SECOND MURDER IN 24 HOURS

A murdered woman's body lay in a downtown apartment building while tenants
argued about calling the police. Some wanted to call 911 right away. Others
wanted to get rid of their drugs first.

This mangy, four-storey building -- a well-known crack house on King Street
East -- is the scene of Hamilton's latest murder. The second in 24 hours.
The third in less than three weeks. The seventh of the year.

The woman is about 30 years old. Her body was in an unlocked, vacant
apartment that was being painted. She was discovered at about 2:30 a.m.
yesterday when someone wandered in looking for a place to sleep.

Police have not identified the woman or figured out how she died. And why
she was there. By late yesterday afternoon her body was still in the
building as police crime scene specialists worked around her. This morning
an autopsy is hoped to bring some answers.

But police are certain that she was murdered. "I have no doubt," said Det.
Mike Thomas, the investigator in charge of the case.

As rain washed pigeon droppings off the sidewalk in front of the building
yesterday, a uniformed police officer guarded the door that leads up a
flight of dark, narrow steps to the three floors of apartments.

The ground floor used to be a bar called The Sandbar, but it was shut down
a year ago, much to the delight of the police department's drug and vice
officers. It was a place they had been to many, many times.

Outside the yellow police tape, a crowd gathers. They stand in the downpour
and swap stories about this building between Catharine and Mary streets,
wedged between a pawn shop and a sex shop.

The discovery of a body, someone murdered, doesn't faze the people who live
and work nearby.

They have, in fact, expected something like this to happen.

There have been warning signs.

The crack addicts coming and going at all hours. The prostitutes doing the
same. The fights and vandalism. The frequent visits by the cops.

"Everyone knows it's a crack house," said Janis Nelson, who sells sex toys
at La Femme next door. "I can't believe they can't bust these crack dealers."

Seventeen-year-old Renee overhears this. She lives right across the hall
from where the body was found. She didn't know anything had happened until
she got up this morning. Her boyfriend thinks he heard some yelling during
the night.

They're not surprised to learn a woman was killed just steps from their door.

"There's lots of fights there all the time," she said.

At the last place she lived in, an apartment on Wellington Street, the guy
across the hall got shot.

Putting the grey hood of her sweatshirt up in an effort to stay dry, Renee
said this building, where she has lived for three months, is "disgusting"
inside. It smells of urine. It's dark.

"Dirty. Lots of crackheads," she says.

How does she know for sure they're crackheads?

"I know they're crackheads because my mom's one," she said.

This is where Renee's mom comes for a fix. Not lately though, because she's
in jail. So is Renee's brother.

"He gets out of jail today so we're probably going to move in together."

A guy in his early 40s joins the group.

He introduces himself not by name, but rather as a former crack addict who
has been clean for three months.

This apartment building is where he bought his stuff. Sometimes as much as
$1,000 worth in a day and a half.

"You will sell your soul to the devil for that stuff."

He and the others speculate on who the woman is upstairs. The names of
several working girls are bandied about. First names only, of course.
Nobody around here cares enough to get a last name.

A young man joins the conversation. He said he has been renting the old
Sandbar space at the bottom of the building. He has some computers in there
and hopes to start his own magazine. He was working late when he heard
screaming and then arguing. He went outside to look and found a fight in
progress.

"A couple of people didn't want the cops called until they cleaned up their
apartments," he said. "Until they cleaned the drugs out."

As it turned out, nobody needed to call the police at all. Two officers
were driving a man to St. Joseph's hospital when they were flagged down by
people on King Street East who told them about the dead woman.

Police say that was at 4 a.m. Ninety minutes after her body was found.