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.
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.
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