Older sister is still looking for some justice
Ontario woman wants whoever committed 1969 murder held to account
Jackie English loved being a big sister.
When her little brother Fred was set to graduate from Grade 8 in London, Ont., their single mother couldn’t afford to buy him anything fancy to wear.
Fifteen-year-old Jackie bought Fred a sports jacket and pants for his graduation ceremony out of money she earned at her two part-time jobs, working at a food counter of a department store and in the kitchen of a posh restaurant.
Three months later, Fred wore the same jacket and dress pants to Jackie’s funeral, after her naked and battered body was found in Big Otter Creek near Tillsonburg, Ont., on Oct. 10, 1969, with bruises on her head and blood in her hair.
The murder remains unsolved.
Fred had grown a little in the months before her funeral. The jacket was “a little bit tight and a bit short in the pants,” their big sister Anne recalled, remembering also how their mother responded to her daughter’s death by attempting suicide with pills, and was hospitalized for a year.
Anne, 68, isn’t giving up the fight about solving the case, but she isn’t a starry-eyed optimist either.
“Am I hopeful that there’ll be a trial?” Anne said. “No. Not at all.”
There have been no charges laid, although Anne English has her ideas of who was responsible for abducting and murdering her little sister.
She believes it was likely two people who were involved in the crime, and she thinks police have the same people in mind, but don’t have the evidence to bring them to court.
Det. Insp. Randy Gaynor of the Ontario Provincial Police said he can’t comment.
“We’re still working it,” he said of the case, adding: “We don’t give up on them.”
Anne English doesn’t believe her sister’s life was ended by strangers. She thinks a key to the case is two men who upset Jackie the day before she died, when they dropped by the food counter at the Met on the outskirts of London near Highway 401, where Jackie worked as a server.
One of them flipped her a penny and said, “That’s what you’re worth,” Anne said.
Anne’s own personal investigation into Jackie’s murder has taken her strange places.
She once confronted one of the men she considers a prime suspect.
She laughs when she talks about going into that man’s washroom and scooping up material that might be good for DNA testing.
“I wasn’t mean to him but I wasn’t kind.”
That man didn’t seem too rattled by Anne’s curiosity, as he invited Anne and her brother Fred to a party.
“I went,” she said. “Everybody was surprised. He looked quite puzzled.”
Anne English also confronted a man who served prison time for a sex killing — she believes he may have been the second person at the food counter.
That man bore a strong resemblance to the photo of a young man that was found in Jackie’s diary.
“It looks very much like him,” Anne said. “We didn’t pick this name out of the thin blue air. The similarities are there.”
Anne’s well aware of longstanding theories that London has had at least two serial killers in modern memory.
Michael Arntfield, a criminology professor at Western University in London, Ont., wrote a book entitled, “Murder City: the untold story of Canada’s serial killer capital, 1959-1984.” And Anne English’s friend, Vanessa Brown, wrote another called, “The Forest City Killer; A Serial Murderer, A Cold-Case Sleuth and A Search for Justice.”
Within weeks of Jackie’s murder, London controller and future mayor Fred Gosnell said that he was convinced there was a “sex maniac” on the loose in the area, responsible for three murders in the previous two years.
A year after Jackie’s killing, the Ottawa Journal editorialized that something was dramatically out of kilter on London’s streets, calling the murder “yet another in a series of murders with sex overtones in the Western Ontario area.”
Jackie English’s name resurfaced in February 1998, when London police and the Ontario Provincial Police jointly announced “Project Angel,” an ambitious combined forces look at 20 unsolved slayings in London and the surrounding area.
The Star’s Nick Pron reported in 1998 that police at the time believed some of the slayings could be the work of one or two serial killers.
In the end, no serial killer was revealed.
For her part, Anne English avoids being drawn into any speculation about serial killers in her hometown.
“I only know Jackie’s story.” Her voice softens when she talks about Jackie, who was younger than her by a year.
“Jackie was the peacemaker. She was the middle one.”
Anne said it was totally in character for Jackie to buy her younger brother’s graduation clothes with money she earned from her part-time work.
“We were taught when you turned 15, you work. Contribute to the household.”
Anne English stresses that something was definitely bothering Jackie on the day of her death. She didn’t want to go to work at the Met food counter, but went anyway.
A witness said that she was visibly upset while talking with a man at work, 10 minutes before her shift ended at 10 p.m.
A key point for Anne English is that Jackie was seen getting into the back seat of a car that pulled over on the Wellington Road bridge while Jackie was walking home that night. Why would she get into the back seat unless there were already people in the front seats?
Anne English says her sister’s case is complicated, but says she’s sure it’s solvable.
She still wants the killer or killers to be arrested and at least “named and shamed.”
She also wants people to realize her little sister’s short life had value.
“I want her always remembered.”