Post by Graveyardbride on Mar 9, 2021 15:54:58 GMT -5
Did Christine Jessop’s Killer Also Kill Nicole Morin?
In October 2020, 36 years after the abduction and murder of 9-year-old Christine Jessop, Toronto police announced her killer had been identified using DNA extracted from a semen stain on the little girl’s underwear. Calvin Hoover, the name named, who was 28 at the time of the murder, came as a shock to both the Jessop family and Hoover’s former wife. Calvin Hoover committed suicide in 2015.
Heather Hoover lived with a killer for a decade and never suspected a thing. On that cool, cloudy day in 1984, when Christine Jessop went missing from her home in the Queensville area of Toronto, Heather believed her husband was at Eastern Independent Telecom, where Bob Jessop, the little girl’s father, was also employed. She now wonders why investigators never checked into Calvin Hoover’s alibi. She also recalled Calvin’s consoling her after she returned from a visit to Christine’s grave.
Although Hoover and the Jessop family were known to each other, Bob Jessop admitted he doesn’t remember much about Hoover. “That was the unknown thing at the time,” Jessop explained after learning Hoover had been named as his daughter’s killer. “Unbelievable, to a degree, as to why he would even do it. It seems to me that he must’ve had some reason for it. I can’t figure it out, what it would’ve been. I really don’t know.”
Nonetheless, Ken Jessop, Christine’s older brother brother, recalled Calvin Hoover’s participation in the searches when his sister first disappeared. “He was at the funeral. He was at the house for the wake that night,” Ken declared. The families socialized together, the kids played together, Heather and Janet Jessop were close friends and, according to Ken, the Hoovers were among the few who knew he and his mother were going to visit his dad – who was serving time in jail for fraud – that Wednesday and Christine wouldn’t be accompanying them. Christine, he added, “was having a tantrum because she had wanted to go see her father,” something Heather may have heard and mentioned to her husband. “He [Hoover] saw his opportunity and his chance and he took it. There was nothing random about this,” he continued. “I always said it was somebody that knew my father was in jail and used the pickup line of ‘I will take you to see your father.’ I am sure he was at the house waiting when she [Christine] got back from the store.”
Three months after she disappeared, Christine’s body was discovered in a wooded part of Sunderland, approximately 60 miles north of Toronto. After Hoover was identified as the child’s killer, Detective Sergeant Steve Smith of the Toronto Police said Hoover had a friend in Sunderland with whom he spent a lot of time outdoors.
“I believe Heather,” Smith added. “I don’t think he was around the home a lot. I think she had a lot of kids to look after at the time and I don’t think she questioned what it was he was doing when he said he was at work.”
But Ken Jessop isn’t convinced Hoover’s wife was totally ignorant of her husband’s activities. Although he concedes she may have been blind-sided as she claims, he [Hoover] “must have confessed to someone,” he declared.
The authorities now know Hoover’s job as a cable installer took him across the province, as well as to several cities in the United States, and investigators are continuing to check into his possible connection to other unsolved murders.
One of the crimes of which he is suspected is the July 30, 1985, disappearance of 8-year-old Nicole Morin (above) – a child some say looked so much like Christine the two could have been sisters. Ken Jessop has no doubt Hoover abducted Nicole just as he did Christine nine months earlier.
Nicole went missing from her West Mall apartment three months after Guy Paul Morin (no relation to Nicole), next-door neighbor to the Jessops, was arrested for Christine’s murder – it was a decade before he was exonerated through DNA testing.
Ken Jessop believes the arrogant Hoover was emboldened by Morin’s arrest and because he had gotten away with one murder, was confident he could get away with another. “They should send in cadaver dogs in the spring. There was a swamp there further into the woods,” he said. “Nicole’s body was never found. He just got better at hiding.”
Smith maintains police have diligently investigated Nicole Morin’s disappearance, but so far, haven’t been able to connect Hoover’s job as a cable installer to the crime scene. “We’re learning more about the people that he spent time with, where he spent time and we’re looking at any unsolved cases that may be out there that Calvin could have been involved in,” he explained.
He added that Heather and other members of the Hoover family have been both cooperative and helpful. “They’re providing us with as much information as they can,” he said.
Mrs. Hoover recently told a reporter she and her husband separated in 1993 after he became increasingly difficult to live with because of his alcohol abuse and mental health issues. “As he got older, this event [Christine’s murder] probably really weighed on him and caused his downward spiral,” she reasoned.
Sources: Michael Mandel, The Toronto Sun, February 17, 2021; Madeline Miller, CBC News, October 22, 2019; Jessica Patton, The Global News, October 16, 2020; Chris Fox, CP24, October 26, 2020; Jeremy Grimaldi, Toronto.com, October 15, 2020; and "The Guy Paul Morin Case," The Canadian Encyclopedia.
