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They are the mysteries that were never solved. They are families who never got answers.
As part of a recurring series, the Star is profiling unsolved crimes.
Some are relatively fresh and made headlines not so long ago.
Others date back literally centuries, to the days of rum-runners and the roots of organized crime in the GTA.
There are murders with suspects who range from random killers to family members to killers-for-hire, and much more.
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Readers with suggestions — or insights on cold cases — are invited to send them to [email protected]
Daniel Lee Dobson has trouble talking about why his mother isn’t still alive.
“I say she passed away from cancer,” Dobson says.
The truth is his mother, April Dobson, was shot to death on Oct. 14, 2005, as she sat on a porch in Barrie.
It was a single shot from a gun to the back of her head.
She was 40 years old.
Her back was to the street, and she didn’t see the attacker take aim.
It was her first visit to her co-worker’s house on Browning Trail in Barrie’s Letitia Heights neighbourhood, nestled in a string of attached two-storey townhomes.
She was a part-time delivery driver for Swiss Chalet on what was then known as Molson Park Drive near Highway 400, and went to help a co-worker fix her car after work, as it had water on a spark plug.
She worked about a 20-minute drive from the Browning Trail home and arrived around 11 p.m. that night. She had her friend’s car back in running condition by 11:30 p.m.
Then she enjoyed turkey leftovers and wine with her friend on the front porch, on the mild October evening.
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A second friend joined them.
Around midnight, there was a single gunshot.
Police haven’t said how close the gunman was when he fired the weapon. However, there is a high fence on the other side of the street from the townhouse and no nearby highrises, suggesting the killer got up close before pulling the trigger.
As the 20th anniversary of her death arrives, the killing remains unsolved.
Daniel isn’t critical of the police effort. They conducted hundreds of interviews. But he has plenty of theories about who killed his mother.
His mother was kind to a fault. She wasn’t the type to attract bitter enemies, he said.
She hadn’t been on that porch before and had only been there an hour when the gunman arrived. Was she killed to send a message to someone who had run up a drug debt? Could it have been a thrill kill for someone?
Daniel was 21 and living in Brampton when he got the news, around 5 a.m.
“My grandma was frantic,” he recalls.
He said he’s sure his mother died because she was generous and vulnerable.
Daniel has heard plenty of things about that night. None of them gives him any peace.
He sometimes thinks about a comment he heard that day by a fast-food worker who knew his mother.
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“Don’t get yourself killed tonight,” he heard the fast food worker tell her.
Daniel has heard that drugs were being dealt by a few of her co-workers and acquaintances, and that two of them moved out of town shortly after the murder.
“These girls knew something,” he says. “I think they know more than they’re letting on to.”
They also dealt with bikers, he heard.
The former lead detective on the case has retired. Someone who might have provided clues to police died of an overdose a few years ago.
Daniel still has hope that the case will one day be solved. It would help things if the reward for information leading to a conviction offered by the Barrie Police Service was raised to $100,000 from $50,000, he contends.
Barrie police had no comment on raising the reward.
Officers are particularly interested in the identity of the young man seen running away from the area after the murder and getting on a mountain-style bicycle, riding south on the catwalk between Browning Trail and Bronte Crescent.
That person was never identified.
Barrie police still consider the murder is solvable, if the right person talks.
“The Homicide Unit believes that a person or persons are holding back vital information simply out of fear or a misplaced sense of integrity,” Barrie police said in a public statement.
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Daniel can’t get past the thought that his mother died because of her good nature.
“That night she got killed for helping a co-worker at a residence she had never been to before.”
She had badly injured a knee in 1995 and was struggling financially at the time of her murder.
There was precious little forensic evidence or security camera footage.
Police found fragments of the single bullet that killed her. It was more than likely from a small-calibre firearm, like a handgun, rather than a high-powered hunting rifle.
“For a small city that sees one homicide a year at the most, this is our first gun-related homicide in as long as I can remember, our first innocent person shot with a gun,” Sgt. Dave Goodbrand said at the time. “I’ve gone back 10 years and there has not been a homicide in Barrie that’s been related to a firearm.”
Daniel heard that someone bragged about killing his mother, but he’s not sure how much credence to give that.
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He does know that the single, fatal shot shattered his family.
“My grandmother … carried the weight of this nightmare every day,” Daniel says. “She never stopped calling the police, desperate for updates, and always held onto hope that the case would finally be solved. But she never got to see that day.”
On April 1, 2023 — April’s birthday — her mother, Barbara Monaco, suffered a massive heart attack and died four days later.
“She left this world still waiting for the justice she — and our family — deserved,” Daniel says.
He also shares that the death has pushed him to the edge.
“I’m at a breaking point,” he says. “It’s a horrible thing to go through.”
