The picture that Sharmini’s parents gave a Toronto Star reporter. (Courtesy: CBC)
Twenty years ago, June 12, 1999, 15-year-old Sharmini Anandavel left her Toronto home telling her parents that she was going for a job interview.
She never came back. Four months later a father and a son going for a walk on a Satuday morning, found her remains in a wooded ravine with a river running through it.
Police had a suspect from the beginning but his link to her death was never proved due to lack of physical evidence. The body had been badly damaged by the coyotes making it difficult for DNA analysis.
The man, Stanley Tippett, is serving a jail term for crimes unrelated to Sharmini’s case. He was declared a dangerous offender in October 2011 and was handed an indeterminate sentence, meaning he could remain jailed for the rest of his life.
Twenty years after the disappearance of Sri Lankan-born teenager who aspired to be a lawyer, CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) is shedding light on the unsolved case in a podcast.
Michelle Shephard who was a crime reporter for Toronto Star at the time wrote about the case extensively and she talks about the unsolved case in the latest podcast. She catches vividly the memories of the vivacious teenager and her family’s plight, in her interviews with investigators, close friends and family relatives. Anadavels had fled Sri Lanka at the height of the civil war in the island.
For nearly two years the Toronto Star reporter was in pursuit of Sharmini’s killer, hunting for the man responsible for her death, without any success. “Periodically I was in touch with Sharmini’s family, but the police had found nothing new and the case remains unsolved. Every June 12, the day Sharmini went missing, I would think about her. Her parents gave me a picture of her wearing a gold sari with flowers on her hair, beaming into a mirror. That picture is still on my desk,” said Michelle who often visited the Anandaval family.
Tippett had facial deformities as he was born with Treacher Collins syndrome, a genetic disorder, and he had told the people in the high-rise where Anandavel family lived that he worked as a police officer, adding that he was hurt when he was working for the police bomb squad.
Police were interested in Tippett from the beginning because Sharmini’s parents believe he offered her the job she was heading to on the day she disappeared. The job was described as an undercover operation to track down drug traffickers.
Sharmini left her home at 9 a.m. on June 12, 1999, saying that she was going for her job and a witness recalls seeing her at the nearby Fairview Mall a short time later.
Sharmini thought she was going to work undercover for an anti-drug police operation, according to the investigators based on what her friends told them. They had found a blank job application in her bedroom with the name of a completely bogus company name called the Metro Search Unit.
An investigator believes the application was part of a ruse intended to lure her to the park where she was killed – though they waited until six months after Sharmini’s remains were found to reveal this piece of evidence, according to the podcast.
Sharmini’s parents banged on their neighbour’s apartment door on the first night she went missing but there was no answer. Tippett had moved out two weeks earlier.
Matt Crone, one of the lead investigators on Sharmini’s case, said he believes Tippett was “grooming” Sharmini with the offer of a job, specifically choosing something that would have “a certain amount of secrecy attached to it” — one where she’d be discouraged from speaking to her friends or family about it. Police questioned Tippett about Sharmini’s disappearance multiple times but he was never charged.
In 1991 Tippett had come to police attention, when, as a 16-year-old, set fire to a teacher’s desk after stealing her keys and breaking into the classroom. He was also accused of following a young woman off a Toronto bus and attacking her.
He was involved in several crimes after Sharmini’s disappearance. In 2000, he was accused of stalking a cashier at a grocery store in Oshawa, a town about 45 minutes east of Toronto. A few years later, Tippett and his family were living in Collingwood, a ski town about a two-hour drive north of Toronto, and he was convicted of harassing his female neighbour.
Tippett and his family then moved to Peterborough, 125 km north east of Toronto, where he allegedly offered a 12-year-girl a fake job at the YMCA. When she told her mom she called the police. He also told the girl that her duties at the YMCA would include work on behalf of the police.
Tippett once again approached a young woman at a Walmart, where she was looking for a job and offered her a job. “Once again, [it was] a new Canadian, vulnerable. And he says he can get her a job at the YMCA and somehow gets her address,” said an investigator.
Records show Tippett showed up at the woman’s home on at least three occasions. When the woman complained, police moved to arrest Tippett, and while searching his home found duct tape, rope, plastic sheets, plastic cable ties and a hammer and a knife under the driver’s seat, according to a police officer. Tippett pleaded guilty to criminal harassment and was sentenced to two years in prison.
In December 2009, Tippett was convicted of seven counts related to another attack, including kidnapping, sexual assault and sexual interference.
Tippett had told Michelle that on the day Sharmini went missing he drove by her apartment at 9am. ‘He said he did not stop the car and he did not see her. He was on his way to a job to cut grass. After that job around 9:30 am car troubles plagued him. He fixed it all by himself and went to the Fairview Mall at 10:30 to wash his greasy hands’.
A witness had said he had seen Sharmini there around the same time. After that he said he drove to an intersection and that was the destination Sharmini told her parents that she was going to. Police never disclosed their theory as to what happened to Sharmini.
Matt Crone said the motive that was developing was that her friends said she was going to work as an undercover drug operative for Tippett.
Most of my stories are about miscarriage of justice and abuse of power, says Michelle. “Like many other journalists I have an inherent distrust of authorities.”
Sharmini’s murder – listed as Homicide 36 for 1999 – remains classified as a cold case, meaning there are no leads left to follow in the investigation.
Today, the Anandavel family lives in Ottawa, Canada’s capital about four and half-hour drive from Toronto, where they moved soon after Sharmini’s remains were found.
Her brothers, Kathees and Dinesh, are now in their 30s and remain close – so close, in fact, they married sisters. They visit their parents often, for meals and other family events, according to CBC.
The middle name of Kathees’s daughter is Sharmini, and he says his son is starting to ask about the girl he sees in pictures around his grandparents’ house.
“One of the things I’ve … always kind of struggled with [is] having kids and telling them that I had a sister at one point,” he said.
Both brothers say they don’t have many memories from the time; they’re forgotten or perhaps blocked from their minds. But both are among those who believe Tippett was their sister’s killer. (Based on CBC podcasts and Toronto Star reports) – newstrails.com
