Rage (5 page)

For almost an hour, Tim did nothing more than pace around the Ferrimans’ small apartment and worry. He called Ashley again at 6:41. Her dad answered again. He lied again, telling Tim that Ashley was still out with her friends, but that he expected her home at any minute.

At 6:55, the paramedics arrived at 90 Dawes and raced down to the basement. They replaced the cops in the tiny crawlspace. As soon as they got there, they could see Johnathon was, as paramedics say, VSA (vital signs absent). They wrapped Johnathon’s body in a specially designed blanket and rushed him outside. Once he was inside the ambulance, the paramedics rapidly tried to clamp off all his leaking blood vessels and massage his heart. One of the paramedics, attempting to intubate him, shone a light down his mouth to guide the tube. He was shocked to see the light reflected on the opposite wall—it was coming out of the holes in Johnathon’s throat.

At 7:07, on the sidewalk just in front of 90 Dawes, inside the ambulance—after all life-saving avenues were exhausted—Johnathon was declared dead.

Gray, informed that none of the suspects were still inside the house, sent a part of the ETF to Tim’s address. Armed with shotguns, they surrounded both entrances to the second-floor apartment and called inside. There was no answer. Tim had the phone in his hand when it rang, and he hoped it would be Ashley. But he let it ring, just in case it wasn’t.

He knew that if he got in touch with her, there were things he wanted to say to her that he didn’t want his father to hear. So at 7:35, Tim walked to the apartment’s back door and hesitated at the top of the steps into the back yard with the portable phone in his hand. Although Tim hadn’t yet taken a step outside, the members of the ETF could clearly see him through the open door. He didn’t realize it at first, but he had more than a dozen guns aimed at his head.

The cops yelled at him, told him to stop moving, to put the phone down. He didn’t. They shouted the order at him again and again. Still he refused. He later claimed he couldn’t hear them. After waiting for a response from Tim, one cop ran up to him and kicked him in the chest. Tim crumpled and the cops cuffed him and placed him under arrest.

The commotion drew the attention of Tim’s ailing father—also named Tim Ferriman—who came outside to see what was the matter. When Tim saw him, he told him: “Dad, I witnessed a murder.” Enraged at seeing his son roughly handled and on the ground, the older Ferriman began to argue with and threaten several police officers. He was quickly placed under arrest.

As police led young Tim Ferriman down the stairs, he passed by ETF leader James Hung, recognized that he was in charge, and told him: “I know why you guys are here; I know what this is all about.” He started talking as soon as the arresting officer read him his right to counsel. On the drive to the police station, the officers questioned him about the whereabouts of Kevin and Pierre. He provided police with detailed descriptions of the two boys, including where they were and what they were wearing when he last saw them.

When he was brought to 54 Division, Tim was allowed to explain to his father what had happened in private. His father was then released without being charged.

The officers there took Tim at his word and were treating him like a witness to an attempted murder. That changed when Gray arrived. When he saw Tim waiting around the station, barely supervised, he told the officers there that he wasn’t a witness, but a suspect. “He’s in this,” he told them. Tim was quickly taken into more secure custody.

Despite appearing willing to talk in the car, Tim changed his mind at the police station and decided to wait for a lawyer. Aware that they would get no more information from him that night, the police offered him the chance to make a phone call. Unlike in the United States, a prisoner’s one phone call is not a guaranteed right in Canada, but it has become customary over the years. Excited, Tim told them he wanted to call Ashley. They refused.

At 8:00 p.m., Joanne—unaware that her son was dead—finished up her shift at a popular chain restaurant and headed for home. She got off the subway at the Main Street stop, as she had thousands of times before, and walked the two blocks east to Dawes. She could see flashing lights in the dark sky, but didn’t think much about it. It wasn’t exactly a high-crime area, but things happened there from time to time and a few flashing lights in the neighborhood didn’t overly concern her. As soon as Joanne turned the corner, though, she saw just how many police cars there were and how big the crowds were. As she got closer, she could tell they were in front of her house. She broke into a run. By the time she got to the police line, she was frantic and screaming. Once the police and other emergency personnel identified her as Johnathon’s mother, they surrounded her, separated her from the curious onlookers, packed her in the back seat of a car and took her away for debriefing and grief counseling.

Another family member, who can’t be identified, returning home from a friend’s house shortly after Joanne arrived, ignored the police and emergency staff, lifted up the yellow police tape and walked up to the front door. When stopped by a police officer, the person in question calmly said, “Oh, it’s okay; I live here.”

At about the same time that Joanne found out that her son was dead—and that it was probably her other son who had murdered him—the forensic examiner finished the preliminary report on Johnathon’s battered body. After all the blood and other tissue were cleaned off, the doctor counted no fewer than 71 entry wounds from a large, bladed weapon. Almost all of them were around the face or throat. One thrust—the one that probably killed him—cut so deep that it took a small chunk out of Johnathon’s backbone.

After Tim gave his initial statements and told him he wouldn’t speak further without a lawyer present, Gray decided they needed to hear more from Ashley and her friends that night. He had his staff bring them all in. It was about 10:00 p.m. when they were finally all assembled. He sat them all in a conference room. Each girl had one or both of her parents with her. They all struck him as nice, polite, even upstanding young women. He was saddened that he had to break the news to them.

“Some of what you heard on the tape today came true,” he told them. They all screamed and cried, some even fell to the floor. It was only then that Ashley learned Kevin’s little brother’s name was Johnathon and that he was 12, not five as she’d imagined, and that he was dead.

Kevin and Pierre didn’t get very far that night. While the police searched the area, the boys hid in Taylor Creek Park, which starts just a few blocks north of 90 Dawes.

Although it’s big, there’s not much to the park: just a creek, some marshes and a few trails cut into the lightly wooded ravine. Torontonians appreciate the city’s many wooded valleys for a chance to get closer to nature and away from the city’s hustle and bustle. But Taylor Creek isn’t one of Toronto’s more popular ravines; not many people go there and almost none ever show up at night. When there’s even a light dusting of snow on the ground—as there was November 25, 2003—it can be an eerily quiet place.

Kevin and Pierre, familiar with the park from many smoking and drinking sessions, had no problem staying hidden from the few flashlight beams that penetrated the trees in search of them. They stayed the night there without incident.

The following day, police officers were combing the neighborhood looking for the boys. A call came in from a person who recognized Kevin and Tim from images shown on TV that morning. Because both suspects were under 18, the police needed to get a judge’s permission to release their photos to the media. The witness had seen not only the boys, but also the blood on their clothes.

Detective Constables Chris Sherk and Erin Bradshaw spotted Pierre at the corner of Coxwell Ave. and O’Connor Drive—a busy intersection about two-and-a-half miles away from 90 Dawes. Sherk later said he was surprised to see the most-wanted fugitives in the country “just strolling around” out in the open. Sherk stopped his car and apprehended Pierre. As he “took physical control” of the skinny 6-foot, maybe 140-pound boy, Sherk told him he was under arrest for murder. Pierre shrugged and indicated that he understood. Sherk was perplexed by the lack of concern the boy showed.