James Hutchison & Richard Ambrose
“Cop Killers”
Canadian Criminals are a major part of Canadian society. In our country if you were not the direct victim of a crime you tend to forget the members of society that take pleasure in causing societies grief. As in the case of James Hutchinson and Richard Ambrose, whose crimes were committed in December of 1974.1 They were convicted of killing two Moncton City Police officers. Today, years after the murders were committed Ambrose and Hutchinson are still the center of a major controversy that has plagued our parole system. In order to fully understand the controversy that Ambrose and Hutchinson posses you must look at the chronological order of events that lead up to the slaying.
Richard Ambrose and James Hutchinson lived in the outskirts of Moncton, New Brunswick. Ambrose and Hutchinson committed two indictable offences under the Criminal Code of Canada (CCC). On Tuesday December 12, 1974 they violated section 279.1(c) of the Criminal Code with the kidnapping of Raymond Stein and by December 15, 1974 it was apparent that another crime had been committed. Ambrose and Hutchinson violated section 229(a)(i) of the Criminal Code, murder which would be defined under section 231(4)(a) of the Criminal Code; murder of a peace officer in the first degree.2
14-year-old Raymond Stein was the son of a Moncton restaurant owner and on the night of December 12, 1974 Raymond and his grandmother returned home from his father’s restaurant and found two men already in the house (Ambrose and Hutchinson). The duo tied the grandmother to a stair railing with tape and took the boy to an apartment somewhere on the western fringe of Moncton.3 Shortly before 1am on the 13th Mrs. Stein freed herself and telephoned the boys father and informed him of what had happened. Around 1am Mr. Stein received a phone call and a ransom demand was issued. Mr. Stein received two more calls at 2 and
Bibliography: Final Tribute Paid To Slain Policemen. Mark Pedersen. Telegraph Journal. December 16th, 1974 Hunt to Resume Today For Missing Policemen. Don McLeod. Telegraph Journal. December 14th, 1974. May Have Been Forced To Dig Their Graves. Don McLean. Telegraph Journal. December 16th, 1974. Alan Cairns. Prisons a ‘disgrace’. The Toronto Sun. November 20, 2000 Dimmock,G. and A. Sands. Escaped murder kills for thrills: 73 year old fugitive. Retrieved from the World Wide Web September 9, 2002. http://www.dimmockreport.com/escapedmurderer.htm Howard, S. The Canadian Justice Foundation. June 10, 1999