At about 6:20 p.m. on the evening of Oct. 25, 1921, taxi driver Harry Strom pulled into Culliton's Auto Livery at 1461 Yonge St. for gas. A young man sat on the edge of the back seat and seemed very agitated. Culliton noticed that he had a fawn overcoat over his arm. Soon after leaving Culliton's garage Mr. Strom's passenger apparently attacked him with a large gatepost spike. Mr. Strom's skull was fractured and he had three teeth knocked out. Nevertheless a trail of footprints showed that he was able to crawl under a farm fence and run across a field to the home of T.H. Watts. He was covered with blood and Watts took him to Dr. J.D. Berry's office for first aid. Mr. Strom underwent an emergency operation but died of his injuries the next day. Police got a break when two suitcases and a burr-covered fawn overcoat were discovered in a field a few hundred yards from the murder scene. The suitcases had been hidden in such a way as to suggest that the owner intended to pick them up later. There were traces of blood on the suitcases and one of them contained letters that identified the owner. The owner had picked up his suitcases at Steel's Tea Rooms sometime between six and seven o'clock. Police theorized that the man flagged down Mr. Strom while Mr. Strom was on his way to Culliton's for gas.

Descriptions of the owner of the suitcases tallied with Culliton's description of the man in the back seat of Mr. Strom's car and with descriptions of witnesses who evidently saw the suspect around the time of the attack. A young boy named Bobby Constable reported that a man had approached him at a streetcar stop a few hundred yards from the crime scene and asked when the next car to Toronto would go by. When Constable said the next car would not be along for an hour the man ran off. T.A. Riley reported that an agitated young man came to his back door and asked if Riley had called police headquarters. Surprised at the question Riley said no and asked why. "Oh, there is a guy who has been acting fresh up the street," said the man who then turned and vanished. Police distributed thousands of circulars with the suspect's name and photograph but by 1923 no arrests had been made.