Tom Ozslansky |
Ozslansky was born in Hungary in 1951 and came to Montreal at a young age. He would go on to become a rowing champion whose feats are still listed on rowing websites.
He ordered four restaurant employees into a walk-in freezer at the Ben Ben Ash delicatessen in the Cote de Neiges Plaza at 3:30 a.m. on Saturday June 25, 1972 and shot them dead.
Spiros Mayrelatos, 18, Sender Nincowcz, 54, Benjamin Earle Segal, 18, and Antonios Alefragis, 22 all died tragically and senselessly.
Ozslandsky also shot a security guard but he survived and called police.
A pair of cops from the Night Squad gingerly searched the mall to see if he was still in hiding but Ozslansky (sometimes spelled Ozslanszky) had fled.
Ozslansky, a former security guard at the mall, stole around $3,5000 in cash from the restaurant and then dumped his weapon in the Back River.
He entered a Laval police station a few hours later to recount an incoherent story about the Ben Ash deli.
Police arrested him.
He confessed, telling them that he had been feeling nervous after a rowing race and a friend gave him LSD to relax.
This triggered off his psychosis and he lashed out after he imagined everybody was laughing at him.
He carried a gun, he explained, to protect himself from drug dealers who had previously beaten him up.
Ozslansky was sentenced to four counts of life in prison but reports were not clear as to whether they would be served concurrently.
Corrections Canada tells Coolopolis that they do not have him on file, which appears to indicate that he is not in prison.
Indeed Ozslansky has not even been mentioned in media, it would seem, since he was sentenced in early 1973.
And while he might have changed his name, the Quebec Official Gazette and Le Devoir do not appear to record any such application.
If Tom Ozslansky is still alive, he'd be about 66 years old.