Canadian Taxi Driver Homicides: Gerald Burke Previous page    Next page • Driver Profiles

Gerald Burke

Hamilton, Ontario / December 5, 1969


At about 7:20 p.m. on December 5, 1969, Gerald Burke picked up a woman who called from a direct line in front of the Laura Secord candy store in the Greater Hamilton Shopping Centre. He radioed "Eighteen going to Division Street" and that was the last anyone knew of him until police found his cab in a railway yard off Dunbar Street at 2:37 a.m. Mr. Burke had been shot twice in the head. Since Dunbar intersected with Division Street, police theorized that he had been killed soon after dropping off the shopping centre passenger.

Mr. Burke, 24, had driven part-time for Kenilworth Kabs over the previous two years for short stretches when he was out of work. He was married with two sons aged one and two.

Various witnesses told police that they had seen three young men in the neighborhood of the crime causing disturbances. A railcar inspector and his wife reported seeing three young men flee from the cab at about 9:20 p.m. A fourteen-year-old boy reported seeing one person get out of the cab at about 8:45 p.m.

No more progress was made on the case until February of 1970, when a woman arrested on burglary charges offered to provide information about the Gerald Burke case in exchange for favourable treatment. She claimed that a man known to her had confessed to the murder during a visit to her house.

On the strength of this information police arrested the man, who was subsequently convicted of the murder in January, 1971. However, 22 months later, a new trial overturned the conviction. The woman who provided information to the police turned out to be a former girlfriend with whom the accused had broken off relations. The mother of the accused was able to locate credible witnesses who provided an alibi and who also cast doubt on some of the informant's testimony.

The Crown appealed the acquittal but abandoned the appeal on learning about the evidence of the railcar inspector and his wife. The investigating officers justified their suppression of this evidence on the grounds that it would "confuse" a jury. A memo to this effect remained in the case file.

Gerald Burke. (Source: Hamilton Spectator, December 6, 2002)


In 1997, the former suspect approached the Osgoode Hall Law School's "Innocence Project" for assistance in clearing his name. After various attempts to review the case file were denied, Mr. Burke's two sons successfully lobbied the Hamilton police to make the file available to two law students working for the Innocence Project. The law students discovered the memo concerning the suppressed evidence.

The Hamilton Police refused any further access to the file, and also refused to reinvestigate the case. As a result the former accused and Mr. Burke's sons jointly filed a lawsuit against the Hamilton police department. In 2002 the police department settled out of court for an undisclosed sum and formally apologized to the plaintiff.