[ad_1]
Still horrified by shoeshine boys brutal murder 44 years later
Article content
The horrific sex slaying of a 12-year-old boy sent tremors reverberating throughout the city nearly 44 years ago.
Emanuel Jaques was a shoeshine boy, a child of the city, who recently arrived from Portugal with his impoverished immigrant parents.
On July 28, 1977, he was lured by three men to a seedy apartment above a Yonge St. massage parlour called Charlie’s Angels, where he was raped and then murdered.
Toronto has never been the same.
Now, a former roommate of the primary killer, Saul Betesh, shares his story with The Toronto Sun for the first time in more than four decades. And time has not whittled away this story’s horror.
***
Before Betesh, Werner “Stretcher” Kribbs and Joseph Woods were the most wanted men in the country, Ron van der Meer knew Betesh from the clandestine gay scene downtown.
“I knew him from before, having lived in the same roominghouse for a time at 8 Irwin Ave., a few doors west of Yonge St.,” van der Meer told The Sun, adding he had also met Kribbs.
Advertisement
This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.
Article content
“Saul had a thin pretense of personal hygiene; they were, all of them, equally unkempt and strongly off-putting. They all felt wrong, somehow. Creepy doesn’t quite capture it; something more jagged.”
It was 1975 and van der Meer was young and new to the scene. Before living in the same Victorian roominghouse run by a former hooker with Betesh, he had hooked up with him at a bath house.
“It was the 1970s — sex, drugs, rock and roll and all that,” he recalls. “I guess I managed to conceal my distaste. He was a one-trick pony and some movies don’t meet your expectations.”
Even before the horrific murder, Betesh was obsessed with sex. He would sit for hours with the landlady — a former prostitute — and her son discussing sex.
***
Then came that unforgettable, scorching July day. Van der Meer had moved on by that time.
But what he heard on the radio and read in the newspapers was utterly horrifying.
“Whatever I might have imagined, I could never have conjured this,” van der Meer said. “Who could?”
Cops were hunting Betesh, Kribbs and Woods. Kribbs, Woods and a third man (later acquitted) had hopped a passenger train heading to Vancouver and were hauled off in shackles in a burg called Sioux Lookout.
Betesh turned himself in to Toronto cops.
The public? They wanted them swinging from the end of a rope.
And an equally appalled gay community found themselves facing an unwelcome spotlight.
Mortified as he was, van der Meer was stunned months later when he was subpoenaed to testify — on behalf of Betesh.
Advertisement
This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.
Article content
“I can only assume that he cited me as a ‘friend,’ in the belief that because, we had once hooked up, I would bolster his character from the stand,” van der Meer said, adding that living in the same house pulled back the curtain on Betesh’s monstrous nature.
“Soft spoken, yes, but a little too ingratiating. He had that transparent, shallow sort of charm, best described as slimy, beneath which something twisted and feral lurked. It’s not out in front or obvious, but not well hidden if you’ve seen it before.”
Van der Meer wanted to tell the truth, but he also wanted to make it clear he was no pal of the twisted pedophile. After all, he was under oath.
Making his testimony even more agonizing, he had spent the previous hour with Emanuel’s shattered parents in the witness room.
***
When he finally took the stand in the packed courtroom, the hatred was “palpable.”
Rather than give Betesh the Good Housekeeping seal of approval, he told the truth.
“I attested that I honestly had no personal quarrel with the accused,” van der Meer said. “In order to appear agreeable to the defence, I did not stress the word ‘personal.’”
“How to transmit disgust without displaying it outwardly … no one wants to be associated with such heinous crimes, much less to be deemed complicit in the defense of the indefensible.”
Betesh’s legal team wasn’t pleased with their character witness.
The Crown sensed van der Meer’s reluctance and asked his general impressions.
Advertisement
This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.
Article content
“The best I could summon was that Saul was somehow wired differently than other people I’d known,” van der Meer remembers. “I believe I described it as ‘Faulty wiring. A bad transistor, or something.’ I had a moral obligation at cross purposes with the legal one.”
Betesh exploded in a rage and tried to attack the witness, vowing to hunt him down and kill him.
“Everyone in the room heard me shouting, ‘sicko, bat-shit crazy and playing off a short deck’ at the top of my lungs.”
Van der Meer was just 18 at the time and knew the murder of little Emanuel was the “final flourish” of Betesh and company’s horrific actions.
In court documents, van der Meer was only named as a “young man of his acquaintance.”
“Saul Betesh was a psychopathic pedophile and should never be released … his crimes were beyond the pale. He is where he belongs,” van der Meer reflected.
POSTSCRIPT
Van der Meer now lives elsewhere and has been HIV for 30 years.
Woods died in prison in 2003.
Betesh and Kribbs remain jailed where they will likely die.
bhunter@postmedia.com
[ad_2]
Source link
