I have to admit that I’ve been reading the online version of the Toronto Sun more recently because it covers stories closer to me geographically. Yeah, the level of writing and analysis is usually quite low, but if it covers a story the other papers aren’t, I’m all for it. The article in the COMMENTS section below should make your blood boil. It is a slap in the face of all GOOD people that an ARGUMENT FOR THE DEATH PENALTY is allowed to walk the streets freely (for periods at a time) so close to the people whose lives he ruined when he murdered an innocent victim. Read on and be disgusted…
Anton Lorenz, left, and Sandra Quigley. (Toronto Sun file photo)
Paroled killer wanders Scarborough (By MIKE STROBEL, Toronto Sun)
She walks into No Frills at Cedarbrae Mall to get laundry soap. And there he stands.
The man who murdered her best friend.
“No!” gasps Sheryl Udeh, 36. “I’m hallucinating. Must be. He’s in prison.”
She freezes, staring. A minute passes. Seems like 10 years. He has a cart and gazes at store signs. There’s no mistaking those eyes. He does not notice her.
“This can’t be happening,” says Sheryl. “What if Sandra’s daughter walked into this store?”
She turns and hurries back to her car. “Can’t be, can’t be.”
But in Canada it damn well can.
Anton “Tony” Lorenz, 52, has begun unescorted passes to wander Scarborough — where just 10 years ago he bashed in Sandra Quigley’s head and smothered her with a pillow.
Coming soon to a grocery near you. Let me tell you about him.
Tony Lorenz is a poster boy for what stinks about our justice system.
Single mom Sandra — Sandi — met him on a phone chat line. “Run for your life,” was pal Sheryl’s advice. She tells me: “I knew instantly what he was like. My skin crawled.”
But Sandi laughed her off. She was kind. She dreamed of being a vet.
Five months later, in May 1998, Lorenz said, “I’m gonna kill you.” And he tried. Beat her with a table lamp and choked her.
“Please don’t kill my mommy,” said Sandi’s youngest daughter, who was 2.
Sandra was 5-foot-2, 140 pounds. Lorenz was 6-foot-1. She was pregnant with his child. She called the kid-to-be Matthew. Sheryl was at her hospital bed after the attack, when the doctor said she’d lost the baby. You can imagine.
Lorenz was charged with attempted murder and released on bail. Be good, stay away from her, blah, blah, blah.
But he stalked her and drew her back into his web.
On Feb. 27, 1999, he kicked her in the teeth, battered her head with a telephone and finished her off with a pillow. Sandi was 32.
Lorenz copped a plea to second-degree murder with no eligibility for parole for 10 years.
Within seven months, our savage murderer was in Club Fed — a comfy medium-security camp at Bath.
Eve Peck, Sandi’s sister, led the outcry to get him hauled back to Kingston Pen. In due course, he wormed his way to the facility at bucolic Beaver Creek.
Now, this.
Enroute to full parole, Lorenz has been granted six temp passes this year — three unescorted with his parents in Scarborough, three to a halfway house.
Yep, even though he still blames the victim and dodged a parole board’s questions about the crime.
So, poor Sheryl bumps into him at a grocery — and lands in hospital with stress symptoms.
Surely Sandi’s daughters, now 15 and 20 and still in Scarborough, will run into him. So soon after he murdered their mom.
“This is appalling on every level,” says Sheryl. “It’s all becoming real again.
“To think, he might be around the corner.”
Man, when will “life in prison” mean (itl)life(itl)…
The parole board is within its rights — the minimum 10 years is up — but why so soon? The family was told to expect about 17 years. And it’s unconscionable that Lorenz can wander unfettered near the scene of his heinous crimes.
Crimes for which he still blames Sandi.
“You know, I’m glad her family wasn’t at the parole hearing,” says Krista Gray-Donald, who represented Eve, who lives in Nova Scotia. Gray-Donald is with the Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime. “There’s been no consideration given to family in this case, from day one.”
Lorenz, she says, had the gall at the hearing to “dismiss his role in it and put it all on Sandra.
“They allowed him to say it hurt too much to discuss the murder.
“Until he can take account for what happened, he shouldn’t be out.”
But out he is. Part-time, for now. Next: Full day parole.
Perhaps you saw him in Scarborough during his three-day visit last week.
“This is an utter dismissal of my sister’s life,” says Eve, 51.
“I’ll have to make peace with the fact he’s getting out. But someone has to say, ‘okay, buddy, you’re starting over, but you’ll start over somewhere else.’
“So there’s no chance you’ll run into the family and friends of the woman you killed.”
Sure seems right to me.
Or is it just being too hard on a cold-hearted killer?