Jennifer approaches the cliff three hours and fourteen minutes into the interrogation, telling Goetz again, “If I could have stopped it, I would have stopped it.” Moments later she takes the plunge, her face in her hands.
Although Jennifer’s next words are inaudible on the tape, it is clear she has thrown Goetz a curveball. He repeats what she appears to have whispered to him. “They were supposed to take you…? Why? They were supposed to take the whole family out?”
“No, just me, because I didn’t want to be here anymore. I’m such a disappointment,” she says petulantly.
“It wasn’t supposed to be Mom, is that what you’re telling me? What about your dad?”
“It was supposed to be me, so they could be free from me,” she insists. “I was a disappointment in everything. [Even] when I tried suicide I failed.”
“Who did you get to do this, then?” an audibly exasperated Goetz asks.
“I don’t know who he is. I just got his number,” Jennifer says, advising him she’s doubtful police will find her cellphone to corroborate her statement and that she doesn’t know where its SIM card is, anyway. “[The order was] ‘come in and take me out.’ [They’d know it was me because] I was the only girl in the house.” Jennifer goes on to explain that she set the plot up with a man named Homeboy after Ric gave her his number (notably leaving Daniel out of the equation). According to her, the job was to cost $2,000, a price she and Homeboy agreed on about two months before the shooting. If she wanted to be killed, Homeboy said she was to have the money ready for the men when they arrived. A frustrated Goetz, who thought he was getting to the meat and potatoes, continues to question why Jennifer would ever engage in such a “crazy” scheme. Jennifer forges on, explaining how she made the decision after her father accused her of seeing Daniel when she hadn’t. She says, prior to entry on the night of November 8, the men texted her the message “Game on.”
“What you’ve just told me is half the truth,” Goetz tells Jennifer, asking her to sit up and look him in the eyes. “What I do believe is that you went to somebody, and I do believe that night you paid them the $2,000. That’s the true part. But what’s not true is that it was never for you. The job was for your parents.”
Jennifer strengthens her story, insisting that she was using two phones that night, her Rogers Samsung phone to call her friends, and her Bell iPhone to speak to the murderers. After receiving the request for “VIP access” via text from Homeboy — texts she deleted afterward — she then says she made sure the door was unlocked.
Goetz is growing annoyed now. “Your dad wasn’t supposed to live, but when he did live he was able to tell us what happened that night, which was in conflict with what you told us,” he says. “This is how you deal with stress. You give half and you keep half. That’s your stress mechanism. That’s what you’ve been trained to do. No one thinks bad of you here … everybody in this police department feels sorry for you… basically it’s like a volcano and at one point it was just too much and you erupted.”
“Is that what you want me to say?” Jennifer asks. “But that’s not what happened.”
Goetz continues to push for the next forty-five minutes. And Jennifer continues to refute. “This is not going to go anywhere, because I wanted them to kill me,” she insists testily.
After leaving the room to seek advice from his colleagues, Goetz returns before calmly stating, “I need you to listen close, okay, Jen? At this point of the investigation I will be arresting you for murder, also attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Do you understand?”
Jennifer bows her head once more and begins to cry, covering her ears.
“You have to listen, so can you take your hands off your ears?”
Four hours and twenty-five minutes into the interview, Jennifer makes her last pitch for freedom. When asked if she wishes to say anything in response to the charges, she displays her sense of betrayal. “I thought you were on my side,” she says.
This moment signals the end of Jennifer’s freedom, the end of the road after more than a decade worth of lies and deceit perpetrated against every single person in her life. Those lies will result in plenty of fights, ultimatums, emotional heartache, and family dysfunction. But none of that will compare to her new reality — when her mountain of duplicity finally comes crashing down. Hunched over her knee on the faux leather police chair, she sobs as her leg shakes.
As Goetz enters and exits the room, trying to get her paperwork in order, Jennifer once again asks for his company. “Do you have to leave?”
Goetz responds, “We have to take care of the lawyers. That’s the priority right now.”
9
Panic Sets In
A mere nineteen miles away from Helen Avenue’s tree-lined, middle-class streets live three of four men whose identities will soon become of great interest to the police. Despite their relative proximity, though, their lives greatly contrast with Jennifer’s. Whereas she has lived in a plush Markham home, complete with two high-end vehicles, each with their own garage space, with two income-earning parents, both of whom spent much of her life focused on ensuring her success, countless children in Toronto’s forgotten enclave of Rexdale are lucky to get even a semblance of this sort of upbringing. Of course, parents do their best all over the city, but if we are truly products of our environments, then it’s easy to see why there are still so many social problems plaguing this area northwest of the Toronto core.
Granted, Jennifer and Daniel both spent their childhoods living in a similarly rough neighbourhood in Scarborough in Toronto’s east end; however, they both benefited from secure, closely knit families, with a wealth of resources at their disposal.
While countless success stories have blossomed from the concrete used to pave over farmland in Rexdale in the 1950s, there remain to this day significant social issues in the area. Inside the residences in this part of the city, about a quarter of households are led by a single parent. Outside on the streets, the negative influences are plentiful. Respected Toronto urban landscape journalist Christopher Hume describes the intense feeling of isolation one might sense growing up among Rexdale’s “patchwork of precincts” connected by expressways.
“There are many Rexdales,” writes the Toronto Star’s Hume. “They can be found across North America, clustered on the fringes of the cities that spawned them.… [Rexdale] has become shorthand for suburban blight, social breakdown and gang violence … a grey landscape of highways and highrises, shopping malls and churches. And for the kids that live there — the subject of much concern and study — the common complaint is that there’s nothing to do. Wandering around the anonymous streets of this place, that’s not hard to believe.” He argues that Rexdale was built for people with vehicles, yet when industry dwindled and workers moved on, residents who were left were forced to survive without. Without subways, many have to travel by foot or take buses to their destinations.
One campaigner, Reverend Walter McIntyre, outreach pastor at the Kipling Avenue Baptist Church, says that, without the appropriate community hubs, it’s a struggle to keep kids away from drugs and gangs. While there is an issue regarding financial resources and public projects reaching Rexdale — which has a community makeup of 30 percent South Asian households, 26 percent Caucasian, and 20 percent black, according to 2011 statistics — there have been plenty of police resources spent trying to clean up the mess left behind, often with a firm hand rather than a helping one. Outrage was sparked throughout the community and the city in mid-2016 after pregnant mother Candice Rochelle Bobb was killed, her car sprayed with bullets on Jamestown Crescent. Her baby boy, who had spent five months in the womb, survived for three weeks after doctors performed an emergency C-section. Tragically, the child later died in hospital.
During much of the 2000s, there were running battles between two gang-infused parts of the area, on streets like Jamestown Crescent and Mount Olive Drive. In 20
13 Rexdale hit the headlines and was subsequently caught up in the raging news story of now-deceased former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford. After Ford — adored by many in the community — was photographed outside a neighbourhood crack house, a man tried to sell the video of him allegedly smoking the drug to the media. One of the men pictured with Ford was later shot and killed outside a Toronto nightclub. Following this, police executed raids in Rexdale, arresting forty-three people during an investigation related to murder, guns, and drug trafficking (of drugs that included heroin, cocaine, and marijuana). The investigation focused on the Dixon City Bloods, a.k.a. the Dixon Goonies, and $3 million worth of drugs, $500,000 in cash, and forty guns were seized. Among the men arrested were Mohamed Siad, a.k.a.“Soya,” who tried to sell the Ford video, and Liban Siyad, a.k.a. “Gully,” who was allegedly later extorted for the tape’s return by a Ford associate.
This street term gully will turn up in the Pan investigation.
Eric Carty spent much of his youth in Rexdale at apartment buildings along Kipling Avenue — a road sometimes called “Cripling” in reference to local gang, the Crips (who are not affiliated with the notorious Los Angeles gang). Always a little shorter than his classmates, Eric was the eldest of a family of six children. Growing up, he was a good student until about grade ten. He was described by his track coach as a “quiet and reserved” young man who was pleasant to be around. Although, like Jennifer, he suffered from asthma that would affect his health, especially later in life, he was also plenty quick and athletic as a youth. “He was a quiet, quiet little guy. He just blended in with the rest,” says Earl Letford, founder of the area’s Flying Angels Track and Field Club, which has seen many of its members head to the United States on scholarships. “Some of the kids take it serious and go deep into it. But they usually have plenty of family backing and support. I get them when they’re young and get them on a good path.”
Although Letford has no idea what happened to cause Eric to stop coming out for practice, he was shocked to hear that Eric resorted to a life of crime. However, Letford adds that his limited knowledge of Eric’s life appears to have been consistent with the young man’s loss of a male role model, a trend he’s well acquainted with. “He was a very well-mannered kid and very nice,” he insists, noting that he remembers Eric as a “follower” in his youth. Although he’s seen more of his fair share of “tough guys” in his time, he says Eric wasn’t like that.
Eric’s demeanour soon changed, and by the time he was in his thirties he was being described as the exact opposite of a follower. One man who knew him characterized him as the epitome of a leader, in charge in almost every relationship he was involved in. But others, often the ladies in his life, revealed his softer side, noting that he not only had big dreams, but that he was also very loving and supportive of his children. He was the kind of person who was not only very personable but also dependable, often sharing advice and going out of his way to help those closest to him. And when it came time to unwind? Well, Eric was the life of the party.
But episodes in his life show that, starting in his mid to late teenage years, he displayed a keen sense of revenge. It was likely the ability to put getting even with his enemies above his freedom that won him the respect and fear of his associates. At the tender age of fifteen Eric lost his hero, his dad, in a tragic car crash. This event would alter his life forever. Soon after this tragedy, Eric fell into a criminal lifestyle, and just a year after his father’s death, when Eric was only sixteen, he had his first significant run-in with the police. Two years later, in 1998, he was charged with uttering threats.
In 1999, he made his first lengthy visit to the penitentiary, convicted of carrying a prohibited weapon and discharging a firearm to endanger life. The charges stemmed from an incident on July 12, 1998, a hot summer’s day, when Eric and his friends went to Brampton’s Wild Water Kingdom. In-between the waterslides and bathing-suit-clad children dashing about getting soaked, Eric and his friends got embroiled in a fight with two other teens. After being escorted from the park by employees, Eric hopped in a friend’s car and confronted the two teens who were driving another vehicle. As the car he was riding in slowly pulled up beside the other car, Eric pulled out a .22 calibre sawed-off shotgun. From about six feet away, hanging out of the window, eighteen-year-old Eric took a shot, piercing the window’s moulding and striking the passenger in the vehicle in the left eye. Luckily for both men, the bullet didn’t penetrate the victim’s skull, but the man was badly injured.
Three days later Eric was arrested. He was held in jail for six months until he finally relented and pleaded guilty to the charges. As he had committed the crime one month after his eighteenth birthday — making him an adult in the eyes of the law — he was sentenced to five years in prison.
The incident at Wild Water Kingdom went down in infamy among Eric’s friends and earned him the nickname “Snypa,” which he later tattooed on his leg beside an image of an AK-47. On his neck he has a tattoo that reads GOD BLESS and on his right forearm the term SOULJA. His other nicknames include his middle name, Shawn, and “S.”
When Eric was eventually freed, his behaviour didn’t improve; instead, it escalated until it became a lifestyle. Rarely, if ever, did Eric hold down a job, and his source of income was often from the proceeds of crime, the government, or one of the many women in his life. After his release, he racked up charges for everything from cocaine trafficking to marijuana possession and assaulting a witness in a robbery investigation. But he was astute and managed to evade conviction in all those cases.
Although Eric Carty has been linked to gang violence — including allegedly being stopped by police while in a car seated beside a supposed member of the Hells Angels — those who know him reject the idea that he was involved in any serious gang-related activity. One man, speaking on condition of anonymity, describes Eric as a “lone wolf,” a “middle-level drug-dealer” — a lifestyle that inevitably comes with a certain level of violence. Despite Eric’s reputation, the man characterizes him as “very jovial” and extremely loyal and dedicated to his friends — of whom there were plenty. However, he also says that a friendship with Eric came at a cost, considering how dangerous it was to be around him at certain times. He was sometimes wanted by the police and often relied on those closest to him to help him out when trying to avoid police capture, something that could bring the heat down on those housing him. “He’s very smart and a leader, no doubt,” the anonymous associate says. “Everyone is a brother or a cousin to him. He’s bubbly, but very demanding. A very good friend to friends, but that probably comes at a high cost. Just being around him comes at a high cost.”
Much of Eric’s free time was spent pursuing two of his favourite things, according to another friend — ladies and partying. He was known to be dating and staying with at least five women at the same time (police said the number could have been closer to ten), including more than one of his children’s mothers. One good friend says he was a magnet for women: “Listen, ladies love this guy. Every time I see this guy he has a new girl.” There was one woman, though, Leesha Pompei, the mother of two of his children, who more than the rest, remained a constant in Eric’s life.
By the time he was an adult, fully immersed in a criminal lifestyle, Eric got the body art to prove it. On one arm he has the word OUTLAW emblazoned. On the underside of his left forearm is written RIDE WITH US OR COLLIDE WITH US. Eric rarely went by his “government name,” preferring to call himself “S” or “Snypa.”
Using nicknames, of course, can be a good-natured way to interact, but for many can also be used to keep one’s identity secret to avoid the police.
One of Eric’s good friends who was a business associate of his in the marijuana trade, was Lenford Crawford. Eric and Lenford hung out and smoked weed, drank, partied, and flirted with girls. But Lenford didn’t grow up in Rexdale; in fact, he didn’t even grow up in Canada.
Lenford was born in Kingston
, Jamaica, on June 2, 1982, to Megreta and Lenford Crawford, Sr. He had one sister. Soon after Lenford was born, his father was sponsored to come to Canada, and he jumped at the opportunity, leaving a young family behind. Lenford’s father later married his sponsor and had children with her, settling in Vancouver, British Columbia. With his father gone and the family suffering from a severely reduced income, Lenford, his mother, and his sister soon moved out of expensive Kingston and back to the countryside to Megreta’s home parish of Clarendon. It was there, among the peaceful and agrarian Jamaican plains dotted with fields of tobacco, cotton farms, and banana, coffee, and cocoa crops, that Lenford spent his youth.
The quiet boy was always willing to lend a hand to his mother, doing the dishes and never shirking his chores, and he performed well at school. For his mother, one thing that struck her was his dependability. He was always a very calm and relaxed child, something that would stay with him into adulthood. “He would always come with me and help me sell things at the market,” she told me. “He was a kind sort of boy. You could depend on him. He would do the shopping for me. He was the kind of guy who you could call when you needed help, and he’d always be there for you. If he had a dollar in his pocket and you needed it, he’d give it over without even thinking about it. He was not lazy; he was not idle.”
Megreta soon met another man, Albert Anderson, whose surname she now shares. It was in 1994 that Megreta decided to send Lenford to Canada to live with his father to ensure her boy a better education. “That was my mistake,” she says, describing Lenford at that point as easy to influence, or as she puts it, “humble and willing.” She says that, in the town where he grew up, there were few negative influences for a young boy. He was introduced to the street life much later in his existence when he moved to urban Vancouver. Although she has no idea what occurred when he arrived as a teenager, she remembers distinctly getting a call from a tenant living below the home where Lenford was residing. “He said to me: ‘Please, this is a good kid. I don’t want to see him getting mashed up. Keep him away from these influences,’” she says, explaining that the man had no relation to her or her family, but said he called out of the goodness of his heart after noticing the types of people Lenford was befriending.
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