At about 11:50 p.m. on June 28, 2001, Barrie Taxi driver Gary Newman was dispatched to pick up a man named Chris in the town of Innisfil, just south of Barrie. The call had come from a public phone outside a furniture store near the intersection of Highway 400 and Innisfil Beach Road. Mr. Newman, 49, was the father of four children including a 12-year-old son and a 3-month-old daughter. He was driving a silver 1994 Ford Taurus for his friend Hans Schrader. "He just loved driving that cab," said Mr. Schrader "but he adored his family more." Unknown to Mr. Newman the 24-year-old man he picked up was armed with two knives and and was bent on robbery. He had driven to the furniture store and parked his car in a nearby commuter lot before making the call. He was wearing a pair of work gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints. The man directed Mr. Newman down Huronia road and then asked him to pull over near the National Pines Golf Course on the pretext that he thought he might have left his bank card at the phone booth. When the car was stopped he attacked Mr. Newman from the back seat, stabbing him several times in the head and neck while Mr. Newman tried to ward off the blows with his bare hands. One wound was fatal, penetrating Mr. Newman's brain through his face. In all Mr. Newman was stabbed 29 times. When the blade on the first knife snapped, the killer continued stabbing his victim with the second knife. "He was pleading for his life," said the killer in a statement to police after he was arrested. "A normal person would have stopped, but I just kept going." The killer claimed that he had only intended to rob Mr. Newman but became enraged when he learned there was no money. In fact police found $60 on Mr. Newman's body, casting doubt on robbery as the real motive. In an earlier statement to police, later disavowed, he said that he had committed the murder to see if he could get away with it. The killer left Mr. Newman bleeding to death at the side of the road. He then drove the cab back to the furniture store, discarding the knives and a bloody glove at a Tim Horton's restaurant along the way. Mr. Newman was still alive when a motorist found him shortly after midnight. He whispered something about his son Tom but was pronounced dead at Victoria Hospital in Barrie before he could give any information to police. The abandoned taxi was discovered at almost the same time as Mr. Newman. A fingerprint was retrieved from the cab's steering wheel and the glove that the killer dropped when he dragged Mr. Newman to the roadside yielded a DNA sample, but neither could be matched to any known criminals. It would be two years before the killer was identified. In the meantime South Simcoe police undertook what turned out to be their largest and most expensive investigation. They pursued 276 tips and interviewed several hundred people. They also received assistance from the Ontario Provincial Police and several other agencies, including the Barrie, Toronto and York Regional police and the Los Angeles County Sherriff's Department. Some leads took investigators down false paths. One involved a young blonde woman who, on the night of the murder, was directed to the same phone booth that the killer used. She was riding in a sport utility vehicle driven by a man who was not seen clearly enough for a description. Other witnesses placed a similar vehicle near where Mr. Newman's cab was abandoned at about the time it was discovered. Police developed a detailed psychological profile of the suspect and regarded his "female companion" as the potential key to solving the crime. Investigators also spent time trying to track down a group of youths who attended a birthday party on the night of the murder in a park near where Mr. Newman was found. But if the youths knew anything about Mr. Newman's death they never reported it. A year after the murder, with all their leads drying up, police and Barrie Taxi offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the killer. At the press conference announcing the reward, Mr. Newman's 13-year-old son Tom appealed for help from the public. "This is the first Christmas I haven't had my dad," he began. "My dad did special things with me, like fix my Skidoo and take me places. I lived with him all my life and he was a great dad. If anyone knows who did this to my dad, please call the police." [Next column]

Gary Arthur Newman. (Source: TheBarrieExaminer.com, July 13, 2012.) It was the 273rd tip, arriving in July, 2003, that gave police the break they were waiting for. After sharing several beers in a garage the killer told a former neighbour about the murder. The neighbour was skeptical at first but contacted police when he learned that they were actively pursuing the case. According to the neigbhour, the killer told him that as he watched his victim’s terrified, frantic face in the rear-view mirror, he felt a thrill, something police said he also told them. Police took six weeks to verify the tip before arresting the suspect. His fingerprints and DNA matched the crime scene evidence and when confronted with the evidence he calmly confessed. Contrary to the psychological profile that the police had developed, the killer had no prior criminal record and rather than being a dropout he was a high school football star and honours graduate. As his lawyer stated, there was nothing in his background to suggest that he was capable of such a savage murder. The killer pleaded guilty to second degree murder on October 22, 2004. On November 17 he was sentenced to life imprisonment with no eligibility for parole for 11 years. In passing sentence Justice Michelle Fuerst commented on the brutal nature of the attack on an unarmed victim, the devastating effect it had on his family, the fact that the attack had been carried out as part of a planned robbery and the impact the crime had on a "vulnerable" sector of society, namely, taxi drivers working at night. However, she also took into account the killer's early guilty plea, his cooperation with police after his arrest, the absence of a prior criminal record, and his Indigenous heritage. The defence claimed that the killer had been abused by his aboriginal mother until he was adopted as a toddler and that at the time of the murder he was depressed and desperate for money. He and his pregnant wife had lost the down payment on a house when they couldn't complete the transaction. Mr. Newman's family was outraged at the sentence and left the courtroom amid shouts of "We'll be there in 11 years when you get out, buddy!" Mr. Newman's widow Terri Caron did not accept that his murder was an act of impulse or that the killer's mental state was a mitigating factor in the crime. "You dont go sticking a knife into somebody's guts because of your heritage, or because you are broke," she said outside the Barrie courthouse. "He says he was depressed and abused? Well, I was abused as a child and throughout most of my life until I met Gary. "When I'm broke, I do without and I eat less and I struggle and I get by. I don't feel the need to go and kill somebody." "You don't stab somebody that many times on impulse and you don't bring gloves. He is an evil man and he will be back on the streets someday. Evil always gets its way." In 2011, after serving seven years, the killer was granted day parole. In 2015, as soon as he became eligible, he was released on full parole.