Part 3 – Tommy

Who was John Frederick McDonald?

A Hamilton newspaper reported on November 7th, 1963:

 QUIZZED ON THOMASENA 

John Frederick McDonald, 46, of Newmarket, Ontario, will be jailed for ten years for shooting a policeman. He will be questioned about the disappearance of Thomasena Baker, 10, of Beeton.

Constable Lawrence Pearce, 26, was shot in the abdomen while taking McDonald to a downtown police station last May.

We know that McDonald, born Frederick Landsdown Coates on July 1, 1917,  in the area of Hamilton, Ontario never knew his parents, had no birth certificate and bounced from foster home to foster home. He reported much sexual abuse as a child within a number of the foster homes, and seemed destined for a life of chaos and crime, learning to hate at an early age.

He was first convicted under the name of Fred Coates for shop-lifting at the age of 16, and again under the same name, for rape two years later for which he would serve eight years of a ten year sentence. Shortly after release, he would return to the courts and be convicted for conversion of funds in 1952. The following year, yet another conviction for a Liquor Control Act violation, and for being a tenant in a bawdy house.

McDonald used a variety of names during this period which included John Frederick and Frederick John. He said that he shared the same birth- date as John A. McDonald and liked the ability to share in his name or any versions thereof.

He would once again be convicted for a rape in 1955 in Brantford and appealed for a new trial. The appeal was granted and yet he ultimately received ten years.

It is gut-wrenching  to know that as Tommy and her siblings sat for that Easter picture in March of 1962, just five months before her disappearance, that McDonald would be released yet again, and with no intervention to deter him from any future depravity he may act upon. Shortly after release, he would settle into a room on Millard Avenue in Newmarket, about to act upon his dark impulses, yet again.

As McDonald sat in jail resisting all appeals to speak about the disappearance of Thomasena Baker, Inspector Harris formed a plan. He  was made aware that McDonald had developed an enormous trust in Detective Sergeant  Smedley of the Hamilton Police as his and Smedley’s paths crossed over some 10 years. 

Harris said, “I brought Smedley to see Mcdonald and he wasn’t in the cell with him for ten minutes when he came out. He said that McDonald would take us to where the body was! I figured that if McDonald would talk to anyone it would be Smedley.”

McDonald, while being hand-cuffed to the Hamilton officer, (consider: directed them back to the spot where the tow truck driver had indicated the taxi had been stuck X months ago. ) said he would show him where the little girl’s body was. They drove to where the taxi had been stuck.

Harris said “McDonald pulled Smedley ahead like a hound-dog on a fresh scent. We were up to our knees in foul muck and he pushed on to the base of a fallen tree. McDonald said that this was where he had placed the body. I pushed some leaves aside and saw a few bones that resembled part of a spinal column. It was getting dark so we left it as it was. We drove back and McDonald suddenly announced that he removed the remains to another spot: he didn’t know when, and they were in a plastic bag.” the Inspector said.

The next day, November 13th, the press now in hot pursuit, saw McDonald lead the officers to a fifteen foot embankment off  Number 10 Sideroad near Caledon, and gesture towards a tree. 

Harris moved forward and bent to push aside a thin layer of soil and maple leaves to find a small skull, most of a blue bathing suit with white piping, and a yellowed swimming cap. It was reported that at one point, McDonald would say “Get me outta here.”

There is a Toronto Telegram photograph of OPP Constable Kelso, shovel gripped in his left hand, lips pulled back and a look of sheer despair upon his face at Tommy’s gravesite. An additional picture in that newspaper shows a number of farmers among others, their faces masks of disbelief and anger. 

The name T. Baker could be clearly seen printed inside of the swim cap.

McDonald was told that he would be charged with the capital murder of Thomasena Baker. His only response – “Will I be hanged?”

The police sifted the earth for a couple of days after the find and were able to recover almost all of what remained of Tommy’s little body and a plastic bag which they believed she had been smothered with. 

A crowd of 18 men, women and children and twenty reporters and photographers watched as the blanket covered stretcher with the tiny form was carried out. The hilly side-road, usually peaceful, had been jammed by twenty-nine cars. 

“Once it was over,” Harris said, referring to McDonald, “he looked like he was suddenly relieved of a tremendous burden.”  Not so for the Bakers.

Albert, Tommy’s older brother, had been the first to be asked in help identifying the remains but Chester Butt, the letter-writer, Carolyn’s father, who had helped with the initial search, finally agreed to take on the grimmest of tasks.  

Carolyn’s mother had remembered that Tommy had a dental impression done for a brace and Albert was able to find it after rooting about the house and  provided  Chester Butt with a means  to identify Tommy. Carolyn would later reflect that her Dad  “was never the same.”

On November 13th, at 18 minutes after noon, Mr. and Mrs. Baker were told of the grim discovery.

A friend of the family, Ronald J. Sealey brought the news confirming their worst nightmares. On being asked to relate the news to the family he would recall telling that,”They’ve found Tommy, dead.” “Dead?” Tom said in a flat voice as he visibly sagged as if hit by a punch. Ronald began to cry and later said “it had been the hardest thing he had ever had to do. They had never given up hope – so sure she would be found alive.”

Edith eventually fell asleep in a rocking chair and someone covered her with a rug. Another friend looked after little Alan in the kitchen. No, it would never be the same.

Four year old Alan seemed bewildered as to why his parents  were sleeping in the daytime, both now under heavy sedation, and confused as to why so many people moved soberly about the farm-house. No, this nightmare would not fade like most do in the bright light of day.

Detective Sergeant Smedley would later recall in exact details that the body had been found sixty paces from the 10th Sideroad and how he saw the skull and a flash of blue emerge from a pile of maple leaves at the foot of a beautiful maple tree. It would be beyond human ability to equate the horror with the beauty of the site where Tommy was found. He would be one of a number who carried this moment to their graves.

McDonald would be tried and sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to non-capital murder. The judge who sentenced him, Mr. Justice C.D. Stewart, said he would see to it that McDonald would find release from prison only in death. That did not turn out to be quite the case, however.

McDonald was formally charged on November 14th, 1963 and the machinery for his prosecution activated. On the way to a Barrie jail cell, McDonald said that “he had not killed any other little girls.” He was remanded several times until his trial in January of  1964. Harris said that McDonald was quite taciturn until the trial was over and then seemed relieved. The weight of the evidence had been overwhelming, conclusive and damning.

The irony of the investigation is that McDonald was in custody the day after Tommy’s disappearance. He was able to persuade two OPP constables that he had been drinking with an unknown woman, in the swamp, when the borrowed taxi got stuck and  as his story of a ‘borrowed taxi’  in Newmarket checked out, was released ,never connecting him to Tommy’s disappearance.

McDonald paid the $5.00 for damage to property and went on his merry way! He was not seen again until March of ‘63 in an English model car, rented for the weekend and believed to be on his way to move Tommy’s remains about two miles from where he first left them. Police later discovered he damaged the car going into the swamp, a second time, when the  tow truck driver told McDonald where he had been stuck the previous August.

McDonald would ultimately be transferred from Kingston Penitentiary on August 26th in 1975 to Mountain Institution in British Columbia. Mountain Institute, a medium security site, was originally built to house the Doukhobors. It literally sits on a mountain-side, a forested area in Agassiz. McDonald spent over twenty three years where inmates maintain the grounds, grow vegetable gardens and flowers, cook, and work on the prison’s vehicles. McDonald worked as a hospital orderly at The Mountain’s small hospital, “Many who knew him there accepted him for the hardened, cantankerous, soiled man that he was.” stated  fellow inmate, Joey Ellis. MacDonald’s disdain for cleanliness was well known.

As he grew older and sicker, McDonald benefited from the care at Mountain Institute. Described as “Cantankerous, but a straight up man who didn’t get involved in the prison culture.” He was haunted by remorse for his crimes and wanted to pay society back in various ways. He would say “You do the crime, you do the time,” and often asked “Do you think that I will be forgiven?”

McDonald would be one of several aging inmates transferred to Sumas Community Correctional Centre in Abbotsford as staff felt their quality of life would improve there. After a preliminary visit, McDonald asked, “If I want to get up in the night and cook an egg, could I?” 

Here, McDonald remained until his release to King Road  Half-way-house, attended by  care-giver, Randy Simpson who had been released specifically to provide care to McDonald. McDonald wad said to have often clashed with others. He was offered forgiveness by a pair of missionaries who visited him but he expressed that regardless, he would however suffer “a literal hell of eternal torture and pain”.

McDonald would live well into his late eighties.

Post script.

I would like to include here, what I consider a rather disturbing news item from 1964. I will let you form your own thoughts but  we probably agree that we have come a long way since………

BARRIE EXAMINER, Wednesday, March 11th, 1964

A psychiatrist told Barrie Kinsmen Club last night that if John Frederick McDonald had been brought into his office one week before the abduction of Thomasena Baker, it would have been glaringly apparent what was going to happen.

Dr. Ronald Edward Stokes, Assistant Director of the Forensic Clinic in Toronto, said that McDonald belonged to a category of people who knew they were wrong when they committed these crimes but could not stop.

McDonald was convicted of non-capital murder in the death of a Beeton girl.

He said he knew of 30 people in this category in Toronto who were walking around, free men.

The courts could do nothing about them because it could not be proved they were mentally ill in the legal sense of the word.

“The Clinic”, said Stokes,”dealt with sexual offenders referred to them by the courts in Toronto, and on occasion, from other courts in Ontario.

There were also some voluntary patients with ‘sexual problems’. Magistrates use our reports as a guide to sentence, but reports should not contain any recommendations as to sentence, as this is the function of the courts,” said Stokes. He added “South of the border, psychiatrists have gained a bad reputation , and one wonders whether they are trying to usurp the function of the courts.”The aims of the clinic,” said Stubbs, “were to treat patients with sexual problems, to provide teaching facilities into this branch of psychiatry, and to do research into sexual deviation.

(And this is where I begin to have a problem with Dr, Stokes’ comments)

After describing various forms of sexual deviation, Dr. Stokes said “It is rarely that anyone is completely heterosexual. Most people deviate slightly in one way or another. The largest group seem to be homosexuals.

In Toronto, it is estimated that there are 50,000 active homosexuals with their own clubs, lingo and pick-up system.”

(and this is where I get particularly uncomfortable)

In cases involving adults and children, Dr. Stokes warned his audience: “The children are not always the babes in arms you think they are. Youngsters involved in homosexual relationshis with an adult often resort to blackmailing the adult when they realize the courts can punish the adult.”

(Not long after I found this news piece online it was taken down. Thank you.)