A little before noon on Monday, July 12, 1937, a witness saw Fort Erie taxi driver Edward Kassirer pick up a fare opposite the Erie Lane Hotel at 33 Princess Street. The fare was a man in a light grey suit and straw hat. At about a quarter after 12 another witness saw Mr. Kassirer and his passenger drive through an arch of the International Peace Bridge that connects Fort Erie with Buffalo, New York. Later that afternoon Wesley Harrison, a ferry company employee, was walking on Albany Avenue near Fort Erie Beach when he heard what sounded like groans coming from a field behind a thorn bush. When he investigated he found Mr. Kassirer lying on the ground with a bloody wound to the back of his head. Mr. Harrison got someone to call Dr. T.W. Mulvenny, but Mr. Kassirer was dead by the time the doctor arrived. Police at first thought that Mr. Kassirer had been shot but the autopsy revealed that he had been struck several times with a blunt instrument such as a lead pipe. The autopsy also discovered hairs under Mr. Kassirer's fingernails. Police speculated that Mr. Kassirer was struck while in the cab and then struck again after being dragged behind the bush. His body was deliberately concealed and since Albany Avenue was a lonely back road it might have lain undiscovered indefinitely had not Mr. Harrison passed by when he did. Mr. Kassirer's cab was also concealed. It was driven up a little-used rear driveway leading to the summer estate of a Buffalo doctor and parked in an orchard out of sight of the street. Police found five fingerprints on the car, four belonging to Mr. Kassirer and one unidentified. Mr. Kassirer told friends about having won considerable money at the Fort Erie race track during the past week and this led police to wonder if the killer knew Mr. Kassirer, or knew about the money. Police also speculated that the killer had an accomplice with a car to drive them away from the remote murder scene. Samuel Blanchard, who ran the taxi company Mr. Kassirer drove for, kept $50 for him in the company safe during the previous week but returned it to him on Sunday. Police found $20 in bills in a watch pocket but Mr. Kassirer's wallet was gone. A storekeeper reported that someone tried to pay for a purchase with bloodstained bills on the day after the murder, but what seemed like a viable clue did not lead anywhere. The Buffalo police were interested in the Kassirer case because a local refrigerator repairman had been bludgeoned to death in his home in a very similar way not long before. When it turned out that a man they arrested for passing a bogus check was from Fort Erie, knew Mr. Kassirer and had left town on the day of his murder, they invited the Ontario Provincial Police to interview him. However it turned out that the man had a strong alibi and he was quickly dropped as a suspect.

The Erie Lane Hotel in the 1940s. It burned down in November, 2013. (Source: Fort Erie Museum Services Newsletter, July 4, 2014, p. 13) When a .38 calibre revolver was discovered in a Niagara Falls back yard, two vagrants who were sleeping in a car nearby were arrested as suspects. However, no connection could be established between these men and the gun or Mr. Kassirer's death. Running out of leads the OPP posted a $250 reward for informaton leading to identification and conviction of Mr. Kassirer's killer. Edward Kassirer came to Fort Erie from Montréal with his parents in 1928. He had four sisters and two brothers, all living in the Buffalo-Fort Erie area. His father, Morris Kassirer said that Edward "didn't have an enemy in the world and was well liked by everybody." He was 26 years old. A bizarre sidelight on his murder was provided by a man who claimed that a human skull in his possession spoke Mr. Kassirer's name.