Richard Turkiewicz
Scarborough, ON / Jan. 12, 1976
Turkiewicz, 50, fled his native Poland to England in 1936 and served with the Polish army during World War II. He came to Canada in 1957. Four or five years before his death he separated from his wife and four children. Since then he lived a lonely life in a $20-a-week attic room, cooking his meals on a hot plate in a hallway.
Sometime after 5:30 a.m. on Sunday, January 12, 1976, Turkiewicz picked up a 25-year-old released convict and drove him to an apartment block on Glamorgan Avenue. The man then shot Turkiewicz in the back of the head with a sawed-off rifle. Turkiewicz's body was not discovered until Monday morning when a resident of the apartment block looked inside the snow-covered cab.
Meanwhile, after killing Turkiewicz, the man hailed another cab and ordered the driver to take him to an apartment block at Midland and Eglinton Avenues. When they arrived the killer shot the driver in the face. The bullet entered the victim's left nostril and lodged above his left ear but luckily did not cause serious injury.
The killer then ran to a home on Benjamin Boulevard and took the owner hostage. After a three-hour standoff with police he was shot to death while attempting to escape in his hostage's car. During the standoff police heard the killer boasting to friends in phone calls that he had slain two cab drivers. At the time of the calls Turkiewicz's body was not yet discovered.
The killer had been released from prison under mandatory supervision after serving two-thirds of a 30-month sentence for five break-and-enter convictions. He had a total of 12 previous convictions, including robbery with violence. The chairman of the National Parole Board stated that since the killer had qualified for mandatory supervision due to good behavior in prison, the Board had no alternative but to release him.
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