Killing Time: The Senseless Murder of Joseph Fritch

Ashley Thomson is a full librarian at Laurentian University and co-editor or co-author of nine books, most recently Margaret Atwood: A Reference Guide, 1988-2005.

On the night of October 18, 1989, Joseph Fritch, a successful
44-year-old businessman and father of four, was senselessly murdered
with a fire extinguisher wielded by Steven Olah at a Burlington,
Ontario, Petro-Canada station. Egging Olah on was Jamie Ruston, the
attendant at the station, and watching the brutality was Jamie’s
girlfriend, Cari-Lee Chisamore. After the murder, the three stole the
victim’s Buick Regal and drove to Toronto, where they lived it up at
the Carlton Inn on Fritch’s American Express card. The next morning,
Olah was picked up by Toronto police as he continued to run up charges
on the card; the other two escaped and headed west, where they were
eventually nabbed by Vancouver police and returned to Ontario to be
tried. Hemsworth, a reporter for the Hamilton Spectator, who received a
Halton Regional Police award for his coverage of the case, reports on
these gruesome events, as well as on the trial that followed.

Killing Time is a deceptively quick read because the book is
exceptionally well organized and well written. While the extensive
conversations reported may be questionable (Hemsworth was not there when
they occurred), as with Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, they do not
seriously detract from the book’s credibility. Furthermore,
Hemsworth’s tale has greater significance than it first appears to
have: before the event, Olah took his parents at gunpoint to a hospital
and asked to be treated but was refused because of restrictions imposed
by the current Mental Health Act. In the end, the book focuses on
Olah—the most damaged of the three and the perpetrator of the crime.
My only criticism is that while Hemsworth brings us up-to-date on
Olah’s fate after the trial, he does not do the same for Olah’s
accomplices.