The 1990 disappearance of Pickering, Ontario teen Julie Ann Stanton changed the face the Canadian policing. Detective Herb Curwain knew what he had to do in order to solve the case. Part one can be found here.
Detective Curwain believed that Peter Stark was not only responsible for Julie’s disappearance, but also for the murder of Leslie Mahaffy. When evidence came back proving that Stark was not responsible for Leslie’s murder, Detective Curwain knew what he had to do. He had to ask for help.
Detective Curwain wasted no time petitioning the government for more manpower and more resources. Shortly after Leslie’s body had been found, Curwain got what he asked for.
In September of 1991, Project Hitchhiker became Canada’s first multi-departmental task force in the history of Canadian policing in Vaughn, Ontario. The task force comprised of 9 different agencies, which with their own unsolved cases, with their spotlight on their prime suspect, Peter Stark.
The task force began by re-examining the murder of Maria Woods. They re-excavated the site where she’d been found, hoping that advances in forensics could prove fruitful. Before long, they found a bullet, and a bullet casing.
The bullet casing proved to be a rare WWII bullet from a Colt .45 automatic pistol. Investigators were aware that Stark had owned a Colt .45, given to him by his father. The pistol had vanished soon after Maria had been reported missing. It was clear that Maria’s cause of death had been a gunshot.
Though suspicious, the new evidence in the death of Maria Woods was circumstantial, at best. The task force needed more. As a result, they knew that Stark needed to be tailed and surveilled.
But they’d never encountered a suspect nearly as paranoid as Peter Stark. He would drive for hundreds and hundreds of kilometers, just to see if anyone was following him. When he caught sight of his tail, he would lead them around in circles, just to see how far they would go.
In one particularly creative attempt to thwart their efforts, Stark drew them out towards a set of railway tracks. Once there, he parked, got out of his car, and walked along the tracks. The investigator on his tail believed that Stark was attempting suicide by train.
Under the guise of a concerned passerby, local police were called to the tracks in order to stop him. Stark was then taken into custody, and brought to the station for questioning.
While distracted, the task force moved in and set about bugging and wiretapping Stark’s car. Then, Stark was calmly brought back to his car, as if nothing had happened. But that was part of the plan.
The plan was to make him uncomfortable, and to play on his paranoid nature. They wanted to get under his skin, and force his hand a little. At best, they were hoping that he’d incriminate himself. At worst, they were prepared to wait it out.
For months, the task force followed Stark, and listened to the wiretaps. Until, one day, his routine appeared to be slightly disrupted. Everyone was on alert. Stark had just picked someone up in his car.
Upon closer inspection, it was found that Stark had picked up his estranged wife, Allison. He’d convinced her to quit her job, and move in with him. That was a major problem for Project Hitchhiker.
At the time, spouses could not testify against each other in a court of law. Allison needed to get away from Stark as quickly as possible – for her own safety, first and foremost – if the task force had any hope that she could be presented as a witness for the prosecution.
Detective Curwain reached out to Allison, offering an olive branch. He told her that they were looking for Stark. They needed to use their trump card.
Peter Stark had a warrant out for fraud. If push came to shove, Allison was told, Stark was going to be arrested. They just hoped it would be for murder, rather than fraud.
As Detective Curwain was speaking to Allison, other officers set about ‘searching the house’. However, what they were actually doing was tapping the home phones and bugging the house. With no sign of Stark nearby, they left.
The surveillance showed that Stark was volatile and abusive. He would get especially angry when Allison, startled by the police visit, began calling him out on all the lies and inconsistencies in his statements regarding the day Julie disappeared.
Agitated and paranoid, the task force knew they didn’t have much time before anything they had on Stark would slip through their fingers. With the intent on bringing him in on the warrant for fraud, they decided to apply as much psychological pressure on him as absolutely possible.
With the help of FBI profilers, Project Hitchhiker began to set their trap.
When he was brought in for questioning, the arresting officer bore a striking resemblance to Julie Stanton. They also walked him by the ’79 Monte Carlo he’d sold, that they’d bought and placed in the parking lot.
All along the walls and desks, Stark saw crime scene photos, and surveillance photos. As he was walked into the interrogation room, they walked him by an officer listening to the tape of the wiretap of his home, just loud enough that he could hear himself have a conversation with Allison.
It was extremely apparent that there was a large stack of evidence that pointed at Stark as being responsible for Julie’s disappearance. But they didn’t have a ‘smoking gun’, so to speak. Ideally, they needed a confession.
Once Stark was in the interrogation room, it was apparent that he was agitated and panicked. First, Detective Curwain presented him with the report of his assault on Nancy Nelson. Next, they informed him that they found the Colt .45 bullet casing, lending evidence that he’d murdered Maria Woods. Then, they continuously pointed out every lie he’d told since Julie had gone missing.
Despite his panic, Stark did not bend, nor did he break. He repeated, on a loop: “On the advice of my counsel, I have nothing to say”. But it seemed that the stack of evidence was enough.
With no crime scene, no body, and no confessions, Peter Stark was charged for the first-degree murder of Julie Ann Stanton. The trial began in September of 1994 – four years after she disappeared.
A jailhouse informant proved to be the nail in Stark’s coffin. The informant testified that Stark had admitted to killing and raping Julie.
The informant was extremely detailed in his testimony. He said that Stark told him that he’d picked Julie up, and he tried to have sex with her, but she resisted his advances. He then told the informant that he’d had to kill Julie. He was scared that she’d run to her parents, and ruin his life. And so, he’d murdered her with axe.
When the informant asked him where the body was, he would clam up and tell him not to ask that – Stark was sure that if they couldn’t find the body, they couldn’t convict him.
To corroborate his testimony, the informant was able to provide recordings of conversations with Stark. When Stark had first started talking to him, the informant had alerted the authorities, and agreed to wear a wire.
Any doubts anyone had about the word of an informant were struck down immediately.
Most damning, Stark’s daughter, Kim, also testified. She told the court that he’d admitted to giving Julie a ride the day she went missing. She also said that an axe had been missing from Stark’s boat shortly after the disappearance.
The defence called no witnesses, and Stark did not testify on his own behalf.
On December 4th, 1994, Peter Stark was found guilty of the first-degree murder of Julie Stanton. He was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for 15 years.
Two years later, in 1996, Julie’s body was found in Manvers Township, which is now part of Kawartha Lakes.
A farmer found the skeletal remains, and alerted authorities. Stark’s attorneys were quick to launch an appeal, especially after it had been determined that Julie’s remains were too badly decomposed to determine a cause of death.
Due to the success of Project Hitchhiker, another task force is established soon after. Project Green Ribbon was launched in order to investigate the murder of Leslie Mahaffy. This task force would then lead to the arrests of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka – The School Girl Killers.
In 2000, Peter Stark’s appeal for a new trial was denied.
In February 2017, he would have been eligible for full parole. However, it never came to that. Peter Stark died at the age of 71 in August of 2016.
To date, no one has ever been charged or tried for the murder of Maria Woods, though popular opinion is that Peter Stark was the perpetrator.
Project Hitchhiker was not the first case to be tried without a crime scene or a body. However, it was the first conviction without a crime scene or a body in Canadian history.
Had it not been for the tenacity of Detective Herb Curwain, the changes to basic Canadian policing brought on by the Project Hitchhiker task force may have never come about.
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Sources:
Man convicted in 1990 killing of Pickering teen dies in prison – Joshua Freeman – CP24.com
CBC – The Detectives – Season 1, Episode 2 – Project Hitchhiker
My Favorite Murder podcast – Episode 164 – Live at the Sony Centre in Toronto
Dark Poutine podcast – Episode 74 – The Julie Stanton Story