Reported by Riki Wilchins
(based on Toronto Star stories)
Toronto Metro police have linked the weekend murders of three transgender prostitutes, sparking fears that a serial killer is loose on Toronto streets.
Autopsies and ballistic testing have confirmed that the same gun was used to kill 3 victims in the span of only 3 hours. As rain fell and fireworks boomed in the late hours of Monday's Victoria Day holiday, all 3 were shot execution-style, in the back of the head.
Killed were Deanna Wilkinson (31), Brenda Ludgate (25), and Shawn Keegan (19), who had only recently learned she had contracted HIV from having unprotected sex. There are no suspects, although there were reports last night that police were looking for a certain vehicle in connection with the slayings.
Shawn Keegan (more on Shawn in related story below) was found just after midnight in a stairwell where tricks were often turned. It would be only be a number of hours before the Deanna Wilkinson would be found on the same street at 9:15am near a track where prostitutes sometimes work - slumped against a fence in a laneway nearby. Police believe the two were shot around the same time.
Across the city a 911 call at 11:30 p.m. led police to Brenda Ludgate. She lay fully clothed in an alley, her eyes staring skyward. Police originally stated that Ludgate had died from a beating, until an autopsy showed she too had been shot in the head, from the same gun that killed Shawn and Deanna.
"What connects them is their lifestyle, their occupation, how they were killed, and the weapon they were killed (with)," said McDermott, apparently avoiding the term "serial killer."
While the police seemed to tiptoe around the question, Toronto Councillor Kyle Rae didn't mince words. "Well, it's a serial gun - 3 individuals have been murdered. In the style that was described to us today by the police, it sounds like execution-style murders."
And she says the law is to blame.
It penalizes prostitutes for working in "bawdy houses" by seizing bank accounts and imposing stiffer sentences than for those who work on the street, she said. "Legally speaking, the safest place to work is the street and it's also the most dangerous place," Scott said.
Even more dangerous for transvestites and transsexuals, she added.
"They're really outcasts. The gay community doesn't want to help them, the prostitute community doesn't want to help them."
Slain tranvestite didn't enjoy life in Belleville
He preferred the fast lane on the streets in Toronto and the lifestyle led to his death on those streets this week.
Keegan, 18, was found dead Monday night of a single gunshot wound to the head. When his body was discovered, he was wearing a miniskirt, black platform shoes and a wig a friend had loaned him.
He was one of three prostitutes gunned down Monday in Toronto by someone police believe killed all three.
Daniel Keegan, 38, said in an interview with The Intelligencer this morning his son left Belleville when he was 15 for the streets of Toronto because he "liked the lifestyle."
"He wasn't on the street because he had to be," said the man's father,who is divorced from Shawn Keegan's mother, Brenda. "He wasn't too happy in Belleville."
"He liked the freedom of living on the street and he liked the night life, you know. He thought it was pretty dead around Belleville, so he went off to Toronto."
The elder Keegan said his son had been "back and forth to Belleville a couple of times. He'd come back, try to live here, but decided it was just too dead here and he'd head back to Toronto." "He'd come home to Belleville for a while, but when he did, he'd be in by 9 o'clock at night and thought that was pretty boring." Shawn Keegan dropped out of Centennial Secondary School four or five years ago, but Daniel Keegan said his son was never really interested in school or sports.
As for his son's transvestite lifestyle on the streets of Toronto, Keegan said he was always worried about Shawn's welfare.
"No matter what you hear (about the street kids being street wise), almost every night on TV, something about something going on on the streets there."
Keegan said his son recently told him about 'wearing those (women's) clothes," but said he was unaware his son had been working as a street prostitute in a transvestite role.
"I didn't know the extent of it, no. I didn't ask and he didn't tell me. I didn't really expect that. You just don't go and ask about that kind of thing."
Shawn Keegan's body will be returned to Bellevile today for funeral and burial Saturday.
Keegan will be remembered by some more than most. Ironically, the parkway along the Bay where the trees were planted in memory of Mark Fyke, is named the 'Keegan Parkway.' Shawn, I'm sorry I never knew you when you were alive; but, I'll surely remember you everytime I drive down the Parkway, and each time I walk the pathways along the Bay.
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