The beat goes on, but with fewer TSF blog insiders, the pulse is much weaker.
 |
| Jean Houghton |
Another season, another reason for Toronto Sun Family members to stay in touch.
On a sad note, we say farewell to Max Haines, the Toronto Sun's crime writer who turned murder and mayhem into an industry. Mike Strobel came out of retirement to pay homage to gentle Max, who died Sept. 30. Feel free to add your comments.
By Mike Strobel,
Death was Max Haines’ stock in trade. No one could write murder and mayhem like Max.
In his deft hands, death came alive — for 34 years, 28 books and 2,500 wildly popular Crime Flashback columns in the Sun.
Name the demise and Max wrote about it, with a twinkle and a wry
touch: Decapitation, poison, strangling, shooting, stabbing, vats of
acid, bludgeoning...
Max made murder fun, death droll.
But there is nothing fun or droll about progressive supranuclear
palsy (PSP). It is a rare, slow and incurable neurological scourge akin
to Parkinson’s disease.
It claimed Max Haines, at age 86, in the wee hours of Saturday at his Etobicoke home.
There never was a newspaperman quite like him. A story-teller without peer.
Funny, but it all started with faulty pantyhose.
Max had sallied forth from Antigonish, Nova Scotia, to conquer the
world of women’s undergarments. He set up shop in Toronto. Business was
brisk — but brief. One fateful day, Max forgot to check the elastic
waistbands on a big shipment of pantyhose leaving his factory.
Soon, a hue and cry arose from women across Canada — and Max looked around for a new career.
His passion was writing true crime stories and in 1972 he walked into
the Sun newsroom with a sample, about iconic axe-murder suspect Lizzie
Borden. It was the best $15 managing editor Ed Monteith ever spent.
Max, triumphant, returned to his car, where the lovely Marilyn and daughters Susan, Maureen and Eleanor were waiting.
“We all went out for ice cream,” Marilyn tells me Saturday, from her home, as the family gathers.
As any longtime Sun reader knows, Lizzie Borden was just the start.
Over three decades, Max’s columns were gathered into books like
Bothersome Bodies, Doctors Who Kill, Multiple Murderers II, and
Celebrity Murders and Other Nefarious Deeds.
My favourite Max Haines fiends included the snake Bob James, who
arranged for a rattler to bite his wife and Englishman John Haigh, who
dissolved six victims in sulphuric acid and poured them in his back
yard.
The heinous Mr. Haigh did not know gallstones are too gritty even for acid — an oversight that helped hang him.
I asked Max how to commit the perfect murder. (Hypothetically, of course.)
“Move to Texas,” he replied. “Everyone has a gun down there. The good
wife always says, ‘Gee I thought it was an intruder and it was dark and
I plugged him in the heart.”
“And in Texas, you need two kills to your credit before they take you seriously.”
Max retired in 2006, though Crime Flashback lived on in syndication.
The Sun city desk still gets calls from readers demanding his return.
None of those calls, I’ll bet, was from Dennis Melvyn Howe, the
presumed killer of Sharin’ Morningstar Keenan. The nine-year-old girl
was found strangled in Howe’s rooming house on Brunswick Ave. in 1983, a
case that shocked Toronto out of all innocence.
Max never gave up the hunt for Howe, who is now 77 if he’s still in
our midst. Max chased lead after lead, kept a mug shot in his wallet and
often revisited the case in his column.
“He’s my boogeyman,” Max told me.
Says Marilyn: “Max wanted to find that guy so badly.”
What sweet irony it would be if news of Haines’ death triggers a memory, or stirs a conscience, in someone out there.
What a fitting tribute to Max that would be.
Another season, another reason to stay in touch...
All of TSF's reliable tipsters have retired, been fired, been bought out or have sold out so feel free to enlighten us with TSF news that counts.
The 45th anniversary of the Toronto Sun will be marked on Nov. 1, 2016. Have your say on the anniversary or any other Sun-related topic.
Toronto Sun
At 30 - 2015
Jennifer Gough, 63 – January 1
