Jimmy Wise was investigated for serial murder twice, decades apart

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Jimmy Wise, a burly, lantern-jawed mechanic whose name once sowed fear across the Ottawa Valley, died last week at Montfort Hospital.

Wise was twice investigated for serial murder by the Ontario Provincial Police and, according to court documents, was a suspect in more than 50 unsolved arson cases that terrorized Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry for decades.

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“He’s going to have to go in front of the big guy upstairs now,” said Gary Rankin, the brother of murder victim Randy Rankin, 46, of Morewood.

Randy Rankin, a children’s clown and racetrack announcer, was shot in the heart through his basement window before the sun came up on Feb. 17, 2007. His shooting was one of six homicides and three suspicious deaths that the OPP sought to tie to Wise during two serial murder investigations conducted three decades apart.

Wise was charged with just one of those deaths – the 2009 shooting of Chesterville’s Ray Collison – but he was acquitted by a jury in December 2020 after six days of deliberation.

Collison, a handyman and father, was shot five times and stuffed in a Morewood drainage culvert where his body went undiscovered for five years.

Collison’s skeletal remains were found just down the road from where Rankin had been shot in Morewood.

By the time Wise stood trial for Collison’s murder, he had already suffered a debilitating stroke, and watched the court proceedings from a wheelchair.

In a published death notice, his family said Wise passed away peacefully in hospital Friday after spending his final years at an Ottawa long-term care home.

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He was 80 years old.

James Henry Wise grew up on a farm in North Dundas Township, one of 12 children. He learned to work with his hands and to shoot a rifle. As a young man, he also assembled a criminal record that included convictions for break and enter, armed robbery and car theft.

In Burwash Correctional Centre, Wise earned a reputation as someone who hated police officers, small animals and old men, according to search warrant applications filed by the OPP. Wise escaped from three different jails, and once hijacked a car at gunpoint before being recaptured.

When he was not in jail, Wise, a motor sports enthusiast, supported himself as a mechanic.

“All I have to do is hear an engine and I know what’s wrong with it,” he used to boast.

Trouble followed him. In 1980, after his girlfriend left him, Wise was suspected of burning down her family’s Winchester home with the woman’s father and her three-year-old son still inside. The doors and windows were wired shut, but the heat of the fire melted the wire, and the two managed to escape.

Wise denied any involvement in the crime and was never charged.

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But weeks later, in September 1980, Wise brazenly attacked his ex-girlfriend on Winchester’s main street. Driving a stolen car, he mounted a sidewalk and ran over the woman, who somehow escaped serious injury.

Initially charged with attempted murder, Wise was convicted in November 1982 of wounding with intent to cause bodily harm. He received a one-year jail term.

After returning to Winchester, Wise became the prime suspect in an OPP serial murder investigation dubbed “Special K.” The crimes in question were chilling.

In November 1983, Harold Davidson, 60, was killed as he sat at the kitchen table of his remote farmhouse near Brinston. Davidson was shot three times with a .38-calibre handgun fired through his kitchen window. His body was found next to an oil-burning stove tipped on its side.

Four years later, on the night of May 17, 1987, a single shot fired through the dining room window of an Avonmore farmhouse killed Wallace Johnston. The 48-year-old dairy farmer was found slumped in his favourite armchair next to a plate of fried potatoes. The TV was still on, and a box of matches was spread out on the kitchen counter.

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Two months after that, on July 14, a nighttime fire engulfed the Morewood home of John King, a retired courier and reclusive bachelor. Forensic tests showed King had been shot in the head before his house was torched. Police believe he was shot through the dining room window, then a second time after the gunman forced his way inside.

The OPP said the homicides were all connected. Another three deaths, two of which were attributed to mysterious fires, could also be the work of the same serial killer and arsonist, the investigators said.

The police planted a hidden tracking device in the backseat of Wise’s Oldsmobile, and kept him under around-the-clock surveillance for more than a year. As many as 60 officers were assigned to the case.

In late September 1987, in an attempt to calm local fears, OPP Det. Insp. James McCormick told reporters that investigators had identified the man they believed to be the killer, and were trying to collect enough evidence to charge him. McCormick did not name the suspect, but most everyone in the region, including Wise himself, knew he was under a police microscope.

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Wise told CJOH reporter Charlie Greenwell he was an innocent man. “I haven’t done nothing,” Wise said. “There’s no place I can drive without them (police) being there. I have been watched from the air by helicopters. Wherever I turn around, I always see someone following me and I know someone is out there.”

He said he didn’t know any of the victims. “I’m basically a quiet person,” Wise insisted.

In November 1987, Wise was arrested by the OPP and charged with mischief in connection with the toppling of a $2.3-million communications tower in rural Williamsburg. Cables that supported the tower had been cut with an oxyacetylene torch.

The police suggested Wise destroyed the tower to frustrate their surveillance efforts.

The mischief case against Wise would play out for the next nine years and reach the Supreme Court of Canada. He would stand trial twice – be acquitted once and convicted once – but both verdicts would be vacated on appeal. Ultimately, Justice James Chadwick stayed the case against Wise, ruling that a third trial would offend the principles of fundamental justice.

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Wise then launched a $2-million defamation and civil rights lawsuit against the OPP for identifying him as a serial murder suspect. In 2002, the lawsuit was settled out of court under terms that have never been made public.

Wise vowed to remain in the community despite his notoriety. “They (the OPP) had 15 years to try and come up with something. They came up with nothing,” he said.

He set up a backyard garage on County Road 3, near Chesterville. Many local residents would regularly visit for car maintenance, and some just to socialize since Wise was known to enjoy a good conversation.

Incredibly, Wise became the subject of a second serial murder investigation three decades after the first one: Project Wentworth was launched in November 2014, six months after the discovery of Collison’s skeletal remains.

Project Wentworth made Wise a suspect in the Collison and Rankin homicides, the suspicious death of farmer Ray Patenaude, 58, who died inside his burning truck, an attempted murder during a gas station robbery, and a raft of unsolved arsons. Wise was also again an active suspect in the murders of King, Johnston and Davidson.

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“James Henry Wise has a 30-year history of being linked to people that are victims of homicide that share a similar modus operandi,” OPP Det. Const. Michael Hyndman wrote in the search warrant, filed in October 2017. “One incident by itself may be happenstance, but the evidence, passage of time, and geography make it highly improbable that any other person is responsible for these crimes.”

Hyndman went to extraordinary lengths in an attempt to elicit a confession from Wise — they met face-to-face 11 times in 2016 and 2017 — and once brought him a list of all the people whom he believed Wise had killed.

According to Hyndman, Wise didn’t admit to anything, but told him: “What’s done is done.”

Andrew Duffy is a National Newspaper Award-winning reporter and long-form feature writer based in Ottawa. To support his work, including exclusive content for subscribers only, sign up here: ottawacitizen.com/subscribe

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