Stephen Morton
Stephen Morton (born in Beirut; died 30 August 1961) was a Port Arthur paediatrician who was murdered in his home in 1961 in one of Thunder Bay's most notorious unsolved killings. He was the medical partner of Dr. David Burnford, husband of the author Sheila Burnford.[1]
Early life
According to notes left by his son, the philosopher Adam Morton, Stephen Morton was born in Beirut to an Armenian father and an English mother. The family moved to Greece and then to Paris; after his mother died of cancer, he went to England to live with an aunt and took his mother's maiden name, Morton, to be more readily accepted in Britain. He won a classical scholarship to Cambridge but studied medicine, graduating in 1944, and married Prudence "Prue" Ollivant at the end of the war.[2]
Career in Port Arthur
Unable to find a permanent hospital post in the post-war NHS, Morton emigrated to Canada around 1953. After a year in Toronto and a posting in Saskatchewan, he passed through Port Arthur and accepted a paediatrics position there.[2] He entered private practice with Dr. David Burnford, and both men worked at St. Joseph's Hospital; a 1957 newspaper item noted the two doctors' professional standing.[3]
Murder
In the early hours of 30 August 1961, an intruder entered the Morton home on Farrand Street, walked into the bedroom and fired six shots into Morton as he slept beside his wife. The couple's three sons and the family dog were away at a summer camp and their daughter was visiting friends in Manitoba, so that only one car stood in the driveway. Prue Morton told police that a tall, thin man had carried out the shooting; she had heard a noise beforehand but assumed it was her sons returning, and afterward found the kitchen telephone off the hook.[1][2]
A police probe worked around the clock, but the murder weapon was not recovered. In November 1961 a Port Arthur alderman put up a $1,000 reward, and the Ontario government added a further $1,000 in December.[4] A coroner's inquest, repeatedly delayed, was finally held at the Port Arthur police station in April 1962; the jury returned a verdict that Morton "died of multiple bullet wounds ... by person or persons unknown," and spectators called it "a token inquest."[1]
Several theories circulated. A widely repeated but unproven local rumour held that Morton had been killed by a jealous husband; a newspaper report shortly before the inquest suggested the killing might be connected to wartime Europe, claiming Morton had served in the French Resistance, but this line of inquiry was apparently never pursued.[1] In August 1967 Police Chief Onni Harty announced that a criminal investigation had "turned up a gun similar to that used in the murder." In 1983 the retired Harty said he had believed from the outset that one person had committed the crime, but that there had never been enough evidence to prosecute.[5]
Suspicion of Dr. Baker
Dr. Baker owned the mansion near Dr. Morton's clinic on the future site of Waverley Towers. When his house was torn down around 1969 [1], the police apparently found a gun matching the murder weapon. [2]
"My dad, Gerald Heath was the contractor who built Waverley Park Towers with Poole Construction. We also lived on the 4th floor after it was built." - Debbi Gallant
"I don't remember a Dr. Goll living there as I lived a half a block from there. Dr. Baker lived there and yes there were "rumors" about his practice which he ran it out of his basement. Went to Central School with his son and he had an older daughter. He left town(to California if I remember correctly) shortly after the murder of Dr. Morton I think it was. I would love to read about that murder again. I don't think they ever caught who did it. Tons of rumors going around then too. I remember some of them but won't mention them because they are just "rumors"." - Dell Welch
"As children we played on this lovely hilltop near Dr Bakers residence. We later found out he was a murderer. In my childhood we didn't worry about booze hounds or needles littering the ground. Society was tough, but it was fair." - Rachel-anne Lyndhurst, 27 December 2003
"Dad was building inspector on that one [Waverely Towers]" - Errol Frowen
Suspicion of Dr. Burnford
Morton's murder has long been linked, in local rumour and in the recollections of people close to the case, to his medical partner Dr. David Burnford. The connection rests on suggestion rather than proof, and no charge was ever laid; Olympedia characterises it as "unfounded speculation about Burnford's possible involvement."[6]
Burnford came under renewed scrutiny after his own death: on 9 June 1984 the FBI found some 16 kg of cocaine at his Colorado Springs home, and he shot himself the following day. G.G. Niemi, who was born under the care of both doctors, has written that the retired Onni Harty's "likely prime suspect" was Burnford, and that his mother recalled a rumour that the Sisters of St. Joseph's Hospital also believed Burnford had been involved; Niemi reports a memorial plaque to Morton in the hospital was said to have been rubbed to highlight Burnford's name as Morton's associate.[1]
Niemi sets out two motives that were spoken of locally: that Morton had reported Burnford for performing a medical procedure he was not licensed to do, and that Morton had opposed black-market drug dealing in which Burnford was rumoured to be involved.[1] Adam Morton, writing of his father's death, recorded that "there were a couple of local doctors who fingers were pointed at, but without a lot of evidence," and that one of them — "a difficult person anyway" — "saw his life go downhill from that point, perhaps because of the rumours."[2] Niemi himself doubts that Burnford pulled the trigger, noting that Prue described the killer as a tall, thin man whereas Burnford was tall but heavy-set, and suggests that if Burnford was involved he was more likely to have arranged the killing than to have committed it.[1]
Family
Morton's widow, Prue Morton, remained in Port Arthur and became a noted community volunteer and philanthropist; she died in 2006. His son Adam Morton (died 2020) became a professor of philosophy and the author of several books, including On Evil.[2]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 G.G. Niemi, "Two of My Doctors Who Died by the Gun", Medium, 2022.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Adam Morton, "Notes from Adam's life".
- ↑ Port Arthur News-Chronicle, 3 January 1957.
- ↑ Kim Casey, Thunder Bay's True Murder Investigations 1882 to 2017, p. 294.
- ↑ Kim Casey, Thunder Bay's True Murder Investigations 1882 to 2017, p. 295.
- ↑ Olympedia, "David Burnford".