Adam Strong was a man in his forties living alone in Oshawa, Ontario, when Durham Regional Police arrested him in December 2017. He was not a suspect in anything until that month. Within a year he was charged with two counts of first-degree murder: one for Rori Hache, an 18-year-old Oshawa woman who had died in September 2017, and one for Kandis Fitzpatrick, a young Oshawa woman who had died in 2008.
In March 2021, after a judge-alone trial in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice at Oshawa, Justice Joseph Di Luca found him guilty of the first-degree murder of Rori Hache. On the count concerning Kandis Fitzpatrick, the judge found him not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter: the evidence proved that Strong had unlawfully caused her death, but not that he had meant to kill her. In May 2021 the judge sentenced him to life imprisonment with no eligibility for parole for 25 years and called him "a dangerous predator."
Kandis Fitzpatrick was born in 1989 and grew up in Oshawa, the industrial city on the north shore of Lake Ontario east of Toronto. She had two sisters and a younger brother, who was very young in 2008 and later said he barely remembered her. Her age that year is given as 18 and as 19.
One of her sisters, in a statement read to the court, said that Strong had taken from her a young life and the chance to know her nieces and nephews.
For almost a decade nobody connected her to Adam Strong. Her case was still open on a police file when, in the summer of 2018, investigators working on a different death told her family that they believed she was dead.
Rori Hache was born on July 9, and was 18 in the summer of 2017. Her godmother described her as lively, lovely and intelligent, "full of love and full of joy," and as the "smarty pants" among the children of the family. Others who knew her called her bright, brave and fearless. Shortly before she died she had gone back to school and had taken a part-time job.
In September 2017 Durham Regional Police opened a homicide investigation. Despite an extensive investigation, police had no suspect. At trial, Justice Di Luca found that she was killed in Oshawa in early September 2017, between September 1 and 3. Her mother called her "Oshawa's girl," said that everyone loved her, and insisted that her daughter "was not misplaced in life" and "had family."
Little is known of Adam Strong's earlier life. Police said in 2018 that he had lived in central Oshawa and in another area of the city over the previous twenty years, and they asked anyone who knew of his movements and associations from the mid-1990s onward to come forward. At the time of his arrest he worked at a gas station in Ajax, the town immediately west of Oshawa.
In his long interview with detectives in November 2018 he described his childhood as "troubled" and spoke of a "really bad childhood." He said he had read many books. Beyond those remarks, his family, schooling and work history have never been made public. He was in his mid-forties when he was arrested: his age was given as 45 in 2018 and as 47 when the verdicts and sentence were delivered in 2021.
On December 29, 2017, Durham Regional Police were called to the building in Oshawa where Strong lived. Acting Sergeant Kevin Park of Durham Regional Police was the first officer to arrive. He later testified that Strong was willing to talk from the start; one of his lines in court was that Strong "wanted to spill the beans." The Crown said in its opening that Strong made admissions to the officer at the door. He was arrested that night. Police said afterward that he had not been a suspect in Rori Hache's death before the call.
In late December 2017 Strong was charged with an offense under section 182 of the Criminal Code. He was not charged with murder, and he was held in custody.
The case moved slowly at first. Strong appeared in Oshawa court by video, again and again, for months. By March 1, 2018, he had retained an Oshawa criminal lawyer, Tom Balka, who represented him through the trial. Rori Hache's family and friends came to almost every appearance. Her mother said she attended to show the court her commitment to her daughter and to protect her daughter's good name. "I believe my daughter was hunted," she told reporters in January 2018, before adding, "Nothing has been proven." She said that the accused had shown no emotion in court and no empathy. By the end of November 2018 she counted 22 court appearances.
On July 7, 2018, two days before what would have been Rori's nineteenth birthday, her family and friends held a public gathering at Memorial Park in Oshawa, near a monument inscribed "The Garden of the Unforgotten." They then went out to clean up the parts of the city where she had lived and spent her time. Her mother said the aim was to keep her daughter's name alive, and that Rori would not be ignored. In August 2018, more than a dozen family members and friends came to the Oshawa courthouse in shirts printed "#Justice4Rori." Her godmother called on Strong to come and "look at our eyes," and called his conduct "emotional terrorism" against the family.
On July 10, 2018, Durham Regional Police held a news conference and named a second woman, Kandis Fitzpatrick, whom they believed Strong had killed. The lead investigator, Detective Darren Short of the homicide unit, said that police "strongly believe" the identification and that work to confirm it was continuing. Detective Sergeant Mitch Martin was also part of the investigation.
The police appeal that day was broad. Officers asked for anyone who had known Kandis Fitzpatrick to come forward, and asked about Strong's movements and associations from the mid-1990s until his arrest. No new charge was laid; police said the evidence had to be reviewed first, and that would take time. Rori Hache's mother told reporters that she had been in touch with the Fitzpatrick family.
A preliminary inquiry on the charge concerning Rori Hache was scheduled for October 15 to 19, 2018, before Ontario Court Justice Marquis Felix. It ended on its first day, when the Crown asked for an adjournment because of new evidence, and the judge granted it. It was Strong's first appearance in person since his arrest.
On November 8, 2018, Durham Regional Police charged Strong with two counts of first-degree murder, one in the death of Rori Hache and one in the death of Kandis Fitzpatrick. At a video appearance in Oshawa remand court that day, Crown attorney Greg O'Driscoll withdrew the earlier charge under section 182. The local press counted Kandis Fitzpatrick as the tenth homicide victim in Durham Region in 2018.
The same day, Detective Paul Mitton of Durham Regional Police, a veteran investigator who later retired from the force, began an interview with Strong that lasted about eleven hours. Strong had just learned that the charge against him had been raised to two counts of murder. The interview was recorded, and much of it was later played at trial.
Mitton set out to put him at ease. He bought Strong a meal and found him a cigarette, and over the hours Strong spoke at length. He would not say, when asked, whether he had anything to do with their deaths. He called evidence connected to Kandis Fitzpatrick "damning" and said he had forgotten about it. He told the detective that he did not think he would have gone on killing, and that he would "gladly" have stayed under the radar. He said he expected to spend the rest of his life in prison, had "no illusions" about life after release, and wanted a deal for comforts such as internet access. He said that he wished to pass his condolences to Rori Hache's mother and father, and then wondered whether it was appropriate to say so. "I do mean it," he said. He also said, "I think there's probably a bunch of stuff I shouldn't have said." When the detectives asked about any other victims, he would not answer.
Mike Davis, a former Toronto police officer who spent seventeen years in the homicide squad, later said that a confession in such detail was "pretty rare." He credited Mitton with building a rapport with Strong from the first minutes of the interview, calling him "a very skilled interviewer."
The trial opened at the Oshawa courthouse on Monday, September 28, 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, before Justice Joseph Di Luca of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice sitting without a jury. It was expected to last about three months. Strong pleaded not guilty to both counts. The Crown was led by Bryan Guertin; Tom Balka appeared for the defense.
The Crown presented a circumstantial case. In its opening, the prosecution said that both women had been vulnerable in the periods before their deaths. It said that it would ask the judge to treat the evidence of one death as evidence about the other, and to find that Kandis Fitzpatrick had died at Strong's hands. Guertin told the court that Kandis Fitzpatrick "found the same fate as Ms. Hache."
Much of the early trial was taken up with the admissibility of evidence. The defense challenged what Strong had said to police, both the words at the door on December 29, 2017, and the recorded interviews. Justice Di Luca rejected the defense attempts to keep out evidence, and the recorded interviews were played to the court.
Detective Darren Short, the lead investigator, testified about the course of the investigation.
When the Crown closed its case, the defense called no evidence, and Strong did not testify. His lawyers argued that the Crown had not proven that he caused either death.
Justice Di Luca gave his decision on the afternoon of Tuesday, March 16, 2021, in court and by teleconference.
On the count concerning Rori Hache, he found Strong guilty of first-degree murder. He was satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that Strong had killed her and that the killing took place while he was committing a sexual assault on her. Under section 231(5) of the Criminal Code, a murder committed in those circumstances is first-degree murder whether or not it was planned. The judge rejected the defense's alternative explanations for her death.
On the count concerning Kandis Fitzpatrick, he found Strong not guilty of first-degree murder but guilty of manslaughter. He said that Strong had "probably" intended to kill her, but that "probably is not the test." Murder required proof beyond a reasonable doubt of an intent to kill, or to cause harm that Strong knew was likely to kill. The judge said that "the almost 10-year gap in time and the absence of forensic or other evidence" kept him from that conclusion. He was clear on one point: Strong had "unlawfully caused her death." He observed that the two women had been similarly placed in their lives and that both had been deeply loved by their families.
Strong was remanded into custody to await sentencing. Rori Hache's godmother said she was relieved and elated by the verdict in Rori's case and sad for the Fitzpatrick family; she said the long case had brought the family one blow after another. Kandis Fitzpatrick's father left the courthouse after the manslaughter verdict was read.
The sentencing hearing was set for April 21 and 22, 2021, in person at the Oshawa courthouse. On the evening before it was due to begin, the Superior Court of Justice directed courts across Ontario to defer as many matters as possible because of the pandemic, including virtual hearings, and the hearing was adjourned. "I apologize again, I know how difficult this must be for people who have waited so long to have answers," Justice Di Luca told those who had come. He said he hoped to sit in person on May 10, if the pandemic eased.
The hearing finally began on Thursday, May 27, 2021, and ran for a day and a half. Thirteen victim impact statements were expected. Rori Hache's mother had planned to read hers in person, but she had tested positive for COVID-19 and asked for a two-week postponement; the judge refused and ruled that she could speak by video. When she did not appear on the call, the Crown read her statement for her.
In it she described her daughter as her best friend. "I will never see Rori fall in love, graduate school, be married, have children," she wrote. She described the moment she understood what had happened as the start of something from which she knew she would never wake. She said she was left with guilt and with the feeling that she had failed her daughter. A woman who had been an aunt to Rori told the court that she lived with fear for her own safety: "This wound will never heal."
Kandis Fitzpatrick's father told the court about the day police told him that she was dead. "I was shattered by the news," he said. A statement from one of her sisters, read by the prosecution, spoke of all that Kandis had lost.
First-degree murder carries a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment with no eligibility for parole for 25 years, and the hearing turned on the manslaughter count, which has no minimum sentence in a case such as this and a maximum of life imprisonment. The Crown, through prosecutor Jinwon Kim, asked for 18 years. The defense proposed 8 to 10 years.
Justice Di Luca delivered his sentence orally on Friday, May 28, 2021. For the first-degree murder of Rori Hache he imposed life imprisonment with no parole eligibility for 25 years. For the manslaughter of Kandis Fitzpatrick he imposed 18 years, the term the Crown had sought, to be served concurrently. Strong's earliest date of eligibility for parole was set at December 29, 2042. The judge also ordered that he have no contact with the victims' families.
The judge called Strong "a dangerous predator." He found that Strong had shown no remorse and that he was unlikely to be rehabilitated. "You decided to feed your selfish desires and in doing so you took two vulnerable lives," he told him. He said the sentence could not undo the harm, but that it would ensure Strong never walked free in the community again. He told Strong that he would not be remembered: "you will simply be gone."
Cheers and applause broke out in the courtroom and in an overflow room. Kandis Fitzpatrick's father said he was happy with the outcome and that the family could now move on. Rori Hache's godmother spoke of relief that Strong was no longer part of the families' lives. "They are not coming home," she said of the two women, but the families could now let them rest.
The trial had left questions open for the Fitzpatrick family. In July 2021 Strong, by then serving his sentence, told correctional staff that he had information about Kandis Fitzpatrick, and detectives interviewed him several times over the following months.
Durham Regional Police made an announcement about Kandis Fitzpatrick on Wednesday, February 16, 2022. Detective Sergeant Doris Carriere told reporters that Strong had come forward voluntarily, and that he had received no added privilege in custody, no money and no other benefit in return. There had been some negotiation, she said, but none of it was entertained. Why he had come forward was a question, the detective said, that only he could answer. Because he had already been convicted, she said, no new charge would be laid and the conviction could not be changed to murder. The finding of the trial judge stood.
The two families embraced after the announcement. Rori Hache's mother called the result "a miracle" and said she was "feeling some sense of peace." She made clear that her gratitude was not to Strong. Kandis Fitzpatrick's father said that he had never expected this day. He planned a celebration of her life.
Strong was convicted of two deaths. He has not been charged with, or linked by any court to, any other death. When police named Kandis Fitzpatrick in July 2018, they appealed for information about Strong's movements and associations from the mid-1990s until 2017. Strong, asked in his 2018 interview about other victims, would not answer; he told the detective that he did not think he would have gone on killing.
No appeal against the convictions or the sentence has been reported.
Strong's case moved through the ordinary structure of Canadian criminal law, and several of its turns follow directly from the Criminal Code.
The first charge, in December 2017, was laid under section 182 of the Criminal Code. It can be prosecuted as an indictable offense carrying up to five years' imprisonment or as a summary conviction offense. It does not require proof that the accused caused a death, which is why it could be laid long before police were in a position to lay a murder charge, and why the Crown withdrew it once the murder counts were laid in November 2018.
Murder is one of the offenses listed in section 469 of the Criminal Code, which only a superior court of criminal jurisdiction may try; Strong's case was tried in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. The 2018 preliminary inquiry, before a judge of the Ontario Court, was the step that decides whether there is enough evidence to send a case to trial. Under section 473, a person charged with an offense listed in section 469 may be tried without a jury by a superior court judge, but only with the consent of both the accused and the Attorney General. Strong's trial, which opened during the pandemic in September 2020, proceeded on that basis before Justice Di Luca alone, so the judge both decided the law and found the facts.
Section 231 divides murder into first degree and second degree. A murder is first degree when it is planned and deliberate, or, regardless of planning, when the victim is a police officer or prison officer acting in the course of duty, or when the death is caused while the accused is committing or attempting one of a short list of offenses: hijacking an aircraft, sexual assault in its various forms, kidnapping and forcible confinement, and hostage taking. All other murder is second degree. Justice Di Luca's finding that Rori Hache was killed in the course of a sexual assault brought the case within section 231(5) and made it first-degree murder without any separate finding of planning.
Where the Crown proves that an accused unlawfully caused a death, but not the intent required for murder, the verdict is manslaughter. Section 236 makes manslaughter punishable by up to life imprisonment, and outside a narrow category it carries no minimum sentence. In the Fitzpatrick count the judge was satisfied that Strong had unlawfully caused her death but not that the intent for murder was proven, and the verdict and the 18-year sentence followed from that.
Section 745 fixes the sentence for first-degree murder: imprisonment for life without eligibility for parole until the person has served twenty-five years. Section 746 provides that the time counted toward that period includes the time spent in custody from the day of arrest for the offense.
Parole eligibility is not release. Public Safety Canada states that a person serving life for first-degree murder becomes eligible for full parole 25 years after being taken into custody, may become eligible for day parole and unescorted temporary absences three years earlier, and that "eligibility does not mean automatic release": the Parole Board of Canada must grant it. The Parole Board states that people serving life sentences can leave prison only if the Board grants parole, that some are never granted it, and that those who are released remain under parole conditions and supervision for the rest of their lives, subject to return to prison at any time. Protection of society is the overriding consideration in any release decision. The families of the people killed may present statements to the Board, in person or by recording, about the continuing effect of the crime and any concerns for their safety.
Through four years of proceedings, the families of both women attended the Oshawa courthouse in numbers. Rori Hache's mother said early on that she would come to every appearance, and she spoke to reporters at many stages of the case, as did Rori's godmother. The two families came to know one another through the case, and in February 2022 they stood together at the police announcement about Kandis Fitzpatrick.
In 2021 Kandis Fitzpatrick's father told the court that he had been devastated when police concluded that she was dead.
1989: Kandis Fitzpatrick is born.
2008: Kandis Fitzpatrick dies, at an age given as 18 and as 19; Strong was later convicted of her manslaughter.
Early September 2017 (between September 1 and 3, as found at trial): Rori Hache, 18, is killed in Oshawa.
September 2017: Durham Regional Police open a homicide investigation.
December 29, 2017: Police are called to Strong's building in Oshawa; he is arrested.
Late December 2017: Strong is charged with an offense under section 182 of the Criminal Code.
March 1, 2018: Strong appears with defense counsel Tom Balka.
July 7, 2018: A public gathering at Memorial Park in Oshawa marks what would have been Rori Hache's nineteenth birthday.
July 10, 2018: Police name Kandis Fitzpatrick and appeal for information about Strong.
October 15, 2018: The preliminary inquiry opens and is adjourned the same day at the Crown's request.
November 8, 2018: Strong is charged with two counts of first-degree murder; the section 182 charge is withdrawn; his recorded interview with Detective Paul Mitton begins.
September 28, 2020: The judge-alone trial opens in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice at Oshawa before Justice Joseph Di Luca.
March 16, 2021: Strong is found guilty of the first-degree murder of Rori Hache, and not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter in the death of Kandis Fitzpatrick.
April 21, 2021: The sentencing hearing is adjourned because of the pandemic.
May 27 and 28, 2021: Sentencing hearing; life imprisonment with no parole eligibility for 25 years, and a concurrent 18 years for manslaughter; parole eligibility date December 29, 2042.
July 2021: Strong tells correctional staff that he has information about Kandis Fitzpatrick.
February 16, 2022: Durham Regional Police announce that no further charge is to be laid concerning Kandis Fitzpatrick.