Only in Canada

[Kip Powick]

'Victory' for serial killer

Tribunal rules `Mad Slasher' be moved to Toronto facility

Centre that's held him for 30 years might face contempt

May 12, 2006. 07:09 AM

NICK PRON

STAFF REPORTER

A serial killer known as the Mad Slasher is one step closer to gaining his freedom after a provincial tribunal ruled he should be moved immediately to a west end Toronto health care centre.

The Oak Ridge division of the Penetanguishene mental health centre faces possible contempt charges for ignoring a ruling last year from the Ontario Review Board calling for the transfer of Christian Magee to the Queen St. W. health centre, a facility with programs allowing patients to travel into the community, chairman Crawford MacIntyre said yesterday.

"We find it rather offensive that the review board's order (from last year) has been snubbed," said MacIntyre at a hearing at Oak Ridge, as Magee looked on.

He said there was "a weakness" in the Criminal Code on how the board could enforce its rulings and called upon Magee's lawyer, Dan Brodsky, to bring a motion citing Oak Ridge for contempt at a later hearing.

"A year ago an order was made ... and nothing was done," he said, as two relatives of one of Magee's victims looked on glumly in the hearing room. "It could be said that the board's nose is out of joint."

Magee, who sexually assaulted and killed three women, and raped two others, was all smiles after the hearing. "I'm elated," the father of three said in an interview. "I'm no longer dangerous. I don't want to hurt anybody. I'm hoping sometime down the road I will be able to go out and visit with my family."

"This was a flat-out victory for Chris," Brodsky said later. "If Chris is not at the Toronto facility by next week I will go to the Superior Court with a motion calling for contempt charges to be laid against Oak Ridge."

Magee had been declared not criminally responsible because of mental disorder for the rape and murder of three women in the Strathroy area between 1974 and 1976, and sent to Oak Ridge in 1976, where he has remained for the past 30 years.

For years, he had been trying to get a transfer from the maximum-security facility to the Centre of Addiction and Mental health on Queen St. W., a medium secure facility with outpatient programs.

He won that right last year, but the transfer was put on hold after officials with Oak Ridge appealed to Ontario's Court of Appeal, arguing that Magee was still a "substantial danger" to society who shouldn't be moved. The case was heard just before this past Christmas. A ruling is expected in the next month.

The review board is mandated to hold hearings yearly, but MacIntyre decided to wait until the appeal court's ruling before having one on Magee's transfer.

At last year's review board hearing, a report from a clinical team of specialists described Magee as a sexual sadist, a man with an antisocial personality disorder who has a 76 per cent chance of reoffending in 10 years were he to be released.

"There is no proven and effective treatment or intervention that is likely to change the outcome in a man who commits serial, sexually sadistic homicide," warned the report.

Dr. Lisa Ramshaw said in the report that it would be safest for society if Magee stayed in a "highly structured environment" because he has a "dangerous combination" of personality disorders.

"He should never get out. There's nothing much more to say than that," said Geoffrey Scholes, whose 15-year-old sister, Susan Lynn Scholes was raped and murdered by Magee in June, 1976.

"What gives him the right to even exist?" asked a man at yesterday's hearing whose sister was raped by Magee and left for dead. "Thirty years have passed and my sister has never been the same. Magee took away her God-given right to enjoy the magical act of enjoying a normal relationship with a loved one. Justice will not be served until he is dead."

Magee is not asking for his keepers to fling open the locked gates and let him walk out scot-free, Brodsky said.

He said Magee is seeking more of a "controlled exit," perhaps starting with weekend passes to visit his family, just to show society that he can be trusted.

Now 57 and a grandfather, Magee spends his time playing solitaire on his computer in his room at Oak Ridge, watching 24 on TV and listening to gospel music. He's become a woodcarver, a born-again Christian, a foster parent, the "model prisoner" with a spotless record after three decades in custody.

Magee has a short, stocky build, a thick chest and powerful forearms. His handshake is strong. Sitting close to Magee, it's hard not to focus on the serial killer's large hands that were once wrapped around the necks of the two terrified teenagers and a woman seven months pregnant — women he sexually assaulted and murdered.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

`I can recognize the symptoms and ... stop myself before it happens again.'

Christian Magee

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Once illiterate, he now talks eloquently about his "mental health condition," at times sounding like one of the many psychiatrists he has seen over the years.

"I was out of reality when I killed her," Magee recalled about his first victim, Judith Barksey, 19, during four hours of interviews at Oak Ridge.

"The reality is I'll always have the problem, but now I can recognize the symptoms and take preventative measures — stop myself — before it happens again."

He spotted Barksey by chance, he said, that March 1974 evening in the town of Strathroy, and in the four blocks that he followed her, he had made up his mind he was going to rape her.

"I talked myself into it," he said. "I was fantasizing more and more as I walked behind her, building up the courage, the desire, the want.

"She looked good from behind," he admitted when asked about what was then going through his head.

He never saw her face as he lunged at her in the darkness. He wanted sex, not thinking what would happen after the attack.

But when the startled teen turned around, Magee said he realized right then that he had to kill her because she knew him and could identify him later to the police.

"I just couldn't walk away, even though I hadn't done anything yet. But in my mind I had already committed the crime," he said.

When she struggled, Magee took out a jackknife and slashed her throat, earning him the media nickname he so thoroughly detests. His two other victims also had their throats cut.

"If I were in the same situation now, I would just walk away if I got those thoughts," he said of his personality changes. "Now I would be able to recognize the warning signs and stop myself before anything happened. Back then I couldn't do that."

Several factors, he said, led him to kill. He was born into an abusive, loveless home that was followed by an equally loveless marriage, although the union produced three children. He lacked self-esteem.

When he was young, he walked around with his head down so much that his mother got him to curl his arms through a broom behind his back to force his head up. His parents berated him constantly, telling him he would never amount to anything. An older brother frequently beat him up, he said.

He was in his mid-teens when his father took him out of school and sent him to work to help support the family.

Even after he got married, he was still searching for the affection he wasn't getting from his wife. Magee has told psychiatrists that at one time he was confused by sex and love, believing that forcing sex on someone could get him the affection he so desperately needed. He said he realizes now that was wrong.

Magee said learning a trade — woodworking — has given him confidence.

He has raised more than $25,000 for charity by donating his woodwork at auctions. Magee sponsors a student in Ethiopia who is studying to become a nurse.

Magee freely admitted he still gets deviant sexual fantasies. He said he can never be cured of that problem but insists those thoughts can be controlled.

"I was sent here because I have an illness," he said. "I didn't understand that then. I do now."

"I would have been out years ago had I been found guilty at a criminal trial, and given the mandatory life sentence," he said. People convicted of first-degree murder are allowed to apply for parole after serving 25 years.

"We're a compassionate country. That's the way our system is set up. I can never repay my debt to society. But in Canada you're supposed to be given a second chance."