BIZARRE FALL FROM GRACE
Sandy Zaitzeff is a high-profile lawyer and self-proclaimed millionaire. Now, he is charged with sex assault, is being sued by Thunder Bay’s mayor and appears in a video rant featuring clown dolls and a marriage proposal
THUNDER BAY— With his collection of clown dolls as a backdrop, high-profile lawyer Sandy Zaitzeff faces the video camera, his emotions erratic.
During the next six minutes, he pulls off his T-shirt, parades his bruised torso, alleges unnamed assailants tried to steal his fortune, expresses anguish over his dead son, then gets on his knees to propose marriage.
The video is part of the dramatic and public fall of the class action litigator who built a reputation as a confident winner — the man who took on the RCMP.
This rambling, cryptic monologue — recorded by an acquaintance at one of the lawyer’s many houses and then posted to YouTube — has been viewed more than 40,000 times and has fuelled gossip as locals wonder how it might explain what immediately followed: a breakneck series of criminal and civil allegations that not only saw Zaitzeff arrested on sexual assault charges but has also drawn in the mayor and police chief.
Only slivers of information about the cases have been made publicly available.
This means the strange YouTube video offers one of the few clues about a scandal that has increased scrutiny on a city already under pressure from a series of unrelated investigations.
The Star went to Thunder Bay to learn more about the video, talked to police and one of Zaitzeff’s alleged sexual assault victims, reviewed court documents, and visited six Zaitzeff properties, including the cottage near where his wife disappeared 17 years ago.
Since Zaitzeff’s on-camera outbursts, he has been arrested and charged with multiple counts of sexual assault, including allegedly inviting a minor to touch his penis.
“Sandy Zaitzeff denies the allegations that have been made against him and looks forward to the day when all the evidence can be heard in the appropriate forum,” said his lawyer Scott Hutchison.
There are five accusers. Most of the assaults allegedly happened last fall, before and after the video was reportedly recorded.
“Sandy, being a person of authority and a well-known lawyer, used that to his advantage to assault all of us,” one of the alleged victims told the Star. Her identity cannot be revealed because of a court-ordered publication ban, common in sexual assault cases.
“I’ve never seen a psychiatrist before all of this. I now see a psychiatrist. He made me feel so small,” she said.
The Zaitzeff charges marked the beginning of a turbulent few months at Thunder Bay’s new downtown courthouse. None of the Zaitzeff allegations, nor any of the other allegations that follow in this article, have been proven in court.
While Zaitzeff sat in the MacDougall St. jail awaiting bail, he was sued for defamation by Mayor Keith Hobbs. On the same day, Zaitzeff was sued by lawyer Chris Watkins, who once worked with Zaitzeff and claimed that Zaitzeff took his clients and threatened his life.
Zaitzeff’s lawyer, Hutchison, said that neither lawsuit “has ever been served.”
Two months later, Thunder Bay police Chief J.P. Levesque was charged with breach of trust and obstruction of justice for allegedly disclosing confidential information about the mayor. Exactly what information was disclosed and to whom, and whether it is connected to the Zaitzeff allegations, is not publicly known.
Court-ordered publication bans and meagre details in court documents do little to untangle the legal mess. Zaitzeff and the police chief refused to comment for this article. Mayor Hobbs told the Star by email that because he is a “witness” in the Zaitzeff case, and because there is a publication ban, he will not make any statements.
All of this is unfolding against a backdrop of simmering racial tension in Thunder Bay, with the police force under investigation for how it has handled Indigenous deaths and disappearances. The police services board, meanwhile, is under investigation over how it supervises the police force. And York Regional Police was recently brought in to investigate the deaths of two Indigenous teens.
Alexander (Sandy) Zaitzeff Sr., 68, is a self-proclaimed millionaire who has worked on some major classaction cases. He gained national attention as one of the main architects of a successful class-action lawsuit filed by women against the RCMP, alleging workplace harassment. The Mounties established a $100-million fund to settle claims.
Involved at the earliest stages of the case was former Mountie Heli Kijanen — the woman in the YouTube video facing Zaitzeff as he kneels and asks her to marry him, according to the lawsuit filed by Hobbs, who was one of those in attendance to watch Zaitzeff’s “intoxicated” proposal.
“Baby, I love you. I have always loved you, and I promise you I will marry you,” the woman in the video says, before kissing Zaitzeff.
Kijanen refused to comment for this article. It is not known what, if any, relationship she currently has with Zaitzeff.
Also present at the bizarre scene unfolding in Zaitzeff’s house on Farrand St. are the clown dolls — about 20 to 30 of them on shelves in a large room.
“Every one of these is at least a million-dollar case,” Zaitzeff says in the video, pointing at the figurines. “These are my clowns for only half of my career. Only half.”
If Zaitzeff’s boasts are true, the longtime lawyer has come a long way since 1951. That’s when his parents, Ann and Victor, fled Communist China, where his grandfather owned a vodka distillery, with $50, two rugs and 2-year-old Sandy, according to Ann’s obituary.
The Zaitzeff video was recorded on or around Oct. 25, 2016, according to court documents. Two of the sexual assaults had allegedly occurred the night before. Another allegedly occurred two nights after. None of the victims can be named because of publication bans on their identities.
Zaitzeff had been grieving his son’s death two years earlier, said a man who answered the door at another of Zaitzeff’s houses and who identified himself as “Guy.” The man said he was asked to look after the house for Zaitzeff.
In June 2014, Sandy Zaitzeff Jr., then 33 , was on crutches, hobbled by a broken ankle, when he slipped and fell while getting a snack from the fridge, suffered a severe head injury and died instantly, the obituary said. Visibly distraught in the video, Zaitzeff shakes his head and breathes deeply as though to regain his composure, then says: “I have PT f-----g SD. Why? Because my son died.” He cries. “That’s a big f-----g event, in anybody’s f-----g life!”
His lawyer, Hutchison, told the Star: “There is no doubt that Sandy has experienced tragedy in his life and like few other persons has suffered enormous pain. It would be profoundly unfair and cruel if that pain were now somehow used as an excuse to vilify him.”
Zaitzeff has a drinking problem, says a lawsuit filed by his former law partner. The alleged sex assault victim interviewed by the Star said Zaitzeff prefers expensive vodka.
At one point during the bizarre video, Zaitzeff takes off his black T-shirt and raises his arms to reveal what look like bruises around his midsection.
“Watch the bruises on me,” he says. “That’s only half my f-----g body . . . They took me down. I’m not going to say who. I’m not going to press charges. I don’t want that. I just want the world to f-----g know they took me down, they kicked me around and now I have absolute f-----g proof that they tried to fraud (sic) me. They have a forged f-----g will, where, where, where, they claim, they allege, I left my fortune . . . to them.”
The YouTube video — it is not known who uploaded it — is titled “Sandy Zaitzeff in what seems like a rather shady production.” In the video, it appears to be nighttime, and Hobbs is shown sitting with others, including a woman introduced as one of Zaitzeff’s lawyers and a man named Gerald, who tends to his houses, lawns and cars. Hobbs is heard cracking a joke; he seems relaxed, but otherwise says little. Hobbs told the Star this week, “I am not (Zaitzeff’s) friend.”
In March, as Zaitzeff sat in jail, Hobbs sued the lawyer, detailing how their relationship had soured. Based on Hobbs’s statement of claim, it seems that some time after the video was recorded, Hobbs may have been involved in building the sexual assault case against Zaitzeff.
Hobbs’ $950,000 defamation claim suggests the video was posted as retaliation. Zaitzeff, the suit alleges, told the mayor he would “submarine and bury him as a result of Mayor Keith Hobbs indicating that he would be contacting the police with information concerning serious allegations of sexual impropriety.”
The first charges were laid against Zaitzeff on Nov. 21.
After a text from Zaitzeff saying the mayor “would regret the day that he was born,” the video was uploaded, the lawsuit alleges.
The suit was filed against both Zaitzeff and Kijanen, as Hobbs said he believes one or the other posted the video. Though the lawsuit does not make it clear exactly how he has been defamed, Hobbs said he has been “held up to ridicule, contempt and hatred by the public,” his personal and professional reputation has been “severely damaged” and his prospects for another term “impaired.”
Hobbs is not the only prominent Thunder Bay resident to claim Zaitzeff hurt his career.
At the same time as the mayor’s lawsuit was filed, Chris Watkins, a former law partner of Zaitzeff, alleged breach of contract and “purposeful infliction of emotional harm” in a $28-million lawsuit. The suit claimed that over several years, Zaitzeff took Watkins’s clients and made a false report to the law society that Watkins forged signatures on legal documents.
Watkins said that in 2011, he agreed to work with the “washed up” and “retired old lawyer” to jointly pursue class-action cases. He claimed Zaitzeff took control of three cases that Watkins says his firm was instrumental in developing, including the RCMP suit, then froze out Watkins and left him, his firm and family “abused, broke and bereft,” the suit alleges.
Watkins said Zaitzeff’s behaviour was possibly driven by “drinking and alcoholism” and “malice, greed, (and) mental health issues.”
The lawsuit also alleges Zaitzeff threatened Watkins’s life, telling others he would “take him out.”
“(Zaitzeff ) had hired a highly trained CDN military person with war service and placed him on his payroll during the relevant period,” the lawsuit claims.
Meanwhile, Zaitzeff has hired Marie Henein’s law firm, which represented former radio star Jian Ghomeshi, to deal with his considerable and lurid list of charges.
Those include four counts of assault; eight counts of sexual assault; and one count each of sexual interference, invitation to sexual touching, mischief under $5,000 for allegedly damaging a door, breach of recognizance, unauthorized possession of a firearm and improper storage of a firearm, according to court documents.
The gun charges stem from a police visit to one of Zaitzeff’s houses on Nov. 20, when an officer allegedly found two 12-gauge shotguns and a semi-automatic rifle, all allegedly unlicensed. His law offices have been cleared out, said a receptionist who works in the same building, and his licence to practise law has been suspended. Zaitzeff did not tell the Law Society of Upper Canada about his charges, the regulator said.
As a condition of his bail, Zaitzeff had to give up his passport, cannot drink or buy liquor and was ordered to attend the Bellwood addiction treatment centre in Toronto. He recently returned from Bellwood to Thunder Bay and is living with a friend who posted bail.
Zaitzeff is allowed to visit his cottage on nearby Amethyst Harbour in the company of one of the two people who bailed him out of jail.
It was at the cottage, on the night of Oct. 2, 2000, that Zaitzeff’s wife Marilyn, then 50, was last seen, reportedly leaving the cottage and getting on her Sea-Doo around 9 p.m.
By 11 p.m., Sandy Zaitzeff had called 911 and the coast guard. He and Marilyn had been alone in the house that night, the OPP said.
Marilyn Zaitzeff was a physical fitness enthusiast who often rode her Sea-Doo, sometimes at night and sometimes without a life-jacket or wetsuit. On that night, she was reportedly not wearing a wetsuit, and no life-jackets were missing from the cottage, according to the OPP, which investigated the case at the time.
The waters, shoreline and neighbouring islands were searched, and the next morning the Sea-Doo was found a kilometre away, overturned in the water not far from shore. The Sea-Doo was “undamaged, inspected to be mechanically sound and had a third of a tank of gas,” according to the OPP. While Marilyn is presumed drowned, OPP Det. Supt. Dave Truax told the Star: “This is an open missing person investigation where the individual has not been located.”
“At the time, the circumstances were deemed suspicious, yet there was no evidence of foul play,” added Truax, who is the head of OPP criminal investigations.
“(Zaitzeff) had hired a highly trained CDN military person with war service and placed him on his payroll during the relevant period.” LAWSUIT OF CHRIS WATKINS, FORMER LAW PARTNER OF ZAITZEFF