The Ghosts That Haunt Me

After years working in homicide, retired Toronto detective Steve Ryan reflects on six cases he will never forget.

Retired detective Steve Ryan worked in Toronto’s homicide squad for over a decade. For him, the stories of Toronto’s most infamous crimes were more than just a headline read over morning coffee — they were his everyday life. After investigating over one hundred homicides, the tragedies Steve saw will never leave him, and he’ll never forget the victims whose deaths he investigated. Some things were so terrible they are impossible to forget, even after his retirement from the police force.

In The Ghosts That Haunt Me, Steve reflects on just a few of the many cases that have greatly impacted him. In these pages, he remembers six cases — seven people whose lives were senselessly taken — that he still thinks about nearly every day. While these stories are hard to tell, they were harder to live through. But somewhere in between the crime and the heartache there is a glimmer of hope that good eventually does prevail and that healing can come after grief.