Why would anyone kill a pony farmer?
All famed detective had to go on was a man who asked for directions
Sixty-two-year-old Elgin Cullen appeared to have died of a heart attack when his body was found at his Etobicoke farm after suppertime Monday, Nov. 14, 1960, slumped up against a guinea pig hutch.
Cullen had led a quiet life and was best known for hosting Shetland Pony rides for kids on the weekends on his property near Highway 27 and what is now Eglinton Avenue West.
A closer look at his body revealed his index finger and thumb were missing and there was a single bullet hole in his chest.
“I can’t see why anyone would have a grudge against him,” neighbour Bernard Ottaway told The Toronto Daily Star, describing Cullen as a quiet man who kept to himself.
Trying to sort out the murder was a policing legend: Adolphus J. (Dolph) Payne.
Payne was a slow-talking, methodical sleuth with a computer-like memory who was “long regarded as Canada’s greatest detective,” according to Gwyn (Jocko) Thomas, who covered crime for the Daily Star for 60 years.
“Cops and crooks alike held him almost in awe as he worked outside the limelight to solve many of Metro’s biggest crime mysteries,” Thomas wrote in Payne’s 1981 obituary.
Payne had achieved celebrity status of a sort after tracking down Edwin Alonzo Boyd, leader of a bank-robbing gang that shot and killed a Toronto detective and wounded another and then busted out of the notorious Don Jail.
Payne tracked Boyd down as the bank robber masqueraded as a missionary on Heath Street, near Upper Canada College.
Payne entered every case with an expectation of success. “Most robbers are dumb clucks,” he often said.
Within hours of Cullen’s death, Payne was on the trail of a mysterious stranger who showed up in the area at about 7:30 p.m. that evening. The stranger approached a neighbouring farmer who was exercising a horse and asked, “How do you get to the pony farm?”
About a half-hour after that, Cullen’s wife Queenie said she discovered his body.
An autopsy by Dr. Fred Jaffe revealed that Cullen had been shot through the heart by a single .22-calibre bullet that stopped in his spine. His hands were in front of his body, as though he saw someone frightening and went into a defensive posture.
A .22-calibre rifle was found on a shipping case about 50 feet from the guinea pig hutch, but police determined it was not the murder weapon.
About 50 police officers scoured Cullen’s farm for the gun used to kill him, with no luck. An army sergeant also combed the area with a metal detector, but found no bullet shell.
Robbery was quickly ruled out as a motive. Cullen was in the habit of carrying large sums of money, but none was taken.
Attention then shifted to Cullen’s business life. Aside from the pony rides, Cullen also bred Shetland ponies, mares, geldings, colts and stallions, and sold saddles, harnesses and horse-drawn carts.
Perhaps more importantly to Payne, Cullen also bred guinea pigs, cats, dogs for pet shops and
experimentation. Sometimes he also provided stray dogs to labs.
Investigators pondered the possibility that Cullen was shot by an animal-rights activist.
“Police believe a dog lover whose pet was impounded, then sold to a laboratory may have sought revenge,” the Daily Star reported three days after the murder.
Certainly, Cullen seemed to know he had some enemies.
Ilamay Vineham, 90, (nee Peacock), who was born and raised on the property, earlier told Toronto.com that Cullen was a private person who seemed “always afraid.”
Workers from his farm were much more outgoing, and would knock on neighbourhood doors and let local children sit on the ponies for free.
Police dispatched a sketch artist
to draw a likeness of the stranger who asked for directions to the farm on the evening of the murder.
Within 10 days, Payne was ready to sign off on another successful investigation.
But when officers went to talk with their prime suspect, they learned he had recently committed suicide with a firearm.
There’s little likelihood the case will be solved, as most witnesses are also long dead.
Medical advances like DNA testing aren’t likely to be of any use, as Cullen was killed from a distance, with no contact with the shooter.
Cullen’s old pony farm and animal breeding operation was shut down in 1966, after the land was rezoned to allow for apartment construction. The site is marked by a new road called Pony Farm Drive.