Maybe he was smart though, smashing the teeth out of the head of his victim with a hammer, stooping down afterwards to vacuum up all of the fragments so that dental records couldn’t be matched. Maybe he also burned the cut off hands to prevent fingerprints from being taken and then wrapped up the torso in barbed wire, and dumped it into a lake in the full knowledge that when the stomach swelled up, with the ensuing gases, the barbed wire would puncture it, stopping it from rising to the surface again?

But maybe he couldn’t give a shit, in that lazy-assed way the day finds you sometimes, as he tossed each box out of his van while saying fuck it under his breath, driving away and leaving them out in the sun of Montreal for all to find.

I guess I watch too many true crime shows on TV, watching them on a loop when I go over to visit my parents in Dudley. Fatal Vows is a favourite; my friend Julie is a researcher on that show, so I just thought I'd throw that in there. Anyway, each episode churns out killers whose communities thought were such friendly people. “He was always so quiet; he kept himself to himself”, witnesses always proclaim. “He was a real family man. He coached the little league or preached in a church,” they always say. “They never looked like the bad guy, they were the good ones”, because everyone knew what the bad ones look like and they never live in their all-white neighbourhoods.

Now for the fact check.

3/7