Myles Sanderson was the only killer in Canada mass stabbings, and his brother was a victim, police say
He was the first fatality of the series since an infamous 1993 massacre, and had the most blood on his hands — and in his wallet.
As a kid in Scarborough, Ont., Myles, then called Alex, was caught sneaking out of the house at night, and the two young siblings were taken from their parents and placed in foster care.
Then in the summer of 1968, at the age of 15, Sanderson walked into a bar in Toronto to meet a future acquaintance named William Burke and killed him.
He also murdered 12 people, six of them in a stabbing spree in a Toronto city centre nightclub.
The Sanderson family
But Myles Sanderson’s life was far from over.
His younger brother, William, went on to become a cop, then a lawyer and, in 2006, the first chief magistrate for the country’s highest court, now the Supreme Court of Canada. He was a judge until recently.
Myles Sanderson was a high school dropout who had been convicted of armed robbery and possession of drugs and alcohol in Scarborough, where his parents had taken him out of foster care.
He was the first fatality of the series — and the only one shot in the torso. He was 31.
“A person who is not a threat to the safety of the public… should be given the benefit of the doubt,” Justice Sanderson said in his remarks at a Toronto hospital before he was flown to hospital in Ottawa from Toronto.
Two friends found Myles Sanderson in a dark bar in the city’s east end on Aug. 12, 1968, and he was unarmed when identified.
He had been drinking, Myles testified, and didn’t know where he was.
“He looked like a guy that was not in control of himself
