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Murder of Kenneth Zeller

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Murder and hate crime in Toronto in 1985

Kenneth Zeller (June 5, 1945 – June 1985) was a teacher and librarian in Toronto, who was employed by Davisville Public School, Williamson Road Junior Public School and Western Technical-Commercial School. He was the victim of a homophobic hate crime when he was beaten to death by five youths in Toronto's High Park. Five young offenders were convicted and sentenced to prison.

The crime received media coverage and was the subject of a play called Steel Kiss, written by Robin Fulford and produced by Buddies in Bad Times theatre. Ken McDougall directed the 1991 Dora Award nominated production which featured Andrew Akman, Michael Waller, Derek Aasland, and Fab Fillippo. Fulford wrote a sequel play, Gulag, in 1996, and the two plays were jointly revived by Buddies in Bad Times in 1999, as a response to the October 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard.

John Greyson also produced a movie called The Making of Monsters, which analyzed the incident through the lens of radical queer activists disrupting the production of a heavily sanitized commercial movie of the week about the incident. It was screened at a number of film festivals in 1991, but was never commercially released for general viewing.

The incident also spurred the Toronto District School Board into implementing a program designed to eliminate discrimination based on sexual orientation.

The murder of Zeller was dramatized on Killer Kids.

References

  1. Liam Lacey, "Gay murder explored, unexplained". The Globe and Mail, October 5, 1987.
  2. Wagner, Vit (Nov 22, 1991). "Menacing set adds to play's punch". The Toronto Star. pp. D5.
  3. Vit Wagner, "A bounty for perilous times". Toronto Star, September 26, 1996.
  4. Mitchel Raphael, "The hatred that never went away: Playwright Fulford sees much of today in ten-year-old work". National Post, January 7, 1999.
  5. ^ Matthew Hays, "Legends: The Making of Monsters". POV, February 1, 2009.
  6. Alanna Mitchell, "Welcome to Canada's gay high school: Toronto's Triangle program offers an educational refuge". The Globe and Mail, May 29, 2004.
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