Robert Assaly, a 59-year-old white male and retired schoolteacher, was murdered on March 30, 1991, in Montreal, Quebec. He met Michael Wayne McGray, a 25-year-old white male, at a bar in Montreal's Gay Village. Assaly invited McGray to his home on Nuns' Island, where McGray fatally stabbed him multiple times in the throat and chest. The following day, McGray murdered another man, Gaetan Ethier, under similar circumstances.
At the time of these murders, McGray was on a three-day weekend pass from prison, where he was serving a sentence for a 1987 robbery. He failed to return to prison after the pass and remained at large for nearly two months before being re-arrested.
The murders of Assaly and Ethier remained unsolved for several years. In 1999, McGray was arrested for the 1998 murders of Joan Hicks and her 11-year-old daughter, Nina, in Moncton, New Brunswick. During his incarceration, McGray confessed to multiple other murders, including those of Assaly and Ethier. In April 2000, he pleaded guilty to these two murders and received a life sentence.
McGray's confessions revealed a pattern of targeting gay men, often meeting them in bars and luring them to secluded locations before killing them. He claimed to have murdered up to 16 people across Canada and the United States between 1985 and 1998. His lack of remorse and stated desire to kill again led to his incarceration in a maximum-security prison.
The murder of Robert Assaly, a 59-year-old white male, by Michael Wayne McGray, a 25-year-old white male, highlights significant failures in the criminal justice system, particularly regarding the granting of temporary releases to violent offenders. McGray's ability to commit multiple murders while on a weekend pass underscores the need for stricter oversight and evaluation of parole policies.
