Court document sheds light on York murder mystery
Woman says ex-boyfriend told her crime occurred before police began investigation, statement shows
The ex-girlfriend of the young neighbour accused in the murder of a 67-year-old recluse said he told her about the crime, according to an agreed statement of facts entered in court after she pleaded guilty to obstruction in the case.
The document says that when York police investigators brought Katie Shalin, 21, a soft-spoken, doe-eyed hospital worker, into the police station last Dec.10, she told them her former boyfriend, 26-year-old Cristian Chis, had told her he killed Peter Gavin, an elderly recluse who lived in East Gwillimbury, next door to his parent’s rural ranch.
Shalin said her former boyfriend Chis, a scruffy, heavy-set figure, told her the murder happened long before police ever scoured Gavin’s property in what was then a hunt for a missing person, the document says — before a farmer found Gavin’s skull 20 kilometres away, beginning a bizarre murder mystery that would span more than a year.
Two days after she spoke to police, Shalin would be arrested and charged as an accessory to murder after the fact.
A human skull uncovered in a field far south of Peter Gavin’s home is the only part of his body to be recovered
An hour before her arrest, she called Chis to tell him she’d given him up to the police, according to the agreed statement of facts. She told him to “disappear.” That was after Chis had allegedly showed her blood inside the Quonset hut on Gavin’s farm, according to evidence given during her bail hearing in January.
Gavin was a retired CN railway worker who lived alone in a small red brick bungalow he built, set back on a gravel drive off Kennedy Rd. He was reported missing by an acquaintance in August 2011.
Aplump recluse with no family to speak of, Gavin had few friends. But neighbours said he’d always honk his car horn as he passed by on the paved road, in his rattling diesel truck.
At the time of the missing-person report, he hadn’t been seen or heard from in weeks.
Police officers found Gavin’s white Ford pickup parked outside his home, where the grass was starting to grow wild.
Forcing their way inside, they found little out of place, including the newspapers — Gavin was an avid Toronto Star subscriber — he had collected over the years, according to evidence at the bail hearing. There were no signs of struggle. Even his bed was made. But there was rotting food in the fridge and the mailbox was overflowing. The last Star newspaper found delivered was dated in June, police said.
Officers combed the rural area surrounding Gavin’s property, where neighbouring farm homes are clustered on a stretch of mostly cleared land. They found no signs of foul play.
Three days after the search began, a farmer on Warden Ave. reported a stunning find — a human skull uncovered in a field far south of Gavin’s home. It remains the only part of his body to be recovered.
After homicide investigators took over the case, forensic examination helped de- termine that Gavin had been killed two months earlier, in June.
Neighbours traded rumours about how Gavin kept bundles of cash inside the house. His total worth was set at almost $1.7 million by the public trustee handling his estate. If he had enemies, no one knew to speak of them.
Back at Gavin’s property in September, a search inside the Quonset hut, used to store farm equipment, revealed traces of human blood, according to evidence at the bail hearing. Tests would determine that it was Gavin’s.
Police were also, by this time, following a paper trail after red flags were spotted in his financial records. Investigators learned that three of Gavin’s debit cards had been used at banks in Scarborough, Markham and Newmarket — places the elderly man, who followed strict routines, went rarely, if ever.
Investigators were able to identify three men who had handled the cards, said the agreed statement of facts. One was alleged to be Chis — the adult son of Gavin’s next-door neighbours.
Chis and Shalin were dating at the time of the murder, police said, having both worked as on-call support staff at the Southlake Regional Health Centre in Newmarket.
In November 2012, police tapped several phones: that of Chis, the other men believed to have used the cards, and Shalin, according to the agreed statement of
Neighbours traded rumours about how Gavin kept bundles of cash inside the house. His total worth was set at almost $1.7 million by the public trustee handling his estate
facts. Police determined Chis had passed the cards to the other men, who would later face fraud charges.
When Chis called Shalin back the afternoon of her arrest, on Dec. 12, 2012, they spoke for less than six minutes, the court document said. Police were listening in on the conversation.
Shalin told Chis he had to “wipe his face off the face of the planet,” saying she had “cops at her house” and she had been to the station, according to the statement of facts.
Despite telling Chis she was “terrified” to speak to him and worried about the legal consequences of doing so (as stated in the court document), the two met an hour later, according to evidence given at the bail hearing.
What neither knew was that police had followed them to their meeting point, the remote Rogers Reservoir in East Gwillimbury.
As they watched, police became concerned for Shalin’s safety and moved in to arrest both of them.
In the days that followed, police searched the Chis property with a warrant, which is separated from the Gavin property by a drooping wire fence. Gavin’s remains would not be located.
The property was previously listed for sale before the murder and is again listed at nearly $1 million.
After spending Christmas in jail, Shalin was released in January on $100,000 bail and under house arrest. In April, the Crown withdrew the charge against her of accessory to murder charge. In August, she pleaded guilty to obstruction and was sentenced to one year of probation.
Lead homicide investigator Det. David MacDonald said last Monday he still believes someone has more information about what happened to Gavin.
“Mr. Gavin is a true victim . . . He was in the right place at the right time. He was in his house when he was brutally attacked and murdered and dismembered,” he said. “All homicide investigations are tragic, but this one is especially tragic in my mind.”