wing
neo-Nazi looking
skinheads, yeah, skinheads.
- The chances of a thorough investigation
over the murder of a gay man
is pretty unlikely.
- It's a strange psycho case.
(suspenseful music)
- [Narrator] Gay activists are convinced
the serial killer is stalking gay men.
- 13 in three years.
Where's the public outcry?
If this was 13 little teenage girls,
head would be rolling.
- [Narrator] Police investigate.
- Everybody came and everybody was saying
that there was a serial killer.
There is no serial killer.
- The one comment I will
make about the Montreal case
is that the cases I looked at,
I found no connection.
- [Narrator] Eventually
police convince gay leaders
by showing them case files.
- You're saying now
there's not a serial killer
from what we have seen this morning,
but there certainly is a series of murders
and a phenomenon that has developed.
- [Narrator] And that
phenomenon is still out there.
- I can say that when you
have killed once or twice
and I say that the probability
that he will kill again.
- [Narrator] If there is no serial killer,
the alternative is worse;
there are several killers.
But who are the suspects?
There are an estimated
250 skinheads in Montreal
and five ultra right-wing skinhead gangs.
Skinheads don't just hit
on racial minorities,
they also target gays.
- Yeah, I was found right
over there in that corner.
I had tried to stand up at one point
and I'd fallen down and hit my head
on the corner of that beam there
and through it all I ended up with a scar
right from behind my ear all the way down
the base of my neck.
- [Man] They tried to slit your throat.
- Yeah, their intention was to kill me.
- (mumbles) In my mouth and on the bone--
- [Man] The bones in your face.
- My eyes too and this eye, I
can't see, just a little bit.
- [Narrator] This skinhead was arrested
in the summer of 1991
after a mob of 20 skins
attacked the Gay Village
in broad daylight.
SHARP is an anti-racist skinhead group
that monitors neo-Nazi
activity on the street.
There's plenty of it.
- He was just waiting for
me with a 12 inch blade
and he just jumped me and cut my (mumbles)
right open and cut it
right down to the bone.
- SHARP is Skin Heads
Against Racial Prejudice,
and anti-racist.
We don't believe in that.
Our biggest problems is
that we're called Nazis
every day of our life.
Nine out of 10 skins
in one show are racist.
We know that racist skins
bash homosexuals all the time.
We know that they bash
blacks and Pakistanis.
You name it.
- They go in the parks
and they set one guy up
as like a target guy and make him go
and hit on a guy and
bring him into the woods
where there's like 10-15
boneheads waiting for him
and when they get him into the woods,
they beat the crap out of him.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] Angrignon
Park in Southwest Montreal.
A skinhead lures 51
year old office worker,
Yves Lalonde, into the woods for sex.
Five more skinheads are waiting.
They smash Lalonde with
sticks, fracturing his skull,
bursting his liver.
They steal $92.00.
Police catch up to the youths within days
when one brags about beating a fag
and makes plans to do it again.
The leader is sentenced to three years,
at the time the maximum under
the Young Offenders Act.
One of the arrested youths carries a card
from an international neo-Nazi group,
known to single out gays.
18 months later, someone
has painted Nazi graffiti
next to the spot where
Yves Lalonde was killed.
(dramatic music)
The rise of Nazi gangs is not isolated.
During the time of the
murders, Montreal has also
witnessed a general
rise in youth violence.
The number of teens
charged for violent crimes
has risen 20%.
The numbers for assault, 60%.
In this attack, six youths gang up.
And skins aren't the only
ones who beat up gays.
The youths who killed Joe
Rose weren't skinheads.
One adult, Patrick Moyese, was sentenced
to seven years for manslaughter.
Police say more and more
gangs are going after gays.
- The years of '91, '92, '93,
there were a little bit
more gays assaulted,
probably beaten and there were probably
some violent gang that I'm able to say now
that really beat or went after the gay
because they did not like
them and they kill them.
- [Narrator] And police
suspect violent youth gangs
could be responsible for
some of the other murders.
(dramatic music)
Parc Maisonneuve.
33 year old accountant, Marc Belleriv,
is found lying in his
own blood under a tree
beside his bicycle.
(dramatic music)
His attacker stabbed him over 40 times
and slashed his throat.
Around the same time,
at least three other men
are attacked in the park,
a known meeting place for gay men.
(dramatic music)
Jarry Park, 48 year old
student, Pierre Yvon Croft,
found near his bicycle,
stabbed over 15 times.
(dramatic music)
Savagery of the Belleriv and Croft murders
convince many that Montreal has a serious
hate crime problem.
(upbeat music)
- Fear.
- Fear.
- It's alien to them.
- Fear of the unknown.
- I have no idea.
- It all comes down to being afraid
of something that's different.
- My mother thought it was a disease.
- I don't know why people
are homophobic or whatever.
- They do it because they are stupid.
- Not that you're abnormal to be gay,
but it's just that it's not
the way it should be.
- Intolerance and ignorance
and not being aware and
not being sensitive.
- Discrimination is taught.
- If a straight man is
uncomfortable with himself,
inside himself, well a gay person is going
to bother him a lot.
- If they come to me and oh
you're nice, oh yeah bam!
That's it.
- Your ignorance causes
you to have prejudices
that are based on a lack of knowledge.
- Because the AIDS factor.
- We live in a culture
that values masculinity
and for men to think about
the possibility of
being attracted to a man
is really scary.
(speaking in foreign language)
- You look at movies,
like Silence of the Lambs,
that was like a psycho killer fag.
- I would encourage people to come out
of the homosexual lifestyle and
they can do that by finding God,
by having a relationship with Him.
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Narrator] For Pascal McDonald
and his high school friends,
gay bashing was
practically a social event.
(speaking in foreign language)
They even brought along their girlfriends.
Media reports say they
bashed as many as 60 gay men
until the night they killed someone.
(speaking in foreign language)
McDonald says they went out
that night to party together.
(speaking in foreign language)
He and his friends
stopped at the rest stop
on the way to Joliette because they knew
there were people there,
that they were gay.
So they stopped to watch them.
(dramatic music)
37 year old teacher Daniel Lacombe stops
at a rest stop bathroom.
It's a known gay pick up
spot, but Lacombe is not gay
although the youths think he is.
He refuses their advances.
On the way back to his
car, Patrick Paquette
punches hm four times in the head.
Lacombe collapses and
Paquette jumps on his chest.
The youths lift $15 and flee.
(speaking in foreign language)
Pascal McDonald serves just three months.
Patrick Paquette gets four years
and just the suspicion of being gay
got Daniel Lacombe killed.
Some say the killers of
Joe Rose and Daniel Lacombe
were just doing what was once sanctioned
by the Canadian government.
- In Canada, the penalty
for sexual activity
between two people of the same
sex until 1855, was death.
In fact the first execution in Canada
was a man who was put to death for having
sex with a man.
Until 1955, there were
severe terms of imprisonment
with the lash if you
were convicted of being
involved in homosexual activity.
And until 1969, it was illegal,
and so we're in a context where
within our culture it's not very far away
that homosexuality was punished severely.
- [Narrator] And others
say the past still lives
in Canadian censorship laws.
- Canada is an anally retentive nation.
- Descriptions and depictions
of anal penetration
are obscene in Canada and are
not allowed in the country.
What sexual acts are
prohibited by Canadian customs.
1. Anal penetration.
2. Excessive ejaculation
on a person's face
defined as on the eyes, ears or nose
however, the chin and forehead
are federally protected.
C. Group ejaculation.
The state is saying
that a male penetrating
another male by definition is obscene.
The message that's being
sent to the public at large
is that the predominant
mode, or one predominant mode
of gay sexual behavior is
unacceptable, is obscene,
is repulsive.
Nothing to do with the anus is considered
to be healthy sex.
- [Narrator] The irony is that gay culture
has become so popular,
it's being celebrated
in Montreal's heterosexual world.
One of Montreal's
hottest nightclub events,
Squeeze, mixes gays and straights.
The subculture has never
been more vibrant or visible.
Sadly, many believe gay visibility
and growing mainstream acceptance
also creates a backlash.
- When mainstream press
picks up on this, of course,
it's yet another equation with equating
the gay lifestyle with death,
which we've already had ad
nauseum because of AIDS.
When people think of gay men now,
so often they think of
death, whether by AIDS
or by this sort of very
violent homophobic gay bashing.
These people have been
predicting for a time
that there would be violent
backlash against gays
because of AIDS and since
Joe was actually himself,
somebody who had AIDS
when he was murdered,
I felt this was what we were witnessing
was the beginning of a huge backlash
against gay men and I
was very upset by it.
- [Narrator] If AIDS explains
the backlash against gays,
how do we explain
violence against lesbians?
- Most of my friends that got bashed,
like lesbians, they've been followed
walking out of a lesbian
night or a lesbian bar.
They just followed them and then wait
til they find a little dark corner
and beat the shit out of them.
The states, the church, this coup,
the family, push.
Push very hard to maintain and reduce
this ideology that heterosexuality
is the basis of society.
And I think that's why they just hate us.
- As a movement pushes itself forward,
you're always going to get a backlash.
You're always going to get
a sector of society that
doesn't want you around.
I think as long as we're not recognized
by church and state
as (speaking in foreign language),
as equal to every other
citizen in this country,
as long as we don't
have those equal rights,
it'll feed upon people's
prejudices against us.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] The Anglican
Church of St. James the Apostle.
It's where 54 year old Warren Eling serves
until November 10th, 1993.
That night, he is found
bound, naked and strangled.
Montreal is rocked by the murder.
The Reverend meets his
killer on a street corner
in the village.
- The drama or the scene,
the first encounter
started here then we all know
what happened after that.
- [Narrator] Warren
Eling's wallet, computer,
and sound system are stolen.
Danny McIlwaine is arrested
December 10th, 1993,
after he drinks antifreeze
in a suicide attempt.
McIlwaine tells the court he
killed Eling accidentally,
strangling him in an S&M ritual.
The jury doesn't buy it.
McIlwaine gets life in prison
for first degree murder.
But others pegged some
of the responsibility
for Eling's death on the church.
- Warren was a friend and a priest.
Warren and I had been in the same seminary
30 years ago in Toronto.
Two years ago, a little
over two years ago,
we had a parish vacancy here in Montreal
and I was very happy to
have his name nominated
and ultimately invited him
here as priest of that parish.
- [Narrator] In Toronto,
Anglican priest Jim Ferry
was fired for having a gay lover,
creating a climate of fear
for other gay priests.
- Warren didn't leave Toronto
just because of what happened to me.
He was one of several factors.
And I think homophobia figured
largely in the whole thing.
Warren was a very competent priest
but he was obviously
single and to many people,
fairly obviously gay, although
he was very causative.
I think the church bears a
great deal of responsibility
for the death of Warren Eling.
It's the church's duplicitous standards
saying we love gays but we won't allow you
to be in a loving relationship.
That would not allow Father Eling to form
a long term committed relationship.
He had one for several
years, he had to give it up.
And I really have to ask
the church, the bishops,
just how things might have been different
if instead Warren had been allowed to have
a loving, committed relationship?
- Committed lifelong relationships
between same sex partners has not been
part of the picture up to now
that any intimacy
between same sex partners
would be seen as
something outside marriage
and outside what the
church says is the ideal.
- They say on the one hand
no sex outside of marriage
and then they turn around and say
we won't bless your unions.
Now there's a real contradiction there.
- It's a terrible anomaly.
It's a terrible anomaly at the moment
and the day may well come when,
and certainly is coming
in the society as a whole,
the day may well come even
within the life of the church
where committed, life long relationships
between same sex partners
are honored and accepted
and even blessed.
(thunder clapping)
- [Narrator] Quebec is
steeped in Catholic tradition.
A church which says
homosexuals are sinners.
In 1993, Pope John Paul
described homosexuality
as an intrinsically evil act.
The year before, the Vatican
called discrimination
against lesbians and gays,
sometimes justifiable.
70 year old Catholic
priest, Rolland Gagne,
strangled to death in
his downtown apartment.
Police arrest two men,
one of them just 17.
The case is now before the courts.
The Catholic church in
Montreal remains silent
about the priest's death.
It's not the only institution
that shows homosexuals'
lack of understanding.
(crowd yelling)
Montreal gays gather outside Station 25
to protest police action
during a brutal raid
the night before at a
party, the Sex Garage.
(crowd yelling)
Gays say police discrimination
has prevented cops
from solving the murders.
(crowd yelling)
Relations between the
community and the police
are marked by a history of tension
dating back to the Sex Garage incident.
(upbeat music)
(crowd yelling)
- The message that that
sent out was not only
that the police were too brutal
like most people watching it would assume
the police were overreacting,
but for any homophobes who are violent,
watching those broadcasts
was clearly a sanction
of a government institution sanctioning
homophobic violence.
(speaking in foreign language)
(siren blaring)
- In spite of all the prejudice,
we're not welcome
because the gay community
like any other minor community
has prejudice towards the police.
Now we're keeping statistics
about crimes that concern gay
but there again we have problems
because there's not many,
and when, let's say--
- [Reporter] Not many reported.
- Not many reported.
That's very important to recite.
Not many reported and
when they are reported,
if it's not obvious for
us and if the victim
does not say that he's
gay, he cannot be concerned
as a gay crime.
And there's no way we can ask the person,
that's because of Quebec law, are you gay?
- [Narrator] The gay killings,
the plague of gay bashing,
the sense that the police
in the province don't care
enough to solve the murders.
All this leads Quebec's
human rights commission
to hold historic public hearings on gay
and lesbian rights.
June 1st, 1994, the commission recommends
police work with the gay
and lesbian communities
to solve crime.
- The promise is still there,
we can't solve a crime
after one concentration
or one week of public hearings.
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Narrator] In its report,
the Quebec Human Rights
Commission points to Ottawa
as a model for community policing.
- First thing we're starting
to use is the video.
- Gay and lesbian
activists say Ottawa police
are on the leading edge
and perhaps North America
when it comes to dealing with gay bashing
and hate crime.
- [Narrator] Two years
after a man is killed,
in 1989, Ottawa police create
an anti-hate crime squad,
the Bias Crime Unit.
- Well the individual was a waiter
at the Château Laurier Hotel
and he lived over in Hull
and he walked home on a nightly basis
and what he did was he
cut through this park
in the evening, again was
frequented by gay men,
to take the Interprovincial Bridge home
and that night, as he was
going through the park,
there was a group of teenagers up there
that were deciding that they were going to
roll gay people.
And he basically was perceived to be gay
so he was targeted and he
was surrounded and robbed,
eventually dragged to the
bridge and hung upside down
which is about a 10 story drop,
if anybody's ever seen that
bridge, it's a metal bridge
and it ends up down at the rocks
in the Ottawa River.
And again, it was very
lighthearted and joking about it.
The last thing they commented
on before they dropped him
was nice set of shoes you have there.
They let him go and he fell to his death.
- Up until this unit came about,
I had no confidence telling anyone
that they should call the police
and report a bashing or
report an issue of harassment.
Now we at least have a focus where I can
say to someone, call the Bias Crime Unit.
I truly think that this unit,
and the bias crime spin on things
will truly be community
policing in the year 2000
and years to come.
Anybody is looking at placing (mumbles)
has to realize that you
cannot police people
who don't want to be policed.
- It's the creed that
allows you to police.
We're not staking out
cans and stuff like that
looking to catch people
in sexual positions.
I mean, my God.
- [Narrator] Montreal gay activists demand
cops move toward a
similar style of policing.
(dramatic music)
Instead, Montreal Police raid K.O.X.,
the city's largest gay nightclub
and arrest over 160 people.
- Were effectively being performed openly
sexual acts of masturbation, oral sex,
things of that nature.
- [Narrator] The following
day, those caught up
in the K.O.X. raid hold a press conference
to denounce the arrests.
- For Christ's sake, that means for me
that I cannot go anymore in any gay bar
because I could be arrested
to be in a bounty house.
- The raid situates itself
in a series of events
that have been going on for
the last year and a half
of trying to improve relations between
the police department and the
gay and lesbian community.
And this kind of event
unfortunately sets us back.
- [Narrator] Many feel
police should have talked
with club owners instead of
arresting over 160 people.
- What I look at is society,
the general population's reaction to this.
If there's a raid on a heterosexual bar
where sex is happening,
then those people there
are blamed and it's their illegal act,
if it's illegal.
Whereas last night at K.O.X.,
there were, in society's
mind, the entire gay community
was there and the entire gay community
was having sex.
- [Narrator] Gay activists say Montreal
needs an organization police can consult
to prevent situations
like the K.O.X. affair
and that organization needs money.
- One of the ways is to get funding
from the Minister of Public Security
to be able to put together some kind
of professional resources to be able
to start answering these problems.
- But who are we gonna
give the public money to?
Are they reliable?
That's the problem.
Credibility is built with years
and that's their problem for the moment.
- We started our best interests
to be an adverse points between
the police department and the communities,
especially when we have 15 dead bodies.
- [Narrator] By the end
of '93, the death toll
would reach 17.
The highest number of recorded
gay murders in Canada.
- [Man] Probably because
it's one of the most
liberated cities in the world.
- I mean, shit happens.
- I think it's important to say
that for most gay, lesbian
and bisexual people,
Montreal seems to be a
very good place to live,
a very open city, probably
the most open city
in North America.
But I also believe that
with increased visibility
the community and the
increased self-affirmation
of the community, there's
probably a reaction against that.
- I've never had a problem in Montreal
but I think it also is my stature.
I look intimidating.
- We have a population that
in my view and others would
contest this I suppose,
is not as cosmopolitan in its history
as people might tend to believe.
- The fact that there is
an identifiable village
makes it easier to correlate
someone's sexual orientation
to that of a murder.
- I don't think we should
single out Montreal.
I think it ends up a victim
of that kind of violence
everywhere for a long period of time.
- Times are hard whether the solutions
are economic or political,
you have to find victims so
we have many Jews to bash
in Montreal but we have
these nice gay people
in the same district, so,
I'm being cynical but...
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] Police and gay activists
have conducted intensive investigations.
But the one thing they haven't done
is publicly examined the link
between the murders and
Montreal's street cocaine trade.
(dramatic music)
Montreal anti-poverty groups say there are
as many as 5,000 street kids in the city.
(dramatic music)
Many turn to hard street drugs
and then to prostitution to
support their addictions.
During the same time period
as the Montreal killings,
gay murder epidemics
have also struck New York
and Washington, cities with
visible gay communities.
Cities that are also plagued by poverty,
prostitution, cocaine.
It's an explosive mix.
This is the corner of
Champlain and Sainte Catherine.
The dark side of the Gay Village.
A kind of no-mans land on the border
between the up and coming Gay Village
and Montreal's poor, Southeast end.
Champlain and Sainte Catherine is a center
for male prostitution in Montreal.
It's also a major new hotspot for cocaine.
The needle exchange recently
opened one block away.
It's filled with
prostitutes who buy cocaine
in the area and sell sex
to finance their habit.
Surprisingly, many of the male prostitutes
on the strip aren't gay.
This prostitute is a self
described heterosexual.
He says he hates the sex
but hustles to support
his cocaine habit.
It's a typical story on the strip.
It's the story behind
many of the gay murders.
Warren Eling met his murderer
two blocks from here.
- On the corner of Sainte
Catherine and Plessis.
- [Narrator] Danny McIlwaine was straight.
A married man, a cocaine addict who says
he hustles to support his habit.
Brian Booth's murder was similar.
He was killed in a downtown hotel room
but his killers picked
him up at Club David.
A known hustler bar one
block from Champlain
and Sainte Catherine.
Police have since closed it down.
Police evidence suggest
Gaetan Ethie met his murderer
at a bar called Le Top,
also at the corners
of Sainte Catherine and Champlain.
Yet another murder victim, Michael Hogue
was killed in his home in early 1993
by a heterosexual prostitute who hustled
in exchange for cocaine.
And murder victim Nomo Gavo was himself
a cocaine dealer according to police.
This man says he worked for him.
(speaking in foreign language)
- Perhaps a turn, don't
know, a turn or (mumbles)
really (mumbles) the crime.
That mean that the guy
who killed the other guy,
killed him because he was gay.
But most of the crimes
were just criminals.
For money or for the kick.
- I would say setting
up 40 year old people
or getting picked up by 40 year old people
average and being driven home.
Sometimes they have the knife on them,
sometimes they don't.
And sometimes they go into this sexual act
and when the person is in the position
he does not see him, they stab
or they punch and they kill.
- [Narrator] Is the solution to these
in most of the 10 unsolved murders,
found in the drugs and
prostitution that revolve
around the corner of Champlain
and Sainte Catherine?
That connection explains
a lot about the murders.
All the murders were accessibly violent.
- Cocaine, heroin.
I'm not an expert but I can tell you
anything that we have that involves
drugs, heroin or cocaine,
it's violent, it's very violent.
There's no mercy.
- [Narrator] Most victims were over 40,
the strip is full of older men seeing sex,
often closeted, easy prey
for would-be killers.
- We were even told by the gay community
when we met them last Monday,
that once you're over 32,
33 in the gay community,
you're past tense.
So if you're looking 35, you're not gonna
pick up anymore with the young boys.
You gotta go with the prostitutes.
- That's not true, not at all.
There's a lot of
de-association in the clubs
where any guy can go and find somebody
you will like to love.
The problem is they're
afraid to be recognized,
it will go by night, it
will go in dark place
in little street and in park.
- [Narrator] The amount stolen
in all cases were small.
- All crimes committed are
by people on this habit.
Within minutes of following their crime,
they're at the shooting gallery doing it.
Which means that they're spontaneous.
- [Narrator] Prostitutes
themselves admitted
the killer or killers
could be in their midst.
- He might be picking them up down here
but he's not a regular person from here.
He just comes down when he feels like
picking someone up for his next victim.
- He comes around here, he knows the area,
he knows, he must have
some kind of experience.
- I don't want to put all the pressure
on the victim, but some
of those guys are criminal
and they should be put
in jail and stay there.
If I was a police man,
I would do undercover
on the Sainte Catherine
Street, let's see, Champlain,
it's hard to tell, making
friends with the prostitutes
and that's the best way.
When you know them, then
you know, their habit,
you know who are drug
addicts, who can kill.
- [Narrator] Montreal has
developed a reputation
of a dangerous place for homosexuals
but gays have no reason
to distrust each other
because homosexuality is not the killer.
Homosexuals are the victims.
Still, 10 of the 17
murders remain unsolved.
Who is to blame?
There's no evidence of a serial killer.
There is a series of killings
with similar ingredients.
Against a backdrop of
growing Montreal poverty,
a highly profitable cocaine trade thrives
and the fringes of the Gay Village,
some addicts are prostitutes
who may steal and even kill
to keep ahead of their habits.
Society discourages open
relationships between gays.
This pushes some gay men
into clandestine sex,
sometimes found on dangerous streets
at a deadly price.
Laws and public attitudes
marginalize gays.
This makes them a convenient
target for youth gangs,
neo-Nazi skinheads and
others who get a kick
out of bashing gays and
also muffles public outrage.
Montreal police solve 80% of all homicides
but have only solved
40% of the gay murders.
Do police know or care
enough about gay men?
These are the factors that have created
a climate for murder in Montreal
and several killers have
taken advantage of it.
They have singled out gay
men because they believe
they have a better chance
at getting away with murder.
And so far, most of them have.
(gentle music)
- I'm gonna be 26 and have a baby son.
And if I have a boy well
he's gonna carry his name.
With pride.
(gentle music)
- Why are people gay?
Why are people heterosexual?
- Why are people gay?
That's a good question.
- I don't know, do you know?
- They're born that way?
- They're born that way.
- They're just born that way.
- I don't think they're born gay.
- Better gay than grumpy.
- It's a profoundly religious question.
- 'Cause baby without us,
you ain't got nothing.
- 'Cause it's fabulous.
- Is it something that a young man learns
from an overbearing mother?
- I don't believe it's caused by
being a mother overprotective
or a father this.
- As far as general medicine's concerned,
they believe it's genetic.
- Nature and nurture.
- I guess it's nature.
- If it is you and it's
part of you, so be it.
- It's something you're born with.
It's not something we choose.
- [Man] I'm sorry?
- [Woman] Why?
- That I don't know.
- But certainly being gay
is part of the normal,
diversity of human existence.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] It's four
a.m. in downtown Montreal.
23 year old Joe Rose gets on the night bus
after working late at a bar.
He's on his way home.
(dramatic music)
As the bus leaves downtown,
four teenagers taunt Rose
because he has pink hair.
One pulls off his hat.
Rose starts to get off the bus
but the driver tells him to stay on,
saying it's safer.
The teens continue harassing Rose.
(dramatic music)
At the end of the line,
Rose tries to get off
but the teens surround him.
They punch and kick him.
The 16 year old stabs him in the back,
puncturing his heart
with a six inch knife.
Joe Rose bleeds to death on the bus floor.
(dramatic music)
The slaying of a gay man on
a public bus stuns Montreal.
It's a sign of things to come.
(suspenseful music)
(upbeat music)
57 year old hospital worker, Harry Dolan,
is found stabbed to death
in his Montreal apartment.
The body is discovered
by his skinhead neighbor, Annai Nelson.
(speaking in foreign language)
Harry Dolan died from stab
wounds to the neck and chest.
(speaking in foreign language)
Police suspect Nelson and
bring him in for questioning
but his fingerprints don't match those
at the scene of the crime.
- I don't want take my fingerprint.
Police told me, I wring his neck.
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Narrator] Harry Dolan's
murder remains unsolved.
Joe Rose is the first victim
and Harry Dolan the latest
in a string of 17 gay
killings that shock Montreal.
Most of the murders
revolve around a half mile
stretch that's known as the Gay Village,
home to an estimated
20,000 gays and lesbians.
It's a diverse area
where bars, restaurants
and shops thrive.
But it has a dark side.
It's one of the city's
poorest neighborhoods,
a no man's land of street
kids and prostitutes.
(dramatic music)
The village is an oasis
of freedom for gays
but also an easy target
for those who hate them.
Police blame the string
of murders on a series
of violent robberies.
Some murders involve cocaine.
Others, male prostitutes.
Some say a serial killer
is stalking gay men.
Still, others implicate
neo-Nazi skinheads.
As 10 of the 17 murders remain unsolved,
fear escalates within the gay community.
- In Montreal you really
have this basic area
where it's closed in and this is called
the Gay Village and this
is where some white powers
come here at three o'clock in the morning
with baseball bats and a car
and just get out of the car,
beat the shit out of one
and then they just take off.
- I usually carry a whistle.
- There were 10 or 12 of
them getting out of van
with baseball bats and hitting, you know?
They had a lot of fun.
- I met some policemen around back at 410
and they told me, "tell your people
"not to go there by
night, it's dangerous."
I answered him "tell your
guys to go there more often
"because it's dangerous."
- I personally found
the murders so shocking
and so surprising because this city seems
so completely tolerant
that it's very amazing
to hear of these 14 or 15 gay men killed.
(mumbles) was also deeply
shocking and unnerving.
It's such a tolerant place, Montreal,
that I find those murders
particularly out of place.
(sirens blaring)
- [Narrator] The same
day Joe Rose is murdered,
28 year old Richad Galan is
found in the Gay Village,
his throat slashed.
Unsolved.
26 year old Laotian doctor,
Edward Yong Sua Mok,
bound and stabbed to death
in his downtown high rise apartment.
Unsolved.
46 year old sales rep, Gaetan Ethier.
Beaten and stabbed to death
in his St. Andre flat.
Superintendent Michele
Pasquier finds the body.
(speaking in foreign language)
Unsolved.
59 year old retired school
teacher, Robert Assaly,
stabbed to death in his
Nuns Island apartment.
Unsolved.
44 year old businessman, Normand Gareau,
beaten to death with a blunt object
in his Sherbrooke Street apartment.
Unsolved.
30 year old unemployed Garfield Walker,
stabbed in the back in his rundown flat
on Henri Julien Street.
Neighbor Charles Upton believes there is
a reason why murders like
Walker's remain unsolved.
- Because he was a transvestite,
there's no way to trust
trying to solve the murder.
- [Narrator] In Montreal,
the growing number
of unsolved murders only fuel suspicions.
- Homophobic person.
- Homophobia.
- Homophobia.
- Homophobia.
- Homophobics.
(speaking in foreign language)
- Fascism.
- I don't know.
- I don't think you
need to have one person
as a serial killer.
I think what you create is a climate.
- Then these particular
crimes may be unrelated
in terms of the perpetrators,
but the phenomenon is the same.
- Homophobia.
- I think it's an issue
of hit motivated violence.
- It's also maybe has
something to do with poverty.
He's frustrated with his own situation
and his own life and he has
to take it out on someone.
- Young people that are sick.
- Punk looking like extra right-wing
neo-Nazi looking
skinheads, yeah, skinheads.
- The chances of a thorough investigation
over the murder of a gay man
is pretty unlikely.
- It's a strange psycho case.
(suspenseful music)
- [Narrator] Gay activists are convinced
the serial killer is stalking gay men.
- 13 in three years.
Where's the public outcry?
If this was 13 little teenage girls,
head would be rolling.
- [Narrator] Police investigate.
- Everybody came and everybody was saying
that there was a serial killer.
There is no serial killer.
- The one comment I will
make about the Montreal case
is that the cases I looked at,
I found no connection.
- [Narrator] Eventually
police convince gay leaders
by showing them case files.
- You're saying now
there's not a serial killer
from what we have seen this morning,
but there certainly is a series of murders
and a phenomenon that has developed.
- [Narrator] And that
phenomenon is still out there.
- I can say that when you
have killed once or twice
and I say that the probability
that he will kill again.
- [Narrator] If there is no serial killer,
the alternative is worse;
there are several killers.
But who are the suspects?
There are an estimated
250 skinheads in Montreal
and five ultra right-wing skinhead gangs.
Skinheads don't just hit
on racial minorities,
they also target gays.
- Yeah, I was found right
over there in that corner.
I had tried to stand up at one point
and I'd fallen down and hit my head
on the corner of that beam there
and through it all I ended up with a scar
right from behind my ear all the way down
the base of my neck.
- [Man] They tried to slit your throat.
- Yeah, their intention was to kill me.
- (mumbles) In my mouth and on the bone--
- [Man] The bones in your face.
- My eyes too and this eye, I
can't see, just a little bit.
- [Narrator] This skinhead was arrested
in the summer of 1991
after a mob of 20 skins
attacked the Gay Village
in broad daylight.
SHARP is an anti-racist skinhead group
that monitors neo-Nazi
activity on the street.
There's plenty of it.
- He was just waiting for
me with a 12 inch blade
and he just jumped me and cut my (mumbles)
right open and cut it
right down to the bone.
- SHARP is Skin Heads
Against Racial Prejudice,
and anti-racist.
We don't believe in that.
Our biggest problems is
that we're called Nazis
every day of our life.
Nine out of 10 skins
in one show are racist.
We know that racist skins
bash homosexuals all the time.
We know that they bash
blacks and Pakistanis.
You name it.
- They go in the parks
and they set one guy up
as like a target guy and make him go
and hit on a guy and
bring him into the woods
where there's like 10-15
boneheads waiting for him
and when they get him into the woods,
they beat the crap out of him.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] Angrignon
Park in Southwest Montreal.
A skinhead lures 51
year old office worker,
Yves Lalonde, into the woods for sex.
Five more skinheads are waiting.
They smash Lalonde with
sticks, fracturing his skull,
bursting his liver.
They steal $92.00.
Police catch up to the youths within days
when one brags about beating a fag
and makes plans to do it again.
The leader is sentenced to three years,
at the time the maximum under
the Young Offenders Act.
One of the arrested youths carries a card
from an international neo-Nazi group,
known to single out gays.
18 months later, someone
has painted Nazi graffiti
next to the spot where
Yves Lalonde was killed.
(dramatic music)
The rise of Nazi gangs is not isolated.
During the time of the
murders, Montreal has also
witnessed a general
rise in youth violence.
The number of teens
charged for violent crimes
has risen 20%.
The numbers for assault, 60%.
In this attack, six youths gang up.
And skins aren't the only
ones who beat up gays.
The youths who killed Joe
Rose weren't skinheads.
One adult, Patrick Moyese, was sentenced
to seven years for manslaughter.
Police say more and more
gangs are going after gays.
- The years of '91, '92, '93,
there were a little bit
more gays assaulted,
probably beaten and there were probably
some violent gang that I'm able to say now
that really beat or went after the gay
because they did not like
them and they kill them.
- [Narrator] And police
suspect violent youth gangs
could be responsible for
some of the other murders.
(dramatic music)
Parc Maisonneuve.
33 year old accountant, Marc Belleriv,
is found lying in his
own blood under a tree
beside his bicycle.
(dramatic music)
His attacker stabbed him over 40 times
and slashed his throat.
Around the same time,
at least three other men
are attacked in the park,
a known meeting place for gay men.
(dramatic music)
Jarry Park, 48 year old
student, Pierre Yvon Croft,
found near his bicycle,
stabbed over 15 times.
(dramatic music)
Savagery of the Belleriv and Croft murders
convince many that Montreal has a serious
hate crime problem.
(upbeat music)
- Fear.
- Fear.
- It's alien to them.
- Fear of the unknown.
- I have no idea.
- It all comes down to being afraid
of something that's different.
- My mother thought it was a disease.
- I don't know why people
are homophobic or whatever.
- They do it because they are stupid.
- Not that you're abnormal to be gay,
but it's just that it's not
the way it should be.
- Intolerance and ignorance
and not being aware and
not being sensitive.
- Discrimination is taught.
- If a straight man is
uncomfortable with himself,
inside himself, well a gay person is going
to bother him a lot.
- If they come to me and oh
you're nice, oh yeah bam!
That's it.
- Your ignorance causes
you to have prejudices
that are based on a lack of knowledge.
- Because the AIDS factor.
- We live in a culture
that values masculinity
and for men to think about
the possibility of
being attracted to a man
is really scary.
(speaking in foreign language)
- You look at movies,
like Silence of the Lambs,
that was like a psycho killer fag.
- I would encourage people to come out
of the homosexual lifestyle and
they can do that by finding God,
by having a relationship with Him.
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Narrator] For Pascal McDonald
and his high school friends,
gay bashing was
practically a social event.
(speaking in foreign language)
They even brought along their girlfriends.
Media reports say they
bashed as many as 60 gay men
until the night they killed someone.
(speaking in foreign language)
McDonald says they went out
that night to party together.
(speaking in foreign language)
He and his friends
stopped at the rest stop
on the way to Joliette because they knew
there were people there,
that they were gay.
So they stopped to watch them.
(dramatic music)
37 year old teacher Daniel Lacombe stops
at a rest stop bathroom.
It's a known gay pick up
spot, but Lacombe is not gay
although the youths think he is.
He refuses their advances.
On the way back to his
car, Patrick Paquette
punches hm four times in the head.
Lacombe collapses and
Paquette jumps on his chest.
The youths lift $15 and flee.
(speaking in foreign language)
Pascal McDonald serves just three months.
Patrick Paquette gets four years
and just the suspicion of being gay
got Daniel Lacombe killed.
Some say the killers of
Joe Rose and Daniel Lacombe
were just doing what was once sanctioned
by the Canadian government.
- In Canada, the penalty
for sexual activity
between two people of the same
sex until 1855, was death.
In fact the first execution in Canada
was a man who was put to death for having
sex with a man.
Until 1955, there were
severe terms of imprisonment
with the lash if you
were convicted of being
involved in homosexual activity.
And until 1969, it was illegal,
and so we're in a context where
within our culture it's not very far away
that homosexuality was punished severely.
- [Narrator] And others
say the past still lives
in Canadian censorship laws.
- Canada is an anally retentive nation.
- Descriptions and depictions
of anal penetration
are obscene in Canada and are
not allowed in the country.
What sexual acts are
prohibited by Canadian customs.
1. Anal penetration.
2. Excessive ejaculation
on a person's face
defined as on the eyes, ears or nose
however, the chin and forehead
are federally protected.
C. Group ejaculation.
The state is saying
that a male penetrating
another male by definition is obscene.
The message that's being
sent to the public at large
is that the predominant
mode, or one predominant mode
of gay sexual behavior is
unacceptable, is obscene,
is repulsive.
Nothing to do with the anus is considered
to be healthy sex.
- [Narrator] The irony is that gay culture
has become so popular,
it's being celebrated
in Montreal's heterosexual world.
One of Montreal's
hottest nightclub events,
Squeeze, mixes gays and straights.
The subculture has never
been more vibrant or visible.
Sadly, many believe gay visibility
and growing mainstream acceptance
also creates a backlash.
- When mainstream press
picks up on this, of course,
it's yet another equation with equating
the gay lifestyle with death,
which we've already had ad
nauseum because of AIDS.
When people think of gay men now,
so often they think of
death, whether by AIDS
or by this sort of very
violent homophobic gay bashing.
These people have been
predicting for a time
that there would be violent
backlash against gays
because of AIDS and since
Joe was actually himself,
somebody who had AIDS
when he was murdered,
I felt this was what we were witnessing
was the beginning of a huge backlash
against gay men and I
was very upset by it.
- [Narrator] If AIDS explains
the backlash against gays,
how do we explain
violence against lesbians?
- Most of my friends that got bashed,
like lesbians, they've been followed
walking out of a lesbian
night or a lesbian bar.
They just followed them and then wait
til they find a little dark corner
and beat the shit out of them.
The states, the church, this coup,
the family, push.
Push very hard to maintain and reduce
this ideology that heterosexuality
is the basis of society.
And I think that's why they just hate us.
- As a movement pushes itself forward,
you're always going to get a backlash.
You're always going to get
a sector of society that
doesn't want you around.
I think as long as we're not recognized
by church and state
as (speaking in foreign language),
as equal to every other
citizen in this country,
as long as we don't
have those equal rights,
it'll feed upon people's
prejudices against us.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] The Anglican
Church of St. James the Apostle.
It's where 54 year old Warren Eling serves
until November 10th, 1993.
That night, he is found
bound, naked and strangled.
Montreal is rocked by the murder.
The Reverend meets his
killer on a street corner
in the village.
- The drama or the scene,
the first encounter
started here then we all know
what happened after that.
- [Narrator] Warren
Eling's wallet, computer,
and sound system are stolen.
Danny McIlwaine is arrested
December 10th, 1993,
after he drinks antifreeze
in a suicide attempt.
McIlwaine tells the court he
killed Eling accidentally,
strangling him in an S&M ritual.
The jury doesn't buy it.
McIlwaine gets life in prison
for first degree murder.
But others pegged some
of the responsibility
for Eling's death on the church.
- Warren was a friend and a priest.
Warren and I had been in the same seminary
30 years ago in Toronto.
Two years ago, a little
over two years ago,
we had a parish vacancy here in Montreal
and I was very happy to
have his name nominated
and ultimately invited him
here as priest of that parish.
- [Narrator] In Toronto,
Anglican priest Jim Ferry
was fired for having a gay lover,
creating a climate of fear
for other gay priests.
- Warren didn't leave Toronto
just because of what happened to me.
He was one of several factors.
And I think homophobia figured
largely in the whole thing.
Warren was a very competent priest
but he was obviously
single and to many people,
fairly obviously gay, although
he was very causative.
I think the church bears a
great deal of responsibility
for the death of Warren Eling.
It's the church's duplicitous standards
saying we love gays but we won't allow you
to be in a loving relationship.
That would not allow Father Eling to form
a long term committed relationship.
He had one for several
years, he had to give it up.
And I really have to ask
the church, the bishops,
just how things might have been different
if instead Warren had been allowed to have
a loving, committed relationship?
- Committed lifelong relationships
between same sex partners has not been
part of the picture up to now
that any intimacy
between same sex partners
would be seen as
something outside marriage
and outside what the
church says is the ideal.
- They say on the one hand
no sex outside of marriage
and then they turn around and say
we won't bless your unions.
Now there's a real contradiction there.
- It's a terrible anomaly.
It's a terrible anomaly at the moment
and the day may well come when,
and certainly is coming
in the society as a whole,
the day may well come even
within the life of the church
where committed, life long relationships
between same sex partners
are honored and accepted
and even blessed.
(thunder clapping)
- [Narrator] Quebec is
steeped in Catholic tradition.
A church which says
homosexuals are sinners.
In 1993, Pope John Paul
described homosexuality
as an intrinsically evil act.
The year before, the Vatican
called discrimination
against lesbians and gays,
sometimes justifiable.
70 year old Catholic
priest, Rolland Gagne,
strangled to death in
his downtown apartment.
Police arrest two men,
one of them just 17.
The case is now before the courts.
The Catholic church in
Montreal remains silent
about the priest's death.
It's not the only institution
that shows homosexuals'
lack of understanding.
(crowd yelling)
Montreal gays gather outside Station 25
to protest police action
during a brutal raid
the night before at a
party, the Sex Garage.
(crowd yelling)
Gays say police discrimination
has prevented cops
from solving the murders.
(crowd yelling)
Relations between the
community and the police
are marked by a history of tension
dating back to the Sex Garage incident.
(upbeat music)
(crowd yelling)
- The message that that
sent out was not only
that the police were too brutal
like most people watching it would assume
the police were overreacting,
but for any homophobes who are violent,
watching those broadcasts
was clearly a sanction
of a government institution sanctioning
homophobic violence.
(speaking in foreign language)
(siren blaring)
- In spite of all the prejudice,
we're not welcome
because the gay community
like any other minor community
has prejudice towards the police.
Now we're keeping statistics
about crimes that concern gay
but there again we have problems
because there's not many,
and when, let's say--
- [Reporter] Not many reported.
- Not many reported.
That's very important to recite.
Not many reported and
when they are reported,
if it's not obvious for
us and if the victim
does not say that he's
gay, he cannot be concerned
as a gay crime.
And there's no way we can ask the person,
that's because of Quebec law, are you gay?
- [Narrator] The gay killings,
the plague of gay bashing,
the sense that the police
in the province don't care
enough to solve the murders.
All this leads Quebec's
human rights commission
to hold historic public hearings on gay
and lesbian rights.
June 1st, 1994, the commission recommends
police work with the gay
and lesbian communities
to solve crime.
- The promise is still there,
we can't solve a crime
after one concentration
or one week of public hearings.
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Narrator] In its report,
the Quebec Human Rights
Commission points to Ottawa
as a model for community policing.
- First thing we're starting
to use is the video.
- Gay and lesbian
activists say Ottawa police
are on the leading edge
and perhaps North America
when it comes to dealing with gay bashing
and hate crime.
- [Narrator] Two years
after a man is killed,
in 1989, Ottawa police create
an anti-hate crime squad,
the Bias Crime Unit.
- Well the individual was a waiter
at the Château Laurier Hotel
and he lived over in Hull
and he walked home on a nightly basis
and what he did was he
cut through this park
in the evening, again was
frequented by gay men,
to take the Interprovincial Bridge home
and that night, as he was
going through the park,
there was a group of teenagers up there
that were deciding that they were going to
roll gay people.
And he basically was perceived to be gay
so he was targeted and he
was surrounded and robbed,
eventually dragged to the
bridge and hung upside down
which is about a 10 story drop,
if anybody's ever seen that
bridge, it's a metal bridge
and it ends up down at the rocks
in the Ottawa River.
And again, it was very
lighthearted and joking about it.
The last thing they commented
on before they dropped him
was nice set of shoes you have there.
They let him go and he fell to his death.
- Up until this unit came about,
I had no confidence telling anyone
that they should call the police
and report a bashing or
report an issue of harassment.
Now we at least have a focus where I can
say to someone, call the Bias Crime Unit.
I truly think that this unit,
and the bias crime spin on things
will truly be community
policing in the year 2000
and years to come.
Anybody is looking at placing (mumbles)
has to realize that you
cannot police people
who don't want to be policed.
- It's the creed that
allows you to police.
We're not staking out
cans and stuff like that
looking to catch people
in sexual positions.
I mean, my God.
- [Narrator] Montreal gay activists demand
cops move toward a
similar style of policing.
(dramatic music)
Instead, Montreal Police raid K.O.X.,
the city's largest gay nightclub
and arrest over 160 people.
- Were effectively being performed openly
sexual acts of masturbation, oral sex,
things of that nature.
- [Narrator] The following
day, those caught up
in the K.O.X. raid hold a press conference
to denounce the arrests.
- For Christ's sake, that means for me
that I cannot go anymore in any gay bar
because I could be arrested
to be in a bounty house.
- The raid situates itself
in a series of events
that have been going on for
the last year and a half
of trying to improve relations between
the police department and the
gay and lesbian community.
And this kind of event
unfortunately sets us back.
- [Narrator] Many feel
police should have talked
with club owners instead of
arresting over 160 people.
- What I look at is society,
the general population's reaction to this.
If there's a raid on a heterosexual bar
where sex is happening,
then those people there
are blamed and it's their illegal act,
if it's illegal.
Whereas last night at K.O.X.,
there were, in society's
mind, the entire gay community
was there and the entire gay community
was having sex.
- [Narrator] Gay activists say Montreal
needs an organization police can consult
to prevent situations
like the K.O.X. affair
and that organization needs money.
- One of the ways is to get funding
from the Minister of Public Security
to be able to put together some kind
of professional resources to be able
to start answering these problems.
- But who are we gonna
give the public money to?
Are they reliable?
That's the problem.
Credibility is built with years
and that's their problem for the moment.
- We started our best interests
to be an adverse points between
the police department and the communities,
especially when we have 15 dead bodies.
- [Narrator] By the end
of '93, the death toll
would reach 17.
The highest number of recorded
gay murders in Canada.
- [Man] Probably because
it's one of the most
liberated cities in the world.
- I mean, shit happens.
- I think it's important to say
that for most gay, lesbian
and bisexual people,
Montreal seems to be a
very good place to live,
a very open city, probably
the most open city
in North America.
But I also believe that
with increased visibility
the community and the
increased self-affirmation
of the community, there's
probably a reaction against that.
- I've never had a problem in Montreal
but I think it also is my stature.
I look intimidating.
- We have a population that
in my view and others would
contest this I suppose,
is not as cosmopolitan in its history
as people might tend to believe.
- The fact that there is
an identifiable village
makes it easier to correlate
someone's sexual orientation
to that of a murder.
- I don't think we should
single out Montreal.
I think it ends up a victim
of that kind of violence
everywhere for a long period of time.
- Times are hard whether the solutions
are economic or political,
you have to find victims so
we have many Jews to bash
in Montreal but we have
these nice gay people
in the same district, so,
I'm being cynical but...
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] Police and gay activists
have conducted intensive investigations.
But the one thing they haven't done
is publicly examined the link
between the murders and
Montreal's street cocaine trade.
(dramatic music)
Montreal anti-poverty groups say there are
as many as 5,000 street kids in the city.
(dramatic music)
Many turn to hard street drugs
and then to prostitution to
support their addictions.
During the same time period
as the Montreal killings,
gay murder epidemics
have also struck New York
and Washington, cities with
visible gay communities.
Cities that are also plagued by poverty,
prostitution, cocaine.
It's an explosive mix.
This is the corner of
Champlain and Sainte Catherine.
The dark side of the Gay Village.
A kind of no-mans land on the border
between the up and coming Gay Village
and Montreal's poor, Southeast end.
Champlain and Sainte Catherine is a center
for male prostitution in Montreal.
It's also a major new hotspot for cocaine.
The needle exchange recently
opened one block away.
It's filled with
prostitutes who buy cocaine
in the area and sell sex
to finance their habit.
Surprisingly, many of the male prostitutes
on the strip aren't gay.
This prostitute is a self
described heterosexual.
He says he hates the sex
but hustles to support
his cocaine habit.
It's a typical story on the strip.
It's the story behind
many of the gay murders.
Warren Eling met his murderer
two blocks from here.
- On the corner of Sainte
Catherine and Plessis.
- [Narrator] Danny McIlwaine was straight.
A married man, a cocaine addict who says
he hustles to support his habit.
Brian Booth's murder was similar.
He was killed in a downtown hotel room
but his killers picked
him up at Club David.
A known hustler bar one
block from Champlain
and Sainte Catherine.
Police have since closed it down.
Police evidence suggest
Gaetan Ethie met his murderer
at a bar called Le Top,
also at the corners
of Sainte Catherine and Champlain.
Yet another murder victim, Michael Hogue
was killed in his home in early 1993
by a heterosexual prostitute who hustled
in exchange for cocaine.
And murder victim Nomo Gavo was himself
a cocaine dealer according to police.
This man says he worked for him.
(speaking in foreign language)
- Perhaps a turn, don't
know, a turn or (mumbles)
really (mumbles) the crime.
That mean that the guy
who killed the other guy,
killed him because he was gay.
But most of the crimes
were just criminals.
For money or for the kick.
- I would say setting
up 40 year old people
or getting picked up by 40 year old people
average and being driven home.
Sometimes they have the knife on them,
sometimes they don't.
And sometimes they go into this sexual act
and when the person is in the position
he does not see him, they stab
or they punch and they kill.
- [Narrator] Is the solution to these
in most of the 10 unsolved murders,
found in the drugs and
prostitution that revolve
around the corner of Champlain
and Sainte Catherine?
That connection explains
a lot about the murders.
All the murders were accessibly violent.
- Cocaine, heroin.
I'm not an expert but I can tell you
anything that we have that involves
drugs, heroin or cocaine,
it's violent, it's very violent.
There's no mercy.
- [Narrator] Most victims were over 40,
the strip is full of older men seeing sex,
often closeted, easy prey
for would-be killers.
- We were even told by the gay community
when we met them last Monday,
that once you're over 32,
33 in the gay community,
you're past tense.
So if you're looking 35, you're not gonna
pick up anymore with the young boys.
You gotta go with the prostitutes.
- That's not true, not at all.
There's a lot of
de-association in the clubs
where any guy can go and find somebody
you will like to love.
The problem is they're
afraid to be recognized,
it will go by night, it
will go in dark place
in little street and in park.
- [Narrator] The amount stolen
in all cases were small.
- All crimes committed are
by people on this habit.
Within minutes of following their crime,
they're at the shooting gallery doing it.
Which means that they're spontaneous.
- [Narrator] Prostitutes
themselves admitted
the killer or killers
could be in their midst.
- He might be picking them up down here
but he's not a regular person from here.
He just comes down when he feels like
picking someone up for his next victim.
- He comes around here, he knows the area,
he knows, he must have
some kind of experience.
- I don't want to put all the pressure
on the victim, but some
of those guys are criminal
and they should be put
in jail and stay there.
If I was a police man,
I would do undercover
on the Sainte Catherine
Street, let's see, Champlain,
it's hard to tell, making
friends with the prostitutes
and that's the best way.
When you know them, then
you know, their habit,
you know who are drug
addicts, who can kill.
- [Narrator] Montreal has
developed a reputation
of a dangerous place for homosexuals
but gays have no reason
to distrust each other
because homosexuality is not the killer.
Homosexuals are the victims.
Still, 10 of the 17
murders remain unsolved.
Who is to blame?
There's no evidence of a serial killer.
There is a series of killings
with similar ingredients.
Against a backdrop of
growing Montreal poverty,
a highly profitable cocaine trade thrives
and the fringes of the Gay Village,
some addicts are prostitutes
who may steal and even kill
to keep ahead of their habits.
Society discourages open
relationships between gays.
This pushes some gay men
into clandestine sex,
sometimes found on dangerous streets
at a deadly price.
Laws and public attitudes
marginalize gays.
This makes them a convenient
target for youth gangs,
neo-Nazi skinheads and
others who get a kick
out of bashing gays and
also muffles public outrage.
Montreal police solve 80% of all homicides
but have only solved
40% of the gay murders.
Do police know or care
enough about gay men?
These are the factors that have created
a climate for murder in Montreal
and several killers have
taken advantage of it.
They have singled out gay
men because they believe
they have a better chance
at getting away with murder.
And so far, most of them have.
(gentle music)
- I'm gonna be 26 and have a baby son.
And if I have a boy well
he's gonna carry his name.
With pride.
(gentle music)
- Why are people gay?
Why are people heterosexual?
- Why are people gay?
That's a good question.
- I don't know, do you know?
- They're born that way?
- They're born that way.
- They're just born that way.
- I don't think they're born gay.
- Better gay than grumpy.
- It's a profoundly religious question.
- 'Cause baby without us,
you ain't got nothing.
- 'Cause it's fabulous.
- Is it something that a young man learns
from an overbearing mother?
- I don't believe it's caused by
being a mother overprotective
or a father this.
- As far as general medicine's concerned,
they believe it's genetic.
- Nature and nurture.
- I guess it's nature.
- If it is you and it's
part of you, so be it.
- It's something you're born with.
It's not something we choose.
- [Man] I'm sorry?
- [Woman] Why?
- That I don't know.
- But certainly being gay
is part of the normal,
diversity of human existence.