David Michael Krueger was born on March 5th, 1939 in Peterborough, Ontario which is northeast of Toronto. He is best known by his birth name, Peter Woodcock. He was born to a 17-year-old factory worker, Juanita Woodcock, who gave him up for adoption after breastfeeding him for a month. Adoption records showed that as a newborn, Peter showed signs of feeding problems and cried constantly. As an infant, he stayed in several foster homes but was unable to bond with any of his foster parents. After his 1st birthday, he became terrified of anybody approaching him. His speech was also incoherent and was described as strange whining animal noises. He was also physically abused by at least one of his early foster parents. This was discovered when a 2-year-old Peter was given medical treatment for an injured neck after receiving a beating.
He was placed into a stable home at the age of 3, to foster parents Frank and Susan Maynard. They were an upper-middle-class couple with another son, George, who was 10 years older than Peter. They also never adopted Peter for whatever reason. Susan was described as a “forceful woman with an exaggerated sense of propriety” and became strongly attached to Peter who would still scream when someone approached him. By the age of 5, Peter would no longer scream when approached, but he remained a strange child and became the target of neighbourhood bullies. He often wandered far from his neighbourhood and was once found cowering in some bushes. He said he was hiding from the other kids and wanted to “stay out where god could protect him”. Frank and Susan Maynard were worried about Peter’s emotional state so they would regularly bring him to the Hospital for Sick Children, where Peter received extensive treatment. At one point, Susan came home to find their canary dead and Peter holding a “funeral” for it. He had the bird laid on a piano with candles surrounding it and told Susan that the dog murdered the bird. Peter was sent to private school, but again failed to make friends or interact successfully with other children. By the age of 11, he was described as an “angry little boy”.
Signs of Peter’s violent fantasies were present at this time as well. During a trip to the Canadian National Exhibition, a social worker was walking with peter and he mumbled “I wish a bomb would fall on the Exhibition and kill all the children”. He was then sent to a school for emotionally disturbed children in Kingston, Ontario. This is where he began acting on his strong sexual urges with other children. Woodcock stated that he had consensual intercourse with a 12-year-old girl when he was 13. When he turned 15, he left the school and returned to live with his foster parents. He was soon re-enrolled at his original private school where he again, failed to make friends with anyone. At age 16, he left the private school again and was sent to a public high school, where children from the neighbourhood instantly recognized him and started bullying him again. He transferred to a private high school only 6 weeks later. His teachers there remembered him as a very smart student who excelled in science, history and English, and who frequently scored perfect scores on tests.
Peter’s prized possession was his red and white Schwinn bike which he used to wander the streets and as far as the outskirts of the city. He had fantasized about leading a gang of 500 invisible boys on bikes called the “Winchester Heights Gang”. His foster parents were aware of this fantasy and how he liked to wander the streets. They were unaware that he had begun travelling around the city and was sexually assaulting children. Peter was oddly obsessed with human anatomy, rape and murder. He started getting younger children to ride along with him on his bike where he would take the children to a secluded area and play sex games with them.
In the spring of 1956, Peter became friends with a depressed 10-year-old girl. According to him, the girl wanted to die and he was willing to help her. He planned on killing her, cutting her up and then seeing what she looked like on the inside. The pair planned the girl’s death over 2 weeks. When they met up, nothing went as planned. Although the girl was willing to die, Woodcock couldn’t follow through with the act. It was late before the 2 went home and the girl’s parents had become worried and called the police who questioned their daughter and also went over to Peter’s house to have a conversation with him. When confronted by his foster parents and the police, Peter threatened to hurt himself so the family wouldn’t be embarrassed after the police visit.
On September 16th, 1956, Peter was riding his bike around the city when he met 7-year-old Wayne Mallette who was visiting his grandmother. Wayne had been playing in her front yard during the day while his 3 older brothers went out on their own. Wayne’s mother, Irene had gone outside to call him in once it started getting late and he was nowhere to be found. Wayne’s father, Jack thought that Wayne had gone with his 3 older brothers but when they came home and Wayne wasn’t with them, panic started to set in and the parents called the police. Wayne had wandered off to play near the train tracks. This is where he ran into Peter Woodcock who lured the boy out of sight and then proceeded to strangle him to death. Mallette’s body was found early the next morning. He was dressed in a British schoolboy blazer, shirt and plaid pants. It appeared that his clothing had been removed and then he was re-dressed. His face was pushed into the dirt and garbage was stuffed into his mouth. There were 2 bite marks found on the body. One on the boy’s calf and the other on his buttock. A forensics team had made casts of the bite marks. There was no evidence of rape. There were however, pennies found ritualistically scattered near the body and someone had also defecated near the victim. Toronto police initially arrested and interrogated another boy, Ron Mowatt. Through intense questioning they were able to get a false confession from 14-year-old Mowatt. There were even witnesses who said Mowatt was in a movie theatre before the murder of Wayne Mallatte but he was still found guilty and sentenced to youth detention. After police acknowledged there was a serial predator in Toronto, Mowatt was not released.
On October 6th, 1956, Woodcock was riding his bike around Cabbagetown when he picked up 9-year-old Gary Morris. He then drove the boy to Cherry Beach where he strangled and beat him to death. A coroner later determined that Morris died from a ruptured liver. Morris’ body was found with a bite mark on his throat. Instead of pennies scattered around the body, this time there were paper clips near the corpse. Again, the clothing had been removed and then the victim had been re-dressed.
On January 19th, 1957, Woodcock was riding his bike when he approached 4-year-old Carole Voyce playing with an older boy outside an apartment building where their parents were socializing. Woodcock talked them into going with him on his bike but decided he wanted to take Carole with him instead of the boy “because she was smaller and easier to control”. Witnesses later said they saw Carole riding on the handlebars of a skinny boy’s bicycle. He then drove her under the Bloor Viaduct and murdered her. When she was found, her clothes had been pulled off. It appeared that she had been choked into unconsciousness and sexually molested. There was a cause of death determined but I have decided to leave it out as it is extremely disturbing. If you absolutely need to know what happened, there is plenty of information on the internet. Woodcock had slipped when trying to get back up the bank when leaving the scene of the crime and angrily returned to give the dead girl one last hard kick to the head. He even stopped and told a man “If there’s a murder down there, they’re going to try to blame it on me”
Witnesses saw a teenager riding a bike away from Carole Voyce’s crime scene and an accurate composite sketch was made based on the descriptions. This sketch ran on the front page of the Toronto Star newspaper. Woodcock was eventually arrested on January 21st, 1957 and confessed to all 3 murders. He admitted to the Mallette murder because he was angry that someone else was given credit for something he had done. After his conviction, he was called in as a defence witness for Mowatt. The wrongful murder charge was stayed in 1957 and Mowatt was released. Nate Hendley published an account of Mowatt’s experience in 2018 called “The boy on the Bicycle”. After his arrest, he was stated saying “My fear was that mother would find out. Mother was my biggest fear. I didn’t know if the police would let her at me” Although he confessed to all 3 killings, Woodcock was only tried for one. It took the jury only 2 hours to find him not guilty by reason of insanity. He was sent to Oak Ridge; a maximum-security psychiatric institution in Penetanguishene, Ontario.
While imprisoned, Woodcock was diagnosed as a psychopath. He was studied, analyzed and used as a guinea pig for experimental treatment of psychopathic criminals. He was pumped with LSD and other mind-altering drugs, and put in a dark, artificial womb for days, according to journalist Mark Bourrie. Woodcock did not respond well to these treatments, and was not an ideal prisoner. He engaged in coercive sexual acts and exploited his fellow inmates, who were often less intelligent or less sane than he was. He formed another imaginary gang, the Brotherhood. He convinced inmates that he had contact with the mythical group on the outside, and that in order to be initiated, inmates had to perform oral sex on him and bring him gifts of cigarettes. Woodcock was eventually transferred to less restrictive institutions, and ultimately arrived at the Brockville Psychiatric Hospital. Here, staff indulged his passion for trains by taking him to the Smiths Falls Railway Museum, and even took him to see The Silence of the Lambs. During this time, he legally changed his name to David Michael Krueger and rekindled a relationship with Bruce Hamill, an Ottawa killer who had been released from Oak Ridge and was working as a security guard at the Ottawa courthouse.
On July 13th, 1991, he was allowed out of Brockville Psychiatric Hospital on a day pass with Bruce Hamill as his escort. This was the first time he was allowed out on an “unsupervised release” in 34 years. The two men lured another inmate (Dennis Kerr) to the woods where they butchered and mutilated him. They had been planning this for a long time. Woodcock then turned himself in to police.
For the murder of Dennis Kerr, David Krueger (Peter Woodcock) was transferred back to the Oak Ridge division of the Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre, where he had spent the majority of his 34 preceding years in custody. In the years after Kerr’s murder, he was the focus of a biography and several documentary films and sometimes tried to explain why he killed, but he never came up with rational reasons. He said in a 1993 interview: “I’m accused of having no morality, which is a fair assessment, because my morality is whatever the system allows.” On March 5th, 2010, his 71st birthday, Peter Woodcock (David Krueger) died of natural causes.
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