Victim Was Too Scared to Escape Killer, Police Say

The man accused of killing Iliada Zois and her 14-year-old brother then held another brother captive for 30 hours, during which time he took him out in public to visit friends, police alleged yesterday.

But the youth was "scared green" and didn't escape or tell anyone about the deaths, police said.

The man also planned to kill 16-year-old Tommy Zois, but "for some reason he changed his mind," said Detective Sergeant Gary Grinton of the Toronto police homicide squad, revealing new allegations of the Christmas Day killings.

Police had previously said that Tommy Zois was held in the Rexdale apartment where his siblings were killed and at one other undisclosed location. They said that despite suffering multiple stab wounds, he managed to escape on Boxing Day evening and lead police to their bloody bodies.

Det. Sgt. Grinton said the accused killer also planned to take Tommy's life.

 
"He planned on killing him, and gave it the college try, and then for some reason stopped," he said.

 
Police say they have an idea of what might have caused him to change his mind, but Det. Sgt. Grinton wouldn't elaborate because of evidence relating to the trial.

 
"The simplest way I can tell is that he somehow changed his mind, from wanting to kill him to not," he said. "You're going to take a thousand years of psychiatry lessons to really figure it out."

 
"It is more messed up than you can ever imagine," Det. Sgt. Grinton said. "It'll take a year or more before you know just how sick this is, until we go to trial."