Rampage (7 page)

Andre Kirchhoff      

Peter John Peters

Tattoo Man

“When the police find you, make sure you tell them that I was a real nice guy.”

Victims:
2 killed/1 wounded

Duration of rampage:
January 20 to 25, 1990 (spree killer)

Locations:
London, Ontario; Toronto, Ontario

Weapons:
Manual strangulation/plastic bag suffocation; iron bar

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Before dawn on Monday, January 22, 1990, Albert Philip rolled from the warmth of his bed and glanced out the window. In the dim glow of the streetlights, snowflakes were falling on Ellis Avenue, as if powdering a corpse for burial. Beneath the blankets, Albert’s wife lay sleeping. Careful not to wake her or their thirteen-year-old daughter, the ageing man put on his coat, slipped out the front door, and drove to the downtown Toronto parking garage where he worked as an attendant. He was a kind and considerate man, known for providing food to the homeless. Albert clocked in for his shift and began readying himself for work, intending to rouse his wife shortly after with a routine wake-up call. Sadly, his life of peaceful order was about to be interrupted by the savage forces of chaos.

Albert’s wife arose late at 7:30 a.m., surprised not to have been woken by her husband’s gentle tone. When she telephoned the parking building’s office to check on him, she received no answer. Concerned, Mrs. Philip called another employee and asked him to investigate. Heading downstairs to the office, the co-worker came face to face with a bloodied Albert Philip — unconscious and barely breathing. Police and paramedics arriving on the scene doubted the sixty-three-year-old would survive his attack. Albert’s skull had been fractured several times, propelling his false teeth under the radiator. He had also sustained numerous defence wounds to his hands. The murder weapon — a blood-stained metal bar — was discovered nearby, along with a knapsack full of clothing. Albert’s wallet and vehicle were missing.

Reconstructing the timeline, investigators concluded that he had been viciously assaulted shortly after punching his card for work. The battered attendant was rushed immediately to the emergency room at St. Michael’s Hospital to have surgery performed on his scalp. Meanwhile, a solemn policeman assured the Philip family that Albert’s attacker would be found and punished. The promise would go unbroken.

The Wolf and the Woodcutter

Until the 1991/92 torture-murders committed by Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka, the community of St. Catharines, Ontario, had been considered largely untainted by violent crime. The events of January 22, 1990, were a shocking exception.

At 1:15 p.m. that day, twenty-eight-year-old Sandie Bellows parked outside a local credit union. As she exited the vehicle, she spotted a man with long blond hair seated in a mid-eighties estate car. The two exchanged smiles, and the newlywed Sandie continued to the credit union to conduct her business. After returning to her car, she was putting the keys in the ignition when she felt a cold blade against her neck.

“Shut up!” the blond man barked, no longer smiling. “Get over!” He pushed Sandie over to the passenger side, and climbed into the driver’s seat. Terrified, she repeatedly begged him to release her as he drove the car out of the parking lot and onto the road, heading west. Her abductor responded by threatening to stab her if she didn’t shut up and pay attention. He informed her that he was on the run from the police, and that he and Sandie had to look like a married couple. If she complied, he promised to set her free once he was out of harm’s way.

“When the police find you,” his green eyes pierced the windshield, “make sure you tell them that I was a real nice guy.” The man claimed his name was John, and that something that he hadn’t meant to happen had gone “really, really wrong.”

“I don’t want to know anything,” Sandie sobbed. John’s behaviour was already disturbingly erratic; though he seemed to be trying to befriend her, he continued to remind her that if she screwed up he would kill her.

Just over an hour into their flight west, John veered the car into a wooded area near Paris, Ontario. Realizing that if he tried to kill her nobody would hear her screams, Sandie began to panic. Worse yet, her captor’s mood had taken a turn.

“What are you doing?” Sandie protested. “You promised to let me go.”

“I’m going to have some fun with you,” he responded. “I’m going to rape you.” John forced her into the back seat and beat her into submission. As John penetrated her, Sandie could only think that she would soon be murdered. Fortunately, a valiant woodcutter was coming to her rescue. While logging in the forest, retired Ontario provincial policeman Alan Pike spotted Sandie’s car and drove his tractor over to investigate. Alarmed by Pike’s approach, John warned Sandie to “get up and not do anything stupid.” As her attacker climbed out the right rear door and began to pull his pants up, Sandie sprang from the back seat and ran toward the forest. Before she knew it, John had struck her forehead, knocking her to the ground. Al Pike threw the tractor into full throttle as the blond man kicked the helpless woman in the skull. John then began stabbing a blade repeatedly into Sandie’s torso. Luckily, Alan Pike had an axe lying on the tractor floor. As John raised the blood-stained knife to deliver a fatal blow through Sandie’s breast, he spotted Pike hurrying toward him. Leaping aside, John sprinted back to Sandie’s car, and with a screech of tires began to pull away. Adrenaline surging, Pike followed and managed to shatter the right rear window with his axe. The relentless retiree attempted to climb into the departing vehicle, but was unsuccessful. Exhausted, he watched in frustration as it rounded the bend and disappeared from his sight.

As emergency respondents sped toward the scene, John managed to bog down the car on a snowy back road. He continued on foot until he reached a nearby farm house, where he robbed sixty-seven-year-old Jenny Whiting of her car at knife point. From there, he drove to downtown Paris and held up a Bank of Montreal for $2,000. Within half a day, the mysterious “John” had accumulated a list of charges that included rape, two counts of attempted murder, and armed robbery. Numerous police agencies were now hot on his trail. When investigators found Albert Philip’s empty car in the St. Catharines parking lot where Sandie had been kidnapped, they realized that the same offender was at work. Mustering her strength, Sandie Bellows provided the police with a description of her attacker, including one particularly important detail: tattoos — he was covered in them. Specifically she remembered seeing the name “Johnnie” or “Joannie” inked into his forearm. By evening, Albert Philip was dead.

The following day, inside a police warehouse, a forensics team meticulously tore the stolen vehicles apart in search of evidence. On the inside door handle of Albert Philip’s car they discovered a partial fingerprint, which was immediately flown by plane to the national police database in Ottawa. To the investigators’ disappointment, it could not be processed by computer. As the moon hung over the Ontario snows, a sad truth settled into the hearts of the policemen: a good man lay dead, and a tattooed monster was still roaming the streets.

Breadcrumbs

The morning of Wednesday, January 24 would finally shed light on the blond man’s identity. After three days of fruitless searching, the friends and family of twenty-five-year-old Charlene Brittain decided to report her missing to the police. Prior to her disappearance, the London woman had spoken of going to see a man with long blond hair and tattoos named Peter John Peters. As reports of the tattooed madman circulated around southwestern Ontario, Charlene’s best friend began to fear that they were one and the same. Coincidentally, that morning, Peters’s former parole officer telephoned the authorities with similar suspicions. A twenty-eight-year-old ex-convict, Peters was known locally as “Tattoo Man” for parading shirtless through the streets of London showcasing his body art. The product of a turbulent home, his criminal record extending back into childhood included firearms- related offences and forcible confinement. Worse yet, it showed that his capacity for violence had been steadily escalating.

When police descended upon Peters’s basement apartment that afternoon, each piece of the puzzle clicked to form a horrific picture. At first there seemed nothing amiss inside the flat, until investigators spied a padlocked door. After breaking the lock, they entered a large storage area to discover the nude, lifeless body of Charlene Brittain lying supine on the floor. She was surrounded by hundreds of file folders containing pornography. A plastic bag had been pulled over her head, distorting her pretty features. Autopsy results would later reveal that she had been strangled and died three days before her discovery. The investigators concluded that Charlene’s murder marked a point of no return for Peters — knowing that he would be linked to the crime, he had taken off, attempting to slaughter anyone who stood between him and escape. Interestingly, the backpack abandoned at the Philip crime scene was determined to have once belonged to Charlene. Whether by intent, stupidity, or blatant disregard, Peters was leaving a trail of breadcrumbs wherever he went, allowing the authorities to connect his otherwise disparate crimes. Furthermore, the partial fingerprint lifted from Albert Philip’s car matched Peters’s when compared manually to a police file. Photographs of the boyish-looking suspect were sent to every major Canadian media agency, along with his name, as Ontario police prepared for one of the largest manhunts in the nation’s history. Soon Peter John Peters’s face was emblazoned on the front pages of newspapers across the country.

Northern Exposure

At noon on January 25, 460 kilometres away in Sault Ste. Marie, Peter John Peters stepped off the bus and breathed in a lungful of cold northern Ontario air. A few metres away, he spotted a woman brushing snow from her windshield — another easy target. He walked up to make her acquaintance.

“Get in the car, or I’ll kill you.”

The woman stood gazing back at him as if unable to comprehend his request, so he repeated himself. Again. And again. Suddenly a light of recognition appeared in her eyes, and she took off running. Realizing he had drawn attention to himself, Peters jumped into her car and slammed his foot on the gas. He headed for the cover of the back roads, but after driving for nearly an hour, found that the heavy snows were slowing his escape, and decided he needed to be armed. Ditching the vehicle, he made for a nearby house and kicked in the door, startling nineteen-year-old Brad Johnston. Peters held the knife to his throat.

“Do you have any guns?” The young man showed him to the family shotgun. Still pressing the blade to his flesh, Peters forced him to load it before taking the weapon from him. Peering out the window, Peters sighted some hydro workers inspecting his abandoned vehicle and aimed.

“They didn’t do anything to you,” Brad implored him. “You don’t need to kill them.” Incredibly, his words seemed to resonate with Peters. When Peters lowered the shotgun, Brad offered to assist him in finding another vehicle. They left the home around 2:00 p.m. to search. Farther down the road, they saw a car parked in an elderly man’s driveway. Inside, Reverend Ron Hubbard of the local Pentecostal church and retired homeowner Ernie Cattley were conversing when Brad suddenly entered the dwelling with his hands in the air. Peters followed behind him with the shotgun pointed at his back.

“Just do as he says. He means business,” Brad warned them. Peters asked whose car was parked outside, and the reverend replied that it was his.

“You’re a cop!” Peters yelled, turning the gun on him. Fearing for his life, the reverend produced credentials from his wallet, calming Peters. The gunman demanded the car keys, and the men complied immediately. Before leaving, Peters destroyed the telephone, then took off in what was to be his fifth stolen vehicle in as many days. Once he had left, Brad Johnston, Ernie Cattley, and Reverend Hubbard sought help. Fortunately, it found them. Police cars swarmed the area, having been alerted by the hydro workers to the abandoned car. When the officers showed the three survivors a photograph of Peter John Peters, they positively identified him, but noted that his hair had been cut short.

Meanwhile, Peters continued to display a remarkable lack of driving skills, miring his car on another snowy back road. He approached a nearby residence and used his shotgun to blast the lock to pieces. Entering, he demanded the keys to a blue Ford Tempo from the terrified homeowner. Peters sped off yet again, only now his behaviour had become so reckless that he was running out of places to flee. The police had barricaded the roads and were rapidly closing in on him. While driving along a main road at around 4:00 p.m., he noticed a cruiser behind him. Exhausted, Peter John Peters did something entirely unexpected: he pulled over and exited with his hands in the air. The notorious spree killer who everyone assumed would go out in a blaze of glory lay meekly in the snow to be handcuffed. After five continuous days of fight and flight, his rampage had come to a decidedly anticlimactic finale.

Scars and Tattoos

Other than his good looks, Peter John Peters hadn’t been given much of a chance in life. Born to alcoholic parents, he had been raised in a dumpy green duplex on the outskirts of Wallaceburg, Ontario. His parents were more interested in drinking than raising their children, and Peters grew up in an environment of neglect, spousal abuse, and criminal behaviour. Having been completely ignored, he was understandably slow to learn at school, and dropped out before grade seven. Instead of losing himself in books, Peters simply became lost. He found himself on the wrong side of the law in 1979, when he was sentenced to a four-year term at Millhaven maximum-security prison for pointing a firearm. While inside, the angry young man took two shop teachers hostage with a pair of scissors, earning himself an extra three years of incarceration.