Toronto cops probing murder after body dumped along 401 in Pickering

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Homicide detectives are investigating a gruesome murder after human remains were found dumped along the side of Hwy. 401 in Pickering early Friday.

Toronto Police have confirmed their officers are investigating the murder after a body was found along the south side of the busy highway’s eastbound lanes just west of Whites Rd. – in Durham Region, just outside of their jurisdiction – shortly after midnight.

In a brief media scrum held at 7 p.m. at 43 Division in Scarborough, Homicide Det.-Sgt. Phillip Campbell offered few details and would not say exactly how police located the body, only that “it was discovered through investigation.”

“This is very early in the investigation,” he said when asked by reporters for more details. “There are a lot of steps we have to take and we want to protect the integrity of the investigation.”

Campbell did reveal the victim is a 67-year-old woman but he did not release her identity.

He also confirmed a man was in custody but would not say specifically if he is cooperating with police.

“He has provided some information and we’re investigating that information,” Campbell said.

The investigator also said the man and woman were known to one another.

“They were in a common-law relationship,” he said.

Campbell said the slain woman had been missing since Wednesday – two days before her remains were found – and she was last seen in the area of Brimley Rd. and Omni Dr., just north of Ellesmere Rd.

While few details have been released officially by police, Toronto Sun sources say the remains were discovered in a suitcase and are believed to be that of a missing Scarborough woman.

Toronto cops spent Friday morning searching an area along the side of Hwy. 401, using MTO trucks to help block the highway while Forensic Unit and Marine Unit officers could scour a watery marshy gully using metal detectors and long poles.

The officers recovered evidence and cleared from the area around the noon-hour.

A Homicide detective showed up before noon and walked into the crime scene, which was littered with various police markers near a culvert system just off the highway.

Aidan Kendic and his co-workers, who work at a nearby musical instrument and sound warehouse, wandered over to learn about the grisly find while they were on their coffee break.

“I don’t know what to make of it. I just heard about it five or 10 minutes ago,” Kendic said. “It’s pretty crazy.”

“It does freak me out. I don’t know why they would pick here right next to my work. I don’t know what to make of it,” he added.

Some of his co-workers had the same thoughts as they peered through the fences separating the overgrown marsh area, their employer’s building and Hwy. 401, snapping cellphone images of the officers searching.

Further down Hwy. 401 in Durham Region, sources said a dumpster was removed on a flatbed from the Pickering Casino Resort Hotel, likely taken to the Centre for Forensic Sciences.

Around noontime, the CTV helicopter captured video footage of multiple Toronto Police vehicles, a Forensic Unit truck and a large group of officers searching for further evidence at a waste management transfer station in Pickering on Friday.

It’s believed that the various crime scenes are connected somehow yet police have yet to reveal any of their findings.

While not officially confirmed by police, Sun sources say the murder is thought to be tied to an unknown trouble call that 43 Division responded to recently after neighbours reported hearing people fighting at a residence in Scarborough.

According to sources, the officers were unable to locate a woman who may have been involved in the incident. Investigators later reviewed video from a security camera on the premises and spotted her entering the property but not exiting.

Sources said a man was taken into custody and initially charged with aggravated assault related to the missing woman after officers found evidence of a suspected crime scene in a home.

– With files by Jack Boland