It was a shocking moment of revelation for the head of the homicide unit. His detectives had hunted this suspect for months after an old man in Calgary had disappeared and the blood-splashed interior of his house made it obvious he’d been murdered right there, then taken away and dumped. Staff Sergeant George Rocks, head of Calgary city homicide unit, told me how he’d waited for this moment when his lead detectives would caution and charge suspect Raymond Tudor with murder: “When we caught him, he’s wearing the victim’s watch, he’s got blood on his cowboy boots, he’s got blood on his clothing, he’s got the victim’s car, the victim’s credit cards and keys, and the victim’s wallet. He had the victim’s guns, he had the victim’s liquor, and he had the victim’s cigarettes. The evidence was overwhelming.”
Rocks recalled how he was monitoring, on close-circuit television, the vital moments in the interview as two homicide detectives, Calvin Johnson and Brent Refvik, were spelling out to Tudor that he was being charged with murder.
Tudor suddenly looked at them with a grin on his face and said, “Do you know, you are wearing the ugliest ties I’ve ever seen.”
Rocks couldn’t believe his ears: “I sat there thinking, ‘this is insane, absolutely insane. This man’s just been told he’s being tagged with a murder and he’s more interested in joking about the detectives’ ties.’”
It gave Rocks an instant insight into the man they’d been hunting. “I thought, ‘this man is an animal. This guy has no emotions. This is a cold-blooded killer. He has no value for human life. None.’”
As Rocks finished relating this moment, he added, “By the way, Tudor had one thing right. They were really terrible ties!”