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Date of birth: 1960
City of residence: Queensville, Ontario (North of Toronto)

Musician, played the clarinet

Known as a "weird guy"

Wrongfully convicted of murdering Christine Jessop

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On October 3, 1984, nine-year-old Christine Jessop went missing after being dropped off at home by the school bus. The search lasted several days, with no sign of her, until December 31, 1984 where her body was found, in which she had been stabbed to death.
The police first became interested in Morin on February 14, 1985, after Christine’s mother mentioned that their neighbour was a “weird-type guy, who played the clarinet.” Although, Morin insisted he was innocent, he was arrested on April 22, 1985. Morin went through two different trials and spent 18 months in jail. Finally, he was proven to be innocent on January 23, 1995 and received $1.25 Million as compensation.  10 years of Guy Paul Morin's life was taken away from him.  Was $1.25 Million enough? Canada's legal system will be haunted by the wrongful convictions of Guy Paul Morin for a very long time

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Image of Clayton Ruby, one of the lawyers that worked on Guy Paul Morin's case. As Guy Paul Morin's defence counsel, Ruby made much of a series of investigative shortcomings that included the improper collection and retention of physical evidence from the body site, and police notes that were missing, inadequate or misleading. He is a prominent Toronto lawyer and is still in practice today in downtown Toronto.

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tunnel vision, where the case does not proceed with an open mind;

mistaken eyewitness testimony;

false confessions;

unreliable in-custody informers;

flawed forensic and expert testimony; and

media and public pressure to convict.

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This documentary produced by the fifth estate gives an overview of the crime Morin was accused of. It is also, the first ever television interview Morin conducted after being released from prison.

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Guy Paul Morin : Odd Man Out (1992) - the fifth estate

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Guy Paul Morin pictured while he was on trial. Does he look like a child murderer?

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10 things that were learned from Morin's case

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10 things that were learned from Morin's case

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(Pictured below is Christine Jessop).
This article discusses what the justice system learned from Morin's case, such as the danger of tunnel vision. I believe this case helped decrease the amount of wrongful convictions, as it educated officials of what to be aware of.

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Christine Jessop killing: 10 things that were learned from the case | The Star

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Christine's mother, Janet Jessop, is still looking for her killer

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Christine's mother, Janet Jessop, is still looking for her killer

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“I want to find him and that’s my goal,” Jessop said. It is sad that Christine's killer has never been found, after all this time.  Christine's Dad remarried, but Janet has remained single and is now living in a retirement community.  She says the rest of her days are like a living hell on earth.  Janet did receive some money from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board and said, "it was just enough to give her daughter a proper burial."
Police claim that they still get 5-6 leads per month on this case and that they follow up on all of them.

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The community of Queensville, Ont., has a dark shadow hanging over its history.

Nine-year-old Christine Jessop went missing on Oct. 3, 1984 and her remains were discovered three months later in a rural part of Durham Region.

Christine's mother, Janet Jessop, is still looking for her daughter's killer.

"I want to find him and that's my goal," Jessop said.

"Where is the person that did it? We are talking [32] years later. She'd be 41 or 42 now. Where is he? That's the question I have. The second question I have is, why?"

Janet said there was nothing peculiar about the day her daughter went missing.

Christine was supposed to be at home after a short bus ride from school while her mother and older brother were out running errands.

"I had told her not to leave the house if I wasn't home. If she got home from school and I wasn't home, don't leave the house and just stay with Freckles (the family's dog) and she'd be fine," Jessop said.

Police said the nine-year-old had plans to meet up with a friend later that evening at nearby park, but Christine never showed up.

She was last seen purchasing a pack of gum from a convenience store down the road from her home.
WATCH: Extended interview with Janet Jessop, Christine Jessop's mother.
"I called all her friends to see if [she] had gone with them. We went down to the playground and checked that out. We went around the neighbourhood," Jessop said.

"We looked everywhere and finally we thought, 'OK, we better call the police. Something is wrong.'"

On New Year's Eve 1984, Christine's body was found more than 50 kilometres away from her Queensville home.

The nine-year-old was raped and murdered.

"As soon as we saw our minister and police walk up the driveway, we knew," Jessop said.

"You can't fathom it. You can't unless you've gone through it. There's just no way you can understand your feelings."

Toronto Police Service homicide unit Det. Sgt. Stacy Gallant said it's likely Christine was transported by vehicle to Durham Region.

"No one wants to see a young child taken and murdered and not found for an extended period of time. It's difficult for society," he said.

"It's difficult for the community."

Police identified Christine's neighbour, Guy Paul Morin, as a person of interest and he was convicted in the nine-year-old's death.

However, advancements in DNA testing lead to Morin's exoneration in 1995. He served 18 months in jail.

"DNA was located and it was found not to be that of the person that was ultimately convicted for this murder," Gallant said.

Toronto police took carriage of the case after Morin was cleared.

To date, Christine's murderer has never been found and police are still searching for the person responsible.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the police homicide unit at 416-808-7400, homicide@torontopolice.on.ca or Crime Stoppers anonymously at 1-800-222-8477.
Watch Global News at 5:30 & 6 p.m. ET Thursdays for our weekly Cold Case Files series.

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Cold Case Files: 32 years later, Ontario mother still searching for daughter's killer

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The community of Queensville, Ont., has a dark shadow hanging over its history. Nine-year-old Christine Jessop went missing on Oct. 3, 1984 and her remains were discovered three months later in a rural part of Durham Region. Christine's mother, Janet Jessop, is still looking for her daughter's killer.

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Guy Paul Morin - Guilty of Only Being A Misfit

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Guy Paul Morin - Guilty of Only Being A Misfit

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Guy was a local handyman, kept bees & played the clarinet.  People described him as a "weird-type guy".  DNA analysis in 1984/85 was in its infancy.

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"Allegations of police dishonesty surround us," The Toronto Star said under the headline "True Lies."

Mr. Morin was arrested on April 22, 1985, and was acquitted after a five-week trial in 1986. The Crown successfully appealed, setting the stage for a second trial, which ended with a conviction in 1992. Lasting nine months, that was the longest murder trial in Canadian history. Altogether, Mr. Morin spent more than 18 months in prison before advances in DNA analysis came to his rescue.

When he was first charged in 1985, DNA analysis was in its infancy. But by last year the techniques for obtaining a clear DNA imprint from contaminated samples had improved considerably. Applying the new techniques to semen samples collected from the child's clothes, scientists came up with a clear genetic profile of the killer, which did not match that of Mr. Morin. As a result of that evidence the Crown dropped the case.

His ordeal has now stirred both huge outpourings of sympathy and a formal judicial inquiry into the conduct of the police. Despite the impossibility of assigning a value to 10 years of a man's life, he is likely to get substantial compensation from the province.

After looking at more than 200 suspects, most analysts have now concluded that the police locked on him not because of any conclusive evidence linking him to the crime but what police officers saw as his odd behavior.

Mr. Morin was 24 at the time of Christine's death. He lived at home, worked as a handyman, kept bees, played the clarinet and did not hang around with the local youth. One officer wrote in his notebook, according to Maclean's magazine, that Mr. Morin was a "weird-type guy."

Robert Fulford, an essayist and visiting lecturer on Canadian culture at the University of Toronto, says the case "will haunt our society for a long time."

What got the prosecution rolling in the Morin case, Mr. Fulford wrote in The Globe and Mail, was "that he seemed to his neighbors rather odd, not a regular guy -- some sort of loner, a fellow who didn't talk the way normal people talk."

Ida Morin, his mother, pointed to the peach tree Guy Paul planted in the backyard of their house on Leslie Street and the dormer windows he helped build with his father, Alphonse, a graduate engineer who used to work for a paper mill.

On the other side of the fence is the bigger house of Robert and Janet Jessup, who divorced and moved away after the death of their daughter Christine.

"I myself knew and my husband knew that he was innocent," Mrs. Morin said. "We could account for him, and twice we've written to that effect, once at the first trial and once at the second. It is a terrible thing not to be believed. The truth was not enough, and that's unfortunate."

Guy Paul was not at home at the time. He had recently returned from a Caribbean cruise with Allison Ferguson, 25, a computer operator for the Toronto police who was on his defense committee. The two were married in late March in the Virgin Islands.

He returned to Queensville April 1, and said in a telephone interview from his parents' house that he was cutting a compact disk of clarinet music and would continue as a repair man with a company he had incorporated called Paul's Handiworks Ltd.

He was ecstatic about the cruise. "Being on the ocean you can see far and wide," he said, "and I guess that's what freedom is."

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Queensville Journal; Jailed in Killing, He's Guilty Only of Being a Misfit

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"Allegations of police dishonesty surround us," The Toronto Star said under the headline "True Lies." Mr. Morin was arrested on April 22, 1985, and was acquitted after a five-week trial in 1986. The Crown successfully appealed, setting the stage for a second trial, which ended with a conviction in 1992.

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Christine's parents, Janet & Bob Jessop, ended up splitting and moving away after their daughter was killed.

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Christine's parents, Janet & Bob Jessop, ended up splitting and moving away after their daughter was killed.

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Do you think this was a result of the murder of their beloved daughter?

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Guy Paul Morin talks with CBC's fifth estate and explains he is not bitter even after being the subject of relentless public attention.  In this interview, Guy Paul Morin talks about the Crowne Attorney and the public apology he received from him.  Guy Paul Morin is ecstatic to be a free man.  Guy claims the scientists/DNA experts saved him and says he never felt suicidal.  Guy Paul Morin explains how Durham Police officers,  Bernie Fitzpatrick & John Shepard  told Guy Paul Morin that they "did not make grave mistakes" and Guy says they should not be police officers.  Shepard made a deal with two inmates to try to get Morin to confess to them.  The Supreme Court of Canada revealed the profoundly flawed justice system that had prosecuted Guy Paul Morin.  Christine's body was exhumed and the investigative blunders ensued. A highly sensitive law case had been majorly bungled, but in the end a jury decided.  Before Morin walked out of the courtroom - he told everyone a travesty had just occurred. Guy Paul Morin was not the only suspect.  There were other likelier suspects, yet why was Guy singled out?  Key evidence was left out of the trial and this was decided by a Trial Judge.  The jury went on "what they had".  One juror claims he is frightened of the justice system and a miscarriage of justice had taken place.  Guy Paul Morin was a "slaughtered lamb".  DNA tests revealed Guy Paul Morin should never have been a suspect in the first place.  The Durham Police wanted to appease the public and made a case.  They jailed the wrong guy.  It will never be entirely clear how Guy Paul Morin became a suspect in the first place.  His life revolved around his family and his music.  The Cops tried to say fingerprints on a clarinet sealed Morin's fate.  Morin's family spent all their money on lawyers, mortgaged their home.  Morin had been in a 10 year nightmare and it all ends with a picture perfect ending... a happy one for Morin as he is finally free.

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Guy Paul Morin : Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt (1995) - The Fifth Estate

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During this interview, with Janet Jessop, she speculates what happened to her daughter and how they went about the day she went missing. She said, "..we went around the neighbourhood, it wasn't just call the police right away. No, we looked everywhere. Finally, I said we need to call the police because something is wrong."
Janet expresses the hope she once had, that Christine was at a friends they did not know or that she would stroll back home eventually.
Janet also, speaks about what Christine would be like if she was still here.
All these years later, you can still hear the pain in Janet's voice and she still has the same question which is "why?"

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Cold Case Files: extended interview with Christine Jessop's mother, Janet Jessop | Watch News Videos Online

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Watch Cold Case Files: extended interview with Christine Jessop's mother, Janet Jessop Video Online, on GlobalNews.ca

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Guy Paul Morin when he was freed from jail.

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Guy Paul Morin when he was freed from jail.

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Guy Paul Morin was living proof that the legal system had failed him and here he is after being released from jail and finally free.  Guy Paul Morin always maintained his innocence.  After receiving his compensation money, he purchased a tract of land North of Toronto and married Allison Ferguson, a member of a support team that had gathered to advocate his innocence.  The couple had two sons.  Guy became a certified piano tuner, ran a small business called Paul's Handiworks.  Later on, he became a full-time employee at Toronto's Pearson International Airport as a Maintenance Worker.