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Wendy

Oct 22, 06 - 5:59 PM

Bad Date posted on Sex Professionals of Canada website found dead

A month ago, on the morning of Sept. 17, a man's body was fished out of the quiet waters of the Rideau Canal, not far from the historic Pretoria Bridge in downtown Ottawa.

It had been afloat for about 12 hours.

Identification found on the body led police to a basement apartment at the north end of Lyon St., where a suicide note was found that, according to Ottawa Det. Frank Daoust, "covered the basics" and raised no eyebrows.

And then the detective punched the dead man's name into the police computer to check for a possible criminal background, and came up with an unexpected hit that linked him -- albeit tenuously -- to the unsolved murder of a teenaged neophyte prostitute named Melinda Sheppit, and a cold-case file that is now 16 years old, the same age Sheppit was on a day in 1990 when her partially clad body was found in a parking lot near Ottawa's Byward Market.

SEX PROFESSIONALS

Google the name Mark McCaskill and the first link out of 575,000 links retrieved by the search engine leads to the website of the Sex Professionals of Canada (SPOC), and a now-moot alert to prostitutes about threats alleged to have been made by McCaskill to sex-trade workers, as well as a play-by-play of his previous dealings with prostitutes in various provinces.

"Warning!" the message reads. "As of July 13/06, SPOC has received evidence that McCaskill is now threatening to 'physically hurt' sex professionals."

There are even pictures of the 39-year-old McCaskill -- his 40th birthday would have been next month -- that were lifted from webcam images captured during online video conversations with Internet-connected hookers.

One photograph has him with short-cropped hair; the more recent has him with his head shaved bald.

He makes his appearance on the SPOC website in its link to the Bad Client List, a lengthy charting of ongoing situations and past run-ins that warns hookers to be on the alert regarding certain individuals, and includes the pictures of various men who are alleged to have crossed the line.

Wendy

Oct 22nd, 2006 - 5:59 PM

Re: Bad Date posted on Sex Professionals of Canada website found dead continued...

Until the sudden warning in July, the item on McCaskill, while lengthy, did not have him down as potentially violent. It portrayed him as being more of a nuisance.

REPORTS

Example: "SPOC has received reports about McCaskill since 2003. We now receive about two reports monthly, from women in Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba.

"He promises large amounts of $ for weekends or overnights at his place in Ottawa. When the woman arrives, he either doesn't answer the door or doesn't have any money, leaving sex professionals empty-handed. This is how he gets his kicks."

Farther down, it adds, "He lives in a shabby basement apt., and we suspect, is living on disability support cheques.

"He tells women he's living in that apt. because his 'house burnt down' and is waiting while a new one is built.

"McCaskill," SPOC warns, "has hatred for sex professionals and seems to blame us for everything wrong in his life."

Toronto prostitute Valerie Scott is the woman behind SPOC, an organization concerned with the safety of sex-trade workers across Canada, as well as an advocate for seeing prostitution decriminalized as opposed to legalized.

And McCaskill had been e-mailing and phoning Scott regularly. She has, in fact, tapes that total 47 minutes in voice messages -- including a 27-minute, 27-second epic in which he drops the name Melinda Sheppit.

"And it was not prompted," says Scott.

At one point Scott seemed willing to share the e-mails and phone recordings, and then backed off -- stating that she was instructed by Ottawa Det. Frank Daoust, or an officer with a similar name, not to co-operate with the media.

Daoust, however, denies this conversation happened, saying only that he had asked Scott -- at the request of McCaskill's sister -- to remove Mark McCaskill from the SPOC website now that his death was confirmed.

"But I don't think that will happen," said Daoust. "As (Scott) told me, she was going to keep the information on the website until she decided it was no longer relevant."

McCaskill's sister, who lives in Quebec, was unreachable.

Wendy

Oct 22nd, 2006 - 6:00 PM

Re: Bad Date posted on Sex Professionals of Canada website found dead continued...

In one phone conversation, however, she recounted a June 2 e-mail from Mark McCaskill that "read like a press release" regarding his upcoming death -- accurately predicting that his body would be found floating in the Rideau Canal.

These missives have been confirmed by Ottawa police.

Ottawa Det. John Monette of the major-crime unit has the Sheppit file, one of 25 cold-case files that he is investigating, and one of the largest, as well -- with hundreds of names in that file being "persons of interest."

That said, he would not discuss Mark McCaskill's potential involvement in the unsolved Sheppit murder.

"Mark McCaskill is a 'subject' in the investigation," said Monette. "And not necessarily a 'person of interest.'

"But the investigation (regarding McCaskill) is still in its infancy, and one can understand that it can become complicated when certain things become public.

RETRAUMATIZE

"The media are a double-edged sword," said Monette. "They can retraumatize the families involved, and they can also give them a sense of hope that can unfortunately end up false."

According to Det. Frank Daoust, who spoke to McCaskill's sister after McCaskill's body was pulled from the Rideau Canal, Mark McCaskill was "normal in every sense of the word" until he was injured in a serious motorcycle accident east of Ottawa back in 1984, the year he turned 18.

"According to his family, everything was fine before that," said Daoust. "And then everything changed."

Wendy

Oct 23rd, 2006 - 11:51 PM

Re: Bad Date posted on Sex Professionals of Canada website found dead

Here's another article:

Melinda Sheppit has been dead for as many years as she was alive.

Yesterday, her dad Peter said a small part of him hopes that a man who was found floating dead in the canal last month is the man who killed his 16-year-old daughter and left her body in a Byward Market parking lot 16 years ago.

It would finally put an end to the agony, he said.

"I have mixed feelings," the 55-year-old said yesterday from his home near Ottawa. "I wasn't too hopeful, but I was hoping it would be him. I wanted to get the guy myself, kick the sh-- out of him, castrate him. Hopefully, it closes everything. If it's not the person, it's waiting again to find out who done it."

FOUND IN CANAL

Sun columnist Mark Bonokoski yesterday linked Sheppit with Mark McCaskill, 39, who was known to harass sex trade workers before he was found floating in the canal Sept. 17. A suicide note was found in his Lyon St. basement apartment.

McCaskill's is one of hundreds of names in the Sheppit file.

In 1990, desperate and two months pregnant, Melinda Sheppit ran away from home and turned to prostitution. Three weeks later she was found dead, bruised and half-naked.

Her dad hasn't heard from police in four years.

"Four years ago, they said they were 90% sure who did it, but not 100% sure -- they didn't want to do an arrest," Sheppit said. "They didn't give me no names."

Then, just weeks ago, when the detective probing McCaskill's death punched his name into the computer, it came up in the Sheppit file. It also came up on a list of "bad dates" on a website published by Sex Professionals of Canada (SPOC), an advocacy group for "pros."

Sex workers in three provinces had reported being lured to McCaskill's Ottawa apartment. Claiming to be wealthy, McCaskill told women he'd fallen in love with them online and that he'd set them up with an apartment and car. When the women travelled to Ottawa, he didn't answer the door or couldn't pay.

Nuisance complaints date back three years, but this past summer McCaskill became physically threatening, said SPOC head Valerie Scott, whom he bombarded with calls. In one, he mentioned Sheppit.

'A COWARD'

But Scott isn't convinced that McCaskill killed the teen.

"I got the feeling he was in love with her," Scott said. "I don't know if he even met her or if it was just a fantasy in his head. I don't think the police know either. The thing with McCaskill is you never knew what was true or what was fantasy.

"I don't think that, really, he would have murdered her, simply because he was such a coward. He seemed to live vicariously. He hung out on the computer. It was a virtual life."

The Ottawa police major crime section had no update yesterday on the Sheppit case, but the detective on the case has warned publicity could lead to false hope for the family.

Melinda's father said he's never stopped thinking about his daughter. In one of their last conversations, Melinda talked about going to live with an aunt to finish high school. She dreamed of being a social worker.

"Christmas she's not around," her dad said. "She was pregnant when she died -- we're missing a grandchild."

Bonnie

Jan 4th, 2007 - 3:51 PM

Re: Bad Date posted on Sex Professionals of Canada website found dead

this us in regards to my brother ..since his death i have been reading articles some written...
I'm really sorry for what he did to any of you..but try and remember he wa a person...none of you might understand but he was always like this...he suffered more than anyone of every would...he woke up one day abd didn't know his own face much less any of us...he never has remembered a thing about who was before...i failed my brother by not being there for him...
so before youy judge him...be careful and find compassion for others maybe they are different then you...but we are all humans..so might consider what you do for a living..not moral right...

w

Jan 17th, 2007 - 10:15 AM

Re: Bad Date posted on Sex Professionals of Canada website found dead

I'm sorry for your loss, but your brother raped many of my collegues, a month did not go by where we did not get a phone call from a woman who had just been raped by him. Many of these women we're tramatized afterwards, so although I am sympathetic to your loss, I can not feel empathy for a man who regularily hurt women. No one should have to take their own life but no one should have to be beaten and raped either.

Former escort

Sep 27th, 2007 - 2:22 PM

Re: Bad Date posted on Sex Professionals of Canada website found dead

I was an escort until recently and I had dealt with Mark many times. Never did he become hostile or show any signs of anger whatsoever. I cannot believe all of a sudden there are rape allegations when it was always that he just refused the escort when she came to his apt. There were never any accounts of danger, violence or anything but refusal to pay or refusal to pay the cancellation fee. I do not believe in these rape allegations at all. I do not respect SPOC or their policies as they are not professionals and do pick favourites with who they choose to put on their website. They are corrupt and are not to be trusted, by escorts or anyone for that matter as they have many complaints against them. Mark was never anything more than a nuisance. If you look up his name, you should even be able to see that he was indeed harassed himself.

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Wendy Oct 22, 06 - 5:59 PM	Bad Date posted on Sex Professionals of Canada website found dead A month ago, on the morning of Sept. 17, a man's body was fished out of the quiet waters of the Rideau Canal, not far from the historic Pretoria Bridge in downtown Ottawa. It had been afloat for about 12 hours. Identification found on the body led police to a basement apartment at the north end of Lyon St., where a suicide note was found that, according to Ottawa Det. Frank Daoust, "covered the basics" and raised no eyebrows. And then the detective punched the dead man's name into the police computer to check for a possible criminal background, and came up with an unexpected hit that linked him -- albeit tenuously -- to the unsolved murder of a teenaged neophyte prostitute named Melinda Sheppit, and a cold-case file that is now 16 years old, the same age Sheppit was on a day in 1990 when her partially clad body was found in a parking lot near Ottawa's Byward Market. SEX PROFESSIONALS Google the name Mark McCaskill and the first link out of 575,000 links retrieved by the search engine leads to the website of the Sex Professionals of Canada (SPOC), and a now-moot alert to prostitutes about threats alleged to have been made by McCaskill to sex-trade workers, as well as a play-by-play of his previous dealings with prostitutes in various provinces. "Warning!" the message reads. "As of July 13/06, SPOC has received evidence that McCaskill is now threatening to 'physically hurt' sex professionals." There are even pictures of the 39-year-old McCaskill -- his 40th birthday would have been next month -- that were lifted from webcam images captured during online video conversations with Internet-connected hookers. One photograph has him with short-cropped hair; the more recent has him with his head shaved bald. He makes his appearance on the SPOC website in its link to the Bad Client List, a lengthy charting of ongoing situations and past run-ins that warns hookers to be on the alert regarding certain individuals, and includes the pictures of various men who are alleged to have crossed the line.
Wendy Oct 22nd, 2006 - 5:59 PM	Re: Bad Date posted on Sex Professionals of Canada website found dead continued... Until the sudden warning in July, the item on McCaskill, while lengthy, did not have him down as potentially violent. It portrayed him as being more of a nuisance. REPORTS Example: "SPOC has received reports about McCaskill since 2003. We now receive about two reports monthly, from women in Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba. "He promises large amounts of $ for weekends or overnights at his place in Ottawa. When the woman arrives, he either doesn't answer the door or doesn't have any money, leaving sex professionals empty-handed. This is how he gets his kicks." Farther down, it adds, "He lives in a shabby basement apt., and we suspect, is living on disability support cheques. "He tells women he's living in that apt. because his 'house burnt down' and is waiting while a new one is built. "McCaskill," SPOC warns, "has hatred for sex professionals and seems to blame us for everything wrong in his life." Toronto prostitute Valerie Scott is the woman behind SPOC, an organization concerned with the safety of sex-trade workers across Canada, as well as an advocate for seeing prostitution decriminalized as opposed to legalized. And McCaskill had been e-mailing and phoning Scott regularly. She has, in fact, tapes that total 47 minutes in voice messages -- including a 27-minute, 27-second epic in which he drops the name Melinda Sheppit. "And it was not prompted," says Scott. At one point Scott seemed willing to share the e-mails and phone recordings, and then backed off -- stating that she was instructed by Ottawa Det. Frank Daoust, or an officer with a similar name, not to co-operate with the media. Daoust, however, denies this conversation happened, saying only that he had asked Scott -- at the request of McCaskill's sister -- to remove Mark McCaskill from the SPOC website now that his death was confirmed. "But I don't think that will happen," said Daoust. "As (Scott) told me, she was going to keep the information on the website until she decided it was no longer relevant." McCaskill's sister, who lives in Quebec, was unreachable.
Wendy Oct 22nd, 2006 - 6:00 PM	Re: Bad Date posted on Sex Professionals of Canada website found dead continued... In one phone conversation, however, she recounted a June 2 e-mail from Mark McCaskill that "read like a press release" regarding his upcoming death -- accurately predicting that his body would be found floating in the Rideau Canal. These missives have been confirmed by Ottawa police. Ottawa Det. John Monette of the major-crime unit has the Sheppit file, one of 25 cold-case files that he is investigating, and one of the largest, as well -- with hundreds of names in that file being "persons of interest." That said, he would not discuss Mark McCaskill's potential involvement in the unsolved Sheppit murder. "Mark McCaskill is a 'subject' in the investigation," said Monette. "And not necessarily a 'person of interest.' "But the investigation (regarding McCaskill) is still in its infancy, and one can understand that it can become complicated when certain things become public. RETRAUMATIZE "The media are a double-edged sword," said Monette. "They can retraumatize the families involved, and they can also give them a sense of hope that can unfortunately end up false." According to Det. Frank Daoust, who spoke to McCaskill's sister after McCaskill's body was pulled from the Rideau Canal, Mark McCaskill was "normal in every sense of the word" until he was injured in a serious motorcycle accident east of Ottawa back in 1984, the year he turned 18. "According to his family, everything was fine before that," said Daoust. "And then everything changed."
Wendy Oct 23rd, 2006 - 11:51 PM	Re: Bad Date posted on Sex Professionals of Canada website found dead Here's another article: Melinda Sheppit has been dead for as many years as she was alive. Yesterday, her dad Peter said a small part of him hopes that a man who was found floating dead in the canal last month is the man who killed his 16-year-old daughter and left her body in a Byward Market parking lot 16 years ago. It would finally put an end to the agony, he said. "I have mixed feelings," the 55-year-old said yesterday from his home near Ottawa. "I wasn't too hopeful, but I was hoping it would be him. I wanted to get the guy myself, kick the sh-- out of him, castrate him. Hopefully, it closes everything. If it's not the person, it's waiting again to find out who done it." FOUND IN CANAL Sun columnist Mark Bonokoski yesterday linked Sheppit with Mark McCaskill, 39, who was known to harass sex trade workers before he was found floating in the canal Sept. 17. A suicide note was found in his Lyon St. basement apartment. McCaskill's is one of hundreds of names in the Sheppit file. In 1990, desperate and two months pregnant, Melinda Sheppit ran away from home and turned to prostitution. Three weeks later she was found dead, bruised and half-naked. Her dad hasn't heard from police in four years. "Four years ago, they said they were 90% sure who did it, but not 100% sure -- they didn't want to do an arrest," Sheppit said. "They didn't give me no names." Then, just weeks ago, when the detective probing McCaskill's death punched his name into the computer, it came up in the Sheppit file. It also came up on a list of "bad dates" on a website published by Sex Professionals of Canada (SPOC), an advocacy group for "pros." Sex workers in three provinces had reported being lured to McCaskill's Ottawa apartment. Claiming to be wealthy, McCaskill told women he'd fallen in love with them online and that he'd set them up with an apartment and car. When the women travelled to Ottawa, he didn't answer the door or couldn't pay. Nuisance complaints date back three years, but this past summer McCaskill became physically threatening, said SPOC head Valerie Scott, whom he bombarded with calls. In one, he mentioned Sheppit. 'A COWARD' But Scott isn't convinced that McCaskill killed the teen. "I got the feeling he was in love with her," Scott said. "I don't know if he even met her or if it was just a fantasy in his head. I don't think the police know either. The thing with McCaskill is you never knew what was true or what was fantasy. "I don't think that, really, he would have murdered her, simply because he was such a coward. He seemed to live vicariously. He hung out on the computer. It was a virtual life." The Ottawa police major crime section had no update yesterday on the Sheppit case, but the detective on the case has warned publicity could lead to false hope for the family. Melinda's father said he's never stopped thinking about his daughter. In one of their last conversations, Melinda talked about going to live with an aunt to finish high school. She dreamed of being a social worker. "Christmas she's not around," her dad said. "She was pregnant when she died -- we're missing a grandchild."
Bonnie Jan 4th, 2007 - 3:51 PM	Re: Bad Date posted on Sex Professionals of Canada website found dead this us in regards to my brother ..since his death i have been reading articles some written... I'm really sorry for what he did to any of you..but try and remember he wa a person...none of you might understand but he was always like this...he suffered more than anyone of every would...he woke up one day abd didn't know his own face much less any of us...he never has remembered a thing about who was before...i failed my brother by not being there for him... so before youy judge him...be careful and find compassion for others maybe they are different then you...but we are all humans..so might consider what you do for a living..not moral right... Email: bmccaskill@hotmail.com Are you a current or former sex worker? no
w Jan 17th, 2007 - 10:15 AM	Re: Bad Date posted on Sex Professionals of Canada website found dead I'm sorry for your loss, but your brother raped many of my collegues, a month did not go by where we did not get a phone call from a woman who had just been raped by him. Many of these women we're tramatized afterwards, so although I am sympathetic to your loss, I can not feel empathy for a man who regularily hurt women. No one should have to take their own life but no one should have to be beaten and raped either.
Former escort Sep 27th, 2007 - 2:22 PM	Re: Bad Date posted on Sex Professionals of Canada website found dead I was an escort until recently and I had dealt with Mark many times. Never did he become hostile or show any signs of anger whatsoever. I cannot believe all of a sudden there are rape allegations when it was always that he just refused the escort when she came to his apt. There were never any accounts of danger, violence or anything but refusal to pay or refusal to pay the cancellation fee. I do not believe in these rape allegations at all. I do not respect SPOC or their policies as they are not professionals and do pick favourites with who they choose to put on their website. They are corrupt and are not to be trusted, by escorts or anyone for that matter as they have many complaints against them. Mark was never anything more than a nuisance. If you look up his name, you should even be able to see that he was indeed harassed himself. Are you a current or former sex worker? Former sex worker