Wife killer Peter Demeter gives up on freedom

Once-moneyed murderer Peter Demeter (above), a killer who "oozes evil," has given up on freedom. For the fifth consecutive time in the past 10 years, the imprisoned psychopathic senior citizen has told the National Parole Board not to bother holding a hearing at which he could beg for release. A hearing had been scheduled for this month, but Demeter waived his right to plead for freedom. It appears that the former real-estate developer, now 76, has accepted that he'll die behind bars, in part, because he refuses to admit that he hired an assassin who split open his wife's skull on July 18, 1973, in the garage of the couple's upscale Mississauga, Ontario, home.



Thirty-three-year-old Christine Demeter (left), a lithe, athletic Austrian-born model, was alone at home on Wednesday evening, July 18, 1973, for less than two hours. When her husband of slightly less than six years, Peter, returned home from a shopping trip at 9:45 p.m., Christine, wearing an ankle-length, sleeveless plush brown gown, was sprawled on the concrete floor of the garage (photo above), face down, her hands folded beneath her body. Her left foot was bare, a silver slipper a few inches away. A stream of blood, double the width of her tanned body, had flowed from a gaping wound in her head, across the floor. She had been struck at least half a dozen times, perhaps with a tire iron or crowbar, that cleaved her skull, allowing some of her brain to spill out. Blood was spattered on the grey Cadillac parked inside the garage, beside her body.

Seventeen months later, after a sensational trial in London, Ontario, Peter Demeter was convicted of non-capital murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Demeter did not testify and still maintains his innocence. He had hoped to collect a $1 million life insurance payout on his dead wife. The hired killer who prosecutors contended bashed the 33-year-old mother's skull open was never found, though suspicion fell on several shady characters, including Imre Olejnyik (right), a small time Hungarian crook also known as the Duck. Though police named him, at one time, as the probable killer, he was never brought to trial. He died in Hungary in March 1975.

Demeter was on parole in Peterborough, Ontario, by 1983. Two years later, he was convicted of counselling to commit murder in a plot to have his nephew killed and two life sentences were added to his sentence. In 1988, he amassed two more life sentences (for a total of five), for conspiracy to kidnap and murder the daughter of his lawyer. Demeter was angry that lawyer Toby Belman had frozen some of his stocks because he had not paid her legal bill.

Judge John O'Driscoll sentenced Demeter in the Belman kidnap plot in 1988, leaving no doubt how he felt:

Your evil knows no bounds. It never rests. It never ends ... In my opinion, this man should never, ever, ever be released on parole. Whether or not you are inherently evil, I do not know, but you ooze evil out of every pore and contaminate everyone around you.

Demeter was scheduled to go before the parole board this month, but he waived the hearing, as he did four times previously since 1999, the date of his last hearing. At that hearing, he was denied a chance to leave prison for four hours, in shackles, with two escorts. He was deemed too dangerous. Demeter maintained that he did not arrange his wife's murder in 1974:

As you reiterated, you are hardly likely, after twenty-five years, to admit any involvement in your wife's death as you have consistently maintained your innocence.

[full 1999 parole record]

In 1995, a psychiatrist who assessed Demeter in prison described him as "insightless, manipulative, self-exculpatory and psychopathic." The doctor said Demeter "continues to represent a significant risk to cause trouble to others should be be unsupervised in the community." Two psychiatrists concluded he wouldn't benefit from any programs or treatment. One psychiatrist said Demeter exhibited "narcissistic personality traits, rationalizations and intellectualizations." His credibility was described as "so little."

At a 1996 parole hearing, Demeter flirted with responsibility for his wife's death:

Up until today, you have always claimed innocence with respect to the murder of your wife, and minimized the severity of your other offences. At the beginning of the hearing, when pressed, you accepted 'unqualified full responsibility' for all of your offences. As the hearing progressed however, you kept on alluding to the conspiracy theory and yourself as victim. By the end of the hearing, when asked directly if you arranged the murder of your wife, your answer was 'no.'

[full 1996 parole record]

Today, Demeter (at left) is a crippled old man living in a special housing unit, a small cottage-like building for aged and disabled convicts at medium-security Bath Institution, located just west of Kingston, Ontario. He has survived several bouts of cancer, a stroke and several heart attacks (documented in this confidential transfer request I obtained in 1999). One of his bunkmates, sex offender Ken Shipman, baked him cinnamon buns for his 76th birthday on April 19, prison sources tell me.

More

• The definitive book, By Persons Unknown, by George Jonas and Barbara Amiel
• News video clip about the case
• Demeter whined in 2006, about an order requiring him to submit a DNA sample

The full record of Demeter's 1996 parole hearing:



The full record of Demeter's 1999 parole hearing:



Confidential prison transfer request filed by Demeter in 1999:

Read it all