The mutilation of a dead body adds an extra dimension of horror to a murder. This is what happened to 61-year-old Toronto driver Robert Pearson. On April 9, 1978 police were called to a rooming house on Springhurst Avenue following a complaint a cab was blocking a driveway. When they canvassed the building they discovered Mr. Pearson's body. He had been beaten with a baseball bat and stabbed to death. His genitals had been cut off. He had also been robbed of about $35. Within a few hours the police arrested a 16-year-old female in connection with Mr. Pearson's death. She became the youngest woman in Toronto history to be charged with murder. According to police she hailed Mr. Pearson on the street and lured him to her room on the pretext of hiring him to move some household goods. Further investigation revealed that the woman was seriously disturbed. Since the age of twelve she masqueraded as a boy, wearing a piece of cardboard under her shirt to conceal her breasts. In this guise she began dating another girl and, as a psychiatrist testified at her trial, became obsessed with an "absolute, imperative need to get a penis," attach it to herself, and "prove" she was a boy. Two days earlier Mr. Pearson's killer stabbed a 15-year-old boy in a church parking lot but the boy managed to escape with a collapsed lung. The killer was initially charged with assault but the charge was dropped and she was freed. After Mr. Pearson's death the charge was reinstated as one of attempted murder. In July, 1978, the killer was released on $8,300 bail, raising a storm of protest from Toronto cab drivers. As a result the Ontario Attorney-General ordered an appeal against the bail order.

Robert Pearson. (Source: Toronto Globe & Mail, April 11, 1978, p. 5) When the killer came to trial she was found not guilty by reason of insanity on both counts. She was ordered confined in the St. Thomas Psychiatric Hospital "until a review board is satisfied she is well enough to be safely released." The consensus of opinion was that she was not likely to go free for many years.