Part 2 – Tommy

The hunt for Tommy would continue for a week after her disappearance. Searchers camped out on the Baker’s farm and were sheltered and fed in the homes of neighbours. They slogged their way through swamps foraging through fields as they looked under bridges and into culverts. They filed along river and creek beds, beat bushes while as many as 14 private aircraft swept low overhead scouring the earth. Searchers trailed after 42 dogs chasing scents in every direction, sometimes struggling with stifling humidity or bearing the onslaught of pelting rainstorms. Searches were staged from dawn to dusk; the Beeton fairgrounds and arena serving as a meeting point. Many  were fed by army kitchens and others consumed food prepared by legions of local women. 

Apart from two girls’  bathing suits discovered and ruled out by the grief-stricken Mrs. Baker, nothing was found.

Seven days after the  little girl with the bobbing pony-tail had disappeared, Inspector Harris would tell the exhausted and grimy searchers that the hunt was over. It had been Ontario’s largest mass search for a missing person and likely a national record. Inspector Harris, who had thrown himself into the shoulder-to-shoulder search over hundreds of square miles that week, reported he was profoundly moved by the force of sympathy displayed. “It was the farmers particularly. They just left their fields and looked for our little girl. When we broke off the search, I promised them that we would keep on until it was solved. I don’t remember how I said it – I was pretty tired – but I meant it like nothing else,” he said.

Inspector Harris and Constable Kelso would return to the Alliston OPP Detachment and begin following up on a flood of leads. These leads would inadvertently result in charging some 20 alleged pedophiles whose activities were  brought to light. They worked closely with other police departments throughout the province and travelled from Wiarton, Owen Sound, Durham, Hamilton, Guelph, Wasaga Beach, Collingwood, Barrie, Huntsville, Orillia to Penetanguishene.

They exhumed dead animals, stolen car engines and other articles after hearing from residents about  freshly turned earth, which seemed to be everywhere.

As summer turned to Autumn and then to Winter, there was still no word. That first Christmas without Tommy was bleak. “We had a Christmas tree for Alan”, Tommy’s Mom said.  “Our oldest son who was married, Albert, came with his family, but we could not feel gay without Thomasina.” 

Some of the family did not come home for Christmas at all. 

The big break in the investigation came on May 24th the following year, when Mrs. Vivien Jones, wife of a Newmarket newspaper publisher, and sometime reporter, telephoned the Alliston OPP Detachment with a remarkable story.

She reported that a man named John Frederick McDonald had recently been arrested in Hamilton for shooting a policeman a few days earlier. She also stated that the man was known to her as John Frederick Raymond and he had boarded in a house on Millard Avenue in Newmarket.

The insightful  Mrs. Jones had recognized the man charged in Hamilton but also told Inspector Harris that she believed Raymond had a record for child molestation and he had dated the  young babysitter living at the Jones’ home the previous summer. She went to work and found that McDonald had been in Beeton at the time of Tommy’s abduction.

Not only had Mrs. Jones met with MacDonald for coffee and found him to be a likely murder suspect, she began to dig for information and this was how she was able to place McDonald in the Beeton area at the time of Tommy’s disappearance.

Constable Kelso was sent off to interview the insightful Mrs Jones in Newmarket. He learned during the conversation that McDonald (aka Raymond) borrowed a taxi the very same day of Thomasena’s disappearance. Kelso also learned that Mcdonald got the taxi stuck in a swamp near Caledon and was towed out the day after Tommy’s abduction. The tow truck driver was able to indicate the location.

Police returned to the swamp site to search for any clues that indicated what may have become of the little girl. It proved difficult, given that water flowed over the tops of the searcher’s hip boots and the likelihood of finding anything seemed remote.

Inspector Harris and Constable Kelso travelled to Hamilton and visited McDonald in his cell on May 25th. “When I mentioned the girl, McDonald kept saying he didn’t want to implicate himself. His nervousness, his sweating, his manner and my instinct told me he was probably our man,” Inspector Harris said.

The two officers dug thoroughly into McDonald’s background, where the taxi had been stuck in the swamp, and any other relevant details, returning to speak once again with McDonald on June 17th.

McDonald still refused to talk about Tommy’s disappearance and reacted just as he had on the officer’s previous visit.

Inspector Harris arranged to attend the  Hamilton court-house on November 6th of the same year as McDonald was sentenced to 10 years for shooting and injuring a policeman who tried to arrest him. The Inspector was able to move McDonald to Brampton-Peel County Jail with a judge’s order. An identification line-up was held where both Mrs. Jones and the tow truck driver most likely attended. Shortly after this, McDonald was taken to the spot in the swamp where he had been stuck with the cab. 

McDonald, who appeared to have an exceptionally poor memory, first denied it and then remembered that he had been in a drunken race with other cars in the area of Tommy’s disappearance that night and had to sleep in the swamp in the taxi.

He refused a lie detector test at first but on November 8th conceded to think about consenting to one after a few days consideration.  

Regardless, McDonald would  become the prime suspect in the case of Tommy’s death.

Would there be answers?  D. Mackie, a Brampton lawyer, agreed to represent McDonald on a legal aid basis. When Inspector Harris arrived at the jail on November 12th, McDonald said that he had been advised not to take any tests or make any statements. There was still no body, and it certainly did not seem like there was to be a confession.