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During that odd stretch of time between Christmas & New Year’s of 2017, two plumbers were called out to fix a clogged drain at a home in Oshawa, Ontario. The home at 19 McMillian Drive had been converted into two separate units, one on the main level, a second in the basement. The owner of the home, who lived on the main level, had contacted the plumbers since they’d been having issues with their toilets.
The two men who came out on Friday, December 29, 2017, may have thought they’d seen it all during their careers, but they couldn’t have been more wrong. After snaking the drains for three to four hours, they began pulling something out that was stringy, pink & unlike anything they’d ever seen before.
The city of Oshawa is a little under an hour’s drive northeast of Toronto, situated along Lake Ontario in the Durham region of Ontario, Canada. In 2016, one year before this case took place, there was a population of about 159,000.
Before the professionals were called out to fix the clogged drain, Dimitra Papadakis, whose mom owned the 2,260 square-foot bungalow on McMillan Drive since 1987, noticed that their downstairs tenant had been acting strangely. 45-year-old Adam Strong, who’d been living in their basement unit for fourteen years, seemed very anxious about getting his hands on a plumbing tool shortly before the professionals were called out.
While Dimitra had been at her mom’s tailoring shop next door to their apartment building, Adam called to tell her that he was looking for a snake to help clear the plumbing. Shortly after they ended their call, Adam walked over looking very panicky while her mother handed him money to purchase the plumbing tool, explaining that they would still be calling a professional out.
As plumber Sean Farndon & his partner got to work on the main level, they realized that they needed to gain access to the plumbing in the basement unit to get to the potential source of the problem. As soon as Adam Strong opened the door, they were hit with a rotting odor that hung heavily in the air unlike anything they’d ever experienced before, even though they were accustomed to dealing with sewage. They could also see that he’d removed his toilet.
Unable to clear the plumbing from the bathroom, Sean moved on to Strong’s kitchen, attempting to snake the pipe of the kitchen sink. As he worked, he couldn’t help but notice that Strong seemed highly anxious, pacing around throughout the apartment, asking them what was going on, what they were finding.
As Sean continued to snake the drain, he began pulling out a stringy-type substance. When he headed back up to the upstairs apartment to continue to try to clear the pipes from there, Strong followed right behind. At this point, he started pulling out larger chunks of what appeared to be a flesh-like material that stretched more than a foot long.
Strong, who had been watching Sean’s every move kept saying, that’s disgusting, that’s vile, what is it? Unsure of what they were dealing with, Sean contacted his boss who advised him to contact the police, which they did at about 7:30 pm.
He told the dispatcher that after working on a home’s drain over the course of three to four hours, they’d pulled back about ten to fifteen pounds of what appeared to be flesh or meat.
While they waited outside for the police’s arrival, Strong approached Sean & he lied to him when he said that another company would be coming by the next day to deal with the blockage. Strong seemed immediately relieved & said, that’s great, as he headed back to his basement apartment.
Constable Kevin Park of the Durham Regional Police responded to the home at about 8 pm. The plumbers met him outside & handed him a bag of what they described as a fleshy-like substance, maybe 13 to 14 inches long. Since Park had never seen anything like this before, he wasn’t sure what he was dealing with but he called in for back up.
Four officers walked down to the basement unit finding Adam Strong looking very calm, almost as if he’d been awaiting their arrival. When an officer asked him what he’d been flushing down his toilet, he answered without a moment’s hesitation, saying, okay, you got me, the gig’s up, it’s a body. If you want to recover the rest of her, it’s in my freezer.
On his arrest that night, he was initially charged with indecent interference to a body since officers didn’t yet know the identity of his victim or how she came to be in his apartment. Exactly one week after his arrest, investigators linked the remains in his freezer as well as in his drains to 18-year-old Rori Hache, who was last seen four months earlier on August 29, 2017.
In November 2018, just shy of one year later, his charges were upgraded to first-degree murder in her death.
Two months before investigators ever came to know Adam Strong, a man & his 11-year-old grandson had been out fishing in Lake Ontario on Monday, September 11, 2017 when they saw a torso floating in the water. Police responded to the scene & when they pulled the torso out near the Oshawa waterfront, they saw obvious signs of trauma & immediately deemed the case a homicide investigation.
Two months later, in November 2017, DNA testing determined that the torso belonged to Rori Hache, who was last seen 13 days before her torso washed up.
Rori came from a family of bikers. Her grandfather founded the Satan’s Choice Motorcycle Club, while her uncle was a Hell’s Angel. She had a challenging childhood & she eventually turned to drugs, specifically crystal meth.
However, moving forward to 2017, she began to establish herself, earning her own income which afforded her the ability to rent her own apartment. She was a regular at The Refuge which is a youth center located in downtown Oshawa that offers assistance to at-risk youths who are struggling or are at-risk of experiencing homelessness.
According to their website, the Refuge offers access to food, housing assistance, laundry facilities as well as fun activities for those between 16-26-years-old.
In dealing with the grief of losing her child to murder, Rori’s mom, Shanan Dionne, wanted the public to know that her daughter wasn’t a toss away. She was someone who had been loved. Despite her struggles, Rori was a fantastic human being who was brilliant & she’d been so much more than a homeless drug addict.
Rori’s aunt had been spending a lot of time with her niece in the weeks before she vanished & she’d taken her to the dollar store to purchase a pregnancy test. Shanan had only recently learned that her daughter was pregnant & she wasn’t sure how far along she’d been in her pregnancy, but there was no doubt in her mind that Rori would have made a fantastic mother. Before she disappeared, Rori had been making positive steps forward in her life to be sure she would be a great mother to her unborn child.
At the time of his arrest, Adam Strong had not been on police’s radar in relation to Rori’s murder. In analyzing his phone records, data from Google proved that his phone had been at Oshawa Harbor on September 4, one week before her torso was found floating in the lake.
A full search of Strong’s filthy, trash-strewn apartment was delayed on the night of his arrest after someone at the home found what appeared to be a homemade explosive device. After the bomb squad was called in & neighbors were asked to vacate their homes, the bomb squad later determined it to be a pipe bomb before it was safely detonated outside.
Police found the rest of Rori’s dismembered remains within four separate trash bags in a chest freezer inside his bedroom. After dumping her torso in the lake, likely on September 4 based on his phone’s location, he’d been methodically cutting the remaining parts, flushing them down his toilet which is what led to his arrest.
Police also found her blood on his bedroom walls, ceiling, as well as an air mattress while his semen was found on her pelvis. Rori’s bloody gym shoes had been tucked into a dollar store bag & left on the floor next to his bed.
According to forensic pathologist, Andrew Williams, multiple injuries had been found to Rori’s body, including two skull fractures. However, he couldn’t conclusively determine if the fractures had occurred before or after her death. He also couldn’t determine if she’d died from the head injuries or other means, including strangulation.
Not only had her body been methodically dismembered while flesh & muscle had been stripped away from her limbs, but none of the internal organs from her torso or abdomen were ever recovered while body parts had been frozen & thawed. In addition to two skull fractures, there was bruising seen around Rori’s right eye, her right & left cheek & chin, all of which had been inflicted before her death.
A former friend of Strong’s referred to his apartment as a basement of horrors. Before his arrest, he’d posted a photo to Facebook that depicted a pair of handcuffs hanging from a door frame in his apartment with the caption, Home is where my handcuffs hang.
Those who knew Strong before his arrest described him as an easygoing, gregarious character who was very open about his enthusiasm for bondage & rough sex. He was employed at gas stations & coffee shops around town & he frequented websites that featured gore as well as depictions of people dying.
Paul Parker, a man who worked as a cab driver, later testified against Strong during his trial. The two & had met while Strong had been working nights at a gas station. During quiet times in their shifts, they would hang out & chat & he initially viewed him as a friendly person.
His opinion of him changed entirely during one conversation when Parker was poking fun at Strong, teasing him about not being able to get a girlfriend. Strong took his phone out & showed him a video that depicted a very young girl, who was naked & bound in a doorframe while Strong sexually pleasured her. The woman appeared to be far younger than him, possibly even in her teens, something that Parker found highly disturbing.
As forensic investigators continued to search his apartment, they found a large hunting knife in his kitchen drawer that was specifically designed for gutting & skinning animals. The knife, as well as numerous other items, were sent to the Centre of Forensic Sciences (CFS) between early 2018 & the spring 2020.
While these items were tested, they were compared with missing persons within a database. In July 2018, seven months after Adam’s arrest, investigators were able to determine that DNA found on the hunting knife was a close match to 19-year-old Kandis Fitzpatrick, who was last seen over ten years earlier in March 2008. Blood matching this sample was also found in his freezer as well as in his bedroom.
According to reports, Kandis hadn’t been reported missing until 2010, which was two years after Kandis was last seen. However, according to her family members & others close to the case, they had been trying to report her missing as early as late 2008, but because the police considered her a street kid who had addiction issues, the report wasn’t properly taken.
Her father, William Fitzpatrick, said that it wasn’t uncommon for Kandis to leave their house for weeks at a time without word. But when the weeks continued to stretch by without hearing from her, they began searching around Oshawa & neighboring areas without luck.
William Fitzpatrick had created a Facebook page to bring attention to his daughter’s case, hoping that someone would come forward to say they had seen her, but sadly the years continued on & they had no idea what had become of her.
Based on the evidence found in his apartment, Kandis had no doubt suffered the same fate as Rori. Both girls had been vulnerable, each experiencing periods of homelessness with no fixed address. They also struggled with drug addiction & sometimes earned money as sex workers in order to fuel their addictions.
Shanan was unaware that Rori had a relationship of any kind with Adam Strong, a man who was 27 years her senior. It’s her belief that her daughter had been hunted by this man, something that hadn’t been proven, but it was a feeling she believed in her heart.
During an 11 hour police interview on November 8, 2018, Adam Strong was charged with two counts of first-degree murder for the 2008 death of 19-year-old Kandis Fitzpatrick & the 2017 death of 18-year-old Rori Hache.
While he spoke with Durham Regional Police polygraph expert, Detective Paul Mitton, Adam was alarmingly calm & casual. He complained that he hadn’t had a good meal since his arrest, asked for a cigarette & eagerly told the detective that he wanted a Wendy’s triple with no pickles, iced tea, no ice, two of their value spicy chicken wraps & a grilled chicken Cesar salad.
He referred to his situation as bad luck after he was screwed by a faulty drain system, describing how he was caught as foiled by inadequate plumbing, which was a freaking shame for him. He said that he doesn’t feel things like other people do & during his troubled childhood, he had violent fantasies & enjoyed killing animals, especially woodpeckers.
He admitted to having characteristics of a serial killer, but when asked if there were other victims in addition to Kandis & Rori, he responded, Well have at ‘er. Find ‘em.
He said there were certain things he wanted before he would spill the beans, including where Kandis’ remains could be found. He wanted to be as comfortable as he could be in jail. He hoped to have an allowance & internet access.
He spoke of incriminating evidence that the police had missed during their month-long search of his apartment, saying that blood stains had not been mentioned in forensic reports that had been blatant & visible to the naked eye. He voiced his surprise that at the time, the hunting knife had been the sole source of DNA that linked him to Kandis.
He intended to get rid of the knife as well as other evidence, including Rori’s blood-stained shoes, but he simply hadn’t gotten around to it before police had come knocking on his front door.
Although he freely discussed his efforts to dispose of Rori’s remains during his interviews, he wouldn’t discuss how she had died.
He told Mitton that he started to panic after watching the news, realizing that someone had found a torso. Since he took precautions to keep it from surfacing, he couldn’t understand how that had happened.
When the torso was pulled from the lake, Rori hadn’t been reported missing until the following day so she hadn’t been on the police’s radar as a potential victim. Strong said he was aware that the 18-year-old had been sleeping on the side of Oshawa Creek.
When he was told that she was pregnant at the time of her murder, Strong said that although he didn’t want to go into how he knew, but he knew that she wasn’t. When the officer explained that she was newly pregnant, Adam snapped back, I could bet my life. There’s no way getting around that I chopped her up, making explicit references to Rori’s organs.
On March 5, 2020, Adam Strong pleaded not guilty to two counts of first-degree murder. Six months later, the trial began in September 2020 where he opted for a judge-alone trial rather than a jury trial.
Although the defense tried to exclude evidence in support of charges relating to the alleged murder of Kandis Fitzpatrick, Superior Court Justice Joseph Di Luca dismissed this.
When homicide detective Darren Short testified, he voiced his belief that both young women had been killed during a sexual assault. Evidence proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he intentionally murdered Rori by bludgeoning her during a sexual encounter in his McMillan Drive apartment. He then dismembered both women in an attempt to cover up their murders. Since they hadn’t found Kandis’ remains, they couldn’t speculate as to how she died.
Defense attorney Tom Balka argued that the police did not have sufficient grounds to charge Strong with Kandis’ murder, arguing that they were relying on superficial similarities in the circumstances of the two young women, coming to the conclusion that he had murdered them both. Balka argued that if the evidence in Rori’s case was removed, they were left with a knife with a DNA profile on it which wasn’t enough.
However, Judge Di Luca fought back, saying, You have a knife in a home where there are body parts in a freezer. The police have to be able to look at the totality of those circumstances.
Although he dismembered both women, Balka argued that the prosecution had failed to prove that had been responsible for either woman’s deaths.
Five women who were victims of sexual abuse at the hands of Adam testified that he choked them during sex, using a pulley contraption to bind & restrain them. One woman said he’d invited her to see his sex dungeon that was in his basement that had whips, chains & handcuffs & he tied her up & controlled her. Initially she was fine, but as their time together continued, she got scared.
He choked another woman so violently with a belt that when she went to see her family at Christmas, she was forced to wear a turtleneck to conceal the markings that covered her neck.
On March 16, 2021, Judge Di Luca found 47-year-old Adam Strong guilty of first-degree murder in the killing of Rori Hache & guilty of manslaughter, rather than first-degree murder, in the death of Kandis Fitzpatrick.
Judge Di Luca determined that based on the autopsy findings, Rori likely encountered him in downtown Oshawa on September 1, 2017. She died from blunt-force trauma after Strong repeatedly struck her in the head with a hammer or similar object while she lay bound in his bedroom in what may have begun as a consensual encounter.
There’s no answer as to why he decided to kill her, possibly because the violence simply formed part of the sex he wanted to engage in.
Judge Di Luca said that her killing constitutes first-degree murder because it occured in the course of a sexual assault. He determined that he had also killed Kandis Fitzpatrick in a similar situation, but found that there was insufficient evidence for a murder conviction, including her remains.
Rori’s mom & godmother spoke after Strong’s conviction, saying that the verdict doesn’t lessen the pain they feel & there will never be closure. He was a predator that managed to blend into the community, murdering two women in his apartment that was only a block away from the police station. Their lives will never be the same because of a chance encounter with a monster.
Two months later, on May 28, 2021, Strong was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years for his first-degree murder conviction in Rori’s death. He also received 18 years in prison to be served concurrently for the manslaughter conviction in Kandis’ death.
In July 2021, two months after his sentencing, the Durham homicide unit were told that Adam disclosed information about Kandis Fitzpatrick’s whereabouts to correctional staff. Police began conducting interviews with him & on November 8, 2021, he led them to a small clearing near a tree line behind Secreto Drive in Oshawa.
Human remains were recovered over the next five days that were confirmed to belong to Kandis 14 years after she vanished. Durham police have indicated that the discovery would not change the outcome or lead to upgraded charges of murder rather than manslaughter as he has already been convicted in relation to her death.
Ten years passed between the moments when Kandis Fitzpatrick & Rori Hache crossed paths with someone who hadn’t viewed them as human beings, someone who was capable of extraordinary cruelty & violence. They were each vulnerable teens who were there one moment & gone the next. Their families were left not knowing what had become of them, Kandis’ family waiting nearly a decade and a half before they could lay her to rest.
Adam Strong had been living in the same apartment, existing in the same community, undetected. In public, he presented as a friendly, familiar face, but behind closed doors, horrors took place in his dark, dank, filthy apartment. Although justice has been served, two families lost daughters while a lifetime was stolen from both Kandis & Rori.
References:
- Wikipedia: Oshawa
- CBC: Rori Hache’s family demands Oshawa ‘house of horrors,’ where teen’s remains found, be demolished
- CBC: Plumbers found human flesh in accused killer Adam Strong’s pipes, murder trial hears
- CBC: Adam Strong found guilty of 1st-degree murder, manslaughter in killings of 2 Ontario women
- CBC: Adam Strong sentenced to life in prison without parole for 25 years in killings of 2 Ontario women
- Refuge Outreach
- Durham Region: Adam Strong’s DNA detected in examination of human remains, expert testifies
- Durham Region: ‘Panicky’ Adam Strong was anxious to fix plumbing, murder trial hears
- Durham Region: Bruising, skull fractures found in Rori Hache autopsy, Strong murder trial hears
- Durham Region: Plumber recounts grisly discovery of flesh in pipes at Adam Strong’s residence
- Durham Region: First week of Adam Strong murder trial ends with ruling on evidence
- Durham Region: Police lacked grounds to charge Adam Strong in young woman’s murder, defence argues
- Durham Region: ‘I was scared:’ Witness says she was choked by murder suspect Adam Strong
- Durham Region: ‘A chance encounter with a monster’: Murder, manslaughter convictions for Oshawa’s Adam Strong
- Durham Region: Accused killer Adam Strong showed off sex video, bragged of ‘dungeon’, court hears
- Durham Region: ‘You got me.. It’s a body’: Adam Strong’s alleged admission highlighted as murder trial begins
- Durham Region: Expert witness cites inconclusive autopsy results at Strong murder trial
- Durham Region: Torso discovered at Oshawa lakefront identified as missing teen Rori Hache
- CTV News: Mother of Rori Hache says she believes her daughter was ‘hunted’
- CTV News: Newly unsealed police video captures interview with accused killer
- CTV News: How a convicted killer led police to his victim’s remains 14 years after her murder
- Unidentified Wiki: Kandis Fitzpatrick
- City News Everywhere: Body parts found with bomb matched to torso belonging to missing Ontario teen
- Global News: ‘It was just bad luck’: Adam Strong reflects on discovery of human remains during interrogation
- YouTube: That Chapter: Flesh in the pipes – The disturbing case of Adam Strong
- National Post: Fate of missing teen Rori Hache uncovered when plumbers found human flesh in pipes, murder trial hears
