Early life
Shrubsall was originally from Niagara Falls, New York, the son of William and Marianne (Marge) Shrubsall. He excelled academically and was named valedictorian of the graduating class at La Salle High School. Shrubsall was planning to attend the University of Chicago after graduation to study pre-law. [2] [3]
Death of his mother
On June 25, 1988, twelve hours before giving his valedictorian speech, he beat his mother to death with a baseball bat. [4] [2] [3] In his statement to police, Shrubsall stated that his mother got into a heated argument with him after he returned from his then-girlfriend's home. He said that his mother hit him several times and backed him down a hallway while threatening to kill him. [5] Originally charged with second-degree murder, the charge was eventually reduced to manslaughter following a plea bargain. He was examined by a psychiatrist after his arrest who diagnosed Shrubsall as a psychopath and compulsive liar and said that he could not be cured. [6] Niagara County Court Judge Charles J. Hannigan rejected Shrubsall's petition that he be granted youthful offender status and sentenced him to a minimum of five years in prison without parole. [7] In 1990, Shrubsall was granted youthful offender status by the New York State appeals court. [8]
Release and post-secondary education
He served 16 months for the death of his mother, as he was still a minor, and was released in March 1992. [9] [10] Prior to serving his sentence, Shrubsall attended Niagara University for two years. Upon his release, he attended and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1994. [9]
Further charges and fleeing
In April 1995, he was arrested for grabbing a woman's buttocks as she walked down the street. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in that case. [9]
In August 1995, Shrubsall sexually assaulted a 17-year-old female. On May 14, 1996, near the end of the trial, Shrubsall disappeared and left a suicide note claiming to have jumped into Niagara Falls. [11] [10] In reality, he fled the U.S. to Canada. [10] He was later convicted of sexual abuse in absentia . [12]
Life as a fugitive
On May 16, 1996, only two days after fleeing the United States, Shrubsall showed up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, using the alias "Ian Thor Greene" while checking into a homeless shelter. [11] During this time, he worked as a telemarketer, played on a baseball team, and attempted to enroll in high school. [11]
In June 1997, Shrubsall attempted to hire a prostitute and was charged by police. He was fined $100 after pleading guilty. He used the alias Ian Thor Greene and was not properly identified by the police. [11]
In August 1997, Shrubsall began renting a room at a fraternity house on South Street. He faked his student status with Dalhousie University and attempted numerous times to join the Sigma Chi fraternity, only to be denied each time. He manipulated a local congregation into paying his rent by claiming he had financial difficulties.
From February 5–22, 1998 (as per court documents), he stalked his ex-girlfriend. He was charged as Ian Thor Greene. He later was found guilty of criminal harassment in 1999. At that time, he was awaiting other charges and his true identity as William Chandler Shrubsall, American fugitive, was discovered. On February 12, 1998, Shrubsall robbed a Halifax sweater store, hitting a store clerk in the face with a baseball bat a dozen times. [10] The store clerk was in a coma for five days and nearly died from her injuries. [13] [10] [11] That same month, Shrubsall harassed an ex-girlfriend for three weeks, which eventually led to criminal harassment charges. [14]
On May 4, 1998, Shrubsall sexually assaulted and robbed a woman in a Tower Road driveway after following her back from a nightclub. [11] The woman's injuries were so severe that her contact lenses had to be surgically removed, her cheek bone was fractured, and her lip required 13 stitches. [11] [15]
On June 22, 1998, Shrubsall met a woman at a nightclub and walked her back to his room at the fraternity house. After the woman attempted to call a taxi to leave, he beat, choked, and sexually assaulted her. [11] Two senior fraternity members were awoken by the disturbance and upon their intervention, Shrubsall fled the area. [11] For a period of time after his apprehension, the Halifax Police Department as well as other law enforcement agencies were unable to determine the true identity of the individual known as Ian Greene.
Identification and arrest
Shrubsall was arrested after again fleeing the fraternity house upon police arrival and he subsequently identified himself as 19-year-old Ian Thor Greene. [11] The police did not believe his story and a fingerprint search did not yield any results. Detectives searching his room discovered that he had the identification of two previous victims that he had attacked, and this was confirmed by witnesses. [11] [16]
Interrogators also questioned Shrubsall's stories and found no records to support them, leading them to realize that Greene was an alias, but he refused to divulge further details.
In July 1998, police issued an international plea to help identify Shrubsall, including airing the story on CBC's The National which aired in parts of upstate New York. [11] He was eventually identified by the New York State Police.
Guilty verdicts and dangerous offender status
In February 1999, he was found guilty of criminal harassment of his ex-girlfriend. In May 2000, he was found guilty of aggravated sexual assault and robbery after a four-week trial in relation to the May 1998 incident. [15]
In June 2000, he was found guilty of robbery, aggravated assault, and possession of a baseball bat in the commission of a crime in relation to the February 1998 incident. [17]
In November 2000, he was found guilty of sexual assault in relation to the June 1998 incident. During the trial, Shrubsall testified that he assaulted the woman but he denied sexually attacking her. [10] [18]
A forensic psychiatrist diagnosed Shrubsall as a psychopath, saying that he separated women into two categories: "angels" and those that he would assault. The Crown, assisted by his former victims who had flown in to testify, had him declared a dangerous offender in December 2001, giving him no possibility of parole. [19]
In 2002, while serving his life sentence, Shrubsall legally changed his name to "Ethan Simon Templar MacLeod" after the popular TV character. [11] [20]
Parole granted in Canada
The Parole Board of Canada granted Shrubsall parole in late 2018 on the condition that he was deported to his home country. Shrubsall was deported in January 2019. He will have to serve the 7-year sentence from the sex abuse in absentia conviction in New York. In 2021, he was given an additional 2 to 6-year sentence for bail jumping. [21] [22] [23]
His victims, the Crown attorney, and the lead investigator raised concerns about his release. The provincial justice minister advised he will be writing a letter to the Canadian Attorney General of Justice because he has concerns about his release. [21]
In December 2022, the New York State Division of Parole denied Shrubsall parole. His next parole hearing will be in October 2024. [24]
Shrubsall attempted to have his 2022 parole hearing overturned. On September 8th, 2023, the New York State Supreme Court upheld the Parole Board's decision. In October of 2024, the New York State Supreme Court rejected Shrubsall's appeal of their 2023 decision. [25]
Paul Kenneth Bernardo, also known as Paul Jason Teale, is a Canadian serial rapist and serial killer dubbed the Scarborough Rapist, the Schoolgirl Killer and, together with his former wife Karla Homolka, one of the Ken and Barbie Killers. He is known for initially committing a series of rapes in Scarborough, Ontario, a district of Toronto, between 1987 and 1990, before committing three murders with Homolka; among these victims was Karla's younger sister, Tammy Homolka.
Lee Boyd Malvo, also known as John Lee Malvo, is a Jamaican convicted mass murderer who, along with John Allen Muhammad, committed a series of murders dubbed the D.C. sniper attacks over a three-week period in October 2002. Malvo was aged 17 during the span of the shootings. He is serving multiple life sentences at Keen Mountain Correctional Center in Virginia, a maximum security prison.
Graham John Capill is a former New Zealand Christian leader, politician and convicted rapist.
Reena Virk was a 14-year-old Canadian girl who was beaten and killed by a group of teenagers in Saanich, British Columbia, Canada. Her status as a victim of bullying prior to her murder attracted substantial media scrutiny in Canada. Six teenagers were tried and convicted for their participation in her death. The Globe and Mail commented at the time that her case was "elevated into a national tragedy". A pair of Canadian sociologists have described the case as a watershed moment for a "moral panic" over girl violence by the Canadian public in the late 1990s.
Colin Pitchfork is an English child-murderer and child-rapist. He was the first person convicted of rape and murder using DNA profiling after he murdered two girls in neighbouring Leicestershire villages: Lynda Mann in Narborough in November 1983 and Dawn Ashworth in Enderby in July 1986. He was arrested on 19 September 1987 and sentenced to life imprisonment on 22 January 1988 after pleading guilty to both murders. The sentencing judge gave him a 30-year minimum term.
André Boisclair is a former Canadian politician and convicted sex offender in Quebec, Canada. He was the leader of the Parti Québécois, a social democratic and sovereigntist party in Quebec.
Robert Lindsay Hughes also billed variously as Bob Hughes and Robert Hughs, is an Australian-born British former actor who appeared in ABBA: The Movie and the television sitcom Hey Dad..!.
Graham Michael James is a former Canadian junior ice hockey coach who was convicted of sexually abusing players on his teams.
Milton Orkopoulos is an Australian convicted sex offender and former politician. A member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly from 1999 to 2006, Orkopoulos was appointed Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Minister Assisting the Premier on Citizenship in August 2005.
The Parole Board of Canada is the Canadian government agency that is responsible for reviewing and issuing parole and criminal pardons in Canada. It operates under the auspices of Public Safety Canada.
Dante Wyndham Arthurs is an Australian murderer, convicted of the murder of eight-year-old Sofia Rodriguez-Urrutia Shu.
Channon Gail Christian, aged 21, and Hugh Christopher Newsom Jr., aged 23, were from Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. They were kidnapped on the evening of January 6, 2007, when Christian's vehicle was carjacked. The couple were taken to a rental house. Both of them were raped, tortured, and murdered. Four males and one female were arrested, charged, and convicted in the case. In 2007, a grand jury indicted Letalvis Darnell Cobbins, Lemaricus Devall Davidson, George Geovonni Thomas, and Vanessa Lynn Coleman on counts of kidnapping, robbery, rape, and murder. Also in 2007, Eric DeWayne Boyd was indicted by a federal grand jury of being an accessory to a carjacking, resulting in serious bodily injury to another person and misprision of a felony. In 2018, Boyd was indicted on state-level charges of kidnapping, robbery, rape, and murder.
Carl Desmond Leone is a Canadian businessman from Windsor, Ontario. Leone was jailed after pleading guilty in a Windsor court to 15 counts of aggravated sexual assault for not informing his sexual partners of his positive HIV status. It is believed he has been charged with exposing more women to the AIDS-causing virus than anyone in Canadian history. Two of his victims have attempted suicide.
Catholic sexual abuse cases in Australia, like Catholic Church sexual abuse cases elsewhere, have involved convictions, trials and ongoing investigations into allegations of sex crimes committed by Catholic priests, members of religious orders and other personnel which have come to light in recent decades, along with the growing awareness of sexual abuse within other religious and secular institutions.
The 2009 Plymouth child abuse case was a child abuse and paedophile ring involving at least five adults from different parts of England. The case centred on photographs taken of up to 64 children by Vanessa George, a nursery worker in Plymouth. It highlighted the issue of child molestation by women, as all but one of the members of the ring were female.
Aubrey Levin is a South African-born Canadian psychiatrist and former Colonel in the South African Defence Force who used abusive procedures on homosexual army conscripts and conscientious objectors in an attempt to cure them of suspected same-sex attraction in apartheid era South Africa.
Kirk Reid is an English convicted rapist and serial sex offender. In 2009, Reid was convicted of two rapes, 26 sexual assaults and possession of indecent images of children.
People v. Turner, formally The People of the State of California v. Brock Allen Turner (2015), was a criminal case in which Brock Allen Turner was convicted by jury trial of three counts of felony sexual assault.
Mark Errin Rust is a convicted Australian serial sex murderer and rapist: he was convicted of two murders committed in 1999 and 2001 respectively. Rust is currently on an indefinite detention order.
Joseph McCann is an English serial rapist. In April and May 2019, McCann committed sexual attacks in Hertfordshire, London, Greater Manchester and Cheshire against 11 strangers, ranging in age from an 11-year-old boy to a 71-year-old woman. He evaded police, who suspect that he was sheltered by a "support network" across the country. For these crimes, he was tried at the Old Bailey and, on 6 December, convicted of 37 offences. Three days later, he was given 33 Life imprisonment#Europe|life sentences]].