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MURDER CITY Chronicles the Epoch of Serial Murders in a Quaint

Canadian City from 1959 to 1984

Before the term “serial killer” was even a part of law enforcement jargon in Canada, the city of

London, Ontario, was host to up to nine such offenders. In his latest book, MURDER CITY,

criminologist and former police officer Michael Arntfield reveals information about the plague

of murders in London and its surrounding areas that occurred over a twenty-five-year period.

MURDER CITY pieces together the investigative work of detective Dennis Alsop to uncover

never before revealed details of the time when London, Ontario, was besieged by violent,

sexually depraved killers who hunted and attacked twenty-nine, vulnerable victims, including

school-aged girls and boys, hitchhiking teenagers, single mothers, and poverty-stricken elderly

women. Victims were raped, beaten, stabbed, and strangled.

Dennis Alsop, an officer who began his career as a junior crime scene tech and retired as a

detective superintendent in 1979, inherited many of the brutal cases, some of which remain

unsolved to this day. After years of seeking the predators driven by an array of motives, Alsop

and his family became targets of the monsters that roamed London and nearby cities. Even after

retirement, Alsop continued to seek answers to the cold cases. Following the detective’s death,

Alsop’s son passed on his father’s research to Arntfield.

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Arntfield reviews the murders and the multiple reasons the London community was susceptible

to this rash of killings. In the book, Arntfield emphasizes that MURDER CITY is about gaining

“understanding of the fixations and paraphilias of serial killers and what either brought them to

London or how the city turned them out. Above all, it is about victims, families, and loss—the

human stories behind the statistics.” It is the author’s hope that the book will inspire readers to

“get involved in the hunt for these killers and learn how to protect themselves and their loved

ones through the mistakes of the past.”

About the Author

Dr. Michael Arntfield is a Fulbright Scholar at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee,

and professor of criminology at Western University in Canada. Before becoming an academic,

Arntfield worked as a police officer and detective in London, Ontario, for fifteen years. Murder

City is Arntfield’s first nonacademic book for a general audience that combines criminal history

with criminology. The author is currently working on the follow-up to Murder City, which

focuses on a true story that occurred in Madison, Wisconsin, and has plans for a third book in the

true crime series.

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