That same night, in Brooklyn, New York, FBI surveillance agents took photos of a dark-haired woman walking from a house. It was Loretta Marra, leaving a house belonging to a man listed in the phone book as John Howard at 2468 Lynden Avenue. His real name was Dennis Malvasi. Just after midnight, meanwhile, less than four hours after the shooting at Dr. Gandell’s home, a car crossed the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls into Canada. The car was a black Chevy Cavalier, Vermont plate BPE 216.
Manitoba’s capital city had been in the eye of Canada’s abortion battles ever since pro-choice standard- bearer Henry Morgentaler had opened a clinic in the city in 1983, even before he was established in Toronto, even as former Manitoba provincial cabinet minister “Holy” Joe Borowski vowed that Morgentaler’s “butcher shop” would not be permitted to open. Winnipeg’s police raided the clinic several times. And, in 1997, the city still had an aggressive pro-life movement. There was a document making the rounds that listed the names of all physicians in the city known to provide abortion services.
On November 4, 1997, police in Hamilton, Ontario faxed a memo across Canada. It advised all police services to issue warnings to doctors who perform abortions that they might be in danger at this time of year, around Remembrance Day—the time when doctors in Vancouver and Hamilton had been shot. The memo said doctors should be advised to take precautions in their homes, alter their routines, avoid standing in front of well-lit windows or doors at night, keep blinds drawn. In Winnipeg the warning arrived on the fax machine of the Criminal Intelligence Service of Manitoba (a provincial agency comprising city police officers) and the RCMP. The warning was filed and never circulated to the Mounties or city police.
On the night of November 11, Remembrance Day, a car drove along snow-packed streets past homes in the Winnipeg suburb of St. Vital, stopped at a residential crescent where two streets named Salme and Lotus met. The shooter entered the woods bordering a park that ran behind homes along Victoria Crescent. He moved, cloaked in darkness, the bare thin branches nearly invisible in the blackness. It was peaceful in the woods in the late evening, the only sound the distant ambient buzz of the city. The Red River ran alongside the woods. The river floods in springtime, so residential areas in the floodplain use dikes for protection. That included Victoria Crescent, where an obstetrician lived. A mound of earth, a dike about eight meters high, ran right behind the house, some fifteen meters from his door.
The shooter walked close beside the river. There were a few clouds, but the black water shimmered in the reflected light of the moon and of the homes on the far side of the river. The shooter was now roughly parallel with the doctor’s property. He stopped, scaled the riverbank, negotiating the slippery, steep hill through the trees to the chain-link fence. Up and over. And there was the dike. He climbed it, then walked along the ridge. The house was an unusual design, raised up on stilts, a carport underneath. The entire back wall of the house was glass. Winnipeg is frigid in November, on a crisp night you can feel the harsh air rip through your nostrils, your breath floating like smoke in the air. It was 8:45 p.m. Dr. Jack Fainman walked into his living room.
He had studied medicine at the University of Manitoba, further training in obstetrics and gynecology in Chicago, then moved to Emo, a town of a couple thousand in northwestern Ontario, where he set up practice. He and his wife, Fagie, eventually moved to Winnipeg. There was something of the legend about tall, handsome Jack Fainman. The story went that, when he worked as a country doctor in Emo, more than once he walked across the frozen lake in the dark, the wind whipping his face, just to get to a patient. One day, before the advent of Canada’s universal health care system, a pregnant woman refused to go to hospital because she couldn’t afford it. So broad- shouldered Jack Fainman went to her home, picked her off the ground and literally carried her to the hospital.
He also provided abortion services. In 1997 he was 66 years old and still working. He taught medicine at St. Boniface General Hospital. He was one of about a dozen doctors in the city who were referred patients for abortions. But Fainman didn’t handle as many referrals as some of the others, nor did he tend to do later-term abortions like some. A quiet, unassuming man, he put more emphasis, people said, on prenatal care, maybe booked one or two abortions a week.
Just before 9 p.m., he sat in the living room on the other side of the yawning glass wall. To someone outside, just 15 meters away, the light of the room cast Jack Fainman in perfect silhouette.
The explosion, a window shatters, Jack Fainman collapses to the ground, a gusher of blood bursting from his right shoulder. His wife rushes into the room, picks up the phone, calls 911. Fainman himself takes the phone. There is urgency in his voice, but also a cool, clinical tone.
“Hello—” he says.
“Hello,” replies the dispatcher.
“This is Dr. Fainman. I’m hemorrhaging here. Get an ambulance quickly.”
It took nine minutes for police to arrive at the front of the Fainman house. The sniper was gone. Perhaps he drove up Salme Crescent, onto Dunkirk, past the police community kiosk in the strip mall, past the neon glow from the sign of the Dakota Motel, towards the Bishop Grandin expressway. Dr. Fainman, meanwhile, was stable in hospital, as staff debated on whether to remove the bullet embedded deep in his shoulder. Police dogs, forensic unit, detectives combed the scene. The shooter left footprints in the snow, tire tracks. Plaster casts were taken of the tracks. Ron Oliver, a city policeman, took photos of two tire impressions consistent with a General Motors car. Goodyear tire, Concorde caliber, size 195 x 75 x 14, a 5.5-inch-wide tire. Midsize GM car, consistent with model from years 1981 to 1990.
It takes an hour and half to reach the North Dakota border from Winnipeg. At night the four-lane is lonely and dark, vast stretches of farmland on either side blend into blackness, it feels as though you are in a tunnel, on a drive to nowhere. And then lights, a sign declaring you are about to cross the 49th parallel. Hard on the border is Pembina, North Dakota, population just over 600, the first opportunity for food off Route 59 is a greasy spoon called The Depot Cafe that serves lead-in-your belly cheeseburger soup. At 1:10 a.m. a car license plate was recorded crossing the border: Vermont BPE 216.
Late in 1997 the Hamilton police investigation into the maiming of Dr. Hugh Short was still open, but little was happening. A meeting was called at central station on King William Street on November 18, 1997. A detective named Aivars Jekabsons was summoned to see Acting Superintendent Dave Bowen, Steve Hrab (the senior man in the Major Crime Unit) and Detective Peter Abi-Rashed, who was one of the original detectives on the Short file. Jekabsons, who had a relaxed, irreverent air to him, entered the room, looking like an unemployed surfer. His hair hung long, past his shoulders, tied in a ponytail. Ragged clothes, beard. It was part of the uniform, working undercover on the streets. Jekabsons was a 44-year-old vice and drugs detective with 21 years on the force. His Latvian parents had wanted him to pursue accounting. Aivars had wanted to pursue criminals.
As an investigator he had come to the conclusion that everything is just a matter of time. There is always a trail. Just stay with it, good things will happen. But if ever his patience would be tried, it would be in the Hugh Short case.
Two years after the shooting, there were no suspects, and senior officers at the meeting asked Jekabsons if he would take charge of revisiting the cold case. He accepted. Soon after that, Abi-Rashed handed over boxes of evidence and background and investigator notes to the new man. “Here you go,” Abi-Rashed said. “Start reading.” The next step was introducing Jekabsons to Hugh and Katherine Short. Abi-Rashed and Jekabsons visited the house on Sulphur Springs.
“Detective Jekabsons will now be completely dedicated to the case,” Abi-Rashed told the Shorts. “The investigation is going full bore.”
Hugh Short looked over the ragged Jekabsons. “So I’m being assigned a guy who looks like this?”
Jekabsons laughed. He said he planned to get a haircut and shave. They got along just fine after that. The detective came to like the Shorts. There were good people who deserved answers.
Back at the office he started from scratch, digging through documents, forensics. Jekabsons thought the boys who first handled the case did a solid job. But sometimes a fresh set of eyes can spot something new. At least he hoped so. He visited the Shorts’ backyard one night, stood inside the quiet shed where the sniper had waited, then outside, staring at the second-floor window, putting himself inside the shooter’s skin, assuming the firing position, imagining the shot, checking the terrain around him. Two shots in quick succession. Where do you go? Where is the escape route? You probably don’t park your car on the street. Sulphur Springs Road is narrow, in an isolated area, not many homes. A neighbor would notice a strange car parked on the street. There was probably a second person
