Published Thursday, Oct. 28, 2010 12:14PM EDTLast updated Thursday, Oct. 28, 2010 1:39PM EDT0 comments Toronto police have charged a man they are calling a serial killer with three counts of first-degree murder for the slayings of prostitutes in the 1990s.
Peter Dale MacDonald, 52, appeared in court on Thursday in relation to the deaths of three Toronto women. He is currently serving a jail sentence for a separate murder conviction.
“Today, the Toronto Police Service cold case squad arrested a serial killer,” said Staff Inspector Mark Saunders, unit commander of the homicide squad.
Mr. MacDonald is charged with the deaths of Julianne Middleton, Virginia Coote and Darlene McNeill. Their bodies were found in Lake Ontario, near Sunnyside Pool in the city’s west-end, between 1994 and 1997. All three were strangled.
Mr. MacDonald is currently in jail for the 2000 murder of James Campbell in Toronto.
In January, he was charged in connection with the death of Michelle Charette, 40, who was killed in Windsor, Ont., in 2000.
Mr. MacDonald’s name originally surfaced in connection with the 1994 deaths of Ms. Middleton, 23, and Ms. Coote, 33, but police didn’t have evidence to back charges then, said Detective Sergeant Steve Ryan. The body of Ms. McNeill, 35, was discovered in 1997.
New evidence surfaced over the past six or seven months, Det. Sgt. Ryan said. Mr. MacDonald was living in Toronto at the time of the murders, he said.
Staff Insp. Saunders credited the hard work of Toronto police officers and co-operation with other forces for the breakthrough. He said investigators worked hard to put “small pieces of the puzzle together.”
“Today’s investigation took just over 16 years of putting those pieces of the puzzle together to reach that conclusion.”
Police are asking anyone with information about Mr. MacDonald between 1994 and 1997 to contact them.
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