In what would amount to the greatest understatement of the judge’s career, Greenidge was told, “I don’t think you are safe to have around.” The young black man showed no signs of remorse, or wanting to reform. The teenaged girl was walking home with a bag of groceries when Greenidge grabbed her, dragging her kicking and screaming down an alleyway. He then proceeded to sexually assault her, choking her at the same time, almost to the point of death. Even veteran police officers, men who had witnessed all kinds of depravity, were thoroughly repulsed by the viciousness of the attack on the helpless girl. All her clothes, right down to her shoes, were ripped from her body, which was left beaten, bloodied, and desecrated. Fortunately, the girl was able to give a remarkably detailed description of her attacker, “a husky Negro,” about five feet eight inches tall, eighteen years of age. At his trial, Greenidge, the one-time art student and church choirboy, complained the confession was beaten out of him at a police station. No one cared to listen.
Tragically, the rape was only the start of Greenidge’s life as a sexual predator and unstoppable violent offender. After his parole in 1960 he was unable to control his rage and continued his pattern of becoming violent in mere moments. In 1965 Greenidge nearly choked a man to death, believing he was responsible for helping to put him behind bars. Characteristic of the viciousness of his attacks, Greenidge beat the man, dragging him one hundred feet into a laneway to continue the assault. He had his hands around the man’s throat when neighbours saw the horrific assault taking place and called the police. In a sickening twist, he almost pummelled the wrong man to death. The mistaken identity assault landed Greenidge in a reformatory for six months, while his victim was sent to hospital to recover from his serious injuries.
Undated photo of convicted killer James Greenidge, who later changed his name to James Gordon Henry. He was first convicted of violent crimes in the fifties, and is presently behind bars in British Columbia for the horrific murder of a young woman in 1981.
Although just in his twenties, Greenidge had spent years of his life in jail and was rarely out on the streets for long before being sent back behind bars. In 1967 he was sentenced to seventeen years for a number of horrific crimes. He nearly killed one man he’d picked up in Toronto’s gay village. Another victim, seventeen-year-old Robert Wayne Mortimore, wasn’t so lucky. Mortimore’s naked, tattooed body was found in a field northeast of Markham, Ontario. The young insurance clerk was reported missing on July 11 by his brother, and his decomposing remains — missing in the heat of summer for over a week — had to be identified through fingerprints and part of a birth certificate found in Greenidge’s car. One of Mortimore’s tattoos said “Born to raise hell,” while another was a dagger, dripping blood. A number of items were missing from the body, including a silver ring with the initials R.M., a second ring with a black stone, a chain with a gold cross, and a pair of blue and white mod-style trousers.
At the time of Mortimore’s murder, Greenidge was already serving time for the attempted murder of a twenty-one-year-old man who he left beaten, naked, and bleeding in a field. The pair, said Greenidge, met at a movie theatre known as a gay pickup place and drove out to the country on a gravel stretch of road to a farmer’s field north of Barrie, Ontario. The man then made the mistake of asking Greenidge for twenty bucks, allegedly for sex. This threw him into a rage. Pouncing on his victim, Greenidge began punching, kicking, and stabbing the man repeatedly in the throat and chest with a penknife. He then bound the man and left him naked, alone, and bleeding to death. Police said that if the man had not been found within a few hours, he surely would have died.
When he was released from prison in 1978, Greenidge changed his name to James Gordon Henry. His name was different, but his sexual rage remained as strong as ever. In Winnipeg he was charged with sodomizing a thirteen-year-old boy, who he then tried to strangle to death with a blanket. The charges against Greenidge were stayed. While out of jail, Greenidge killed his last known victim in 1981. He was sentenced to life in prison for the brutal rape and murder of Elizabeth Fells, a twenty-four-year-old prostitute. Picking up the woman, Greenidge drove her to an isolated spot in the woods north of Vancouver and flew into a rage. Raping the woman, he then stabbed her over and over again, slashing her throat and leaving her barely alive in an isolated area, repeating his unremitting pattern of violence. Somehow, Fells managed to crawl to the side of the Squamish Highway and flagged down a passing car. She died in hospital eight days after her horrifying attack, but lived long enough to give police a detailed description of her attacker: James Henry Greenidge. Her statement helped police capture Greenidge, who was arrested and charged with her murder.
Over the years, many people fell victim to Greenidge’s rage: women, men, and children. They all have one thing in common: they were white, like Richard Hovey and the young man found at Balsam Lake. The lives of these young men were cut tragically short and no one, save for their killer or killers, knows what the last moments of their lives were like, dying naked in an isolated area with no one there to save their lives.
Thanks to the skills of forensic artist Master Corporal Peter Thompson, the remains formerly known as the Balsam Lake Victim finally have a name. On March 9, 2009, police revealed his identity. The skeletal remains found near Coboconk, Ontario — with the extra thoracic vertebra and rib — were those of Eric Jones from Noelville, Ontario. The original forensic estimate of his age was accurate: Jones was just eighteen when he died. Once the identification was made, police were able to create a profile of the young man and the circumstances that may have led to his death. If it were not for one of Jones’s sisters watching a television program she rarely viewed, her brother’s body would likely have remained unidentified forever.
(Ontario Provincial Police)
Ontario Provincial Police reward circular for Eric Jones, whose skeletonized remains were found in a wooded area of Balsam Lake Provincial Park on December 17, 1967.
In February 2009, W-Five aired a special about Richard Hovey and the other unidentified remains. Pauline Latendresse, one of Eric’s sisters, happened to turn on the television program that day and immediately recognized the clay reconstruction of her long-lost brother’s face. Excited, she began phoning her siblings, telling them to “watch it, watch it right now.” The next day, police came by and collected DNA samples from family members. Tests soon confirmed the remains were those of the missing Eric, son of the late Napoleon and Alexina Jones.
Through interviews with surviving family members, police were able to reconstruct the life and final days of Eric Jones, who came from a large family of eleven children. An older brother, Oscar, remembered the last time he saw Eric. It was at a wedding for one of their sisters in April 1967. By this time, Eric had moved to Toronto to live with an aunt and look for work as a dishwasher, returning for his sister’s wedding. The brothers argued about Eric quitting school and moving away from home. Tragically, it would be the last time Oscar saw his brother alive.
Described by his family as a bit of a shy kid and a loner, Eric wrote letters back and forth to his sister Pauline for about six weeks after he arrived in Toronto. One day, the letters she mailed to her brother came back unopened and unread, marked “No such address.” The aunt Eric was living with in Toronto had moved to Montreal, taking his belongings with her. Since she had not seen or heard from the eighteen-year-old, she assumed he moved back to Noelville. The missing man’s sister contacted police agencies across the province and was led to believe that Eric, a solitary sort, probably didn’t want to be in contact with his family. His sister never believed her brother would want to estrange himself from the family and hoped to