Gerald Stephen De Viller
St. Thomas, ON / Feb. 9, 1968
Between 10:30 and 10:45 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 9, 1968, De Viller, 48, was dispatched to a business address on Talbot Street to pick up a man who wanted to go to Port Stanley. At about 11:10 p.m. De Viller's badly beaten body was found on the Lake Road, about a mile northeast of Port Stanley. Early indications suggested that he had been run over by his cab.
The cab was found about half an hour later in St. Thomas, about nine miles from where the body was found. There was no evidence of foul play inside the cab, indicating that De Viller was outside the cab when he was attacked.
A man was convicted of the crime and sentenced to life in prison. In 1973 this man and two other prisoners escaped from Collins Bay penitentiary. One of the escapees, exposed by the media as a sex offender, was found dead in a ditch outside Niagara Falls. De Viller's killer and the other escapee were captured soon afterward.
In 1979 the killer escaped from Kingston penitentiary. In 1984 he was acquitted of killing a fellow prisoner. Subsequently transferred to Drumheller, he made two abortive escape attempts. In 1992 he was transferred to Bowden Institution and granted day parole from the Hope Mission in Edmonton. In January, 1993 he failed to return to the Mission, and was still at large in February.
De Viller was survived by his wife, a daughter and two adult sons.
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