Two former students of a private high school that caters to Chinese-speaking foreigners have been charged with kidnapping and murdering its affluent owner, Thomas Ku, who has been missing since May 15.
Peel Regional Police said yesterday that a body found in the woods near Peterborough, Ont., is believed to be that of Mr. Ku, 47, although its condition is such that it cannot be identified by sight.
Police said Mr. Ku's family received several phone calls demanding a ransom after he failed to reach his three-storey Mississauga home more than two weeks ago.
The day of his disappearance, Mr. Ku called his family at 7 p.m. from Bowmanville, east of Toronto, to say he was on his way home. An hour and a half later, family memberssaw his BMW parked in the driveway but Mr. Ku was nowhere to be seen. The next morning they called police to report him missing.
Inspector Tom Slinger, who heads the Peel homicide bureau, said no ransom was paid.He said he believed Mr. Ku died shortly after being kidnapped and may have been dead while demands for a ransom were coming in.
The Ontario Provincial Police said the body was found in Manvers Township near the Ganaraska Provincial Forest. Insp. Slinger said his department got information that led them to the body. He would not say who provided the tip.
Two men were arrested earlier this week at their Toronto home, he told reporters.
"They're former students, that's all I'm prepared to say. . . . We're still trying to put together some of the pieces of the puzzle in relation to the background of these two individuals."
The two are Zhiyang Suo, 19, and Feng Wang, 20. They are charged with first-degree murder, kidnapping, extortion, forcible confinement and robbery.
Both live on Chipwood Crescent, a street of side-by-side duplexes next to a Highway 404 cloverleaf near the city's northern boundary. It is "a quiet neighbourhood," resident Glen Phillips, 29, said. "You hardly see a police car around here."
Mr. Ku ran Great Lakes College, a boarding school with branches in west-end Toronto and in Bowmanville. Established in 1978, it offers high-school and English-immersion courses to students from countries including China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Tuition runs as high as $10,000 a year, plus residence fees of $6,000 that do not include meals.
"People in China want to go abroad," a 20-year-old student said yesterday as he left the Toronto campus near Keele and Bloor streets."He [Mr. Ku]can get the[student]visa for you."
In Mississauga, a Mercedes, a Land Rover and a Pathfinder, among other cars, stood outside the Ku house, fronted by manicured gardens, on Chesbro Court, near Mississauga Road.
Liliana Kehoe, who lives a few doors away, said the family moved in within the last year.
"Their house is certainly one of the larger ones on the street," she said, adding thatthere is "a lot of money in this pocket" of Mississauga.
Mr. Ku's abduction and death were big news for Chinese-language reporters.
"We have it as our top story and we have two separate stories on it," said Mary Yang, news director of Fairchild Radio in Richmond Hill. "It doesn't usually happen among the Chinese community, and, besides, Mississauga has a lot of Chinese people living there. This Thomas Ku, many people know him in the Chinese community."