SECRETS: The Jon Rallo story

SECRETS JON RALLO REVEALED: Susan Clairmont has new details from his murder trial and prison letters in today’s Weekend Reader

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Kevin Gooding set out yesterday to buy his wife snow tires so she would be safe on the roads this winter. He had no idea his good intentions would save another man’s life. Gooding pulled onto the Red Hill Valley Parkway around 9:30 a.m. with his four-year-old son Carter in the back seat. Just as he passed the Stone Church Road exit, a white sedan in front of him started spinning across the highway. It clipped another car and, by the time it collided with a guardrail, flames were leaping out of the back window. Gooding pulled over and ran to the burning car. He frantically tried to open the doors and struck the driver’s side window, hoping to break the glass and reach inside. The impact unlocked the door and allowed him to grab the driver. RESCUE continued: A3

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MONTREAL ✦ When he answered that Sunday morning phone call back in 1966, Jake Ireland had no idea it would lead to 30 years of weekly television exposure. “It was a friend of mine desperate to find officials for flag football in Burlington,” Ireland recalls on the eve of his 15th and final assignment to the Grey Cup game. “He said, ‘If you’ve got a whistle, I’ll get

you a shirt and a piece of red cloth.’ That afternoon I was on the field at M.M. Robinson High School with a bunch of tykes.” Late tomorrow afternoon, he’ll be on the field with a bunch of titans, refereeing the biggest Canadian football game of the year for the 15th time. And he’ll lead a squad of six other striped-shirted men who want to grow up to be just like him.

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Jake Ireland, a Burlington Central grad, will referee his 15th and final CFL championship.

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WEEKEND READER THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR ❚ NOVEMBER 22, 2008 ❚ EDITOR AGNES BONGERS ❚ 905-526-3234 OR [email protected]

Jon Rallo’s three victims: his wife Sandra, left, his daughter Stephanie and his son Jason.

SECRETS

Jon Rallo revealed: Never-before-heard details from his murder trial and letters from prison FIRST OF THREE PARTS ❚ BY SUSAN CLAIRMONT ❚ THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR

T

hey placed their first child in her cradle. Sandra. Five days old. The mother whispered to the father: “One day a young man is going to take her away from us.” That man would come. And he would have a secret life. A life of women. And pornography. Bondage. And perhaps sexual assault. Anger. And violence. ✦✦✦ Jon Rallo killed his wife and children 32 years ago. Now, as he begins life after prison, some of his secrets are still being uncovered. Facts and allegations the jury never heard. His letters from prison. Some secrets remain. He still does not admit his guilt. He still will not reveal where he put his son’s body. The Spectator tracked him down in Sudbury, where he is on parole. It seems he plans to take some secrets to his grave. Continued on WR2

PHOTO FROM THE COLLECTION OF MARG LYNCH

Jon Rallo’s mug shot, taken after he was arrested in his daughter’s murder in 1976. Rallo was later convicted of murdering his family in their Hamilton home. He has never admitted his guilt.

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THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2008

TRUE CRIME

A trail of lies and blood Continued from WR1

Monday, Aug. 16, 1976 Sandra Rallo, 29, is out talking with a music teacher. Arranging piano lessons for herself and her husband Jon. It will be nice to do something new together. At home, the children are up past bedtime. But rules can bend on a carefree summer night. Jason and Stephanie sneak outside in their pyjamas. A green short-sleeved nightie with ties in the back for five-year-old Steph, a fair-haired waif with hazel eyes and an olive complexion. Her six-year-old brother, a husky, blue-eyed boy, wears beige shortie jammies. They run around Lantana Court, giggling in the twilight. They knock on Mrs. Swinn’s door to tell her Mommy is home now. She can come for a visit. They race back to their tidy bungalow to get ready for bed with Daddy’s help. Sandra and Barb Swinn sit in the living room having coffee. They talk about furniture Sandra wants and their children’s blood types. “Because Sandra was tied up with Mrs. Swinn,” Jon would testify, “I put the children to bed. “I made sure they had cleaned their teeth and gone to the bathroom and tucked them in and they had said their prayers and Stephanie had her doll. And I went into the living room and said to Sandra, ‘Kiss the children good night.’ ” And Sandra did. By morning, Jon Rallo had killed his entire family. ✦✦✦ Jack and Dorothea Rallo had one child. Jon George Rallo. Born Nov. 30, 1942, in Hamilton. His early years were spent in the city’s modest north end before the family moved to the east Mountain. Jack was an OPP forensic identification officer who photographed crime scenes. He left the force when his son was a teen. Became a Liquor Control Board manager. Jon adored his mother. By the time Jon entered Cathedral High School, he was setting himself apart from the crowd. While his peers slouched to class in denim and plaid, Jon dressed as if he had a job interview. Or a date. He wasn’t a handsome teen. His unruly hair and lanky limbs were not the stuff of conventional good looks. Yet there was something about him. He had style. Confidence. Charm. School was a distraction from what Jon was really interested in. Girls. He spent his free time standing on a downtown corner, watching all the girls pass by. He dropped out of Grade 12, finishing by correspondence. He took management and communication courses at Mohawk College. And he dated. “I used to go out with a girl whose idea of a great night out was to sit in Paddy Green’s drinking 15 cent draft beer,” he would reminisce later in a letter written from prison. “Now that’s a cheap score ... I meant inexpensive. No, now that I think about it, I mean cheap.” Though Jon fancied himself a

THE FAMILY

a wall. Trickles into the drain in the concrete floor. It is Type B blood. Sandra has Type B blood. He takes two green garbage bags from the package on his workbench, puts one over his wife’s head, the other over her red-polished toenails. He slides her into a sleeping bag. He puts two anchors from Canadian Tire on Upper James Street into the bag. He binds the whole package with knots he may have learned from a dirty magazine. Stephanie requires just one garbage bag and one anchor. He folds her into a fetal position and stuffs her inside a blue duffel bag sold at Canadian Tire on Upper James. He zips it shut. Jason is likely put inside a garbage bag. Likely put into a sleeping bag. Jon hauls furniture out of their bedroom, rips up shag and underpadding. He washes his bloody hands in the bathroom — there is a bite mark near his wedding ring — leaving smears on the faucet, cold-water tap, counter. There is blood in the bathtub. In the basement, he crudely taps out a Dear Jon note on Sandra’s Underwood typewriter. After dark, he brings the bodies into the garage — where more blood drips — places them in the trunk of his car, then drives to dump them in waterways around St. Catharines.

HAMILTON SPECTATOR FILE PHOTOS

Jon Rallo stands outside court during a break in his trial in 1977. Hundreds filled the courthouse as he stood trial for the murders of his family: wife Sandra, top, daughter Stephanie and son Jason. ladies’ man, there was one girl in particular who caught his eye. A lively brunette with green eyes and a quick smile. Sandra Pollington. ✦✦✦ Jon says it happened like this: He takes a pillow to his basement cot. He and Sandra have not shared a bed the past few nights. They’ve had a falling-out over his relationship with a neighbour. The previous summer, Kay Scordino came to borrow liquor. “As I handed it to her, I touched her ... On the breast.” Kay told all of Lantana Court and Sandra was humiliated. Sandra’s marriage was already unsteady. A year earlier, Jon sought divorce advice from lawyer Dennis Roy. Sandra briefly stopped wearing her wedding ring and confided in girlfriends that Jon was not satisfying her sexually. For a day or two, they listed the house for sale. But divorce is messy. Expensive. Embarrassing. Soon, the Rallos and Scordinos were friends again. Just on Friday, the two couples went overnight to Cambridge, staying at Sandra’s parents’ place while they were away. They skinny-dipped in the pool until 3 a.m. But Jon and Kay lingered a little too long. Alone in the water. Jon would dismiss it as “horseplay.” Sandra was furious. So Jon is sleeping alone.

“I woke up Tuesday morning ... I proceeded to go upstairs ... I thought it was kind of unusual that neither one or both of the children were up yet. Stephie especially was an early riser. She was up at the crack of dawn usually. Jason, when he got up, usually he would be downstairs watching television. I ... looked in Jason’s room and saw he wasn’t in his bed and nor was Stephanie, or Sandra in our bed.” Jon says he finds a typed note from Sandra on his bureau. It says she has left him for a rich lawyer. She has taken the children and her wallet. Nothing else. Not her purse or wedding ring. Not the children’s favourite toys, toothbrushes, shoes. “I was absolutely beside myself,” Jon testifies. “I thought things had gotten better. We seemed very happy. The children seemed happy.” One day and night pass before Jon tells anyone his family is gone. ✦✦✦ Jon claims he was getting anonymous phone calls. They started in the summer of 1975 and only came when Sandra was out of the house. It was a male caller. He never identified himself but once, Jon says, he let it slip he was a lawyer. “He knew an awful lot about our personal lives.” Jon says he confronted his wife, who denied knowing anything.

Strangely, Jon did not change their phone number. Nor did he seek the help of police. Instead, he would say, he arranged a rendezvous: “Let’s be grown-up and let’s meet.” Jon says he waited outside the courthouse. The same courthouse where he would later stand trial. The man never showed. ✦✦✦ The Crown says it was like this: Jon planned it. He had, for months, been fabricating a story about a mysterious lawyer. Sullying his wife’s reputation. Creating a scapegoat. Then he and Sandra argue in their room. Maybe she confronts him about an affair. Or he accuses her. He punches her in the face. Her nose is damaged, her teeth loosened. Her blood soaks into the shag carpet below the window. It spatters the red drapes and the legs of a bench. It is on the sheets. The mattress. A blind cord is handy. Jon strangles Sandra. During this, the children come in. Witnesses to Daddy’s fury. He kills them, too. Suffocating each one with a pillow in a pretty flowered case. It takes four minutes for Stephanie to die. Jon begins cleaning up. He takes the bodies to the basement. Strips them and puts the clothes, along with bloody linen, in the washing machine. Blood drips onto his leather slippers, smears on a door jamb and

✦✦✦ Sandra was 15. Jon was 20. They were in love. Sandra’s parents were not pleased. Jon was too old. And he was Catholic. Doug Pollington, a Hamilton firefighter who became fire chief in Cambridge, did not approve. Margaret Pollington did not care for her daughter’s suitor, either, but when she saw Sandra was head over heels, she conceded. Jon called them Mom and Dad. The courtship lasted four years. During that time, Sandra got a job as a title searcher at a law firm. Jon landed a job as a rodman on a city survey crew. They married Oct. 8, 1966. Jon wore a tux and white bow tie. His curls were coaxed into submission. Sandra wore a veil over her dark bob. Her smile was radiant. The young Rallos started in a Concession Street apartment. One of their first purchases was a double bed. A jury would come to know a lot about that bed. Jon moved up in the engineering department at City Hall — or The Hall, as he always called it — eventually becoming office manager. Sandra learned to macrame and took yoga classes. Jon played hockey and was a Ticats fan. Then Sandra got pregnant. So they bought a house on Dundurn Street South and on Oct. 30, 1969, John Jason was born. His sister came along on June 30, 1971. Jon says the night Stephanie was born, Sandra hemorrhaged, her blood soaking their bed. Later, he says, Sandra cut the stains from the mattress cover. In 1972, the Rallos moved to 16 Lantana Ct. Seven houses on a quiet street. They parked their dark green Ford Maverick in the garage. Continued on next page

THE CRIME

PHOTOS FROM THE COLLECTION OF MARG LYNCH

Jason Rallo’s bedroom in the house on Lantana Court after the murders.

Blood spots are marked on the basement floor in the Rallo home. The Crown said this is where Rallo stuffed his victims’ bodies in sleeping bags or duffel bags.

Sandra and Jon’s mattress leans in the upstairs hallway after the murders. Jon said he took apart the bed to relieve frustration after his family went missing.

THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2008

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TRUE CRIME THE LAW Continued from previous page

Planted a vegetable garden. Adopted a black and white cat. ✦✦✦ Jon had a secret cache of dirty magazines. Hidden in a drawer. Bondage pornography so hard-core it was illegal in Canada. Photos of intricate knots. Remarkably similar to the ones used to bind Sandra’s body. ✦✦✦ Other women interrupted the Rallos’ life. If Jon wasn’t having lunch with a woman, he was girlwatching. In a letter written from prison he would recall: “I used to stand in front of Laura Secords at King and James every day over lunch hour and the crowd was a better show than any you’d ever see at Diamond Jim’s and some of the people were old enough to know better too, it used to be the best show in town.” Julia Glen worked with Jon. She was young. Pretty. Sometimes she gave Jon a ride home, dropping him at the corner. She invited Jon and Sandra to her wedding. When she was a stenographer at The Hall and Jon was her boss, they lunched together at The Overdraft, Al’s Delicatessen, The Pioneer. When she split from her husband in early 1976, Jon consoled her. He met her for a drink at The Golden Garter. He called on her at her parents’ home and waited for hours outside when he was told she was out with girlfriends. When Julia got her own apartment, he arrived with a plant and a bottle of wine. They ordered pizza. When he left at midnight, he kissed her on the lips. It was platonic, each would testify. “On any occasion I was with Julia Glen, sir, my wife knew about it.” Jon’s relationship with Marjory Jane Smith was not platonic. She was an attractive, married woman in the Hall’s legal department. She dropped by Jon’s office to ask about a cruise he had taken with Sandra and soon, they were regularly going for lunch. She confided she was having marital problems. He told her he was, too. In May 1975 they began having sex. “There were times when I would go home after being with the young lady, kiss my children good night and tuck them in bed and say to myself: ‘What the heck are you doing? If you ever get found out, you are going to lose everything.’ ” Marjory would testify Jon gave her “friendship” and “love.” The same month the affair began, Sandra went to the Bahamas with a group of women. At first Jon didn’t want her to go. Suddenly, he was encouraging her to take time away. “I thought the change might do us both some good.” Jon and Marjory had sex in his marital bed. ✦✦✦ In August 1975, Marjory ended her affair with Jon. “The lady and I discussed it at length,” Jon would testify. “We both established our priorities. We both knew that she needed her husband and she knew I needed my wife and my children.”

RON ALBERTSON, THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR

Justice Anton Zuraw, in his Sopinka courthouse chambers this month, was the Crown attorney for the Rallo trial.

RON ALBERTSON, THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR

Norm Thompson, at home with his wife Joyce, headed the Rallo murder investigation for the Hamilton-Wentworth police. derpadding below the window. “The children had been sick on it, the cat had soiled it and Sandra complained about the odour coming from this rug,” he would testify. To pass time, Jon does laundry. In the afternoon, wearing shorts, a T-shirt and a yellow fishing hat, he goes to Canadian Tire on Upper James and returns a light switch. At dusk, he ventures out for a long drive. He says he goes to the beach strip, Toronto, Brantford, Caledonia. When he arrives home at midnight, he takes a spin on his bike. In the schoolyard he hits “a rut or stone or brick or something” and falls, cutting his hands.

RON ALBERTSON, THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR

Retired detective Bob Slack worked on the Rallo investigation. ✦✦✦ Tuesday, Aug. 17, 1976 Jon calls in sick. The phone rings at the house: daycare, neighbours, Sandra’s mother Marg ... Jon says Sandra is out. To relieve frustration over his missing family, Jon says, he listens to the radio and dismantles his bed. He rips up the beige shag. Tears out a chunk of green un-

✦✦✦ Wednesday, Aug. 18, 1976 Jon is up by 5:15 a.m. and vacuums and dusts “simply for something to do.” He takes three pieces of carpet and one piece of underpadding to the Glanford Dump off Highway 6, he says. A “garbage picker” asks for the carpet. Jon says he hands it over. Barb Swinn is the first person he tells that Sandra and the children are gone. They have been missing more than 24 hours. At 11:30 a.m., he shows up at his father-in-law’s office in Cambridge with the Dear Jon note. They go to the Pollington home and sit at the kitchen

table, where Jon, Sandra and the children had dinner hours before their disappearance. Jon sobs into his hands. “I didn’t see tears,” Marg says later. Jon meets with lawyer Dennis Roy, who recommends a private investigator. Jon and Marg drive to his parents’ home to break the news to them. The two mothers try to convince him to go to Henderson hospital to have his injured hand treated. He refuses. Dorothea goes with her son to Lantana Court. She is the only person he allows in. He has decided to spend the night at his parents’ and while he gathers his things, she makes him a sandwich. Private investigator Ron Arnold comes to Jack and Dorothea’s home. The former Scotland Yard detective asks Jon if he has been faithful to Sandra. Jon says he has. Later, Sandra’s sister Janice comes by. All summer, Janice has been avoiding Jon. He was becoming increasingly flirtatious. When she was at Lantana Court babysitting her niece and nephew, Jon often arrived home unexpectedly. She had taken to shutting herself in the bathroom and running the shower, just to duck him. But she puts all that aside. “Janice was there for some time, but as far as conversation goes, it wasn’t very lengthy because I dozed off twice ... We were sitting outside in my father and mother’s yard in the gazebo.” Jon walks Janice to her car. She says he wraps his arms around her and puts his hand down her pants. ✦✦✦ Wednesday, Aug. 18, 1976 A mom and her sons fish at Twelve Mile Creek in St. Catharines. Two boys wander off to explore. Shawn Labonte, 13, and Paul, 11, spot a royal blue vinyl bag in the muddy water. They haul it ashore and open it. “There was a green garbage bag in it,” Shawn would tell a jury. “I ripped open the hole and I could see the back of a little kid.” The boys run screaming. By nightfall, the body is on a steel table in the morgue at St. Catharines General Hospital. A girl. Forty-three pounds. Three feet seven inches tall. Nude. Bruises on her temples. Tan lines from a two-piece bathing suit. A small bandage stuck to her right knee. ✦✦✦ Thursday, Aug. 19, 1976 Morning Jon is at work by 9 a.m. He tells Marjory his family has disappeared. She reminds him her birthday is the next day. He promises he hasn’t forgotten. At 10 a.m., Jon gets a visitor at his fourth-floor office. Sergeant Larry Dawson of the HamiltonWentworth Regional Police is here to do a missing person report. “I was just going to call you,” Jon says. But Doug Pollington beat him to it. He phoned Chief Gord Torrance, who made the case a priority. Dawson starts his notes in a small black book: Jon Rallo, 33, “missing wife and two children.” Meanwhile, his boss, Inspector Norm Thompson, hears a

radio report. A girl’s body has been pulled from Twelve Mile Creek. ✦✦✦ The final summer. The children played T-ball. Stephanie was crazy about Snakes and Ladders. Steph was enrolled at Peter Pan Nursery School and Jason was about to enter Grade 2 at R.A. Riddell elementary school. The family went to Crystal Beach, Storybook Gardens. Jon was moving forward in a million-dollar business venture with Doug and neighbour Phil Scordino. They planned to build a racquet club on land they owned at Limeridge Road and Upper Wellington. ✦✦✦ Hours before the murders, Jon, Sandra and the children were at the Pollingtons’. All summer, Sandra’s brother David had been trying to coax Jason off the diving board. Now, he got Jason to the edge. The boy summoned his courage. This time, he jumped. Jon did not seem to care. ✦✦✦ Thursday, Aug. 19, 1976 Afternoon Inspector Thompson is on his way to the morgue with a photo of Stephanie. At 2 p.m., Detective Dawson phones Jon and asks him to come to the station. There are more questions. Jon first goes to the bank. He changes the joint chequing account he shares with Sandra to his name only. Then he is chauffeured to the police station by a City Hall driver who waits while Jon does a 90-minute interview. Jon talks about the mystery phone calls. “If she came home tomorrow, I don’t know whether I could forgive her or not because, you know, for a year she made me feel like a heel ... that I didn’t believe her and I didn’t trust her ... For her to be proven wrong and me to be right ... you made me feel like a damn fool for a whole year.” At 4 p.m., Jon is allowed to go and lock up his office at The Hall, then drive his car back to the station. He returns by 5 p.m. Meanwhile, Thompson makes his second trip to the morgue. He escorts Doug, Marg, Janice and David. Doug goes in. “That is her,” he says. He emerges into the sunshine, sits on a curb. He asks to go in again. To make sure. He is gently refused. ✦✦✦ Thursday, Aug. 19, 1976 Evening Jon is at the police station. He wears a green leisure suit, a white shirt, owlish glasses. At 7 p.m., Thompson tells him Stephanie’s body has been found. Jon puts his head on Thompson’s shoulder. “There were no tears in his eyes,” the inspector recalls. Jon hands over his house and car keys. Thompson calls the Centre of Forensic Sciences in Toronto and asks for a “biological examiner” to come to Hamilton. He summons Detectives Ed Kodis and Bob Slack to go with him to Lantana Court. They remove their shoes and have their first look inside. Continued on next page

THE CRIME

PHOTOS FROM THE COLLECTION OF MARG LYNCH

Cuts and scrapes marked Jon Rallo’s hands the night of his arrest. Rallo claimed he got them on a midnight bike ride after his family disappeared, when his bike hit ‘a rut or stone or brick or something’ and he fell.

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THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2008

TRUE CRIME THE VICTIMS his parents. Every day he puts flowers on the grave shared by his wife and daughter. The one with the space left for Jason. He goes to Lantana Court, mows the grass around his children’s swing set and walks through the house. He waves at neighbours but they do not speak to him.

Continued from previous page

The house is in shambles. Furniture is moved. Carpet is torn up. Back at the station, Slack asks Jon why the house is in disarray. Jon tells him about the smelly carpet and the Glanford dump. Jon’s father shows up with lawyer William Hubar. After that, Jon won’t answer any more questions. At 11:30 p.m., Jon Rallo is charged with murdering his daughter. William Towstiak of the Centre of Forensic Sciences arrives at the Lantana Court house. His trained eye spots remnants of spatters and drops and smears. “This bloody house,” he says. ✦✦✦ Detective Kodis spends two days digging through garbage at the dump. He finds a large piece of bloodied shag that matches the rug from the Rallo home. However, this is not at the Glanford dump, where Jon insists he went, but rather the Ottawa Street dump. A security guard remembers Jon with three garbage bags and two boxes. ✦✦✦ Police divers scour the waterways for Sandra and Jason. Bizarrely, they find other bodies, but not the ones they are looking for. A Hamilton man who’d disappeared on a fishing trip in the spring is found behind the wheel of his car submerged in Twelve Mile Creek. He had a heart attack. A middle-aged woman who committed suicide is also recovered.

✦✦✦ January 1977 Jon’s lawyer sends a letter to Mayor Jack MacDonald asking if Jon could return to work at City Hall. The request is refused.

POLLINGTON FAMILY PHOTO

Sandra Rallo on her wedding day in October 1966. She and Jon met and fell in love four years earlier, when she was 15 and Jon was 20.

✦✦✦ Tuesday, Aug. 24, 1976 Stephanie is buried. The service begins with an open casket, but the lid is closed midway through. Her body is turning black. POLLINGTON FAMILY PHOTO

✦✦✦ Thursday, Aug. 26, 1976 OPP searching from a helicopter spot a bundle floating in the Welland Canal. Feet are sticking out. At 12:27 p.m. an officer notes the discovery: “A green cloth zippered sleeping bag and the bag was tied with what appeared to be rope and sash cord, and the bag was open at one end with part of a green plastic garbage bag sticking out the open end. I observed a pair of feet with the toenails painted red.” The rope and sash cord are elaborately tied, “each knot related to the next knot.” There are two sleeping bags, a blue inner one, a green outer one with a label sewn into its lining. It says Jason Rallo. Sandra’s body is decomposed. Her green eyes are discoloured. There is a round hole above her right ear, bruising to her thighs, forearms and face. The tip of her nose is crushed. There is a red mark on her chest. Her tongue protrudes from between her teeth. Typical of strangulation. Doug goes back to the morgue. “Yes, I would say that is her.” Slack and Dawson bring Jon from the jail to the station at 8:50 p.m. “Jon,” says Slack, “it is my duty to inform you of the death of your wife, Sandra. It is also my duty to advise you that you are charged with two counts of murder concerning the death of

Stephanie Rallo was five years old when she died. She was enrolled in Peter Pan Nursery School and loved playing Snakes and Ladders.

POLLINGTON FAMILY PHOTO

Six-year-old Jason Rallo played T-ball and swam in his grandparents’ pool. He would have started Grade 2 a few weeks after he was killed. Sandra Rallo and John Jason Rallo.” Once again, Jon appears upset. But he does not cry. ✦✦✦ Tuesday, Aug. 31, 1976 Sandra is buried beside her daughter. Men who were ushers at her wedding are her pall bearers. ✦✦✦ Late October 1976 Police call off the search for Jason.

✦✦✦ Christmas Eve 1976 A back door at Central police station opens. A man and his lawyer slip into the chill. Jon Rallo has been released on $100,000 bail. He has undergone 58 days of psychiatric tests — including sessions with truth serum — at the Clarke Institute in Toronto. Doctors have deemed him mentally fit. A judge has deemed him fit for bail. For the next year, Jon lives with

✦✦✦ November 1977 It is the biggest Hamilton trial since Evelyn Dick took the stand. Jon Rallo faces three counts of first-degree murder. The courtroom is packed, people sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, holding overcoats and brown lunch bags in their laps. Others line up down the hall, hoping to nab a seat should anyone leave. A team of Hamilton Spectator reporters is here, along with the national press. The Crown will call 48 witnesses. Nearly 150 exhibits will be introduced. A jury of nine men and three women is chosen for the Rallo trial: a union official, a typist, two truck drivers, a secretary, three factory workers, a housewife, a foreman, a college student and a supervisor. ✦✦✦ Nov. 23, 1977 Crown attorney Anton Zuraw opens his case in front of Justice John O’Driscoll. Decades later, in his own judge’s chambers at the John Sopinka Courthouse, Zuraw will recall the oddness of prosecuting such a big case in such a small city. He was the same age as Rallo. Had a son the same age as Stephanie. He had a passing acquaintance with Sandra, from her law office jobs. He worked several coroner’s inquests with Detective Joe Rallo, Jon’s cousin. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you are here, and have been chosen, a panel of 12, to determine the guilt or innocence of Jon Rallo. He is charged with the murder of his wife, his son and his daughter ... You will hear all about the finding of the bodies, how they were packaged and anchors placed in those packages and how they were ultimately found in their watery graves.” The trial lasts 16 days. ✦✦✦ Hamilton lawyers had a unique reputation in 1977 for complete disclosure. There were no secrets kept by defence and Crown. But there were things the jury never heard. The Rallo jury never heard about Jon’s bondage pornography. Never knew of the link between it and the knots binding

Sandra’s corpse. And it never heard that Jon groped his sister-in-law when she tried to comfort him. Janice says she signed a written statement about the alleged sexual assault at the time it happened. And she was told back then that police had discovered her brother-in-law’s stash of pornography when they searched his home. Zuraw — who still will not talk of those two issues — decided before the trial that they might muddy the legal waters and could be grounds for an appeal. He needed to make all the pieces fit: “Don’t leave anything tangled.” And he needed to be fair: “This was not trial by ambush. Rallo had the opportunity to clearly get his story out.” ✦✦✦ Lawyer Dennis Roy and PI Ron Arnold are called to testify. Neighbours give their accounts. Cops refer to their notebooks. The boy who found Steph is nervous. Doug Pollington is angry. Marg is sad. Lover Marjory Smith weeps. Julia Glen smiles and laughs. ✦✦✦ Nov. 30, 1977 Jon’s bail is revoked. In the wake of testimony from Marjory Smith, public outrage reaches a new high: Jon is not only an accused murderer, he is an admitted adulterer. Zuraw fears Jon may skip town or be in danger. He is jailed and brought into court each morning before the jury arrives so they will not know he is in custody. ✦✦✦ Dec. 8, 1977 Jon is called to the stand. He testifies for five hours over two days. Two hundred people brave a snowstorm to fill the court. He is cool. Polite. Articulate. He “gulps for control” when he talks of the murders. Jon testifies that on the night after his family vanished — after his extremely long car ride and mishap on the bike — he wandered his house sadly before settling for the night on the living room couch. “I stayed there all night looking out the window and dozing off and waking up and hoping again if a car came on the court, or a cab or something, and it was Sandra, I could see her out the window.” ✦✦✦ Justice O’Driscoll gives his charge to the jury. “If the accused is the man, then you have before you a very cold, calculating, cold-blooded killer ... who wiped out his family ... and then tried to destroy the evidence. If the accused is not the person, then he has undoubtedly gone through hell on earth since he was arrested.”

MONDAY: Jon Rallo’s life in prison

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Columnist Susan Clairmont has won five Ontario Newspaper Awards and been nominated for a National Newspaper Award. Contact her at 905-526-3539 or [email protected].

GO TO THESPEC.COM FOR AN INTERACTIVE TIMELINE AND ADDITIONAL PHOTOGRAPHS

THE CRIME

PHOTOS FROM THE COLLECTION OF MARG LYNCH

The basement room where Jon Rallo said he slept the night his family disappeared. When he woke up, he said, they were gone.

The trunk of Jon Rallo’s Ford Maverick. The Crown said he put his family’s bodies in the trunk before driving to the St. Catharines area and dumping them in waterways.

The floor of Jon and Sandra’s bedroom after the bloodied shag carpet was ripped out and taken to the dump.

WR4

THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2008

TRUE CRIME THE VICTIMS his parents. Every day he puts flowers on the grave shared by his wife and daughter. The one with the space left for Jason. He goes to Lantana Court, mows the grass around his children’s swing set and walks through the house. He waves at neighbours but they do not speak to him.

Continued from previous page

The house is in shambles. Furniture is moved. Carpet is torn up. Back at the station, Slack asks Jon why the house is in disarray. Jon tells him about the smelly carpet and the Glanford dump. Jon’s father shows up with lawyer William Hubar. After that, Jon won’t answer any more questions. At 11:30 p.m., Jon Rallo is charged with murdering his daughter. William Towstiak of the Centre of Forensic Sciences arrives at the Lantana Court house. His trained eye spots remnants of spatters and drops and smears. “This bloody house,” he says. ✦✦✦ Detective Kodis spends two days digging through garbage at the dump. He finds a large piece of bloodied shag that matches the rug from the Rallo home. However, this is not at the Glanford dump, where Jon insists he went, but rather the Ottawa Street dump. A security guard remembers Jon with three garbage bags and two boxes. ✦✦✦ Police divers scour the waterways for Sandra and Jason. Bizarrely, they find other bodies, but not the ones they are looking for. A Hamilton man who’d disappeared on a fishing trip in the spring is found behind the wheel of his car submerged in Twelve Mile Creek. He had a heart attack. A middle-aged woman who committed suicide is also recovered.

✦✦✦ January 1977 Jon’s lawyer sends a letter to Mayor Jack MacDonald asking if Jon could return to work at City Hall. The request is refused.

POLLINGTON FAMILY PHOTO

Sandra Rallo on her wedding day in October 1966. She and Jon met and fell in love four years earlier, when she was 15 and Jon was 20.

✦✦✦ Tuesday, Aug. 24, 1976 Stephanie is buried. The service begins with an open casket, but the lid is closed midway through. Her body is turning black. POLLINGTON FAMILY PHOTO

✦✦✦ Thursday, Aug. 26, 1976 OPP searching from a helicopter spot a bundle floating in the Welland Canal. Feet are sticking out. At 12:27 p.m. an officer notes the discovery: “A green cloth zippered sleeping bag and the bag was tied with what appeared to be rope and sash cord, and the bag was open at one end with part of a green plastic garbage bag sticking out the open end. I observed a pair of feet with the toenails painted red.” The rope and sash cord are elaborately tied, “each knot related to the next knot.” There are two sleeping bags, a blue inner one, a green outer one with a label sewn into its lining. It says Jason Rallo. Sandra’s body is decomposed. Her green eyes are discoloured. There is a round hole above her right ear, bruising to her thighs, forearms and face. The tip of her nose is crushed. There is a red mark on her chest. Her tongue protrudes from between her teeth. Typical of strangulation. Doug goes back to the morgue. “Yes, I would say that is her.” Slack and Dawson bring Jon from the jail to the station at 8:50 p.m. “Jon,” says Slack, “it is my duty to inform you of the death of your wife, Sandra. It is also my duty to advise you that you are charged with two counts of murder concerning the death of

Stephanie Rallo was five years old when she died. She was enrolled in Peter Pan Nursery School and loved playing Snakes and Ladders.

POLLINGTON FAMILY PHOTO

Six-year-old Jason Rallo played T-ball and swam in his grandparents’ pool. He would have started Grade 2 a few weeks after he was killed. Sandra Rallo and John Jason Rallo.” Once again, Jon appears upset. But he does not cry. ✦✦✦ Tuesday, Aug. 31, 1976 Sandra is buried beside her daughter. Men who were ushers at her wedding are her pall bearers. ✦✦✦ Late October 1976 Police call off the search for Jason.

✦✦✦ Christmas Eve 1976 A back door at Central police station opens. A man and his lawyer slip into the chill. Jon Rallo has been released on $100,000 bail. He has undergone 58 days of psychiatric tests — including sessions with truth serum — at the Clarke Institute in Toronto. Doctors have deemed him mentally fit. A judge has deemed him fit for bail. For the next year, Jon lives with

✦✦✦ November 1977 It is the biggest Hamilton trial since Evelyn Dick took the stand. Jon Rallo faces three counts of first-degree murder. The courtroom is packed, people sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, holding overcoats and brown lunch bags in their laps. Others line up down the hall, hoping to nab a seat should anyone leave. A team of Hamilton Spectator reporters is here, along with the national press. The Crown will call 48 witnesses. Nearly 150 exhibits will be introduced. A jury of nine men and three women is chosen for the Rallo trial: a union official, a typist, two truck drivers, a secretary, three factory workers, a housewife, a foreman, a college student and a supervisor. ✦✦✦ Nov. 23, 1977 Crown attorney Anton Zuraw opens his case in front of Justice John O’Driscoll. Decades later, in his own judge’s chambers at the John Sopinka Courthouse, Zuraw will recall the oddness of prosecuting such a big case in such a small city. He was the same age as Rallo. Had a son the same age as Stephanie. He had a passing acquaintance with Sandra, from her law office jobs. He worked several coroner’s inquests with Detective Joe Rallo, Jon’s cousin. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you are here, and have been chosen, a panel of 12, to determine the guilt or innocence of Jon Rallo. He is charged with the murder of his wife, his son and his daughter ... You will hear all about the finding of the bodies, how they were packaged and anchors placed in those packages and how they were ultimately found in their watery graves.” The trial lasts 16 days. ✦✦✦ Hamilton lawyers had a unique reputation in 1977 for complete disclosure. There were no secrets kept by defence and Crown. But there were things the jury never heard. The Rallo jury never heard about Jon’s bondage pornography. Never knew of the link between it and the knots binding

Sandra’s corpse. And it never heard that Jon groped his sister-in-law when she tried to comfort him. Janice says she signed a written statement about the alleged sexual assault at the time it happened. And she was told back then that police had discovered her brother-in-law’s stash of pornography when they searched his home. Zuraw — who still will not talk of those two issues — decided before the trial that they might muddy the legal waters and could be grounds for an appeal. He needed to make all the pieces fit: “Don’t leave anything tangled.” And he needed to be fair: “This was not trial by ambush. Rallo had the opportunity to clearly get his story out.” ✦✦✦ Lawyer Dennis Roy and PI Ron Arnold are called to testify. Neighbours give their accounts. Cops refer to their notebooks. The boy who found Steph is nervous. Doug Pollington is angry. Marg is sad. Lover Marjory Smith weeps. Julia Glen smiles and laughs. ✦✦✦ Nov. 30, 1977 Jon’s bail is revoked. In the wake of testimony from Marjory Smith, public outrage reaches a new high: Jon is not only an accused murderer, he is an admitted adulterer. Zuraw fears Jon may skip town or be in danger. He is jailed and brought into court each morning before the jury arrives so they will not know he is in custody. ✦✦✦ Dec. 8, 1977 Jon is called to the stand. He testifies for five hours over two days. Two hundred people brave a snowstorm to fill the court. He is cool. Polite. Articulate. He “gulps for control” when he talks of the murders. Jon testifies that on the night after his family vanished — after his extremely long car ride and mishap on the bike — he wandered his house sadly before settling for the night on the living room couch. “I stayed there all night looking out the window and dozing off and waking up and hoping again if a car came on the court, or a cab or something, and it was Sandra, I could see her out the window.” ✦✦✦ Justice O’Driscoll gives his charge to the jury. “If the accused is the man, then you have before you a very cold, calculating, cold-blooded killer ... who wiped out his family ... and then tried to destroy the evidence. If the accused is not the person, then he has undoubtedly gone through hell on earth since he was arrested.”

MONDAY: Jon Rallo’s life in prison

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Columnist Susan Clairmont has won five Ontario Newspaper Awards and been nominated for a National Newspaper Award. Contact her at 905-526-3539 or [email protected].

GO TO THESPEC.COM FOR AN INTERACTIVE TIMELINE AND ADDITIONAL PHOTOGRAPHS

THE CRIME

PHOTOS FROM THE COLLECTION OF MARG LYNCH

The basement room where Jon Rallo said he slept the night his family disappeared. When he woke up, he said, they were gone.

The trunk of Jon Rallo’s Ford Maverick. The Crown said he put his family’s bodies in the trunk before driving to the St. Catharines area and dumping them in waterways.

The floor of Jon and Sandra’s bedroom after the bloodied shag carpet was ripped out and taken to the dump.

WR4

THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2008

TRUE CRIME THE VICTIMS his parents. Every day he puts flowers on the grave shared by his wife and daughter. The one with the space left for Jason. He goes to Lantana Court, mows the grass around his children’s swing set and walks through the house. He waves at neighbours but they do not speak to him.

Continued from previous page

The house is in shambles. Furniture is moved. Carpet is torn up. Back at the station, Slack asks Jon why the house is in disarray. Jon tells him about the smelly carpet and the Glanford dump. Jon’s father shows up with lawyer William Hubar. After that, Jon won’t answer any more questions. At 11:30 p.m., Jon Rallo is charged with murdering his daughter. William Towstiak of the Centre of Forensic Sciences arrives at the Lantana Court house. His trained eye spots remnants of spatters and drops and smears. “This bloody house,” he says. ✦✦✦ Detective Kodis spends two days digging through garbage at the dump. He finds a large piece of bloodied shag that matches the rug from the Rallo home. However, this is not at the Glanford dump, where Jon insists he went, but rather the Ottawa Street dump. A security guard remembers Jon with three garbage bags and two boxes. ✦✦✦ Police divers scour the waterways for Sandra and Jason. Bizarrely, they find other bodies, but not the ones they are looking for. A Hamilton man who’d disappeared on a fishing trip in the spring is found behind the wheel of his car submerged in Twelve Mile Creek. He had a heart attack. A middle-aged woman who committed suicide is also recovered.

✦✦✦ January 1977 Jon’s lawyer sends a letter to Mayor Jack MacDonald asking if Jon could return to work at City Hall. The request is refused.

POLLINGTON FAMILY PHOTO

Sandra Rallo on her wedding day in October 1966. She and Jon met and fell in love four years earlier, when she was 15 and Jon was 20.

✦✦✦ Tuesday, Aug. 24, 1976 Stephanie is buried. The service begins with an open casket, but the lid is closed midway through. Her body is turning black. POLLINGTON FAMILY PHOTO

✦✦✦ Thursday, Aug. 26, 1976 OPP searching from a helicopter spot a bundle floating in the Welland Canal. Feet are sticking out. At 12:27 p.m. an officer notes the discovery: “A green cloth zippered sleeping bag and the bag was tied with what appeared to be rope and sash cord, and the bag was open at one end with part of a green plastic garbage bag sticking out the open end. I observed a pair of feet with the toenails painted red.” The rope and sash cord are elaborately tied, “each knot related to the next knot.” There are two sleeping bags, a blue inner one, a green outer one with a label sewn into its lining. It says Jason Rallo. Sandra’s body is decomposed. Her green eyes are discoloured. There is a round hole above her right ear, bruising to her thighs, forearms and face. The tip of her nose is crushed. There is a red mark on her chest. Her tongue protrudes from between her teeth. Typical of strangulation. Doug goes back to the morgue. “Yes, I would say that is her.” Slack and Dawson bring Jon from the jail to the station at 8:50 p.m. “Jon,” says Slack, “it is my duty to inform you of the death of your wife, Sandra. It is also my duty to advise you that you are charged with two counts of murder concerning the death of

Stephanie Rallo was five years old when she died. She was enrolled in Peter Pan Nursery School and loved playing Snakes and Ladders.

POLLINGTON FAMILY PHOTO

Six-year-old Jason Rallo played T-ball and swam in his grandparents’ pool. He would have started Grade 2 a few weeks after he was killed. Sandra Rallo and John Jason Rallo.” Once again, Jon appears upset. But he does not cry. ✦✦✦ Tuesday, Aug. 31, 1976 Sandra is buried beside her daughter. Men who were ushers at her wedding are her pall bearers. ✦✦✦ Late October 1976 Police call off the search for Jason.

✦✦✦ Christmas Eve 1976 A back door at Central police station opens. A man and his lawyer slip into the chill. Jon Rallo has been released on $100,000 bail. He has undergone 58 days of psychiatric tests — including sessions with truth serum — at the Clarke Institute in Toronto. Doctors have deemed him mentally fit. A judge has deemed him fit for bail. For the next year, Jon lives with

✦✦✦ November 1977 It is the biggest Hamilton trial since Evelyn Dick took the stand. Jon Rallo faces three counts of first-degree murder. The courtroom is packed, people sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, holding overcoats and brown lunch bags in their laps. Others line up down the hall, hoping to nab a seat should anyone leave. A team of Hamilton Spectator reporters is here, along with the national press. The Crown will call 48 witnesses. Nearly 150 exhibits will be introduced. A jury of nine men and three women is chosen for the Rallo trial: a union official, a typist, two truck drivers, a secretary, three factory workers, a housewife, a foreman, a college student and a supervisor. ✦✦✦ Nov. 23, 1977 Crown attorney Anton Zuraw opens his case in front of Justice John O’Driscoll. Decades later, in his own judge’s chambers at the John Sopinka Courthouse, Zuraw will recall the oddness of prosecuting such a big case in such a small city. He was the same age as Rallo. Had a son the same age as Stephanie. He had a passing acquaintance with Sandra, from her law office jobs. He worked several coroner’s inquests with Detective Joe Rallo, Jon’s cousin. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you are here, and have been chosen, a panel of 12, to determine the guilt or innocence of Jon Rallo. He is charged with the murder of his wife, his son and his daughter ... You will hear all about the finding of the bodies, how they were packaged and anchors placed in those packages and how they were ultimately found in their watery graves.” The trial lasts 16 days. ✦✦✦ Hamilton lawyers had a unique reputation in 1977 for complete disclosure. There were no secrets kept by defence and Crown. But there were things the jury never heard. The Rallo jury never heard about Jon’s bondage pornography. Never knew of the link between it and the knots binding

Sandra’s corpse. And it never heard that Jon groped his sister-in-law when she tried to comfort him. Janice says she signed a written statement about the alleged sexual assault at the time it happened. And she was told back then that police had discovered her brother-in-law’s stash of pornography when they searched his home. Zuraw — who still will not talk of those two issues — decided before the trial that they might muddy the legal waters and could be grounds for an appeal. He needed to make all the pieces fit: “Don’t leave anything tangled.” And he needed to be fair: “This was not trial by ambush. Rallo had the opportunity to clearly get his story out.” ✦✦✦ Lawyer Dennis Roy and PI Ron Arnold are called to testify. Neighbours give their accounts. Cops refer to their notebooks. The boy who found Steph is nervous. Doug Pollington is angry. Marg is sad. Lover Marjory Smith weeps. Julia Glen smiles and laughs. ✦✦✦ Nov. 30, 1977 Jon’s bail is revoked. In the wake of testimony from Marjory Smith, public outrage reaches a new high: Jon is not only an accused murderer, he is an admitted adulterer. Zuraw fears Jon may skip town or be in danger. He is jailed and brought into court each morning before the jury arrives so they will not know he is in custody. ✦✦✦ Dec. 8, 1977 Jon is called to the stand. He testifies for five hours over two days. Two hundred people brave a snowstorm to fill the court. He is cool. Polite. Articulate. He “gulps for control” when he talks of the murders. Jon testifies that on the night after his family vanished — after his extremely long car ride and mishap on the bike — he wandered his house sadly before settling for the night on the living room couch. “I stayed there all night looking out the window and dozing off and waking up and hoping again if a car came on the court, or a cab or something, and it was Sandra, I could see her out the window.” ✦✦✦ Justice O’Driscoll gives his charge to the jury. “If the accused is the man, then you have before you a very cold, calculating, cold-blooded killer ... who wiped out his family ... and then tried to destroy the evidence. If the accused is not the person, then he has undoubtedly gone through hell on earth since he was arrested.”

MONDAY: Jon Rallo’s life in prison

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Columnist Susan Clairmont has won five Ontario Newspaper Awards and been nominated for a National Newspaper Award. Contact her at 905-526-3539 or [email protected].

GO TO THESPEC.COM FOR AN INTERACTIVE TIMELINE AND ADDITIONAL PHOTOGRAPHS

THE CRIME

PHOTOS FROM THE COLLECTION OF MARG LYNCH

The basement room where Jon Rallo said he slept the night his family disappeared. When he woke up, he said, they were gone.

The trunk of Jon Rallo’s Ford Maverick. The Crown said he put his family’s bodies in the trunk before driving to the St. Catharines area and dumping them in waterways.

The floor of Jon and Sandra’s bedroom after the bloodied shag carpet was ripped out and taken to the dump.

A12

THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2008

TRUE CRIME

SECRETS

Jon Rallo revealed: Never-before-heard details from his murder trial and letters from prison SECOND OF THREE PARTS ❚ BY SUSAN CLAIRMONT ❚ THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR

No tears, no admission of guilt Dec. 14, 1977, 9:32 p.m. t is Jon Rallo’s moment of reckoning. His wife is dead. And his small daughter. His young son, too, though his body has not been found. Did this man kill his entire family? Strangle and suffocate them in their nightclothes in their own home? Wrap their naked bodies in garbage bags and keep them in the basement for a day before dumping them in deep water? Or, as he claims, was it someone else? A mysterious lawyer who lured Sandra and the children away with promises of wealth? The jury enters the courtroom. It has been deliberating six hours. Jon sits silently. Legs crossed, hands clasped in his lap. He wears a dark blue suit. Jury foreman Thomas Prince reads the verdicts. On the count of first-degree murder for the death of Stephanie Rallo: Guilty. On the count of first-degree murder for the death of Sandra Rallo: Guilty. On the count of first-degree murder for the death of Jason Rallo: Guilty. Margaret Pollington, Sandra’s mother, collapses in tears. Her husband, Doug, comforts her. Their remaining daughter, Janice, weeps. Mr. Rallo? Do you have anything to say? Jon stands, clenches the rail of the prisoner’s box. Pauses. Licks his lips. Bows his head. Then looks directly at the judge. “Well, my Lord, in your charge to the jury you said the past 16 months has been hell for me. What has kept my head above the water is that I know I did not do it. But more importantly, I know Sandra knows I did not do it. Stephanie knows I did not do it and Jason, wherever he may be, knows I did not do it. “That is all, my Lord.”

I

HAMILTON SPECTATOR FILE PHOTO

Sandra Rallo’s parents, Margaret and Doug Pollington, stand outside the old Hamilton courthouse after the faint hope parole hearing for Jon Rallo in November 1992. Rallo was convicted 15 years earlier of killing Sandra, his 29-year-old wife, and their children, Jason, 6, and Stephanie, 5. Thompson was the lead investigator on the murders. He and his wife, Joyce, have become close with the Pollingtons, even going with them to a seance in the hope of learning where Jason is. (About that seance, which the Spec reported on, Jon writes: “What a farce, with a capital F. I guess it was a slow news day. I’m always good for a line or two on those days.”) That same question brings Thompson to Jon now. Jon says he doesn’t know where his son is. A dozen years later, Thompson will try again, waiting for Jon in a room at the Beaver Creek Institution in Gravenhurst. “He comes in, with a cookie in each hand, doesn’t even sit down. Just shrugs and walks away.”

✦✦✦ Each conviction carries a sentence of life imprisonment without eligibility for parole for 25 years. To be served concurrently. Just one month before Jon killed his family, Canada abolished the death penalty. ✦✦✦ Jon stays at the Barton Street jail over the holidays. He is in isolation because he is so hated by other inmates. They send him a Christmas card signed with the names of his slain wife and children. ✦✦✦ Christmas Day, 1977 Jon begins a surprising correspondence that will last a decade. He hates The Hamilton Spectator. Loathes the coverage it has given his case from the moment he was arrested. And yet, he reads it every day. So when he gets his first letter, days after his conviction, from columnist Marguerite Lynch, he recognizes her name. She covered his trial. Now she wants to write a book. Marg introduces herself by telling Jon they both grew up on Barton Street West. “Dear Mrs. Lynch,” Jon replies in precise handwriting. “While I don’t remember you personally, I do have fond memories of your brother, sister ... Now, including you, I know of four people who are proposing just that (to write a book) ... Needless to say, I’m also planning a book, except that mine will include additional periods of my life rather than just the trial. “I apologize for writing to you in pencil but that is all that regulations allow at present.” ✦✦✦ Thirty days after he is found guilty, Jon files an appeal. He claims the trial judge made errors in law and a blood analyst who testified did not qualify as an expert.

PHOTO FROM THE COLLECTION OF MARG LYNCH

A police photo of Jon Rallo taken the night he was arrested for his daughter’s murder in August 1976. ✦✦✦ Feb. 13, 1978 A van arrives at Kingston Penitentiary. There are 13 prisoners inside. One of them is Jon. He is put in protective custody. ✦✦✦ The new arrival from Hamilton has strong clerical skills from his days as a City Hall manager. He is put to work in the prison office for five hours a day. Jon starts a correspondence course from Queen’s University to earn a BA in political science. He teaches himself to type — ironic, because the poorly typed Dear Jon note he tried to pass off as his wife’s work was key evidence at his trial. He whips through bestsellers and subscribes to several business magazines and newspapers. He learns to play bridge, which he finds “most fascinating.” “I’m keeping well,” he writes, “doing lots of running trying to keep my waistline relatively slim

considering all the bread I’m eating. The meals aren’t to my liking and so I’m filling up on bread and peanut butter, which I’m allowed to buy through the canteen. As a result I’m getting a flotation collar around my waist like you wouldn’t believe.” He starts to pen his autobiography. Ninety pages in, he gives up. ✦✦✦ Nov. 23, 1978 The Ontario Court of Appeal upholds Jon’s conviction. “I was absolutely astounded that the appeal was dismissed so quickly since everyone was optimistic about the ‘points scored,’ on the first day of the hearing ... I intend to exhaust every avenue available to me.” In 1980, the Supreme Court of Canada also turns down his appeal. ✦✦✦ Three days after the Ontario appeal court decision, Inspector Norm Thompson pays Jon a visit.

✦✦✦ It is nearing Jon’s second Christmas in prison. He is still putting off meeting with Marg, who writes a humour column focusing on her young family. “I would suggest that we wait until after the holidays are over with,” he writes, “as I recall this next month and a half or so are busy times for parents with young children.” He asks her not to contact his parents until the new year because “contrary to what you might read in the paper, there are two sets of grandparents who loved the children and Sandra very much and have suffered a tragic loss, and had a couple of dismal Christmas seasons, and for some of us, all is not over yet. “I enjoy your weekly columns, but sometimes you strike a raw nerve when you start talking about ... your babies’ early days and all those other memories ... Sometimes Marg, I think that’s all I have left.” ✦✦✦ Jon becomes more enthusiastic about Marg’s book. “I have come to the conclusion that I must do something soon insofar as telling my side of the story. I’m tired of being the heavy while others are smelling like roses. “I’ll have lots to say about lots of things to lots of people ... I want a book written Marg and I’d love you to do it but I want and need some assurances ... While I realize it’s your book, I honestly think I can contribute an awful lot in certain areas ... “As far as putting you on to a close relative, I didn’t realize you were going to include my early life. I’m kind of young for a life story, aren’t I?”

✦✦✦ May 1979 Marg writes of a new racquet club at Limeridge and Upper Wellington. Just before the murders, Jon, his father-in-law and a neighbour owned that corner and planned to build their own racquet club. The business deal came up at the trial, leaving open the possibility Jon didn’t divorce his wife for fear his father-inlaw would back out of the deal. “I’m pleased that the racquet club is the success I thought it would be,” he writes back. “If I was speaking to my two former business partners I’d let them know what we missed out on.” ✦✦✦ July 1980 Jon sees a wire photo in The Spectator of a boy from Massachusetts riding a bike. He is certain it is Jason. The Spectator tracks down the boy’s mother and debunks the theory. ✦✦✦ Jon agrees to an interview. But it is not with Marg. Instead it is with her colleague, court reporter Dulce Waller. She meets Jon in late 1980 in the Kingston Pen’s office building. He brings a thick file of documents and newspaper clippings. He is not convinced his wife is dead, because the body identified as Sandra’s was decomposed when it came out of the Welland Canal. He is sure Jason is alive because his body has never been found. He talks of rumours regarding Jason. Stories about Jon being a secret Crown witness at a Mafia murder trial. His wife and daughter being killed and Jason kidnapped and taken to Italy to prevent him from testifying. Some of Jon’s friends and family tell The Spectator those rumours were started by Jon while he was in jail. “I didn’t do it,” he tells Waller. “I just keep hoping and praying something will come up to prove me right. “I guess until Jason turns up alive or dead I won’t be convinced he’s not alive somewhere and I won’t ever be convinced that’s Sandra in the ground in view of what happened in the identification of Jason.” ✦✦✦ What happened in the identification of Jason was unthinkable. In April 1977 — while Jon was out on bail — a boy’s skeleton was found in Springwater Park near Barrie. Continued on next page

THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2008

A13

TRUE CRIME ABOUT THE AUTHOR Columnist Susan Clairmont has won five Ontario Newspaper Awards and been nominated for a National Newspaper Award. Contact her at 905-526-3539 or [email protected]. Continued from previous page

A pathologist used dental records and confirmed the child was Jason. The minister who baptized Jason performed the funeral as the boy was laid to rest with his mother and sister. It was three months before anyone realized the mistake. An RCMP investigation in Alberta into the disappearance of another little boy led detectives to Springwater. The body was exhumed. The skull sent to a forensic dentist in Connecticut. The error was confirmed. The boy was Jaime Shearer, 5. He had disappeared a year earlier after he and his mom went to Toronto with a man who escaped from a Florida prison. Jaime’s mom had since committed suicide. Doug and Marg Pollington, Sandra’s parents, had visited the grave every week. Jon’s bail conditions prevented him from attending the funeral. But he sent word to the funeral home that there shouldn’t be a procession for the boy. Perhaps he knew it wasn’t his son. ✦✦✦ Jon meets a woman. They are introduced in 1979. She is from the Toronto area. They begin dating while Jon is on family visits. She is identified to prison officials as a family friend. By 1992, the couple has had four private visits, spending 72 hours at a time in a trailer on prison grounds. In 1997, Jon proposes. Neither Jon nor parole officers inform the National Parole Board he is in a relationship. It isn’t until there is a passing reference to Jon’s girlfriend in a psychological report that the board learns the truth. In 2000, the board rebukes Jon and the Correctional Service of Canada for being deceptive. In May 2005, the 26-year romance ends. ✦✦✦ In November 1983, Jon transfers to medium-security Warkworth Penitentiary near Campbellford. He works in the institute’s engineering department earning $6.30 a day. He is on the executive of the Life Servers Group, is president of the Italian Heritage Club, works on a BA from the University of Waterloo (paid for by the government) and tends a vegetable garden. He co-authors a manual on managing anger and violence. Jon attends meetings for lifers involved in domestic violence. He does not actively participate. He later tells a parole board he could not relate to the issue. ✦✦✦ By 1986, Jon is going out into the community on escorted temporary absences. Some of those are used to return to Hamilton to celebrate holidays with his parents and cousins. An unarmed male guard stays “in sight and sound” of him. The Pollingtons are not told of these visits. It isn’t until five years later, when people begin telling them they have seen Jon in Hamilton, that they become aware. In February 1990, Jon transfers to Beaver Creek Institution, a minimum-security facility in Gravenhurst. He is, like all wellbehaved inmates, “cascading” down the security levels. ✦✦✦ Nov. 16, 1987 Jon writes his last letter to Marg. He thinks it best to end communication while he tries for early parole. “I have purposely kept a low profile all these years ... I don’t want anything to jeopardize my appearance before the Parole Board ... the system is very sensitive to public opinion. “Secondly I feel it serves no purpose in requiring my parents and family to have to go through

all they did 11 long years ago, bringing up all the old wounds and heartbreak ... and in the end it will change nothing except ... to perhaps set me back for a period of time ... Many books have been written several years after the fact, two that come to mind are projects on both Steven Truscott and Evelyn Dick, both done some 20 years later ... Don’t you think the book should include how all this turns out?” His last letter is signed: “Yours very truly, Jon Rallo.” ✦✦✦ When Parliament did away with capital punishment, it quietly introduced the “faint hope” clause. Jon is one of the first inmates in Canada to apply. It allows lifers to ask a jury to review their automatic 25-year sentence after 15 years. Jon reaches that mark in July 1992. The review considers an inmate’s character, conduct in jail and crime. Jon’s crime was heinous. Yet he is a “virtually perfect institutional citizen,” as one parole officer says. The review takes place in Hamilton that November. Jon is in isolation during the hearing because “Hamilton’s general dislike of Jon Rallo extends into the Barton Street jail,” his lawyer says. Psychiatric reports introduced at the hearing show Jon is no danger to himself or others. In the end, the jury unanimously rejects Jon’s chance of early parole. Jon shows no emotion. ✦✦✦ In March 1993, the Pollingtons see Jon for the first time in 16 years. In keeping with policy, he’d been transferred back to the medium-security Warkworth before his faint hope hearing. Now he has a parole hearing to determine if his escorted temporary absences, or ETAs, will continue. Thanks to the new Corrections and Conditional Release Act, observers are now allowed. The Pollingtons sit within arm’s reach of Jon in a prison chapel while case managers tell the panel he is not a security risk. A psychiatrist reports Jon continues “to present in an emotionally flat and deliberate manner.” This panel has a concern that will be echoed by others for the next 15 years: “It is difficult to deal with, because of the horror of the offence and your maintaining of innocence.” Jon makes a speech he will go on to repeat at other hearings: “Not a day goes by when I don’t think about my children and wonder what they would have accomplished by now. Birthdays, wedding anniversaries, Christmases are hard ... I don’t know what happened. I have tried to figure out how it happened, who did it, but I just don’t know.” It is the only time Jon’s parents speak publicly. Jack Rallo addresses the panel: “We lost a beautiful daughterin-law and two grandchildren and we can never bring them back. I can understand how Sandra’s parents feel. We feel the same way but we can never change it. We’re in our mid-70s and it’s a terrible thing to see our only son in prison. The only thing we can look forward to is to spend a few hours away with our son.” Jon is allowed to continue his ETAs. ✦✦✦ Doug and Marg Pollington become two of the country’s most powerful advocates for victims’ rights. They work with Priscilla de Villiers and her CAVEAT advocacy group to try to repeal the faint hope clause. They support the French and Mahaffy families during the Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka trials. “We won’t stop agitating, writing, working to change the laws so people like him (Jon) have to spend the rest of their lives in prison,” Doug says. ✦✦✦ Jon returns to Beaver Creek.

He cooks his own meals, takes long walks, joins Toastmasters and is on a work crew doing manual labour in the community. He attends church in Gravenhurst. He visits Hamilton regularly. Parole hearings take place every two years, beginning in 2000. For the first one, Jon applies for both unescorted temporary absences, known as UTAs, and day parole. He wants to move to a halfway house in Peterborough, but a citizens’ advisory group rejects him because of his lack of remorse. His backup plan is to return to Hamilton. The panel denies his UTAs. “Despite almost 24 years of incarceration, the board can distinguish no measurable, positive change in your risk of reoffending.” Jon is eligible for full parole July 26, 2002, and asks again for UTAs and day parole. Again he is turned down. “The board continues to be struck by your continued denial ... despite the overwhelming circumstantial and forensic evidence that supports a finding of guilt.” By his June 2004 hearing, he is one of Canada’s longest-serving inmates. He is denied UTAs. The board says he is “emotionally detached” and “a certain element of emotional detachment would almost certainly have to exist during the murders of your family and the disposal of their bodies ... Nothing has really changed in your personality.” The next hearing is September 2006. Jon applies to the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted, asking the group that fought to exonerate Guy Paul Morin, David Milgaard, Donald Marshall Jr. and Steven Truscott to adopt his case. He never supplies his legal documents, so his application is dismissed. Again he is denied full and day parole. Two of the panel’s three members reject his UTA application, citing his denials and lack of emotion. Jon files an appeal and gets a new hearing. That year, 450 federal prisoners appeal parole board decisions. Just 15 appeals — including Jon’s — result in new hearings or the removal of a condition.

FROM THE COLLECTION OF MARG LYNCH

Jon Rallo and late Spectator columnist Marguerite Lynch exchanged letters for a decade, starting shortly after he was convicted in 1977. Lynch was writing a book about Rallo. He broke off contact in 1987.

✦✦✦ June 27, 2007 Jon does something at this hearing he has never done publicly in three decades. He weeps. Tears come when Jon speaks of the year after the murders, when he was on bail and visiting the home where his family died. “I’d go there and cut the grass ... I’d go in to that house and walk from room to room. I missed everybody and I missed everything ... Beautiful kids ... Beautiful wife. It’s been difficult ... I know there’s been psychological reports about a lack of emotion ... I’d just sit in that house and really break down. I’d walk from room to room. All the children’s stuff was there. I thought: Be strong ... I guess being strong means showing no emotion.” He is granted UTAs. He will use them to scout out Sudbury, where he wants to live. This hearing is monumental in another way, too. It is the first time Doug and Marg Pollington — aged and unwell — are unable to attend. ✦✦✦ Aug. 26, 2008 Jon gets out after nearly 32 years in prison. The triple murderer is granted day parole. He has not confessed. He has not revealed what he did with Jason. And now, he is free.

TOMORROW: Jon Rallo on parole in Sudbury

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City eyes smoke ban for public housing

DAMAGE CONTROL In the U.S., president-elect Barack Obama named his crisis team and promises to push for a $700-billion stimulus package. Britain is spending $37 billion to jump-start its economy. Will our PM take action sooner rather than later if Canada continues to lose ground?

BY EMMA REILLY

A proposal to ban smoking in Hamilton’s public housing is stirring debate about the right to smoke in the privacy of your home versus the right to clean air. The city is preparing a report on banning smoking in all public housing buildings, as well as beaches and parks. The report is expected in June 2009. The proposed ban has raised questions about whether prohibiting smoking in private homes could be a violation of human rights. John Fraser, a program director at the Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation in Toronto, said because people with lower incomes are overrepresented in the smoking population, imposing the ban could be construed as discrimination against low-income families. “Social tenants don’t have a choice to be there,” he said. “They’re living there because they don’t have a lot of other options.” But several tenants in public housing say they would support a city-sanctioned ban on smoking in their homes. Tracy Woods, a longtime smoker who has lived in public housing with her two children for 13 years, said she agrees with the move. She says she currently smokes in her home, but only away from her kids. “Yes, it’s my right, but at the same time, it’s not your right when you’re polluting your kids and the people around you.” Woods also has a personal stake in the issue. Her husband, John, who also smoked, died from lung cancer in February. He was 37. Maria Rose, who has lived in a city-owned house on the Mountain for the past three years, said she also supports the ban. Rose is also a smoker, though she already abides by a strict “no smoking in the house” policy.

United States ❚ unveils team of economic advisers ❚ urges Congress to pass a costly, job-creating stimulus bill as quickly as possible ❚ orders advisers to craft package to create or protect 2.5 million jobs ❚ vows to support bailout commitments of current administration

‘We need a recovery plan for both Wall Street and Main Street. A plan that stabilizes our financial system and gets credit flowing again, while at the same time addressing our growing foreclosure crisis, helping our struggling auto industry and creating and saving 2.5 million jobs.’ — U.S. president-elect Barack Obama

Britain ❚ $37-billion stimulus plan ❚ cuts sales tax by 2.5 percentage points ❚ increases taxes for the rich ❚ speeds up $5.6 billion in public works spending ‘We have seen in previous recessions how a failure to take action at the start of the downturn has increased both the length and depth of the recession. To fail to act now would be not only a failure of economic policy, but a failure of leadership.’ — British Prime Minister Gordon Brown

Canada ❚ no new stimulus package in Thursday’s economic statement ❚ considers moving up billions in infrastructure spending before February budget ❚ expected to ease pension requirements for cash-strapped firms ❚ plans more room for seniors to draw from their registered retirement plans ‘The most recent private-sector forecasts suggest the strong possibility of a technical recession … Yes, I am surprised at this.’ — Prime Minister Stephen Harper (in Peru Sunday)

WHAT THE LEADERS ARE SAYING Obama’s new team Economic advisers tapped to start recovery efforts now A12 British ‘shock treatment’ Tax hikes for rich, more government borrowing A12 Canada’s plan? Flaherty says no to new measures, but package still possible A13 MORE ON THE ECONOMIC FRONT The Spectator’s view Act now A10 Deflation Is it coming to Canada? A13 Consumers Confidence plummets A14 No buying Happy without the mall Go 6

Continued on A3

City buys strip club

SECRETS

Plans to turn Maxim’s into public housing

JON RALLO REVEALED: A killer tastes freedom but a devastated family never gets closure. A6-7

The city says it is the proud new owner of a downtown strip joint. CityHousing penned a deal last week to buy Maxim’s with a longterm plan of converting the Gore Park club into public housing. “This is a strategic move,” said Councillor Brian McHattie, president of CityHousing Hamilton. He said the purchase serves a dual purpose of adding housing to the core, while also helping to clean up the downtown’s image. The property is beside the Gore Building, a new subsidized apartment built by the city. In a release, the city said the deal will close next month. That’s news to Dan Charnicovsky, Maxim’s registered owner, who says he also owns the King Street building. Though the property is for sale, the Windsor man says there’s no deal on the table.

Inside today

JOHN PACKMAN, SPECIAL TO THE SPECTATOR

Maxim’s owner denies a sale, saying there’s no deal on the table. “I haven’t sold it to anyone. I don’t know what’s going on,” he said last night. Chris Murray, the city’s director of housing, said he can’t discuss confidential details of the deal, but said the city plans to shut down the strip club. “That business is done.” The city hopes to find a new ten-

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ant to cover operating expenses. Eventually, Murray said, there’s plans for housing, including an option for subsidized units for artists. Murray declined to reveal the purchase price, saying it was “reasonable.” Earlier this year, council approved $1 million for CityHousing to buy a property in the core. The strip club, formerly known as Chez M and Bannisters, is a “sad remnant of the downtown’s past era of decline,” said Councillor Bob Bratina. Maxim’s owner has not applied to transfer the strip club’s licence to another location. A new strip club could not open downtown or within 500 metres of a residential neighbourhood. The closure will leave only one operating strip joint in Hamilton. [email protected] 905-526-3299

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THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2008

TRUE CRIME

SECRETS

Jon Rallo revealed: Never-before-heard details from his murder trial and letters from prison THIRD OF THREE PARTS ❚ BY SUSAN CLAIRMONT ❚ THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR

RON ALBERTSON, THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR

Jon Rallo leaves the parole office in Sudbury last month. The Hamilton man who killed his wife and children in 1976 moved to Sudbury after he was granted day parole in August.

A killer finally tastes freedom SUDBURY Thursday, Oct. 23, 2008 he back door of the halfway house opens and Jon Rallo steps into the cold. Hunching his shoulders against the wind, he shoves his hands deep into his jacket pockets and sets off at a brisk pace. In an instant, he merges with the flow of early morning pedestrians rushing to get to their downtown jobs. He walks with them past a funeral home, a blood bank, a coffee shop. In just two blocks he reaches his destination. A large, nondescript government building on Lisgar Street. He heads inside and up to the third floor where he sits, alone, in the waiting room of the Correctional Service of Canada office. He has a meeting with his parole officer. They will talk about how he is adjusting to life on the outside.

He even went to a retirement home to inquire about getting on the waiting list. Jon has more money than most lifers getting out of prison. His pension brings in about $1,200 a month, plus he has some savings. The halfway house is a pleasant, three-storey home with an ornate wrought iron railing up the front steps. It sits in the shadow of the city’s water tower and between the downtown core and a quiet residential neighbourhood. On a sunny autumn afternoon, a woman walks past pushing two young children in a stroller.

T

✦✦✦ Jon was granted day parole on Aug. 26, 2008, 32 years after murdering his wife and two small children in a tidy Hamilton bungalow. Though considered a model prisoner, he was incarcerated longer than most killers in Canada. He was kept in because he wouldn’t admit his guilt. He wouldn’t show remorse. He wouldn’t acknowledge his marriage was anything less than perfect. And he wouldn’t tell anybody where he put his son’s body. But even Jon Rallo can’t stay locked up forever. ✦✦✦ His wife Sandra would be 61 years old now. Their son Jason would be 39. Stephanie, their daughter, would be 37. ✦✦✦ In just a few days, Nov. 30, Jon will celebrate his 66th birthday. Perhaps he will come home to Hamilton, where his parents still live. Jack and Dorothea Rallo are now in their 90s. His parole conditions say he must live at the Sudbury halfway house on weekdays. During the day he can go out into the community as he pleases, so long as

RON ALBERTSON, THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR

Jon Rallo’s new home: a halfway house on Larch Street in Sudbury operated by the St. Leonard’s Society.

he is back in the house overnight. On weekends, though, he can leave Sudbury. He can come to Hamilton. He was here in June for his parents’ 67th wedding anniversary. Now he can come without an escort. Jon is an only child, but he has a large extended family and they often get together to see him when he is in town. The parole board is supposed to call Sandra’s family to warn them when Jon is coming here. Her parents, Margaret and Doug Pollington, her sister Janice and brother David all live in the area. Jon is not to have any contact with them. A few times over the years, Jon has told parole panels he planned to return to Hamilton once he was out. “The board was quite surprised to see such a request,” which shows “your apparent lack of consideration and understanding with respect to how others view your crime and your risk.” It wasn’t until his August

hearing, when he was granted permission to move to Sudbury, that Jon assured the panel he had abandoned any hope of permanently returning to Hamilton. “I have a lot of mixed feelings about Hamilton,” he said. “I was born and raised there. I worked for the city. A lot of good memories. A lot of bad memories.” ✦✦✦ The meeting with the parole officer lasts 20 minutes. Jon emerges onto the sidewalk and hesitates a moment as he looks over some documents in his hand. If he was to turn to his right and walk a block, he would come to Sudbury Police headquarters. They know who Jon Rallo is. “Am I happy he’s in our community? Not particularly,” says Chief Ian Davidson. “He’s convicted of some absolutely horrendous acts. People are not easily going to forgive or forget.” The Sudbury police service told the National Parole Board it opposed Jon’s release into its community because of his “denial stance.” But the board went ahead

and did it anyway. The Larch Half Way House of Sudbury, a private facility on Larch Street operated by the St. Leonard’s Society, said it would take Jon and that was good enough. Jon has stayed at the house before. In 2002, he did a two-month work placement in Sudbury. He liked it there. He went to church, the grocery store, the mall. He thought he might move there and earn a living as a real estate developer. Do some volunteer work. Go fishing, tend a garden, get a YMCA membership. Learn French. “I would see the sights of the city,” he told a parole board member. “I’d keep myself busy. I hope you can appreciate, sir, I have a lot of catching up to do.” He went back again several times this year on unescorted temporary absences. He used his visits to prepare for starting a life there. He checked out the library, had dinner at a restaurant with another parolee, and scouted out the arena where the Sudbury Wolves play their hockey games.

✦✦✦ Jon turns left and heads to the shopping mall. He strides through the food court, where clusters of men his age sit and talk and sip coffee. He passes stores that are just opening for the day. He stops at a kiosk. Smiles and chats to the woman who works there. Buys a lottery ticket. ✦✦✦ Jon’s parole conditions require him to have psychological counselling to help him transition into the community. And he must report any relationship with a woman to his parole officer. In August, Jon told the parole board he is not currently seeing anyone. ✦✦✦ Jason has never been found. Over the years, there have been moments of hope, always followed by disappointment. There was a mysterious phone call made to then Hamilton police superintendent George Frid’s home telling divers to search a certain area of Jordan Harbour. Then there were inconclusive DNA tests done on bones and hair found in the Niagara River. A psychic from Niagara-onthe-Lake directed police divers to search a section of the Welland Canal. Bones found in a green garbage bag were eventually identified as animal remains. Continued on next page

THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2008

A7

TRUE CRIME

POLLINGTON FAMILY PHOTO

Stephanie and Jason Rallo stand on the front lawn of their home on Lantana Court, Hamilton.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Columnist Susan Clairmont has won five Ontario Newspaper Awards and been nominated for a National Newspaper Award. Contact her at 905-526-3539 or [email protected].

Continued from previous page

And most devastating, another young murder victim was buried by the Pollingtons — before they realized he was not their grandson. The detectives who investigated the case have their theories. Norm Thompson believes Jason’s remains are mired in mud at the bottom of Twelve Mile Creek, where his sister was found. Bob Slack thinks the boy’s body was swept out to Lake Ontario and will never be found. There is still an empty spot in the grave shared by Stephanie and Sandra. ✦✦✦ Jon leaves the mall and starts to walk. He heads up a hilly street, past an apartment building, a Catholic high school. The sidewalk is deep with newly fallen leaves and Jon takes a playful kick at them as he passes through. His stride is long and fast. He is, after years of leading a prison work crew, in excellent health. He dashes across a street busy with traffic and construction. Bounds up the steps of a store. The Salvation Army thrift shop. ✦✦✦ There have been only 90 murder convictions in Canada where a body was never found. One of those convicted is Jon Rallo. Australian author Steve Banic is working on a book about “nobody” murder trials. He has collected data from all over the

world, from the fifth century BC to now. A total of 2,100 cases with another 150 still before the courts. Canada ranks fourth in the world for no-body cases, behind the U.S. (1,254), the U.K. (154) and Australia (124). By province, the greatest number is in British Columbia, with 25. Ontario is next with 20. At the bottom of the list is Newfoundland, which has one. Worldwide, there is a spike in no-body cases during the month of July. Banic says that’s because lakes and rivers have thawed and become dumping grounds for bodies. In the U.S., California and Florida were the states with the most no-body cases. “Though California and Florida are surrounded by ocean ... my research will be interesting to see how many of the ... cases actually result in an offender disposing of a body at sea.” Seldom, according to Banic, does a murderer ever reveal the location of a body after being convicted in a no-body trial. He knows of fewer than 30 cases. “Depending on a number of factors, such as guilt, sentencing, etc., the offender will usually reveal the location if it would potentially result in a lesser sentence or punishment.” The most common ground of appeal on a case like this is to argue the “corpus delicti” principle, Banic says. The problem is, a lot of criminals and their lawyers don’t understand it. It does not, as many believe, mean that not having a body is grounds for appeal. Rather, the Latin term

POLLINGTON FAMILY PHOTO

Jason and Stephanie Rallo on a family outing with their mother, Sandra. Jon Rallo was convicted of killing all three of them a few years after this photo was taken.

refers to the “body” of evidence that shows an alleged crime has occurred. There must be a crime in order to have a conviction. ✦✦✦ Jon has always been known as a sharp dresser. Classmates at Cathedral High School say his fancy clothes made him stick out from the rest. His Grade 10 class photo shows a sea of boys mostly dressed in cardigans and plaid shirts. And then there’s Jon in a suit jacket, complete with a puff in his pocket. In the days immediately following the murders, Jon’s friends and family were shocked at his dishevelled appearance, so different from his usual wellgroomed look. During his trial, Spectator reporters devoted a paragraph or two every day to describing Jon’s attire: A grey knit suit. A salt-andpepper suit. A sand-coloured three-piece suit, a dark brown tie and a white shirt splashed with brown polka dots. A tweed suit, five-button vest, white flecked shirt and striped tie. Even now, Jon dresses as well as his limited resources will allow. He goes toward the back of the Salvation Army thrift shop. Begins to carefully peruse the racks. He is shopping for clothes. ✦✦✦ Marguerite Lynch’s book was never published. The Spectator columnist covered Jon’s trial and maintained a 10-year correspondence with him. “It became very bothersome to me to think, ‘This is my pen pal,’ ” Marg once said. Her 250-page manuscript led readers to the conclusion that Jon Rallo was guilty. But publishers told her they needed a new hook. A reason for people to read it. Maybe, they said, she should try again when

Jason is found. Or when Jon gets out of prison. Marg died of cancer in May 2006. ✦✦✦ Justice Anton Zuraw says it was one of the most fascinating cases he has been involved with. He was the acting Crown attorney who won three first-degree murder convictions against Jon Rallo. “This was a case that had no smoking gun, no eyewitnesses, no confession,” he recalls. “The fact that there were two young children added empathy. And the mystery of the missing body.” For 32 years, Jon has stuck to his story that someone else did it. That a rich lawyer lured Sandra and the children away and killed them. Could Jon Rallo be innocent? “I am unaware of any corroboration of any of Mr. Rallo’s tale,” Zuraw says. ✦✦✦ “Mr. Rallo?” He turns and flashes a broad smile. “Yes?” he says. “I’m Susan Clairmont from The Hamilton Spectator. I’m writing a story about you and wanted to give you a chance to talk.” The smile vanishes. He turns away. Rifles through the rack of thrift shop clothes so fast items fall to the floor. “I have nothing to say,” he responds, his voice measured. “It’s a story about your life. About what you’ve done ... It’s a large story.” “It always is with you people.” He begins to walk away. “How are things going for you in Sudbury?” He stops. Turns. “I have nothing to say to you, Susan.” He immediately rushes back to the halfway house. ✦✦✦ In February, Jon will be eligible

for full parole. About a month before that, the National Parole Board will get a report on how he is doing on day parole. And then Jon can have a hearing and ask to leave the halfway house and live on his own in the community. But chances are, that won’t happen. Not yet. Lifers usually stay on day parole for a year or more, says Carol Sparling of the National Parole Board. They have a big adjustment to make. Jon will have a full parole hearing once every two years. He can stay on day parole for an indefinite period of time. It’s not uncommon for lifers to live in a halfway house for seven or eight years. Sometimes that is because “the offender hasn’t got the means to live on their own.” And sometimes it’s because they have had minor violations of their conditions. ✦✦✦ Marg and Doug Pollington have always said that, before they die, they want to be able to lay Jason to rest with his mother and sister. They are on in years now. Unwell. They have lived to see the man who murdered their daughter and grandchildren gain his freedom. But they still have not buried their grandson. “To this day, the constant, ever-growing fear exists in our minds that the body of that beautiful young boy will never be found,” Marg once said. “When I cannot sleep, I come downstairs and look out my window and wonder where Jason is. “(Jon) had a car and a suitcase. If he wasn’t happy, all he had to do was leave.” Doug, the tough-as-nails fire chief who went to the morgue to identify Stephanie and then went back again a few days later to identify Sandra, has forever been haunted by what he saw. “You see that and then you imagine her the day she was born.”

RON ALBERTSON, THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR

Jon Rallo crosses a street in Sudbury. The Sudbury police service opposed his move to the community because he continued to deny that he murdered his family.

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