Just a few weeks ago, Christopher Raynsford told friends he had been threatened and robbed at knifepoint by a man he met on an Internet chat line and invited home.
Two days ago, he was found dead in his Lisgar Street apartment. His badly beaten body had been there for several days.
The killing follows a string of unsolved robberies and assaults in Ottawa dating back to November 2001, involving male victims sought out through telephone dating lines for men.
Police released a media advisory last December, warning that in the preceding months, at least five users of gay dating services had been assaulted and robbed and suffered minor injuries at the hands of someone they met over the phone.
Ottawa's gay community publication, Capital Xtra!, reported in its latest edition that the assaults are linked to a telephone chat line for men.
Police will not confirm a link.
"We'll go so far as to say it was a telephone dating service that they were meeting them through," Ottawa police Insp. Terry Cheslock said last night.
Since last December's police warning, two more assaults, carried out in a similar manner, have been reported, Insp. Cheslock said.
Mr. Raynsford used the online chat service, gay.com .
In the first five cases, the victims met the suspect, had consensual sex and were then ordered to hand over money. When they refused, the men were assaulted and robbed.
The suspect in these incidents is described as a white male, 30 to 40 years old, between 5-foot-10 and six feet tall. He's of thin to medium build, with shoulder-length curly brown hair. He uses the names John and Paul.
Insp. Cheslock said police were not linking these assaults with the city's eighth homicide of the year. Police have also not positively identified the body found Wednesday morning in apartment 805 at 257 Lisgar St. as that of Mr. Raynsford, who lived in the unit. He has not shown up for work since Nov. 21.
As a result of the media attention to the killing, Insp. Cheslock said police have received a number of tips they are following up.
But the chairwoman of the police liaison committee said last night she felt the gay community could have been told of the specific threat sooner, had all community representatives shared what information they had.
Cynthia Cousens, chairwoman of the Ottawa police liaison committee for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities, said police informed the committee of assaults in a timely manner, but were never told of a possible common link between them.
She said Capital Xtra! shared their conclusions the assaults were linked through the telephone chat line with the group just last month, almost a year after the initial police warning.
"Up to that point, the liaison committee was not aware there was a problem (with the chat line), so our concern now is asking the owners what safety mechanisms do they have in place," Ms. Cousens said.
Cruiseline is one of the local chat line services. Marketing manager Harlond Davey says his service started placing recorded advisories on the line just within the last two months.
"We did put a prompt at the beginning of the system about meeting people in public," Mr. Davey said. He said hundreds of people are registered to use the chat line in Ottawa.
"There is always a possibility there are predatory people in chat rooms," Ms. Cousens said. "There is always a possibility people will use those chatlines for hate crimes."
She advised those using the services to always meet in public with a friend present.
Ottawa's online gay community mourned the loss of a "caring, loving" man yesterday, as hundreds of people flooded onto a popular chat room in response to Mr. Raynsford's death.
In the "Ottawa" chat room on gay.com , a steady stream of online friends came together to discuss the man many of them knew only as "Hollis," Mr. Raynsford's online handle.
"It's a sad day," wrote Kuurt. (People in the chat room use online nicknames.)
The Web site gay.com is an online dating service based in San Francisco, California. Their Web site claims to have more than 5.2 million members worldwide.
In recent years, the Ottawa chat room has acted as a meeting place for online members of the gay community to gather to catch up with old friends, make new ones or pick up a sexual partner. It's part community centre, part coffee shop, part bar.
In his profile on the gay.com Web site, Mr. Raynsford answers the question "How gay are you?" with: "Totally." He listed himself as 5-9, 150 pounds, with an "extroverted/social, funny, romantic personality."
He completes the phrase "I am looking for" with "love."
Yesterday, employees at the National Art Centre's Le Caf?, where Mr. Raynsford had worked since early October, said they realized something was amiss when he missed a shift Nov. 21.
"He was so reliable," said waiter and friend Jason Huard, 25. "You could really trust him."
Yesterday, from her home outside Owen Sound, Mr. Raynsford's mother was reluctant to speak about her family's loss.
"The police have told us at the moment not to talk to anybody," said Anne Raynsford. "They still haven't released stuff and they're concerned about what gets said, that it might hamper what they're doing, so they've asked us for 24 hours."
In an unrelated development, Kingston police said Wednesday they are treating the discovery of a 39-year-old man's body as a homicide. Robert LeClair, who was gay, worked as a waiter at a Kingston restaurant.
