Then he bolted for the back door. Kevin grabbed him from behind and wrestled him to the floor. Convinced his chest had been opened up, Ralston thought he’d be no match for Kevin, who was enraged and beating him up while still struggling to get closer to the knife. Confused, Ralston looked up at Kevin.
“You’re trying to kill me?” he asked.
Kevin, his face red from the struggle, looked him in the eye. “Yes,” he said, “ . . . yes, that’s what I want to do.”
At that point, Ralston realized he’d die if he didn’t get away. He summoned all of his strength and managed to wrestle Kevin off him and down to the floor. He got up and ran. Kevin tackled him, brought him down, but failed to immobilize him. He grabbed his stepdad by the calves, shouting: “You’re not going out there; you’re going to die right here.” In the struggle, the button on Ralston’s pants popped open. As he was wriggling out of them, and Kevin’s grasp, he struggled towards the front door. Kevin, sensing he was losing his grip, shouted to Pierre: “Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!”
Up until this point, Pierre had been watching, stunned, as Kevin attacked Ralston, just as Tim had when Kevin hacked away at Johnathon. He stood, open-mouthed with the wooden baseball bat in his hands, shocked at what he’d seen, both here and in the basement. But something in the urgency of Kevin’s demand woke him out of his trance.
He pulled the bat behind his head and swung it at the prone man’s head as hard as he could. He did it again and again. Ralston held his hand up in the air, trying to protect his bruised, bleeding head. He looked Pierre in the eye and said: “Why are you doing this to me? I’ve never done anything to you.” The only answer Pierre could provide was a tearful “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and took a few more whacks at him.
Desperate, Ralston kept struggling. He wriggled out of his pants and crawled to the front door. Behind him, he heard Kevin yell: “Jesus Christ! He’s getting away!” Ralston managed to open the door and screamed for help. He noticed Pierre position himself on the stairway so he could hit him with the bat again. Kevin shut the front door, but Ralston kept screaming. With one more push, Ralston managed to open the door just enough for him to squeeze through. He lost his pants and jacket in the process.
Clad in just boxer shorts and a T-shirt despite the snow, and with blood dripping from his head, Ralston kept screaming. Unaware if anyone could hear him, he yelled: “Please help, They’re trying to kill me!” Luckily, a woman happened to be riding by the house on her bicycle exactly as he escaped. He stopped her and shouted, “Please help me! They’re trying to kill me!” She rode to a payphone and called 911.
Ralston ran to a nearby house, where he knew the residents. He recounted the story and the neighbors called 911 again. The calls were logged in at 5:39 and 5:42 p.m.
As soon as Pierre and Kevin saw Ralston and the bicyclist leave, they fled the house. Taking nothing—not even their weapons—with them, and with no more complicated plan than simply running away, they sprinted as fast and as far as their legs and lungs would allow.
Detective Glenn Gray began to listen to the tape Ashley and her friends had made. He had heard hundreds of death threats before, but was particularly unnerved and even a little sickened by this one. He later told me he “had never heard a tape so cold and calculated.” These kids were talking about murder as casually as someone else might talk about their day at the office.
He was about halfway through it when another cop asked him if he’d just sent some officers to an address on Dawes. He said that he had and the other officer told him about the two calls for an attempted murder at No. 90.
Within seconds, Gray ordered an emergency task force (ETF) to 90 Dawes. They were heavily armed and specially trained in assault and negotiation techniques, but they didn’t know who was inside the house, what they were armed with, and if they had any hostages or not. Gray also ordered more discreet teams to the addresses he had been given for Tim, Pierre and Ashley.
He then called Ashley’s house. He told her parents that the two big guys in the car parked in front of her house were his men and that they were there for their protection. If the phone should ring, he told them, pick it up, but don’t let any of the boys speak with Ashley under any circumstances. If Tim or any of the boys should come banging on the door, Gray told them to call him and he’d have his men in the car arrest him.
The ETF arrived at 90 Dawes at 6:30. They stationed a team out front, but the bulk of the men entered through the smaller, weaker back door. Once they determined that the house was secure, they searched the place. It didn’t take long to find Johnathon. The ETF team followed the sloppy trail of blood smeared on the floor and walls that started at the pool at the bottom of the stairs, went through the broken glass the boys had dragged him over and up to the tiny crawlspace they’d jammed him into, intending it to be his final resting place. The team saw his feet, with socks but no shoes, sticking out. They called to him. He didn’t answer. An officer opened the blood-smeared door and found Johnathon inside, his body in a fetal position and covered in blood.
Despite their training and experience with grisly matters, the officers who found Johnathon were shocked and sickened at their discovery. Crimes against children do tend to have more profound effects on police officers and the sight of Johnathon’s body, twisted and mashed to fit in the miserable little hole he was stuffed into, his face and throat covered in blood, horrified the officers present. At first, they hoped he was still alive.
The officers immediately called for paramedics.
Meanwhile, Tim had fled for home by bus. Seeing Ralston arrive had really spooked him. He vainly hoped that nobody would ever find Johnathon, who he and Kevin had shoved—still weakly fighting for breath—into the tiny crawlspace. He hoped that it would all just go away. He didn’t think about the ridiculous amount of forensic evidence they’d left behind. He didn’t think about whether Johnathon would live or die.
He’d been on the bus for one stop when it opened its doors again to take on two bloodstained youths. The other passengers on the bus did their best to ignore Kevin and Pierre as they shambled toward the back of the bus out of habit. They sat near, but not with, Tim. He looked at Kevin. The big boy nodded, but did not speak. Kevin and Pierre got off after two stops and walked into the woods of Taylor Creek Ravine.
But Tim didn’t think that much of it at the time. All he could think about was Ashley. He thought about how beautiful she was, how much he loved her, and how he hoped that she would provide him with the comfort he was sure he couldn’t get anywhere else.
When the bus finally stopped at the corner nearest his apartment, Tim ran home and straight up to his room. At 5:55, he called Ashley and got her father. Keeping in mind what Gray had told him, her father told Tim that Ashley wasn’t home, but perhaps he should try again a little later. Ashley’s dad later described the boy’s demeanor as nervous, but unfailingly polite.
For almost an hour, Tim did nothing more than pace around the Ferrimans’ small apartment and worry. He called Ashley again at 6:41. Her dad answered again. He lied again, telling Tim that Ashley was still out with her friends, but that he expected her home at any minute.
At 6:55, the paramedics arrived at 90 Dawes and raced down to the basement. They replaced the cops in the tiny crawlspace. As soon as they got there, they could see Johnathon was, as paramedics say, VSA (vital signs absent). They wrapped Johnathon’s body in a specially designed blanket and rushed him outside. Once he was inside the ambulance, the paramedics rapidly tried to clamp off all his leaking blood vessels and massage his heart. One of the paramedics, attempting to intubate him, shone a light down his mouth to guide the tube. He was shocked to see the light reflected on the opposite wall—it was coming out of the holes in Johnathon’s throat.
At 7:07, on the sidewalk just in front of 90 Dawes, inside the ambulance—after all life-saving avenues were exhausted—Johnathon was declared dead.
Gray, informed that none of the suspects were still
inside the house, sent a part of the ETF to Tim’s address. Armed with shotguns, they surrounded both entrances to the second-floor apartment and called inside. There was no answer. Tim had the phone in his hand when it rang, and he hoped it would be Ashley. But he let it ring, just in case it wasn’t.
He knew that if he got in touch with her, there were things he wanted to say to her that he didn’t want his father to hear. So at 7:35, Tim walked to the apartment’s back door and hesitated at the top of the steps into the back yard with the portable phone in his hand. Although Tim hadn’t yet taken a step outside, the members of the ETF could clearly see him through the open door. He didn’t realize it at first, but he had more than a dozen guns aimed at his head.
The cops yelled at him, told him to stop moving, to put the phone down. He didn’t. They shouted the order at him again and again. Still he refused. He later claimed he couldn’t hear them. After waiting for a response from Tim, one cop ran up to him and kicked him in the chest. Tim crumpled and the cops cuffed him and placed him under arrest.
The commotion drew the attention of Tim’s ailing father—also named Tim Ferriman—who came outside to see what was the matter. When Tim saw him, he told him: “Dad, I witnessed a murder.” Enraged at seeing his son roughly handled and on the ground, the older Ferriman began to argue with and threaten several police officers. He was quickly placed under arrest.
As police led young Tim Ferriman down the stairs, he passed by ETF leader James Hung, recognized that he was in charge, and told him: “I know why you guys are here; I know what this is all about.” He started talking as soon as the arresting officer read him his right to counsel. On the drive to the police station, the officers questioned him about the whereabouts of Kevin and Pierre. He provided police with detailed descriptions of the two boys, including where they were and what they were wearing when he last saw them.
When he was brought to 54 Division, Tim was allowed to explain to his father what had happened in private. His father was then released without being charged.
The officers there took Tim at his word and were treating him like a witness to an attempted murder. That changed when Gray arrived. When he saw Tim waiting around the station, barely supervised, he told the officers there that he wasn’t a witness, but a suspect. “He’s in this,” he told them. Tim was quickly taken into more secure custody.
Despite appearing willing to talk in the car, Tim changed his mind at the police station and decided to wait for a lawyer. Aware that they would get no more information from him that night, the police offered him the chance to make a phone call. Unlike in the United States, a prisoner’s one phone call is not a guaranteed right in Canada, but it has become customary over the years. Excited, Tim told them he wanted to call Ashley. They refused.
At 8:00 p.m., Joanne—unaware that her son was dead—finished up her shift at a popular chain restaurant and headed for home. She got off the subway at the Main Street stop, as she had thousands of times before, and walked the two blocks east to Dawes. She could see flashing lights in the dark sky, but didn’t think much about it. It wasn’t exactly a high-crime area, but things happened there from time to time and a few flashing lights in the neighborhood didn’t overly concern her. As soon as Joanne turned the corner, though, she saw just how many police cars there were and how big the crowds were. As she got closer, she could tell they were in front of her house. She broke into a run. By the time she got to the police line, she was frantic and screaming. Once the police and other emergency personnel identified her as Johnathon’s mother, they surrounded her, separated her from the curious onlookers, packed her in the back seat of a car and took her away for debriefing and grief counseling.
Another family member, who can’t be identified, returning home from a friend’s house shortly after Joanne arrived, ignored the police and emergency staff, lifted up the yellow police tape and walked up to the front door. When stopped by a police officer, the person in question calmly said, “Oh, it’s okay; I live here.”
At about the same time that Joanne found out that her son was dead—and that it was probably her other son who had murdered him—the forensic examiner finished the preliminary report on Johnathon’s battered body. After all the blood and other tissue were cleaned off, the doctor counted no fewer than 71 entry wounds from a large, bladed weapon. Almost all of them were around the face or throat. One thrust—the one that probably killed him—cut so deep that it took a small chunk out of Johnathon’s backbone.
After Tim gave his initial statements and told him he wouldn’t speak further without a lawyer present, Gray decided they needed to hear more from Ashley and her friends that night. He had his staff bring them all in. It was about 10:00 p.m. when they were finally all assembled. He sat them all in a conference room. Each girl had one or both of her parents with her. They all struck him as nice, polite, even upstanding young women. He was saddened that he had to break the news to them.
“Some of what you heard on the tape today came true,” he told them. They all screamed and cried, some even fell to the floor. It was only then that Ashley learned Kevin’s little brother’s name was Johnathon and that he was 12, not five as she’d imagined, and that he was dead.
Kevin and Pierre didn’t get very far that night. While the police searched the area, the boys hid in Taylor Creek Park, which starts just a few blocks north of 90 Dawes.
Although it’s big, there’s not much to the park: just a creek, some marshes and a few trails cut into the lightly wooded ravine. Torontonians appreciate the city’s many wooded valleys for a chance to get closer to nature and away from the city’s hustle and bustle. But Taylor Creek isn’t one of Toronto’s more popular ravines; not many people go there and almost none ever show up at night. When there’s even a light dusting of snow on the ground—as there was November 25, 2003—it can be an eerily quiet place.
Kevin and Pierre, familiar with the park from many smoking and drinking sessions, had no problem staying hidden from the few flashlight beams that penetrated the trees in search of them. They stayed the night there without incident.
The following day, police officers were combing the neighborhood looking for the boys. A call came in from a person who recognized Kevin and Tim from images shown on TV that morning. Because both suspects were under 18, the police needed to get a judge’s permission to release their photos to the media. The witness had seen not only the boys, but also the blood on their clothes.
Detective Constables Chris Sherk and Erin Bradshaw spotted Pierre at the corner of Coxwell Ave. and O’Connor Drive—a busy intersection about two-and-a-half miles away from 90 Dawes. Sherk later said he was surprised to see the most-wanted fugitives in the country “just strolling around” out in the open. Sherk stopped his car and apprehended Pierre. As he “took physical control” of the skinny 6-foot, maybe 140-pound boy, Sherk told him he was under arrest for murder. Pierre shrugged and indicated that he understood. Sherk was perplexed by the lack of concern the boy showed.
As Sherk was taking Pierre down, Detective Sergeants John Rossano and Chris Haynes arrived from another direction after recognizing Kevin, who was on a different side of the same corner as Pierre. Rossano leapt from his car to arrest the big boy. And he too was surprised at how calm the murder suspect was. Kevin was not only giving no resistance, but he was showing no emotion. Rossano asked him: “Do you understand what this is about?” Kevin nodded and replied: “Yeah, the death of my brother.” Both arrests were recorded at 2:35 p.m., November 26.
Despite—or maybe because of—the seriousness of the situation, the cops at intake couldn’t help but feel a mordant amusement when they saw what the boys were wearing. Kevin had on a bright red T-shirt with the Nike slogan “Just Do It,” and Pierre was wearing a white T-shirt with a picture of a man up to his neck in the Nile River just in front of the pyramids, with the words “Deep In Denial” printed beneath him.
Later that day, homicide Detective Sergeant Terry Wark and his partner Jerry Ball were brough
t in to interrogate Kevin. Before he turned the tape recorder on, Wark told Kevin that he and Ball were both fathers and that they were trying very hard to understand why he’d done what he had. Kevin offered no response. Wark informed him that he could talk to a lawyer before he answered any questions. He also repeated the charges against him. Kevin said he understood. They began the interview when Wark turned on the tape.
Wark: Do you wish to say anything in answer to the charges against you?
Kevin: I want to say it was not first degree; I didn’t plan it.
That response surprised Wark, but he surmised that Kevin was trying to play Canada’s Youth Criminal Justice Act (formerly named, and still better known as, the Young Offenders Act) to his advantage. Under the controversial and much-criticized legislation, Wark anticipated that Kevin was aware that he would face a much lighter sentence if tried as a youth than he would as an adult and that he would probably not be tried as an adult unless the charge was first-degree murder.
At that point, Kevin asked if could call a lawyer. Wark agreed and turned off the tape. Then Kevin returned to the interrogation room and Wark turned the tape back on.
Wark: Do you realize what you’ve done?
Kevin: Yes I do.
Wark: How do you feel?
Kevin: Not so good.
Wark: What did your brother do to deserve to die?
At this point, Kevin began to cry.
Kevin: I just get depressed . . . and things happen . . . and I snap . . .
Wark: Why your little brother?
Kevin: I don’t want to talk about it.
Kevin regained his composure.
Wark: Anything else to say?
Kevin: No.
Wark: Any further questions?
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