TRUE CRIME STORIES: The Peter John Peters story
- 6 years ago
The frenzied crime spree by Peter John Peters spread from London to Sarnia to Chatham to St. Catharines to Sault Ste. Marie to Brantford to Toronto in January 1990. The rampage began soon after a romantic relationship with his parole officer soured.
Charlene Brittain, 25, strangled and stabbed to death, her naked body found with a plastic garbage bag over her head, stuffed inside a locked storage room in Peters’ London basement apartment. The computer programmer had met Peters by chance on the train from Sarnia a month earlier. They’d gone out for one dinner date. He was a handsome guy.
Albert Philip, a 63-year-old janitor — he and Peters were strangers to each other — bludgeoned with a metal pipe in the underground parking lot of a downtown Toronto apartment building, struck so hard his skull fractured. The married father, just a year short of retirement, died in hospital.
Sandie Bellows, a 28-year-old telephone company employee, was abducted outside a credit union in St. Catharines. She was forced to drive Peters — in the station wagon he’d stolen from Philip — 100 kilometres, ordered to stop near a woodlot. Bellows was raped, kicked in the face, stabbed in the back, shoulder and chest with a screwdriver. The assault, which likely would have resulted in murder, was interrupted by a retired OPP officer who happened on the scene while hauling logs. “He stabbed her four times right in front of me,” Al Pike said afterward. “It looked like he was enjoying himself.”
Pike managed to smash the station wagon’s rear window as Peters drove away, then put Bellows on his tractor and brought her to his son’s home to call police.
Peters ditched the vehicle soon afterward, went to a farmhouse and stole another car under threat of a butcher’s knife held to the female occupant’s throat.
In Paris, Ont., he robbed a bank.
In Chatham, he tried repeatedly to coax a 15-year-old girl into the car until she fled screaming up the driveway of a nearby house.
Charlene Brittain, 25, strangled and stabbed to death, her naked body found with a plastic garbage bag over her head, stuffed inside a locked storage room in Peters’ London basement apartment. The computer programmer had met Peters by chance on the train from Sarnia a month earlier. They’d gone out for one dinner date. He was a handsome guy.
Albert Philip, a 63-year-old janitor — he and Peters were strangers to each other — bludgeoned with a metal pipe in the underground parking lot of a downtown Toronto apartment building, struck so hard his skull fractured. The married father, just a year short of retirement, died in hospital.
Sandie Bellows, a 28-year-old telephone company employee, was abducted outside a credit union in St. Catharines. She was forced to drive Peters — in the station wagon he’d stolen from Philip — 100 kilometres, ordered to stop near a woodlot. Bellows was raped, kicked in the face, stabbed in the back, shoulder and chest with a screwdriver. The assault, which likely would have resulted in murder, was interrupted by a retired OPP officer who happened on the scene while hauling logs. “He stabbed her four times right in front of me,” Al Pike said afterward. “It looked like he was enjoying himself.”
Pike managed to smash the station wagon’s rear window as Peters drove away, then put Bellows on his tractor and brought her to his son’s home to call police.
Peters ditched the vehicle soon afterward, went to a farmhouse and stole another car under threat of a butcher’s knife held to the female occupant’s throat.
In Paris, Ont., he robbed a bank.
In Chatham, he tried repeatedly to coax a 15-year-old girl into the car until she fled screaming up the driveway of a nearby house.