Officer's hunch fell through the cracks, by Richard Brennan

THE BERNARDO INQUIRY Officer's hunch fell through the cracks IGNORED: A Toronto police sergeant's detailed report on the man he suspected was a serial rapist sat in a file for more than two years. TORONTO - Police Sgt. Kevin McNiff listened to his gut instincts, but unfortunately nobody else did. While he was pounding the beat on Toronto Island in 1988, McNiff had information fall into his lap that made him suspicious that Paul Bernardo was the Scarborough rapist. Of the hundreds of tips about a rapist terrorizing the Toronto suburb for five years in the mid-1980s, it was McNiff's that pointed one of the first fingers at the suspect who would go on to torture and murder two teenage girls. It was that tip that Mr. Justice Archie Campbell, the author of a judicial review into the Bernardo investigation, By Richard Brennan Southam Newspapers laments the most. McNiff's detailed report on Bernardo's violent, sadistic characteristics sat unnoticed in a police file for 2½ years before someone finally looked at it, and even then nothing was done. "It appears that there was, from the time he submitted his report until Bernardo was identified five years later as the Scarborough rapist, no attempt to get in touch with him (McNiff) or with his informant," Campbell says. McNiff was working at the Toronto Island mini station during the time of the rapes and had no connection with the investigation until a friend's 18- year-old daughter came to him to talk about Bernardo an abusive boyfriend who owed her money. "Her desire was to learn how to end the relationship and get some money back that was owed," McNiff wrote in his Jan. 5, 1988, report, noting that details of the boyfriend and his behavior made him suspicious that Bernardo might be the serial rapist. "Bernardo is described as manipulative and aggressive. His behavior progressed from gesturing to slap her in a joking manner, to threatening to do so, to giving her light taps, which became harder and harder," his report stated. As he would do with other women, Bernardo once held a knife to the 18- year-old woman's throat in November 1987 and demanded she have sex. "(Again) in late November (of 1987) ... he drove to an isolated factory area. He had been hitting her and yelling at her. They had an argument and Ms F wanted to leave the car, but he wouldn't let her. He worked himself into a frenzy and was looking for his knife, but didn't find it. At one point he started talking to himself and banging his head on the steering wheel saying: "Why do I do this, why?"* To McNiff, Bernardo had all the characteristics of a rapist, and possibly the Scarborough rapist. "A report like this shouldn't disappear in a hole ... it is very discouraging," McNiff said. The Windsor Star

The Ottawa Citizen

Officer's hunch fell through the cracks, by Richard Brennan

Officer's hunch fell through the cracks, by Richard Brennan

The Ottawa Citizen