Guy Paul Morin

Murder of Christine Jessop On October 3, 1984, Jessop's mother Janet and elder brother, Kenney, had travelled to Toronto's East Detention Centre, where her father Bob was in custody. Bob Jessop had been incarcerated two weeks earlier for misappropriation of funds. Her mother thought that, at 9 years old, Christine was too young to visit the detention centre. Despite her protests, Christine was left behind in Queensville to attend school as usual. Christine returned home from school that afternoon on the school bus. She dropped her backpack off at home, but was not there when her mother and brother returned home shortly after 4p.m. Jessop went from her home to the variety store close to her home. The shopkeeper said that Christine came to the store alone between 3:30 and 4:00p.m., bought bubble gum and left a minute or so later. Christine was supposed to meet a friend from school at a nearby park, but failed to show up.

When her mother arrived home she found Christine's school bag on the counter. In early evening after her mother had telephoned Christine's friends and searched for the little girl herself, police were called. Her body was discovered on December 31, nearly three months later. She had been sexually assaulted and murdered.

Trials An officer from York Regional Police visited the Morin home in the hours after Christine's disappearance to ask Ida Morin whether anyone had seen Christine that day, or noticed anything unusual. During that conversation, the officer noted that Guy "stared straight ahead, showing no apparent interest in the conversation"; this was later interpreted as evidence of his guilt. In early 1985, the FBI offered a profile of the perpetrator: an intelligent white male who was a resident of Queensville, age 19–26. Police turned their attention to Morin on 14 February 1985, after Christine's mother, Janet Jessop, described Morin to police as a “weird-type guy” who played the clarinet. On February 19, police set up surveillance of the Morin home. Two York Region police officers interviewed him on 22 February. A raid was conducted at the Morin home on April 22, 1985, and Morin, age 25, was arrested for Christine's murder.

Morin was acquitted at his first trial in 1986. In 1987 the Court of Appeal for Ontario ordered a new trial. The retrial was delayed until 1992 by Morin's own appeals based on the Crown's non-disclosure of exculpatory evidence and by other issues, including the double jeopardy rule. He was released on bail, pending his appeal in February 1993; On January 23, 1995, Chief Justice Charles Dubin of the Court of Appeal for Ontario allowed the appeal and entered a directed verdict of acquittal in response to the DNA evidence that all parties agreed was accurate. This verdict led to a group of volunteers to form the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (AIDWYC), now known as Innocence Canada.

An inquiry culminating in the Kaufman Report into Morin's case also uncovered evidence of police and prosecutorial misconduct, and of misrepresentation of forensic evidence by the Ontario Centre of Forensic Sciences. Morin received $1.25 million in compensation from the Ontario government. Calvin Hoover, his then-wife Heather and Bob Jessop all worked together at Eastern Independent Telecom. Calvin Hoover was a cable installer, Heather was a dispatcher, and Bob was the "lead hand" of cable installers. Heather Hoover was very close with Janet Jessop. Ken Jessop remembers going to the Hoover family home and the Hoover family coming to the Jessop home for barbecues, birthdays and other events.