Cottage Killer
Another deranged killer hailing from Ontario, now languishing in Penetangushine’s Facility for the criminally insane. His name is David Snow, who led the police on a nation wide chase ending in the North Shore mountains. Here is the amazing story of the two RCMP officers, constables Peter Cross, and John Woodlock who followed their guts and caught the man in the process of murdering Dalia Gelineau.
He (Peter Cross) found David Snow bending over and twisting “something” around the neck of an almost nude and apparently lifeless woman. The woman was Dalia Gelineau.
“My first reaction was that she was dead and that he had just killed her,” said Cross.
Cross tackled Snow and was handcuffing the fugitive when the senior officer told Woodlock, “There is a lady back there with a bag on her head. Run back.”
Woodlock found the loaded gun Snow had fumbled.
“I (John Woodlock) saw Dalia lying there, bound, pretty graphically, with a bag over her head,” said Woodlock.
She was on her right side, in an almost fetal position.
“I thought she was dead, so I rolled her over,” said Woodlock.
Woodlock removed the bag and released a gag that had bound Gelineau’s mouth. He pulled out a blood-soaked slip that was stuffed into her mouth. She groaned.
Snow’s former Ontario neighbour, and wife of ex business partner played a pivitol role in David Snow’s conviction of attempted mured of his last victim, and murder of his others, despite the sitting Judge.
Snow gagged Gelineau with her slip, put a plastic bag over her head and tightened a wire around her neck. A North Vancouver Mountie found Snow standing over a bound and near unconscious Gelineau.
North Vancouver provincial court Judge Jerome Paradis decided that Snow didn’t intend to murder Gelineau and found him not guilty. The verdict enraged people, not the least of whom was Gelineau, an eloquent, brave grandmother.
Paradis later redeemed himself by designating Snow a dangerous offender. That means Snow has an indefinite prison sentence.
Shaw phoned the Metropolitan Toronto Police after recognizing Snow’s handwriting.
Her court ordeal afterwards both in B.C. and in Ontario and her “relationship” with Snow are chronicled in A Friend of the Family.
The 260-page hard cover book was released last week.
In an interview earlier this week , Shaw, 39, seemed tired and uneasy. She had already spent most of the day doing publicity interviews. She also arranged to meet with one of Snow’s victims, Dalia Gelineau, at the News office.
The two women hugged each other on the sidewalk.
The book was recently turned into a movie, and aired on CTV last night.
Anyone see it?
hey, i have read a few of your blogs and i think they’re great!
Hi Suzy, I’m glad to meet you!
Thanks for your encouragement.
Hazel
I live in cottage country in Ontario, for years I have heard stories about David Snow. I am very intrested in his case and the crimes he comitted. I would like to read more information on his crimes seeing how he comitted some so close to where I live. so if you could please send me more infromation about his crimes, so I can find out for myself if the stories I have heard are true or really are just stories.
Thanks
Good day,
I just saw this the movie last night on Lifetime…what a creep!
The worst of it all is how the Mrs. Shaw’s husband, and everyone
else for that matter, refused to beleive her, which I’m sure
led to her divorce…that Wacko had everyone fooled…hope he
never gets out!
Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours,
Stephanie
Hi Ashlee, I have to appologize your comment must have slipped right by me.
I don’t really have access to any info on this case that can’t be found through google. I understand the movie is now out, mabey see if you can find a copy. If you learn of anything new, you’re welcome to come back and share, heck you’re welcome to come back anyway, anytime.
Thanks for taking the time to comment, sorry I havn’t been much help.
Take care!
Hazel
Hi Stephanie, I agree that has to be the worst thing, not being believed in such a situation. Its a sad fact these things happen more often than we would like to know. Wanting so badly for something to be true, or not to be true is no substitute for the truth.
And thank you! I hope Thanksgiving was a good one for you and yours!
I knew him from school and working at the local pool hall for years, we all thought he was different. He only had one friend that I remember, he was anti-social, loner.I knew his sister.I seen him pretty much everyday for years either at school or the local pool hall.I haven’t read shaws book, but I find it hard to believe that she was only one to find him odd, I lived in Orangeville all my life until the late eighties.
Hi Sam, thanks for your recollections. Thats a good point, about him being oobviously odd to many. Perhaps she was the only one with cause, and willing to say so on record?
I had this creep in my house after agreeing to billet him through our church in Alberta in 1981-82. I found him profoundly creepy, asked God to protect me after he made overt advances towards me, nothing happened, but I reported this to the church and they took me very seriously, nobody else did. I am not surprized at his history, just today saw his case on Exhibit A tv show, narrated by tom jackson.
i grew up next door to david snow, and was not shocked at all when i found out he was wanted for murder. I even said in the paper that he was pretty creepy, and my mom used to make me come inside if he came out while i was playing. my mom got so mad, we stayed at my grandmas for a few weeks cuz he was on the loose. I have wild stories about that man.
Does anyone have Snow’s handwriting? I am a graphologlist and am very interested in criminal writing.
Supposedly, Alison recognised his handwriting in a murder case, at least according to the movie.
If you do have any sample of his writing, would you please be so kind email me? vardarose@comcast.net
thanks!
Varda Rose
i just saw the movie and it did not end the way your article say’s,that scene with the baby,speaker,closet,her running and getting caught by him and her husband say’s it all,it is the completion of the whole movie,if it is not true and it was another woman being assaulted and not alison shaw isn’t this so wrong,it also say’s at the end of the movie he was found quilty of two murders in your article it say’s not quilty but a dangerous offender,what story does alison shaw’s book portray,if it was the one in the movie then
although she may have had her feelings…i find this ending very self serving and not a reflection of the truth.i am confused.did they have to change it that much to give it a hollywood ending or what,i thought it was a true story,if you take the ending away alison shaw does not really have much of a story because what other parts portrayed in the movie as her story actually belonged to someone else.that’s it thanks.
Hi Jan, the movie you saw was BASED on the true story.
I’m glad you wrote in with this point, I looked into the ending and found this:
Random Reflections
‘Based on a true story’- really?
Tom Claridge (a reporter who covered the case as it unfolded back in the 90’s.)
Quote:
The main truth in the story is that Alison Shaw and her then-husband, Darris, knew David Alexander Snow, to the point where Darris was a business partner in a venture that involved demolishing old buildings and selling antiques and other collectibles.
Also true is the fact Snow was close enough to the Shaws’ first child that they came to call him “uncle David.”
However, much of the movie is fictitious, particularly toward the end when Alison meets up with the serial killer at the Shaws’ new home in Vancouver.
Among the major fictions is the movie’s suggestion that the serial killings were of young women and included several in B.C.
From Orangeville Citizen
http://www.citizen.on.ca/news/2006/0831/Columns/031.html
Hope this clarifies stuff for you. And yeah, kinda suckie no? Like this story needed any extra oomph. Pretty awful stuff as it was.
Hazel.
hi hazel,i wrote this big long thing for you along with a thankyou,i posted it and this sign comes up and tells me to slow down i am posting too fast,hmmmmmmmmm don’t know what that means so i will wait and see if my original post gets posted if not i will be back to write it over.thanks hazel.
jan
Hi Jan sorry you had posting troubles. That’s wordpress’s litle sign, I’ve had it a few times too. Fast fingers and all that.
See you soon!?
I find it endlessly offensive when movie makers pretend to offer essential truth, and do not. From another point of view, it may just as well be a script writer’s inabilty to devise a fictitious scenario, so they take from real life, embellish, alter, pervert… and then pay off the necessary individuals for the ‘rights’ to the usurped material. If ever anyone has the energy and abilty to make a true movie, I hope they make it from the book ” Autobiography of a Yogi”. There’s more drama in that book than in most fiction, and it actually has meritorious substance!
Hi Dave, it’s been said many times truth is stranger than fiction. A crime movie based on a real story is one thing, but to market a movie as a real crime story when the plot has obviously been altered feels like a fraud. Additionally I think confusing David Snow’s case with a string of murdered women in Vancouver, while a serial killer was operating in the area was Wrong. (w/ a Capitol W).
I’ll take a look into the book you mentioned, I like the title already.
Have a great day.
Hazel.
I guess, after years of watching movies about real stories, my expectations are not that high. At the end of the movie when the police are driving off with David Snow and he mouths the words “I love you” to Alison I just thought “How cheesy”. The actual facts of the story were enough and the addition of this kind of stuff cheapens the production. However there were unanswered questions in this story that imply an even larger story. If David Snow was not involved with the murders in that area (where Alison and her husband moved) who was involved? Was that ever solved and how did Alison and her husband not see the obvious when they met David Snow as everyone else did in the city where he grew up?