Book about unsolved murders just released

Santos, 21, was found dead by his dad at 7:27 a.m. in the backyard of their Scarborough home.

The case is among 258 unsolved murders featured in a newly published book by retired Toronto Star reporter Cal Millar.

"The goal was to put together an open-ended Crime Stoppers appeal," Millar said. "The book is basically an appeal for people to call Crime Stoppers if they know anything about any of the crimes."

Find My Killer - Crime Stoppers: Unsolved Homicides, a 326-page paperback, highlights cases from both Canada and the U.S. Rewards for the cases total $5.5 million.

"One of the things that relatives and friends of murder victims want is for an arrest," said Millar. "And interestingly enough they never ever get closure."

Police had said they don't have a motive in the Santos case and the killer was likely familiar with the victim and where he lived.

"Someone out there knows what happened. I need to know what happened," Santos' mom Juliet told The Scarborough Mirror in a 2007 interview. "He had so many dreams: to have his own auto shop, to move in with his girlfriend."

Another case featured in the book is of Mohamed Adbi Warsame. The 16-year-old North York boy told his mom he was going with friends to a movie theatre to see Iron Man the night of May 3, 2008. He never returned home. At 2 a.m. the next day, his mother Ayan Dahir called police to report the teen missing. He was found murdered 12 hours later in the stairwell of an apartment building on Cougar Court in Scarborough.

"He didn't have any friends that we know of at the building or that area. That's not the area where he used to hang out," family friend Faisa Mahamud said at the time. "We don't know what happened. We need answers."

Three other Toronto cases are featured in the book: the fatal shooting on May 21, 2007 of Mark Smith, 40, on Weston Road at Imogene Avenue; the June 23, 2001 shooting of Justin Shephard, 19, on the Howard Street foot bridge across Rosedale Valley and the Feb. 15, 2003 slaying of Edwardo Daley at the Etobicoke apartment building where he lived with his parents and sister.

Daley, 24, was a religious Christian and a Humber College student.

"He was a very friendly, caring, intelligent person. He was an achiever," Daley's pastor Rev. S. A. Morrison told The Etobicoke Guardian prior to the funeral. "We would like to see the perpetrator caught."

Other cases in Find My Killer include the shooting death of a federal prosecutor in Seattle, Washington; the killing of the sheriff's wife in Alexandria, Virginia; the homicidal beating of a homeless woman in Rochester, Minnesota; the murder of a clown in Canada and the slaying of a young girl in Arlington, Texas that led to the establishment of the Amber Alert system.

Millar spent nearly two years combing through newspaper articles, public records and computer files to get information about the crimes.

In some cases, police have the unidentified murderer's DNA. "And they've checked all the known criminals," Millar said. "But if they had somebody who would suggest who it might be, they would then be able to do a DNA sample and that would confirm yea or nay."

Millar, who is vice-chair of Halton Crime Stoppers, hopes his book will be put in prison libraries so inmates can read it. "The co-ordinator at Halton (Crime Stoppers) is going to see if he can get it up to the jail in Maplehurst. But that hasn't been done yet," he said.

Find My Killer is available at www.amazon.com

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