Wednesday, January 03, 2018

Tom Oszlansky's chilling account of killing four at the Cote de Neiges Plaza

Tom Oszlansky
  Thomas Oszlansky was a 21-year-old Canadian kayaking champion living with his parents in suburban Sainte Dorothee Laval who became a killing machine after supposedly ingesting LSD.
    Oszlansky was born in Hungary in 1951 and came to Montreal with his family at the age of 12.
   He would go on to become a solid kayaker at the Lachine Canoe Club who paddled in the prestigious Canada Summer Games of 1969 and whose feats are still listed on websites.
  Thomas, who now calls himself Tamas, appeared normal as he entered the Cote de Neiges Plaza, chatting amicably with a security guard upon entering.
   He then continued onward in the mall to the Ben Ash delicatessen where he ordered four restaurant employees into a walk-in freezer at 3:30 a.m. on Saturday June 25, 1972 and shot them dead.
   Spiros Mayrelatos, 18, Sender Nincowicz, 54, Benjamin Earle Segal, 18, (brother of future Ontario Chief Prosecutor Murray Segal) and Antonios Alefragis, 22, (two Jews, two Greek) died tragically and senselessly.
   Oszlansky also shot security guard Paul Dindzik, 42, but he survived and called police.
   A pair of cops from the Night Squad gingerly searched the mall to see if he was still in hiding but Oszlansky (sometimes spelled Ozslansky or Ozslanszky) had fled.
   Oszlansky, a former security guard at the mall, stole around $3,5000 in cash from the restaurant and then dumped his weapon in the Back River.
   He entered a Laval police station a few hours later to recount an incoherent story about the Ben Ash deli.
   Police arrested him.
   He confessed, telling them that he had been feeling nervous after a race and a friend gave him LSD to relax. (It was not known whether the LSD claim is true, as criminals occasionally blame their antics on hallucinogenic drugs as a method of shedding blame)
   The LSD, he said, triggered off his psychosis and he lashed out after he imagined everybody was laughing at him.
   He carried a gun, he explained, to protect himself from drug dealers who had previously beaten him up.
   Oszlansky was sentenced to four counts of life in prison to be served concurrently. He was released from prison but it's not known when exactly.
**
   Oszlansky's father had come to Hungary with great ambitions for his daughter and son, who attended private school at Loyola in NDG.
   The senior Oszlansky had fought Communism back home and was tortured for his efforts and forced to work as a coal miner before getting a chance to bring his family to Canada, where he settled in Montreal as did many other Hungarian families at the time.
   The senior Oszlansky, a kind man, was shattered after his son committed the murders and died within a couple of years. One friend said he died "of a broken heart."
    Local Greeks were not thrilled about their young people being killed by the young Hungarian and some worsened matters by sending death threats to the Oszlanskys when Thomas was sentenced in 1973.
     ***
   Oszlansky, described as having "intense eyes" entered a world of problems after he became addicted to heroin.
   Prior to that he had been an athletic purist, cross-country skiing in the winter and paddling in the summer. He would sometimes jog the lengthy distance from Laval to Lachine to his club.
   But after becoming mixed up in drugs, he complained that his failure to pay his drug debts led a drug dealers, who he described as three black guys, to beat him regularly.
   As a means of protection, he started showing up to kayaking meets and practices with a sawed-off .22 hidden in his bag. Sawing off a such a weapon requires considerable work, so his method was not entirely madness.
   He presumably sought to rob the delicatessen because he wanted money to pay the drugs dealers the money he owed them.
   He originally pleaded innocent but changed that plea to guilty on 16 January 1973. His lawyer Nikita Tomesco attempted to sway the court with a plea akin to temporary insanity, arguing that he had acted while undergoing hallucinations and that he had been traumatized at the difficult treatment his father endured under Communism in Hungary.
  This prompted Conservative MP Reg Stackhouse to rise in the House of Commons on Dec. 3, 1973 and urge the Parole Board to not to release him early.
***
 After his release - year unknown -  Oszlansky, now 68, worked in construction and appears to still be active in home renovations in Montreal.
   One observer who crossed paths with Oszlansky a couple of years ago had that impression that Oszlansky adopted the persona of being a highly-moral person who was very close to his mother. One impression that Oszlansky may or may not have fostered was that he was motivated to kill because the men who died had somehow attacked a woman. None of that appeared in past accounts.
   ***
   It might be noted that Oszlansky was not the only Hungarian immigrant to Montreal from the early 1950s who committed a high profile murder. Colman Losonczy killed two when he attacked the Canadian embassy in Vienna in August 1969. And Francois Schirm killed a man on August 29, 1964 in a terrorist robbery.

See also:
  Oszlansky's quadruple murder ranks as the second most terrible crime that ever happened in Cote des Neiges, behind the Polytechnique Massacre, and in front of the Harvey's double murder across the street on October 28, 1996.

   Oszlansky's statement to the court in January 1973 read:

      On June 24th I was involved in an athletic competition. It was a depressing day of constant rain and pressure. On that evening I wanted to relax with a few friends at a restaurant.
   On the way there I had an accident with my friend's car, followed by an hour of arguments and harassment. Having finally reached the restaurant (Pam Pam on Stanley) I had at the most three beers.
   I mentioned these things because they might in a slight way, be connected with terrible happenings later on (June 25th) . After parting with my last friend on Bourret Street I proceeded to walk in the neighbourhood of Victoria, Linton and Barclay Streets with no definite aim in mind.
   I changed to intersect Plaza Cote des Neiges, my former place of work for a year. Having decided to enter and talk to fellow guards, I rang the bell and was admitted by a strange guard.
  I talked with him for a while and then he left to do his rounds. I remained for a while with my red handbag carrying clothes, a pair of some girls' stockings (unknown) and a cut down .22 calibre, 8 capacity rifle
  I sometimes carry this with me in the Plaza neighborhood after i have been attacked and knifed by three colored men in January.
   The time was approximately 2 a.m and I found myself on the upper floor at Ben Ash restaurant. i was in an unexplainable state.
   There was no feeling of hate, depression, love, greed, or anything else, only a vacuum of emptiness and non-caring. Something forced me to act and violence I never thought a man was capable of erupted.
   I entered the restaurant premises by force and made the four employees break open doors and the cash register, stuffing money in my bag and pockets. I remember I asked for a glass of orange juice before I killed three young men and an older one who I have known for a year. I exited from the restaurant in a state of blankness and disregard. I again met the security guard and we talked for a long time both upstairs and in the security office (downstairs). By 3:30 in the morning the terrible force of my actions came fully to my consciousness. At that moment the bell rang again and someone demanded entry at doors by the cinema. when the guard returned from the bell I shot him from behind in pure panic. He managed to swing the door closed and I was stranded from the office. I fired three more shots at the door, all missing the man fortunately.
  I heard him call the police, so I grabbed my bag which I put in a garbage truck and exited by the upper front doors. I ran across Cote des Neiges probably leaving a trail of bills and coins.
   Sweating and breathing hard I jumped into a taxi and asked to be taken to Gouin Boulevard. I later changed that to Salaberry and Lachapelle. The fare was $2.70. From there I walked to my club "Cartierville Boating Club."
   The time was approximately 4 a.m. I jumped the fence and went down to the wharf. In a daze I changed clothes transferring license, wallet, house key and comb and putting the discarded clothes into my bag which I then sank.
  I then took the gun and shot myself point blank in the left side under the ribs. The bullet took off the tip of my third finger and cut through my side leaving a great burn mark.
  At the moment I felt no pain whatsoever. Having thrown the gun in the water I put on my jacket and walked across the Cartierville bridge on my way home. At the St. Martin Shopping Centre loss of blood and the increasing pain forced me to take a taxi and asked to be taken to the Laval police.
  Here then is the end to the best years of my life and athletic aspirations. I can find no reason for my actions, because if robbery was my motive, I had had a golden opportunity for a year. I was working as a security guard. I am certainly no rich financially as the money is either blowing in the air somewhere or parts of it drifting down the river.
  But what can I possible say to the dead, my own parents relative and friends? That I am sorry? 


                                      ***       
Stories like this fill the must-read Montreal: 375 Tales of Eating, Drinking, Living and Loving, order your paper copy here now or buy it at Indigo or Paragraph.

                                              *** 

6 comments:

  1. I recall that the Ben Ash Delicatessen was located in the basement level of the CdN Plaza which, by the way opened in late 1968 after years of delays.

    The original project was to include high-rise apartments in the rear where the current outdoor parking lot exists today and almost none of the original shops and services in the plaza are there anymore. Ben's itself closed down soon after the crime.

    In 1996 a strangely similar murder occurred in the Harvey's restaurant across in the street. See:

    http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montrealer-convicted-in-restaurant-killings-hangs-himself-1.467363

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  2. So Ozslansky lived at 4311 Gatineau. This is right next door to what was for years the former Rosedale Funeral Home at 4911 Cote des Neiges Road--later demolished and replaced by the current Chateau Decelles high-rise apartment building. I once knew someone who had a temporary job at that funeral home. He told us gruesome stories of retrieving decaying, dead bodies for preparation there. Ugh! You have to be a special kind of person to perform a job such as that. :-(

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  3. I went to school with Benny (St. Laurent High). He was a sports fanatic who never bothered any one. I remember him telling me before the tragedy how happy he was to get this summer job

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  4. Incidentally, Plaza Cote des Neiges opened on October 3, 1968 after years of promises going back as far back as 1957 and probably even earlier than that. I remember the long-standing wooden fence along Cote des Neiges Road upon which was scrawled "Future Shopping Center" or something similar with the open field behind it.

    Original plans were to include high-rise apartments in the rear where today's outdoor parking lot exists. Thankfully the high-rises were never built, possibly due to predictions of the inevitable increased road traffic in the neighbourhood, particularly with regards to the nearby Northmount High School (since renamed Ecole Secondaire La Voie).

    See the Gazette of October 3, 1968, pages 33 through 36.

    https://news.google.ca/newspapers?nid=Fr8DH2VBP9sC&dat=19681003&printsec=frontpage&hl=en

    Not sure if the plaza's current management plans a 50th anniversary celebration or if they are even aware of the aforementioned facts.

    Cote des Neiges Plaza had an extensive upgrade back in the '90s, particularly with respect to the theatres. Even today in 2018, renovations are taking place.

    Not the best mall in town but definitely adequate and comprehensive regarding its services.

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  5. if he had joined the Cartierville Boating Club, no one would have died. Ask Justin.

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  6. Nincowicz had a son,Avi, at Northmount high school while I was there when this happened.Quite shocking.

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