Shortly after midnight on March 16, 1975, the Able Atlantic taxi dispatcher heard a faint call for help over his radio but was unable to identify the driver. As he tried to track down the caller by contacting all on-duty taxis the Toronto police notified him that one of the company's cabs had been found on the Scarborough Golf Club Road. The driver, Gordon Stoddart, died of a gunshot wound to the neck shortly after being admitted to hospital. Mr. Stoddart, 42, was the father of two sons aged 4 and 3. He was a postal carrier who drove a taxi part-time. At the time of his death he was trying to earn some extra money to take the family out to celebrate his mother-in-law's birthday. Police were given their first lead by another Able Atlantic driver, John Johnson, who had dropped off three youths at a club near the murder scene shortly before Mr. Stoddart was dispatched to the same club. The youths had acted in a threatening manner and left the cab without paying full fare. Johnson was off the air when Mr. Stoddart was dispatched and so was not able to warn him of possible danger. Fingerprints taken from a phone booth near the club matched those of a sixteen-year-old juvenile. Further investigation linked another sixteen-year-old and a 20-year-old to the murder. One of the sixteen-year-olds was eventually convicted of manslaughter. He served five years and was deported to his native Jamaica on release. In 1997 the killer, now 38, was arrested and charged with re-entering Canada illegally. John Johnson quit driving a taxi as a result of Gordon Stoddart's murder. In 1978 he wrote a book about his experiences as a taxi driver in which he comments on the case (Taxi: True Stories from Behind the Wheel.)

Gordon Stoddart. (Source: Toronto Globe and Mail, March 17, 1975, p. 1.) William McCormack, the detective who led the investigation into Mr. Stoddart's murder, became Toronto police chief from 1989 to 1995. In 1998 he wrote a book about his experiences on the police force and included a chapter on the Stoddart case (Life on Homicide: A Police Detective's Memoir.)