Peter Wronski ©1992-2002

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Included in the newly discovered archive are remarkable text and documentary files on some of the nation’s more notorious crimes-including startling new material on one of our most enduring mysteries, the 1919 disappearance of millionaire Ambrose Small; and the 1935 Ruth Taylor homicide which land marked in Canada the first time use of new forms of scientific forensic analysis. But, while Crime & Punishment presents some criminal case details, it does so in the context of thematic exploration; the series is not a case-by-case anthology of Canada’s most notorious crimes.

Crime & Punishment is an unhosted documentary history series, the narration being driven by readings from contemporary sources such as documents, court and police transcripts, letters, newspaper accounts, diaries and memoirs and by current commentary from various experts on the presented themes. Some of these proposed experts, featured interviews and commentators are:

• Jack Webster, former head of Toronto’s Homicide Squad in the 1970’s and recently retired Force Historian from the Toronto Police Service;

• Carolyn Strange, criminologist and author of Toronto’s Girl Problem: The Peril and Pleasures of the City 1880-1930;

• D. Owen Carrigan, historian and author of the seminal Crime and Punishment in Canada: A History;

• Tina Loo, criminologist and author of Making Good: Law and Moral Regulation in Canada, 1867–1939;

• Niel Boyd, author of The Last Dance: Murder in Canada;

• Helen Boritch, author of Fallen Women: Female Crime and Criminal Justice in Canada and of The Making of Toronto the Good: The Organization of Policing and Production of Arrests – 1859 to 1955;

• J.M. Beattie, criminologist and historian, author of Attitudes Towards Crime and Punishment in Canada 1830 – 1850;

• Hugh A. Halliday, author of Murder Among Gentlemen: A History of Duelling in Canada;

• Peter Oliver, historian and author of ‘Terror to Evil-Doers’: Prisons and Punishments in Nineteenth-Century Ontario;

• Peter McGahan, author of Crime and Policing in Maritime Canada and Killers, thieves, Tramps & Sinners;

• Antonio Nicaso and Lee Lamothe, experts on the history of transnational organized crime in Canada;

• Mick Lowe, author of Conspiracy of Brothers, a history of Canada’s Satan’s Choice biker gang;

Finally, a series narrator, sparingly bridges the remaining elements of the narrative voice-over. Aside from relevant occasional motion picture archive material, imagery primarily consists of high-definition historical black & white still images, across which the camera can move extensively and explore in minute detail. Original footage shot for the series not only visualizes current aspects of presented themes but also links physical locations revealed in the archive photographs. Period paintings, illustrations and lithographs serve as a visual source for the pre-photographic era covered by the series while motion picture film and video archive material documents the modern eras. Music evocative of the periods under discussion will underpin the soundtrack.