FATAL MISTAKES. The Disturbing Events That Led to the Murder of nina de Villiers and a Nationwide Campaign Against Violence

Hardback. Jonathan Yeo was known to his wife, to the police and to the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry as a troubled and dangerous individual with an extensive history of sex-related crimes and weapon offences. Why was he free on bail to commit murder? The author's dramatic narrative poses crucial questions about justice and public safety. First he sketches the warm family life of university student Nina de Villiers, killed by Jonathan Yeo in Hamilton, Ontario in 1991. Then he shows how the anguish the de Villiers family suffered was followed by frustration and rage over an amazing catalogue of human errors compounded by shortcomings in the social and justice systems. All this emerged at a far-reaching inquest into Jonathan Yeo's death - an inquest held after much pressure from Priscilla de Villiers, Nina's mother, and a group she and her friends founded called CAVEAT (Canadians Against Violence Everywhere Advocating its Termination). The author also vividly recounts the tragic story of Yeo, an adopted black child in a white family, whose increasingly serious record of violence, forcible confinement and rape was both unchecked and unappreciated by the authorities - partly because of a series of mistakes, partly because of victims' fear of coming forward. The result was 3 preventable deaths - the murder of Nina, the subsequent murder of Karen Marquis in New Brunswick and the suicide of Jonathan Yeo. 230pp. 8vo. h/back. From the library of true crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. F. in f. dw.