In 1982 he legally changed his name to David Michael Krueger. Woodcock also murdered a fellow psychiatric patient in 1991, at the medium-security hospital in Brockville, Ontario, during the first hour of his very first weekend pass. Woodcock was being supervised on the pass by Bruce Hamill, a former patient who killed an elderly Ottawa woman in 1984. Hamill was an accomplice in the Brockville murder, and both men were subsequently returned to Oak Ridge.

David Michael Krueger (March 5, 1939 – March 5, 2010), best known by his birth name, Peter Woodcock, was a Canadian serial killer and child rapist who murdered three young children in Toronto, Canada in 1956 and 1957 while still a teenager, as well as a fellow psychiatric patient in 1991. Woodcock was a diagnosed psychopath.

Life and crimes

Woodcock was born to a 17-year-old Peterborough factory worker who gave him up for adoption. He spent the first three years of his life in various foster homes. He was physically abused in at least one of those homes, suffering a serious neck injury. He was later adopted by a wealthy family living near Yonge Street and Lawrence Avenue.

The family paid for a private school education, therapy and bikes for Woodcock. When he reached puberty, he began to travel around Toronto on his bike, fantasizing about becoming a gang leader and, in reality, sexually assaulting children in Parkdale and Cabbagetown. Ultimately, Woodcock would brutally murder three young children in 1956 and 1957.

Woodcock was apprehended for the murders in 1957, found not guilty by reason of insanity, and placed in Oak Ridge, an Ontario psychiatric facility located in Penetanguishene. There, he legally changed his name.

Following the completion of a treatment program for Woodcock and other psychopathic individuals, he was deemed greatly improved, and sent to a medium-security hospital in Brockville, Ontario in 1991. There, Woodcock claims, he fell in love with fellow psychiatric patient Dennis Kerr, who rejected his sexual advances.

During the first hour of his very first weekend pass in thirty-five years, Woodcock stabbed Kerr to death. Woodcock was being supervised on the pass by Bruce Hamill, a former patient who killed an elderly Ottawa woman in 1984. Hamill was an accomplice in the Brockville murder, and both men were subsequently returned to Oak Ridge.

Woodcock has told how the treatment program served only to make him more adept at manipulating others. Having spent the majority of his fifty-three years in custody at Oak Ridge, Woodcock died there on March 5, 2010, his 71st birthday.

Woodcock, billed as David Krueger, was prominently featured in the 2002 BBC documentary, Mind of a Murderer: Mask of Sanity.

Victims

• Wayne Mallette – seven-year-old boy lured into the deserted Toronto Exhibition grounds on September 15, 1956. Originally another teen, identified only as "Ronald Mowatt", was charged with the child's murder.

• Gary Morris – nine-year-old boy lured to Cherry Beach on October 6, 1956.

• Carole Voyce – four-year-old girl murdered by Woodcock on January 19, 1957 in a ravine under the Prince Edward Viaduct.

• Dennis Kerr – psychiatric inmate murdered on July 13, 1991 with a knife and hatchet by Peter Woodcock with the help of a former inmate, Bruce Hamill

Author: Mark Bourrie

Description

In the summer of 1993, people in Ontario were shocked by one of the most bizarre murders in the province‘s history. A patient at the Brockville psychiatric hospital was brutally killed in a forest grove on the grounds of the institution. One of the killers, a nearly blind psychiatric patient, walked into a nearby police station and turned himself in. The other murderer lay near the body in a sleeping bag, drugged into unconsciousness.

Police found that the myopic suspect is one of the Canada‘s most dangerous killers, David Michael Krueger. His accomplice was Bruce Hamill, a murderer who had been freed after years of treatment at Penatanguishene‘s Oak Ridge Institution for the criminally insane. Brockville hospital authorities had let Hamill escort Krueger on his first day pass in thirty-five years.

How could this killing have happened?