In late 1991, owners of seasonal chalets around Toronto began reporting that someone had been living in their homes for several days while they were away. The intruder entered through windows, broke almost nothing, stole little, and tried to leave the places tidy. Because of that unusual neatness, he became known as the “cottage drifter,” and police initially did not view him as dangerous.
On March 10, 1992, Samuel and Rose Appleton arrived at their country chalet and came face to face with an armed man. He forced them into their car and ordered them to drive to Toronto, but on a busy street Samuel deliberately blocked traffic. The attacker chose to flee. Police did not treat the report seriously at the time.
The situation changed after the bodies of Ian and Nancy Blackburn were discovered on April 13. A relative found the couple in the trunk of a car outside their home; experts determined that they had been tortured before being strangled. Investigators later established that the killings took place at the Blackburns’ summer chalet in the Caledon East area, where forensic teams found blood, signs of a cleanup, and a garbage bag containing the same distinctive items already linked to the “cottage drifter.”
A second search of the Appletons’ house produced another lead: in the attic was a box containing pornographic photographs, pictures of World War II aircraft, and a sheet of handwritten notes. Inspector Douglas Grady decided to publish the handwriting sample without mentioning the murders. Within hours, former shop employee Alison Shaw recognized it and identified the owner of the store “Nothing Special” as David Snow.
Police then found Snow’s shop closed, his home abandoned, and Snow himself gone. At the same time, investigators began to suspect he might be connected to other disappearances, including jeweler Carolyn Case, who vanished in the autumn of 1991. Snow was placed on a nationwide wanted list.
On July 11, 1992, the investigation unexpectedly caught up with him in Vancouver after an attack on a video store and the abduction of women. In Seymour Park, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Corporal David Kvaznika found a victim’s car and managed to rescue two kidnapped women. Inside the vehicle was a 1908 Luger pistol previously stolen from a collector’s chalet. Later that same day, Snow was arrested near a restaurant while trying to kill another woman. He refused to cooperate with investigators. He was later sentenced in Vancouver to 25 years in prison and then, in Toronto, to life imprisonment. The exact number of his victims was never established.