William Chandler Shrubsall

Early crimes

Shrubsall was originally from Niagara Falls, New York. He was convicted of killing his mother with a baseball bat in 1988 the night before his high school graduation from La Salle High School. Apparently, he had a disagreement with his mother, a domineering woman, over his having a girlfriend. His then-girlfriend and Detective John Donner expressed concern about Shrubsall's lack of remorse when he confessed to police. He served 16 months for that crime, as he was still a minor, and afterwards supposedly graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1994, transferring there from two years at Niagara University. While at Penn, he lived in a single room in Stouffer College House for two years without any incidents. In 1996, after returning home to upstate New York, Shrubsall was on trial for sexually abusing a 17-year-old girl and jumped bail, leaving a suicide note claiming to have jumped into Niagara Falls. In reality, he fled the U.S. to Canada. He was later convicted of sexual abuse in absentia.

Life as a fugitive

Shrubsall showed up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, using the alias "Ian Thor Greene". At a frat house on South St, many students believed that he was a medical student. Saying that he had financial difficulties, he managed to con a local congregation into providing him with money. During one evening with a student, when she tried to call a taxi to go home, he punched and choked her.

He had been previously arrested by police for picking up an undercover officer posing as a prostitute (he used the name Ian Thor Greene). He was not properly identified by the police.

Detectives searching his room discovered that he had the identification of two previous victims that he attacked, and this was confirmed by witnesses. These were for aggravated sexual assault and one in May 1998 for robbing and assaulting a female store clerk with a baseball bat; the first case was unsolved, while another man, Danny Myette (who suffered from schizophrenia) confessed to the crime, respectively.

Caught

Interrogators also questioned Shrubsall's stories and found no records to support them, realizing that Greene was an alias, but he refused to divulge further details. The authorities released his photo and the New York State Police immediately identified him as the missing fugitive.

A forensic psychiatrist diagnosed Shrubsall as a psychopath, saying that he separated women into two categories: "angels" and those that he would assault. The Crown, assisted by his former victims who had flown in to testify, had him declared a dangerous offender, giving him no possibility of parole.

While serving his life sentence, Shrubsall applied to have his name changed to "Simon Templar" after the popular TV character.