Death links two victims in refuge of their dreams
Two women who may have known each other only peripherally in life, a glancing recognition from within Toronto’s small Eritrean community, are now intimately linked in death — and murder.
One never saw her killer coming as he stalked his victim along a Cabbagetown laneway in the early morning rain nearly a year ago. But Nighisti Semret clawed for her life as she was stabbed repeatedly with a 20 cm kitchen knife and got DNA beneath her fingernails. That was the clue she left behind for forensics examiners to recover.
The other must have had strong suspicions about the man, a fellow émigré she’d tried to help — her friend, perhaps her lover. He came home bloodied to the apartment they shared on the day Semret was slain, say police, with significant wounds, gashes and lacerations to his hands and arms — injuries sustained during a struggle with a “good Samaritan” wielding an umbrella, in the moments after Semret was attacked.
Rigat Essag Ghirmay saw the blood, was apparently present when the man sought medical treatment, and would have learned there was DNA evidence retrieved when police made that announcement seven months after Semret died.
Within a week Ghirmay was dead, too, her body chopped up and disposed in pieces that had been trundled around town in pieces of luggage. Only her torso has ever been found, stuffed inside a duffel bag discovered on a path near Humber Blvd.
The DNA trail extended from Semret’s nails to the good Samaritan’s umbrella to Ghirmay’s Shuter St. apartment to the suspect’s home. The cases are biologically connected.
On Monday, 42-year-old Adonay Zekarias appeared in court, charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Originally, this past May, Zekarias had been charged with committing an indignity to a body — Ghrimay’s dismemberment. Murder is also an indignity. Three people whose lives transected in ways investigators are still trying to understand, with the hope that members of the expatriate Eritrean community will help shed light on the links — just as DNA has linked the crimes.
At the time Semret was killed, there was fear that the homicide — a frenzied assault partly captured by surveillance cameras — had been random, committed against the backdrop of purse snatchings and other incidents that had plagued the neighbourhood, some kind of mani- ac who’d pounced upon the 55-yearold mother of four as she headed home from her overnight shift as a cleaning supervisor at the Delta Chelsea Hotel. There was no apparent motive for the attack. There still isn’t — not that motive is a requirement for prosecution. “Motive isn’t a particularly imperative element of a murder prosecution, unlike what you see and hear on television,” Det.-Sgt. Gary Giroux, lead investigator in the Semret homicide, told reporters at a press conference Monday afternoon. “But it does help members of the community understand why people kill other people. That element would be of assistance in relation to what was the precipitating event that Miss Semret is alleged to have done to Mr. Zekarias to cause him to murder her in this particular way, in a very violent way.” Detectives have heard rumours. “Evidence will show that Miss Semret and the offender knew each other, but the difficulty we have is that the motive for the attack remains unclear,” Giroux continued. “I am asking the public to assist with regards to the motive as to why Mr. Zekarias would have been waiting for Miss Semret in the rain and in the dark. It’s clear now that he would have been familiar with her route home. He was standing out of sight and attacked her from behind for an obviously very specific purpose.” More clarity exists, police are certain, for the subsequent murder in May of 28-year-old Ghirmay. Det.-Sgt. Pauline Gray heads that investigation. “It’s my personal theory that Rigat did know or had figured out what Zekarias (allegedly) had done and had either confronted him or had let him know that she in fact knew that he was the murderer of Nighisti.” Inadvertently, police disclosing the DNA evidence maybe provoked what happened next. “We believe the confrontation happened a week or so after (Giroux’s) last press conference,” said Gray, “when he disclosed that there was DNA at the scene and that the offender was in all likelihood injured. “Our concern is that the murder of Miss Ghirmay has a lot to do with what happened to Miss Semret.” Ghirmay, tragically, did not contact police. She did move out of the apartment she’d shared with Zekarias. There is no suggestion that she had any involvement in Semret’s murder. Gray wants to hear from anybody who may have seen Zekarias dragging the luggage between May 17 and May 24 — probably four pieces, three wheeled bags and a knapsack. Zekarias was not on the radar in the Semret murder. One investigative thread now being pursued is that their paths may have crossed in the cleaning business. “I’ve said before that Miss Semret as a supervisor was very demanding of her staff. We looked at the investigative theory that the possibility existed that a cleaner such as this individual was present maybe for a short period of time and (Semret) may have been critical of him and he may have been discharged,” said Giroux. “That would be a clear motive in relation to why he did what he did. But at this point I don’t have that type of information.” A former co-worker told the Star’s Joel Eastwood that Semret had never worked with Zekarias. All three protagonists had arrived in Canada within five years before Semret was slain. Each spent some time living in a transition home for émigrés from Africa. Zekarias and Semret had stayed there for a while at the same time.
It’s unclear how Ghirmay met Zekarias, but the Eritrean community in Toronto is small, its members often coming to know each other through an Eritrean church in Cabbagetown. Investigators suspect, but have not been able to confirm, that Ghirmay and Semret also met each other socially through Eritrean events. But Ghirmay was definitely a source of emotional support for Zekarias.
“She helped him through school,” said Gray. “She was sort of the patron saint of lost puppies. Her brother said she was a bit of a fan of the underdog and so she was supporting him through his English language studies and helping him try to find work.”
For her kindness, for her coincidental proximity to an alleged murderer, Ghirmay became his next victim, police allege, the only retrieved part of her body found some 300 metres from Zekarias’ apartment.
How she came to that location from her own home, whether already dead when transported, is still not known, nor how Ghirmay was killed, nor what became of the rest of her mortal remains.
Two women, born in Eritrea, murdered in Toronto, refuge of their dreams. Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.