Magee was born in 1948 and lived in the Strathroy area of southwestern Ontario. Between 1974 and 1976 he killed three young women: Judith Barksey, nineteen; Patricia Jenner, nineteen; and Susan Lynn Scholes, fifteen. Each had her throat cut, and there were sexual assaults. Canadian reporting called him the Mad Slasher.
He was arrested and tried in 1977, and was found not guilty by reason of insanity. The verdict then available in Canada. He was committed to the Oak Ridge maximum-security division of the Penetanguishene mental health centre.
He has been detained there continuously since 1977 and has appeared before the Ontario Review Board annually. He has never been released.
Because there was no conviction there is no judgment, and the account of the killings comes from the trial psychiatric evidence and the annual board hearings. He is the second Ontario case in this archive held at Penetanguishene on that basis, alongside Russell Johnson, whose series overlapped his in time and place.