William Patrick Fyfe was born in Toronto on February 27, 1955. He came to a small community in Quebec for treatment for drug addiction and stayed on, counselling others, and worked as a handyman and gardener around the west island of Montreal. Neighbours found him generous and full of community spirit, if given to lecturing people about their weight and their habits. The Canadian press called him the Killer Handyman.
The work was the method. He would ring the doorbell or knock at houses in the affluent communities west of Montreal, offer his services as a handyman or a plumber, and be invited in. That is why so many of the entries showed no forced entry. He attacked women who lived alone, sexually assaulted them, beat them and stabbed them, usually in the middle of the day, and robbed the house. The bodies were generally found by family members coming home. His victims ranged in age from twenty-six to fifty-nine.
The killings fell into two periods with a ten-year gap between them, which is the part of the case the police never resolved. Five women were killed between 1979 and 1989, in Montreal, Pointe-Claire, Sainte-Adele, Piedmont and Town of Mount Royal. Then nothing until 1999, when he killed four more, in Senneville, Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts, Laval and Baie-d'Urfe. In the autumn of 1999 he was driving the six hundred and fifty kilometres from Barrie in Ontario to Montreal repeatedly, and the killings were accelerating.
Those named in the record are Hazel Scattolon, fifty-two; Monique Gaudreau, forty-six; Anna Yarnold, fifty-nine; Teresa Shanahan, fifty-five; Mary Glenn, fifty; Suzanne-Marie Bernier, sixty-two; Nicole Raymond, twenty-six; Louise Poupart-Leblanc, thirty-seven; and Pauline Laplante, forty-five.
The murders went unconnected for years, partly because they crossed several police jurisdictions around Montreal. A joint squad was eventually formed. The case was made on forensic evidence: DNA from semen and blood recovered at several scenes, and a thumbprint left in blood at one victim's apartment. He was arrested on December 22, 1999 by the Ontario Provincial Police, picked up as he walked back to his pickup truck after eating at a truck stop.
His preliminary hearing opened on November 6, 2000 before Judge Suzanne Coupal, who imposed a publication ban; the Crown was led by Jean Lecours. On September 21, 2001 he pleaded guilty in the Quebec Superior Court to five counts of first degree murder and was sentenced to life with no eligibility for parole for twenty-five years.
Two months later he confessed to four more killings, and the circumstances of that confession matter. It was made as part of a bargain: he wanted a transfer out of a Quebec prison and admitted the four in exchange for being moved to a penitentiary in western Canada. No further charges were brought, because he was already serving the maximum the law allowed. His counsel explained the Crown's interest as wanting to close files, particularly ones that would be hard to prove.
A detective who listened to those confessions described him as a very, very ordinary man, and said he showed no emotion, recounting each killing as though describing an old film. The Montreal police commander André Bouchard put the other side of it, calling him a vicious murderer.
So the count is five proved and nine admitted, and the police view was that even nine might not be the end of it: the ten-year gap was never accounted for. He is serving the sentence in Saskatchewan.