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In the world tonight, hunting a killer, police release a note from the past.
The bizarre disposal of a huge GST ripoff.
And Ontario Somalis denounce welfare abusers and critics at Queens Park.
["The Star-Spangled Banner"]
The world tonight with Peter Kent and Jane Gilbert.
["The Star-Spangled Banner"]
Good evening. Ontario Provincial Police are asking the public to help them solve a three-year-old murder case.
Linda Shaw, a 21-year-old university student, disappeared while driving along the 401 in April of 1990.
She was later found stabbed and beaten to death.
Today, the OPP released parts of a letter which they hope will lead them to the murderer.
Our crime specialist, Sue Scambatti, reports.
The letter arrived at the Woodstock OPP office on May 1st, 1991, and was mailed in southwestern Ontario.
Although police have blacked out portions of it, the letter reads,
Sir, I was told Linda Shaw was killed by a London bodybuilder who works as a bouncer at the...
on Wellington Road in London.
His name is Lucas, or something that sounds like that.
Someone was bragging that he had left.
They also said he would get out of it if caught because he had proof.
The letter is signed, Jim Gold.
There's details in the letter that we have blackened out that we feel that only either the person responsible for the death of Linda Shaw
or someone that is aware of information about that person or has received information would know.
Police are finally publicizing the contents of the letter in the hope someone will recognize the handwriting
and be able to identify Jim Gold or pass on information about Lucas.
Investigators have been unable to determine if the writer is a man or a woman,
but they say the person appears to be well-educated, is quite familiar with London, and has an interest in police investigations.
The return address on the envelope is London City Police Headquarters.
Perhaps it's somebody that just wishes to tease the investigators.
It could be somebody who has some sort of revenge ideas against an individual.
Certainly it's kind of hard to speculate specifically why this person wrote,
other than the fact is that we believe that that person has specific knowledge, and we want to talk to that person.
Twenty-one-year-old Linda Shaw disappeared on Easter Monday 1990 while driving to London along the 401.
Her car was found abandoned by the highway.
Her body was later discovered in a field near Woodstock.
She had been beaten and stabbed, and her body set on fire.
Police are asking anyone with information about this letter, its author, or the person Lucas mentioned in it to contact investigators.
Sue Scambati, Global News, Woodstock.
The American television program, A Current Affair, tonight broadcast information concerning the Carla Homolka and Paul Teal cases,
details the Canadian media can't report because of an Ontario court gag order.
The program filled in some of the blanks for its American audience, and Canadians who were able to watch the episode with satellite dishes.
The tabloid program also interviewed a man who claimed to be a cellmate of Paul Teal,
who also claimed he had sex with Teal in jail.
He said that Teal was outraged over the likeness of the sentence Homolka received for her part in the murders of Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffey, 12 years in prison.
In Niagara region, the Green Ribbon Task Force that investigated the case said tonight they will speak with the Attorney General's office about the broadcast.
Parts of Southern California are still being devastated by huge brush fires.
So far 30,000 people have been driven from their homes by the raging fires, but authorities tonight are saying that the worst may be over.
Helped by calmer winds, firefighters are making some progress in battling the blazes.
Richard Roth reports.
As daylight broke on a spectacle of ruin, firefighters today said they had turned a corner on the worst of it.
Almost 100,000 acres are charred for more than a dozen fires.
More than 600 homes are damaged or destroyed.
The emergency is not over, but a crisis point has passed, and a big reason is the weather.
It is warm again today and dry, but today there's not that much left for a fire to burn.
And yesterday's terrible winds are calmer.
Last night in Laguna Beach looked like the end of the world.
Authorities believe this fire was deliberately set.
Its effect was devastating.
The town was evacuated as more than 300 homes were hit by flames.
Miss, goodbye.
What did I say?
Going home this morning, the shock that hit Deborah Congdon and her teenage son was repeated over and over.
Oh, what a nightmare. This is a nightmare.
Throughout it all, firefighters were making decisions.
Where might a house be saved, and where would the effort be futile?
When the flames surrounded Dave Coragian, firemen told him to leave.
Then police told him to obey the firemen.
The police made me leave. I went to the end of the street and waited for about 15 minutes and snuck back in.
And he fought the fire almost alone until firemen decided to add their resources to his effort.
We were actually on the roof trying to put it out with wet towels because we had very little water.
I was throwing Gatorade on the thing, cokes, anything I could get.
They ask you to leave, they tell you to leave. They say there's an evacuation.
Oh, yeah.
It's only a house.
Oh, no, it's not just a house. We built this house, my father, my family and I built this house 20 years ago.
It just means too much to me.
For those who lost the most, there are shattered dreams.
For everyone else, there are shattered nerves.
Dave Coragian was still watering his house today as if anxiety had become a habit.
Richard Roth, CBS News, Laguna Beach.
Prime Minister-elect Jean Chrétien has been quick to act on one of his campaign promises.
He's appointed former Ontario Treasurer Robert Nixon to study the deal to privatize Toronto's Pearson International Airport.
Nixon is to advise Chrétien on the advisability of going ahead with the deal within 30 days.
During the campaign, Chrétien promised to review the $700 million agreement.
It was also announced today that Chrétien and his cabinet will be sworn into office next Thursday, November the 4th.
Robert Trinka has expensive tastes, but for the next three years he'll have to modify those tastes in jail.
The Toronto man will do time not because he liked the high life, but because he paid for it with money built from Revenue Canada.
Simon Dingley reports.
Robert Trinka loved strippers. In 1991, the 37-year-old real estate agent spent money like a drunken sailor, over $100,000 on booze and exotic dancers in this Mississauga club alone.
The club's table dancers had a nickname for Trinka, the cash cow.
He would spend quite a bit on them because they would sit with them from, like, all night long for a couple hours and, you know, charge them, you know, a few hundred dollars an hour or whatever.
Table dancers.
Yeah, yeah, and if he liked them, you know, he'd say, don't even dance, just sit here and drink and keep me company.
Trinka would visit this club and other West End establishments every day and stay until closing time.
He gave one dancer $55,000 after she told him she needed breast surgery and allowed him to examine her breasts.
It was common for him to spend thousands of dollars a night in the bar on champagne and hard liquor, and during one short poker game, he'd lost more than $160,000.
One of the women that danced out of the taverns he proposed marriage to and actually bought a house for in contemplation of marriage, she apparently changed her mind.
But not until after she'd got the house worth $250,000.
Trinka got the money by incorporating a business in 1989 and claiming it did more than $20 million in business.
He received a GST tax credit of $1.34 million.
Apparently, no one in Ottawa bothered to check the claim.
Trinka would hint he had mafia connections.
He never told what he does.
Never told me.
He said he invests money, that's what he says.
You'd think that if you somehow got a windfall of $1.3 million, you would end up in the south of France living like a king for the rest of your life.
He ended up in Mississauga and to Evans.
Trinka lived here in the basement of his parents' home in Etobicoke.
The woman who answered the door told Global News she had no comment.
But the federal justice department says Trinka almost pulled off the perfect crime.
He very likely would have gotten away with this had he been satisfied with $1.3 million. What drew the attention of the investigators to him is that he tried it again.
And like a gambler who rolls the dice one time too many, Trinka got greedy and got caught during an audit.
Simon Dingley, Global News, Mississauga.
Members of Ontario's Somali community held a news conference in Toronto today partly to denounce welfare fraud by any Somalis who use support money to buy weapons for warring countries.
They use the weapons for warring factions in their homeland.
But the Somali leaders also accused Liberal leader Lynn McLeod of unfairly singling out Somali refugees as welfare abusers.
Global's Robin Smythe has the details.
Members of Metro's Somali community are demanding an apology from the Liberal leader.
Yesterday she alleged some Somali refugee claimants were defrauding the welfare system and sending money overseas to buy weapons.
That according to a federal report she refused to release publicly.
But they decry those allegations as unfair and untrue.
I'm originally from Somalia. I'm Canadian citizen. I respect the law of this country.
But it seems that there's a bang, there's a stamp in our head, welfare fraud.
This is absolutely ridiculous.
To sing out a community, to sing out ethnic group, I think it's not what we learn in the Canadian way.
So we demand an apology from her.
The government now says the report is not sanctioned by any federal ministry and that it found only seven incidents of fraud by Somalis in Canada.
That from a population of 60,000.
And from those seven incidents, the writer of this report, an individual civil servant, draws conclusions which cast aspersions on a particular community
and which were added to by the leader of the opposition's press release, which I find appalling and abhorrent.
Global News has obtained a copy of the confidential report that has sparked a fierce political fight.
In fact, there are nine confirmed fraud cases and another 12 Somalis are being investigated.
Another investigation resulted in charges against 150 Somalis and another 100 may still be charged.
But it's not something condoned by the vast majority of Somalis in Canada.
We didn't come here to collect welfare. We want to work on those bad, few bad people, Somali people who collect double or triple welfare.
They should be put into prison. Never mind the prison. They should be sent back home, maybe.
As for Lynne McLeod... And I regret if anybody is seeing this as applying to a whole community. This is not a matter of race.
I will raise the issue and continue to raise the issue that I am deeply concerned about,
which is whether or not deliberate welfare fraud is jeopardizing a system which needs to be protected for all of those who need it.
But it seems politics has overshadowed the very real concerns about the extent and cost of welfare fraud and about just what is being done to stop it.
Robin Smythe, Global News, Queen's Park.
Canadian broadcasters and the CRTC have agreed to cut back on television violence.
They introduced a revised code today establishing new rules meant to protect young Canadians from excessive violence in everything from drama to cartoons.
Kathy Linus has the story.
Viewing this kind of violence isn't healthy for Canada's children.
That belief has led private broadcasters and the CRTC to agree on a tough new anti-violence code for TV.
Broadcasters have felt that part of their responsibility is to ensure that none of their programming in fact does harm to children.
The CRTC says there is strong evidence excessive TV violence does hurt youngsters.
A relentless diet of excessive gratuitous romanticized television violence damages children.
It desensitizes them. It can make it difficult for them to study at school. It makes them aggressive and antisocial.
The code makes several commitments including an outright ban on gratuitous violence.
That is material not integral to plot or character.
Violence not suitable for children won't be broadcast before 9 p.m.
For children's shows and cartoons, violence can't be central and the consequences of violence should be shown.
There will be viewer advisories to warn of violent content.
Just recently in the U.S., a child imitated the cartoon Beavis and Butt-Head causing a fire which killed his sister.
The Canadian code also bans cartoons inviting dangerous imitation.
The decision to control cartoon violence may be somewhat controversial.
The CRTC says the aim is not to get excessive.
Nobody wants to censor Bugs Bunny or Road Runner and that kind of stuff or Tom and Jerry, delightful stuff.
Together we had to find a balance between protecting children and protecting creative freedom and they're equally important.
Broadcasters say they've already started the process of self-control.
Broadcasters have been reading their audiences for years and saying I can't put that on television.
You know, people won't accept that kind of violence on television.
The code doesn't apply to U.S. channels carried on Canadian cable nor to pay or specialty channels.
But the CRTC has asked the cable companies and the others to come up with their own anti-violence code by the end of the year.
As well, the entire industry is working on a classification system for TV shows to label programs family or adult entertainment.
Kathy Linus, Global News, Ottawa.
In a week when the federal New Democrats were reduced to just nine seats in the House of Commons, the Ontario NDP is now mulling over a grim new poll.
And Varonix conducted the poll earlier this month that shows support for Bob Ray's party at only 13 percent among decided voters, down three points from July.
The Liberals remain in the lead with the support of 40 percent of those polled, up three points from July.
And the Tories are second, dropping two points to 32 percent. The NDP's showing was its lowest since 1985.
Canadian doctors say they're stressed out and they're blaming the government. That story is next.
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Compared to the next most popular diaper, Pampers for walkers help prevent leaks better.
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The second annual national survey on Canadian doctors was released today, and some may find its findings surprising.
It shows that many doctors feel they are under increasing levels of stress, and those doctors are blaming government for much of it.
Our health specialist Colleen Walsh explains.
For almost 40 years, Dr. Douglas Schatz has been a proud physician.
He's been satisfied intellectually and fulfilled by his relationships with patients and his colleagues.
I can't imagine working with a better group of people, a more dependable, more reliable, more loyal group of people
than in medicine.
But Canadian doctors are frustrated by the increasing regulations imposed on them by government.
They are being challenged by various government and association regulations that they find restrictive.
They find that stressful, and this becomes harmful to their practice, and they become irritable and less cooperative to the system.
Even though in a profession that demands long, high pressure hours and life or death decisions,
the Medical Post's second national survey on doctors turned up some surprising findings.
When we talked about the sources of stress for doctors, six in ten cite government control and regulations being the single largest source of stress.
As a result of those controls, many physicians are overloaded with patients, and 50 percent say patient demand is also a major cause of stress.
60 percent of physicians say there should be a charge for telephone consultations,
and 74 percent say patients should receive an itemized statement of their health care costs to dispel the myth that health care is free.
The survey reveals 70 percent of doctors say today's better informed patients are consuming more time,
and while they agree the system isn't set up to spend that much time in consultation,
it means patients become more responsible for their own health.
Dr. Schott says the social contract in Ontario is an example of the heavy hand of government, and it's being blamed for poor morale.
Ironically, here at the North York General Hospital, they've just announced they'll have to close for non-essential services over Christmas to meet social contract demands.
It's this kind of government intervention that doctors say is one of the most stressful aspects of their job.
We don't see an end to this at present time. More regulations, more restrictions, more guidelines continue to restrain enthusiasm within the profession.
Colleen Walsh, Global News, Toronto.
Susan Hay tells us the cold weather is still coming.
It will get here. I know you want it. In some portions tonight, definitely colder than others,
but scattered showers or wet flurries right across the board over the next 24 hours.
We'll be back with Susan's forecast in just a moment.
And the Las Vegas landmark goes out in style.
Hi there. I'm Dave Thomas, and I'd like one of those Monterey Ranch chicken sandwiches, please.
Hi, I'm Dave Thomas. I'd like a Monterey Ranch chicken sandwich.
When we stopped making our Monterey Ranch chicken sandwich, people tried everything to get one.
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Dave Thomas missed Wendy's Monterey Ranch Chicken Sandwich with its breaded seasoned chicken breast,
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Well, the weather conditions this evening across the maritime provinces have definitely improved.
There was a large low pressure disturbance earlier in the day that generated anywhere from 50 to 67 millimeters of rainfall just this afternoon.
So, well over two inches and strong winds with gusts to 120 kilometers per hour.
Tonight, the winds have diminished and the rain is very, very light.
So, they're much better off this evening.
Newfoundland still reporting strong wind gusts.
Now, strong wind gusts in Timmins later on this evening associated with this low that is tracking eastward because of the southwesterly winds to 40
and an overnight low predicted around minus one.
Windchill values predicted around minus 15 in Timmins with more scattered flurries on the way.
And this low is tracking eastward, as I mentioned, continuing with the snow in the northwest earlier in the day, 10 to 15 centimeters,
an additional 10 more by tomorrow morning.
So, it looks like the remainder of the province into some scattered showers or rain.
The Sioux, a mixture of rain and wet snow.
But on the map tomorrow, once that cold front passes through, in behind the precipitation should come to an end,
whether it's snow or flurry, scattered showers or rain.
It might take a while, particularly for eastern Ontario.
But by the afternoon, we should clear out just a bit as the high from the prairies comes in.
So, variable-type clouds, maybe some sunny breaks, in other areas, mainly just a cloudy day.
Winds will be out of the south or southwest tomorrow, gusts to about 40, and then by the afternoon, a westerly circulation.
This weekend, a northwesterly circulation, and temperatures are really going to fall off and be quite cold out there.
Okay, current readings, anywhere from about minus one to about six degrees because of all the cloud and the showers.
Tomorrow, not much improvement in the north and central areas.
You just saw about one to six in between Ottawa and Windsor.
Six to nine degrees, these are our daytime highs tomorrow.
Here's a closer look at the next four days.
So, Timmins, more snow or scattered flurries in the forecast.
Your high, only one degree.
Now, a 70 percent chance of flurries in the Sioux with sunny breaks in Elliott Lake, Sudbury and North Bay.
Showers or flurries likely in the morning.
For Ottawa, a 40 percent chance of showers tomorrow, Peterborough and the Coorthas.
Scattered showers ending in the afternoon.
It will be windy and much colder.
Across Georgian Bay, the District of Muskoka and Perry Sound, mainly cloudy, scattered showers Friday.
Southwest winds to 40 in the high six degrees.
Across the southwest, predicting a variable cloudy day with a chance of showers in the morning.
And in Metro Toronto, showers in the morning ending by the afternoon.
My goodness, there's just so much weather here.
I'm going to keep up. It's going to be a cold weekend.
All right, enough said.
That's right.
Finally tonight, one of Las Vegas' famous landmarks is no more.
The Dune's Hotel is where some of America's biggest stars used to perform.
Frank Sinatra, Jack Benny and Margaret.
But last night, it put on its biggest show ever.
Demolition experts brought the place down in a spectacular fiery display.
The Dune's Hotel.
It's about the third time I've seen those pictures tonight and they continue to amaze me.
That's the weather on the weekend too.
No, no, don't say that.
That's our report for the world tonight.
For all of us here, I'm Jane Gilbert.
And I'm Peter Kemp, Global's next newscast tomorrow at noon.
Stay tuned now for Sportsline with Jim Tatti and Mark Hepsher.
Good night.
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