How a killer turned a victim into an activist
Saturday, July 2, 2005 Updated at 2:37 AM EDT
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
When Carolyn Gardner successfully lobbied MPs last winter for a law forcing convicted killers to provide a DNA sample, she latched on to the impending release of Karla Homolka as a rallying cry.
It worked. Invoking the name of the infamous killer magically cleared a parliamentary logjam. The new bill allowed police to add DNA samples from Ms. Homolka and hundreds of other killers to a national data bank
But Ms. Homolka was little more than a trump card for Ms. Gardner. Her real quarry was Ralph Ernest Power — the psychopath who raped and killed her 20-year-old sister, Sheryl, 24 years ago today.
“Karla helped bring a sense of urgency to Bill C-13, but my involvement was very personal,” Ms. Gardner said. “It was founded on Ralph Power.”
Mr. Power, who meticulously stalked 15 women in downtown Toronto before murdering Sheryl and seriously harming another woman, becomes eligible for parole on July 2, 2006.
Late last year, the spectre of his release lit a fire under the 39-year-old founder and president of an Ottawa e-marketing business. Having shut her sister's murder out of her mind for 23 years, Ms. Gardner embarked on a high-energy crusade to see that Mr. Power never gets out.
She believes that, unlike Ms. Homolka, whose notoriety will make it nearly impossible for her to operate unobserved, Mr. Power can melt into the background and return to the murderous trail he left off in 1981.
“To be really dangerous, Karla needs a sidekick,” Ms. Gardner said. “But Power is his own man.”
The Power case took place when crime reporting was not the media staple it is today, but the story had all the ingredients of a blockbuster. Mr. Power was every woman's nightmare, a chameleon who had acquired a full range of criminal skills during his frequent prison stints for break-ins and arson.
When not mopping floors at one of the major burger joints, he whiled away his time scoping out potential victims on the streets and in the shopping malls of the city.
From the balcony of his 22nd floor apartment in downtown Toronto, Mr. Power spent many more hours spying on possible victims as they strolled about or sought refuge from the blistering heat in nearby swimming pools.
“He really got fulfilment from the hunt,” said Wayne Oldham, a homicide detective whose partner, David Boothby, would later become the chief of police. “As demented as he was, he really liked scoping and playing little mind games. He said he was planning to be a cop next.”
A life of foster homes and jail cells had left Mr. Power friendless and with few social skills, although he was capable of appearing genial and harmless until it was too late. His plan was to talk his way into his targets' apartments disguised as a telephone repairman, and to rape them.
Isolating beautiful women who attracted him the most, Mr. Power tracked them in search of their identities, their geographical orbits and their living arrangements.
His methods were chillingly cunning. They included alighting from apartment elevators a floor above the one where his quarry had got off, and then running to check for fresh imprints in the carpet outside each door to determine which unit a target had entered.
Mr. Power also routinely listened for voices at apartment doors to detect whether women lived alone. He smelled doorways for traces of perfume, and he was adept at picking locks.
He also had a fondness for fiddling with electronic gadgetry such as oscilloscopes and Dictaphones, equipment he attempted to modify to enhance or distinguish voice patterns.
“With the Internet and the kind of technology that's available today for creating a fake identity, can you imagine what he would have been capable of?” Ms. Gardner asked. “I think he could do a much better job now.”
Sheryl Gardner moved to Toronto from Ottawa in 1978 to pursue a career as a fashion model. On the weekend she died, she had cancelled a plan to return home for the Canada Day holiday because of a modelling assignment.
Police received a mysterious call that evening tipping them off to the location of a body. They found Ms. Gardner, naked and severely beaten, in her 16th-floor apartment in Toronto's gay district. Her head was so badly caved in with a hammer that detectives initially thought she had blown it off with a gun.
Carolyn Gardner vividly recalls being awakened at her Eastern Ontario cottage by a blood-curdling scream as her mother learned of Sheryl's murder. “I immediately thought: my life has changed and will never be the same again,” she recalled.
Evidence at the murder scene baffled detectives Oldham and Boothby. Ms. Gardner appeared to have let her killer into her apartment, suggesting he was a friend or relative. Yet, the sexual assault and the frenzied violence pointed toward a crazed intruder.
Fearful of a similar attack, the detectives worked around the clock for the next six days.
They would eventually learn Sheryl Gardner was not Mr. Power's intended target that evening. He had heard a dog barking inside the apartment of the woman he had been casing for weeks, who was scheduled for death that night. Leaving the building in disgust, Mr. Power had chanced upon Ms. Gardner.
“He was in the lobby; Sheryl walked in and fit his profile,” Carolyn Gardner said. “I still don't fully understand why it had to be her. If she had only stopped off to buy a loaf of bread. . . .”
It turned out that Mr. Power had devoted the next day to locating Sheryl Gardner's apartment. He had created a fake work order for telephone repairs, and called her number on various pretexts to listen for background noises that might reveal the presence of family or roommates.
Hours after the murder, Mr. Power placed the anonymous phone call to police, and sat back to watch the action in the streets below.
By a stroke of good luck, his next victim — Suzy Gaudrault, another model — managed to fend off Mr. Power's hammer blows, even grabbing his weapon long enough to deliver a blow to his forehead. Ms. Gaudrault had complied with his demands long enough that Mr. Power let his guard down. She ran screaming into the hallway of her apartment building — the same building where Mr. Power's penthouse apartment was located.
“He surely intended to kill her, but she fought like a trooper,” Mr. Oldham said. “Power was a big boy, and she was just a little professional model from Montreal. It was astounding. Without her, Ralph Power was planning to go through another 10 or 12 women.”
Another clue proved vital. A man living in Ms. Gardner's apartment building recalled seeing in the hallways a prowler he noticed previously at an animal shelter. The detectives obtained employee lists for several animal shelters and came up with a known arsonist who had once poured gasoline into a woman's mail slot and lit it: Ralph Ernest Power.
They showed Ms. Gaudrault a photo lineup that included pictures of Mr. Power. She identified him instantly as her attacker.
In the meantime, media and public reaction had intensified when word leaked out that the prime suspect had been masquerading as a telephone repairman. Speed was of the essence, lest Mr. Power see the circle tightening around him.
On July 8, 1981, the homicide detectives pounced on Mr. Power just as he was attempting to flee his apartment with a few belongings.
To their horror and fascination, the man they had caught turned out to be what Mr. Oldham describes as “an absolutely classic psychopath.” A chronic bedwetter with a history of cruelty to animals, Mr. Power had grown up devoid of remorse or empathy. He gabbed to the officers with uncontained excitement about his sexual fantasies and clever scams.
In a taped confession that has a permanent place in the Toronto police museum, Mr. Power proudly detailed the efforts he had put into his disguises and deception. He admitted to an obsession with women's sexuality.
Mr. Power spoke freely of possessing a cagey criminal side and a less-controlled side that took turns dominating his actions. “I'm looking at 25 [years in prison],” he told police. “It can't be prettied up. Look, I don't mind doing the 25, but I don't want to do it in the pen.”
It was one of the first police confessions ever captured on tape. “There had been so many accusations over the years that people simply don't confess openly unless there is some cop whacking them with a phone book,” Mr. Oldham recalled. “We proved that was all wrong.”
At trial, Mr. Power pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Giggling and gesticulating in the witness box, he uttered a grim prediction that may yet damn his chances of being released on parole next year: “It might take me a month, but with all the pretty girls on the streets . . . it would be just too much to handle.”
The jury didn't buy the insanity defence. On Feb. 6, 1982, it found him guilty of first-degree murder.
No sooner was he in prison than guards caught Mr. Power with a set of official-looking documents he had faked to make it appear that his violent attacks had no sexual component.
Eventually, the Gardner family emerged from an intense period of grief and, by unspoken agreement, rarely discussed either Sheryl's murder or Mr. Power until Carolyn launched her mission last winter.
Joining long-time victim rights advocate Steve Sullivan, Ms. Gardner used her e-marketing skills to help him lobby for the bill forcing convicted killers to give DNA samples by appearing at parliamentary committees, speaking to politicians personally and deluging the government with e-mail.
She is also using the Internet to raise awareness of Mr. Power's case and plans to oppose any parole application he makes.
Ms. Gardner and her parents also recently toured the penitentiary where Mr. Power is incarcerated — Bath Institution — just 30 minutes from where Sheryl is buried.
Ms. Gardner noted that one of the particularly worrisome elements of both Ms. Homolka's and Mr. Power's crimes are that they attacked women chosen at random, using carefully premeditated plans.
“They are both masters of deception,” she said. “Karla played the roles of being the pretty girl next door and eventually the battered housewife — both typically seen as non-threatening. Power played the roles of phone repairman and apartment superintendent — again two roles that are typically non-threatening.
“Plus, both seem to show no remorse for what they did. The bottom line is simple: no one can truly feel safe with people like Power or Homolka living in their community. But it is Power who can remain deceptive, since he doesn't have the notoriety that Homolka does. With his quiet, methodical approach, he is a lurking danger.”
Mr. Power probably summarized the threat he poses best from the witness box at his trial: “We have to protect society from people with problems like I have.”
After his brush with Mr. Power, Mr. Oldham studied psychopathy closely. He said that although Mr. Power will be 53 if he gets parole, it will leave him far short of the burnout stage, where a deviant's sex drive diminishes.
“The scary thing is that people like him are not treatable,” Mr. Oldham added.
Ms. Gardner fears that after being locked up for 25 years, Mr. Power's pent-up compulsions will be uncontrollable. “The thing that upset him most was that his plan was cut short,” she said.
Getting Mr. Power's DNA into the data bank was an enormous step, Ms. Gardner said. “It might even connect him to another unsolved crime. And if he is released, it will deter him from committing another crime. That gives me comfort.
“Even when I was young, I knew I wouldn't be able to sit back and be quiet when he got out. I don't feel hatred for him; it is more a matter of him being incomprehensible. There is a part of me that wants him to know that nothing has been forgiven. It's not forgotten, and he's not forgiven.”
Mr. Oldham said he intends to do what he can to help Ms. Gardner's mission. “She really has a lot of momentum going on this,” he said. “We need to be extremely cautious with Ralph, because he is very intelligent and very much a charmer. He is a very, very scary person.”
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