By now you've heard about the eight men found dead yesterday inside four vehicles left on a tract of farmland about 30 kilometres southwest of London near St. Thomas. The OPP are tight lipped, but I've seen enough episodes of "The Sopraonos" to smell a gang hit. We're probably not talking about the mob here, several motorcycle clubs have been known to populate the area including the Loners, the Bandidos and the Hells Angels.
Eight men out puts the deadly event at number six in Canada's worst single mass-murder countdown. Here are the top ten, courtesy of The Star.
- Fourteen women were killed by anti-feminist Marc Lepine at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique engineering school in December 1989. Lepine wounded another nine women and four men and fatally shot himself.
- Thirteen people died after being herded into a storage room in Montreal's Gargantua nightclub in 1975. Some were shot, but most suffocated when the building was set on fire in what was believed to be an underworld contract hit.
- Nine people gunned down by Mark Chahal, a spurned son-in-law in Vernon, B.C., who killed his estranged wife, her bride-to-be-sister and seven other relatives before killing himself in April 1996.
- Nine people slain in 1967 in Shell Lake, Sask., by Robert Hoffman, later sent to a mental institution.
- Nine miners killed by deliberately set blast in Yellowknife's Giant Mine in September 1992. Roger Warren, a striking miner, sentenced to life in prison for setting the bomb during a bitter strike-lockout.
- The bodies of eight men found yesterday in southwestern Ontario.
- Seven people, including six children, killed in 1965 by ex-Vancouver police constable Leonard Hogue, who then killed himself.
- Bodies of six campers found in burned-out car in Wells Gray Provincial Park north of Kamloops, B.C., in 1982. David Shearing of Clearwater, B.C., confesses.
- Bodies of four adults and a baby associated with the doomsday cult Order of the Solar Temple found in the burned-out remains of a chalet in Morin Heights, Que., in 1994. The couple believed responsible fled to Switzerland where they were among 53 cultists who were killed or committed suicide.
- Five people found dead on a farm in Abbotsford, B.C., in September 1996. Police believed the killings were related to the drug trade.
There's a 10:00 news conference today. Hopefully the OPP will shed a little more light on this dark discover then.
