‘This is not my normal self’
Woman arrested in unprovoked stabbing
She used to sit in the window at the coffee shop — same stool, same spot — day after day, working on her laptop. She wore the same two suits and the same two shirts: one white, the other lavender.
But, she looked the part anyway, professional, ready to work. The thing is, though, it was a part, a role she was playing, not a life she really had.
On Tuesday afternoon, Toronto police arrested Rohinie Bisesar, an MBA and financial district regular, and charged her with attempted murder.
Police believe Bisesar walked into a downtown drugstore Friday afternoon and hacked a knife into a stranger’ s chest, wounding her grievously. Then she walked away.
Bisesar’s story made international news when police released her name Monday.
She appeared online to be as far from a common criminal as could be. She went to one of Canada’s best business schools, at York University. She worked in finance and consulting. Her LinkedIn page featured a slew of glowing praise from former colleagues.
But according to one friend, the life Bisesar lived online was largely a mirage, at least in recent years. Karl Gutowski has known Bisesar for eight years. He said Tuesday she struggled to find work after completing her MBA in 2007. Bisesar, 40, networked hard, he said, but could never land anything for more than a few months at a time.
And in the past several years, Gutowski said, Bisesar’s mental health had deteriorated. She was hospitalized in 2014. She was alienated from her family and she appeared to be increasingly paranoid.
“She’s a sweet person,” Gutowski said. But lately, “she seemed very sweet but odd.”
Police say Bisesar was arrested Tuesday at approximately 3:05 p.m. Ten minutes earlier, someone using Bisesar’s personal email address sent a message to the National Post.
Gutowski confirmed that the email address was authentic and that Bisesar had been using it Tuesday. But the Post could not independently confirm that the message came from her.
The email opens with a plea:
“Do you know any top professionals in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, nanotechnology, satellites?” it said.
“Something has been happening to me and this is not my normal self and I would like to know who and why this is happening.”
It then goes on to address the stabbing.
“I am sorry about the incidence,” the email said. “I felt the need to be extreme to see if it would work. I would normally not do such a thing.”
Gutowski said Bisesar’s successful friends helped her through years of unemployment, letting her sleep on their couches or lending her money.
“She’s been able to sustain herself from a large network of friends,” he said. “I speculate the list got shorter and shorter.”
Her only real break came in 2010 when she landed a job at GMP Capital, a financial services firm with an office on King Street West, he said. But her employment there only lasted about eight months.
“She got that one job, but she didn’t get to keep it for too long,” Gutowski said. “She couldn’t adjust to pretty normal office politics.”
Friday’s stabbing happened in the heart of Toronto’s financial district, at a Shopper’s Drug Mart in the underground PATH system. The victim, who hasn’t been identified, suffered life- threatening injuries.
Police charged Bisesar Tuesday with attempted murder, aggravated assault and carrying a concealed weapon. She was due to appear in court Wednesday morning.
News of t he apparentl y random attack rippled through the tight financial district this week. Bisesar was well known in several coffee shops in the area. And until about a month ago, she was a regular at a Starbucks on Yonge and Adelaide streets, according to the manager, Ryan Baron.
Baron said Bisesar sat for months most days at a window bench near the bathroom. He didn’t find anything unusual about her. She was quiet, polite. But about a month ago, she just stopped showing up.
As for Gutowski, he continued to stay in touch with Bisesar even as she alienated many others in her life. She had supported his career and encouraged him to succeed, and he wanted to help her get over her illness. They’ve exchanged more than 1,100 emails over t he past f i ve years.
“I was trying to be the voice of reason,” Gutowski said. “But you can’t really reason with a person who’s not sharing anything except her own circular reasoning, which is very faulty.”
I speculate the list (of friends) got shorter and shorter