MURDER SOLVED, after 15 years: JUSTICE DENIED

http://www.pulse24.com/News/Top_Stor...1-019/page.asp

Justice Denied

It was a case that horrified a southwestern Ontario community, and inspired women everywhere to be more vigilant when travelling alone.

After 15 years, and an exhaustive investigation that stretched throughout Canada and into the United States, authorities finally believe they know who killed 21-year-old university Lynda Shaw in 1990.

Their prime suspect is a twice-convicted killer who’s been dead since 1994. Privacy laws prevent him from being identified, but investigators reportedly linked him to the slaying through DNA evidence.

A partly-burned man’s duffel coat found within a metre of her body, a garment they were sure belonged to the killer. The man they’ve just now pinpointed lived less than an hour away from the murder scene.

The third-year engineering student was brutally sexually assaulted and murdered Monday, April 16th, 1990, on her way back to university after spending Easter weekend with her family in Huttonville, just south of Brampton.

After leaving her home at about 11pm Sunday in her 1989 blue Dodge Shadow, Shaw stopped a little more than an hour later at a service centre Burger King off Highway 401 in Oxford County. That was at about 12:17am.

The snack stop, where she’s believed to have purchased a burger and fries, appears to have been her last. She never showed up at Western University the next day for an exam she was supposed to write.

Shaw's abandoned car was found a little up the road on the shoulder - one of its windows smashed and a rear tire replaced by a spare.

After an extensive search, the young woman's body was found beaten, stabbed and partially burned in a wooded area six days later. It was later determined she'd also been sexually assaulted.

More than 900 people were investigated as 'persons of interest' over the years, everyone from unknown strangers to Paul Bernardo was among the suspects. Authorities also sifted through nearly a thousand tips.

For the young woman's mother, Carol Taylor, Friday's announcement provided an ending, but not closure, "because we now have learned that this person was a convicted killer many years before Lynda's murder.

"He not only killed two people, but he killed Lynda," she said in a statement. "All were victims of a man who placed no value on human life."

Shaw's horrifying case has resulted in at least one big change in travelling habits: it inspired women across the country to carry cellphones with them when they're on their own.

It's a sombre ending to a terrible and tragic tale.

August 12, 2005

http://www.pulse24.com/News/Top_Stor...3-002/page.asp

His name was Allan Craig McDonald, and he was out of jail on good behaviour.

That’s how police contend he met up with and ultimately murdered 21-year-old college student Lynda Shaw.

When the O.P.P. revealed on Friday they’d made a dramatic breakthrough in the long unsolved 1990 killing of the Huttonville, Ontario native, they refused to reveal the name of her killer.

The reason: he committed suicide four years after the crime, and because he was dead and could never be charged, they weren’t allowed to release his name.

But they provided enough clues for the media to turn detective and retrace his steps.

McDonald had previously committed two other murders but had been out of jail on parole. Those circumstances led amateur sleuths straight to his identity, and revealed a criminal past that was both deadly and disturbing.

McDonald was convicted of killing a police officer and a cab driver in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia in 1975.

Incredibly, despite those slayings on his record, he was let out in 1993 for good behaviour. A year later, Shaw was heading back to school in London to write an exam, and had stopped at a rest area, when police think her killer deliberately slashed her tire.

They were always sure that same person posed as a Good Samaritan who offered to help fix it, then grabbed the terrified woman and brutally attacked her.

Her car was found abandoned and her body was located a week later. She’d been sexually assaulted, stabbed and set on fire.

Cops found some hairs near the body that they were sure came from her assailant, but until DNA technology was available and efforts began to match it with known killers, they were never able to solve her case.

They finally made the connection they’d been waiting more than 15 years for in July.

The fact McDonald was out on parole and had his fatal encounter with Shaw leaves her still grieving mother feeling bitter.

In a statement dripping with disgust, she made her emotions clear. "I feel that Lynda and our family have been betrayed by a federal judicial system that put a cold-blooded murderer back on the street," Carole Taylor writes. "Lynda was a victim of our justice system and, in particular, of a parole board that acted irresponsibly in releasing this man from prison."

But while one part of the case is closed, another remains open. Police are convinced someone helped McDonald dispose of Shaw’s body that terrible night in April 1990.

They believe it’s possible someone McDonald meet during his time on parole at a halfway house may know something about what happened after the killing.

And they vow to hunt him down, too, assigning five officers to the suddenly recharged investigation. "Why would we give up now?" asks Det. Insp. Randy Rosiak.

August 13, 2005

"who served 12 years for the murder of a police officer and a cab driver in Dartmouth, N.S. "????

Appalling!

[2L8 4A D8]

Un-fricken-believable! I thought that I had heard it all with Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo, but I guess not. What a travesty of justice!

For Lynda Shaw ~ God Bless You!
For Lynda's Mother and Family!