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By Persons Unknown: The Strange Death of Christine Demeter
By persons The strange death of Christine Demeter [Jan 01, 1977] Jonas, George
- GenresTrue Crime
349 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 30, 2023
You got to admit that's a pretty ghastly cover
It's had a lot of weird reviews, and had a few of them before this review got mulched...
Some thought the book was tedious and boring because it was one of the most highly complicated legal cases in Canada.
Jonas was a strange guy, one of these right-wing classical liberals, and was with Radio Budapest in the 50s, and well, worked 30 years producing shows for the CBC, when he wasn't occasionally writing for National Review or Foreign Policy or the Wall Street Journal once in a blue moon.
This was a husband and wife team and it won an Edgar Award, so it was pretty good considering, it might not be the most enjoyable True Crime read.
"Jonas and Amiel co-wrote By Persons Unknown: The Strange Death of Christine Demeter (1976), an account of the 1973 murder of Christine Demeter and the subsequent murder trial and conviction of her husband, Peter. Their work won the 1978 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime book."
The simple version of the case is a model gets snuffed, and people suspect the husband.
Christine Ferrari was an Austrian model, and Demeter the husband was a wealthy Hungarian who's family lost their wealth in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, and basically struggled to become a rich land developer in Toronto.
Basically she gets her skull bashed in the garage, and people all think the husband wants the life insurance, and there's a real weird mystery of if there were hired killers involved in this creepy story of the 1970s
It was the longest trial in Canadian history from July 1973 when the husband got charged, to when he was found guilty in Dec 1974.
It had Mister X in a hood in the courtroom
and tape recordings of phone calls with the husband to shady friends after she died....
I'm not sure if it was proven or merely a guess, or just an accusation.....
well, was the husband trying to snuff the wife
and was the wife trying to snuff the husband?
It was one of the possibilities in the case, but maybe it was just a ploy for making the husband look less guilty.
What the book does NOT cover is that the husband was charged for planning a kidnap and murder of a cousin of the Austrian model chicky's family, since they were looking after the her daughter. So let's just say that the guy really did hold a grudge.
And on top of that, an arson charge, and another charge for wanting to kidnap and murder his lawyer!!
.........
Best thing about this, is they did a late 70s sleazy movie of this starring Elke Sommer
and it gets a 3.9 for an IMDB rating
review of the movie
"....not very shocking at all. It's in essence a courtroom drama that uses flashbacks to tell its story. And it's seemingly based on a notorious true Canadian crime. In it, a woman is murdered and her millionaire husband is accused."
"The only familiar face for me was the German actress Elke Sommer who starred in a couple of Mario Bava films earlier in the 70's. She is good enough as the femme fatale murder victim. In fact, the opening of the movie is certainly unusual, with the name actress being brutally murdered right away."
"It's intriguing for sure but ultimately the film as a whole is not especially well done. It really feels like a TV movie most of the time, which is why the occasional nasty moments are so jarring, such as the murder and especially a scene of necrophilia, the latter of which must surely have cemented the film's nasty status."
.......
One of his wives in the 70s was Barbara Amiel who was with the CBC for a while, and more famous for her 80s work in Maclean's Magazine after the glory years of the 60s.
Barbara Amiel is a strange chicky, a fascinating and controversial history, famous for her columns in Macleans magazine, her marriage to billionaire Conrad Black, her fight against some of the biggest stupidities of 1970s Ontario/Toronto multiculturalism and political correctness.
She's the incredible mixture of sometimes intelligent, and sometimes bat-shit crazy, veering from being a teenage Trotskyite in England with her mother, to a ranting right-wing libertarian feminist and lover of Fredrich von Hayek later.
All her books have a creepy love-hate quality to them, at times great charm, and other points great tedium and dullness (as some found this book), yet she's wonderfully eccentric and spunky.
It's not easy going through life with issues of being a teenage Trotskyite to a middle-aged Codeine methytl-morphine addict with anxiety attacks.
She had a story in her autobiography of seeing faces staring back at her through her windows, and was so terrified she would have some sock or hosiery chew toy she would bite, so she didn't scream when she saw the faces, for a time..... just awesomely bizarre.
her later books is an amazing insightful and spiteful piece on the giants of the rich and famous in America, Canada and England, and the ups and downs of her life with Conrad Black, newspaper baron billionaire and off-beat amateur historian of FDR, LBJ and the like. She really had some of the most fascinating stories and gossip, and talked endlessly about the shallow world of the rich, with plastic surgery and high fashion, hanging out with Oscar de la Renta, and how in the end, i think only Brian Mulroney and Henry Kissinger were their only friends after burning a zillion bridges and being blacklisted from high society.
She's actually a weird wonder of wacky...
It's had a lot of weird reviews, and had a few of them before this review got mulched...
Some thought the book was tedious and boring because it was one of the most highly complicated legal cases in Canada.
Jonas was a strange guy, one of these right-wing classical liberals, and was with Radio Budapest in the 50s, and well, worked 30 years producing shows for the CBC, when he wasn't occasionally writing for National Review or Foreign Policy or the Wall Street Journal once in a blue moon.
This was a husband and wife team and it won an Edgar Award, so it was pretty good considering, it might not be the most enjoyable True Crime read.
"Jonas and Amiel co-wrote By Persons Unknown: The Strange Death of Christine Demeter (1976), an account of the 1973 murder of Christine Demeter and the subsequent murder trial and conviction of her husband, Peter. Their work won the 1978 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime book."
The simple version of the case is a model gets snuffed, and people suspect the husband.
Christine Ferrari was an Austrian model, and Demeter the husband was a wealthy Hungarian who's family lost their wealth in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, and basically struggled to become a rich land developer in Toronto.
Basically she gets her skull bashed in the garage, and people all think the husband wants the life insurance, and there's a real weird mystery of if there were hired killers involved in this creepy story of the 1970s
It was the longest trial in Canadian history from July 1973 when the husband got charged, to when he was found guilty in Dec 1974.
It had Mister X in a hood in the courtroom
and tape recordings of phone calls with the husband to shady friends after she died....
I'm not sure if it was proven or merely a guess, or just an accusation.....
well, was the husband trying to snuff the wife
and was the wife trying to snuff the husband?
It was one of the possibilities in the case, but maybe it was just a ploy for making the husband look less guilty.
What the book does NOT cover is that the husband was charged for planning a kidnap and murder of a cousin of the Austrian model chicky's family, since they were looking after the her daughter. So let's just say that the guy really did hold a grudge.
And on top of that, an arson charge, and another charge for wanting to kidnap and murder his lawyer!!
.........
Best thing about this, is they did a late 70s sleazy movie of this starring Elke Sommer
and it gets a 3.9 for an IMDB rating
review of the movie
"....not very shocking at all. It's in essence a courtroom drama that uses flashbacks to tell its story. And it's seemingly based on a notorious true Canadian crime. In it, a woman is murdered and her millionaire husband is accused."
"The only familiar face for me was the German actress Elke Sommer who starred in a couple of Mario Bava films earlier in the 70's. She is good enough as the femme fatale murder victim. In fact, the opening of the movie is certainly unusual, with the name actress being brutally murdered right away."
"It's intriguing for sure but ultimately the film as a whole is not especially well done. It really feels like a TV movie most of the time, which is why the occasional nasty moments are so jarring, such as the murder and especially a scene of necrophilia, the latter of which must surely have cemented the film's nasty status."
.......
One of his wives in the 70s was Barbara Amiel who was with the CBC for a while, and more famous for her 80s work in Maclean's Magazine after the glory years of the 60s.
Barbara Amiel is a strange chicky, a fascinating and controversial history, famous for her columns in Macleans magazine, her marriage to billionaire Conrad Black, her fight against some of the biggest stupidities of 1970s Ontario/Toronto multiculturalism and political correctness.
She's the incredible mixture of sometimes intelligent, and sometimes bat-shit crazy, veering from being a teenage Trotskyite in England with her mother, to a ranting right-wing libertarian feminist and lover of Fredrich von Hayek later.
All her books have a creepy love-hate quality to them, at times great charm, and other points great tedium and dullness (as some found this book), yet she's wonderfully eccentric and spunky.
It's not easy going through life with issues of being a teenage Trotskyite to a middle-aged Codeine methytl-morphine addict with anxiety attacks.
She had a story in her autobiography of seeing faces staring back at her through her windows, and was so terrified she would have some sock or hosiery chew toy she would bite, so she didn't scream when she saw the faces, for a time..... just awesomely bizarre.
her later books is an amazing insightful and spiteful piece on the giants of the rich and famous in America, Canada and England, and the ups and downs of her life with Conrad Black, newspaper baron billionaire and off-beat amateur historian of FDR, LBJ and the like. She really had some of the most fascinating stories and gossip, and talked endlessly about the shallow world of the rich, with plastic surgery and high fashion, hanging out with Oscar de la Renta, and how in the end, i think only Brian Mulroney and Henry Kissinger were their only friends after burning a zillion bridges and being blacklisted from high society.
She's actually a weird wonder of wacky...
August 15, 2019
Easily the most dull true crime book I've ever read. The set-up and murder were fine (with lots of unnecessary asides) but after that, it really went off the rails, becoming a detailed biography of trial judges, lawyers, detectives, etc.
There wasn't a satisfactory explanation as to how on earth this "murder plot" was put in place under the circumstances.
I ended up skimming a lot. This book was about 200 pages too long.
There wasn't a satisfactory explanation as to how on earth this "murder plot" was put in place under the circumstances.
I ended up skimming a lot. This book was about 200 pages too long.
March 3, 2008
Seek this one out! This little-known true crime story is a must for all true crime fans. An exotic cast of characters includes a fashion model victim, a rich businessman husband with a gorgeous extra-curricular girlfriend, and denizens of the Eastern European underworld. And it all takes place in an upscale suburb of Toronto. Did Peter Demeter have his wife killed, or not? The courtroom scenes are masterfully retold. You'll have to read it to understand the power of these words, but one highlight comes when the Prosecutor has the husband on the stand and asks: "Is Christine Demeter dead?" Yep, she's dead. In fact, that's a photo of her on the garage floor with her brains dashed out. In another scene, one witness describes the alleged killer and the husband joking after the murder, saying "I never knew Christine had so much brains."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 12, 2012
An engrossing book that is propelled by richly detailed portraits of the characters.
February 28, 2022
An interesting book that take place in Canada. There are a lot of details about the Canadian legal system. The main figures in this book are Hungarian refugees who came to Canada to begin new lives. Unfortunately, a life was taken. The investigation took quite a while to bring the prime suspect to trial. It does seem ( to me) to drag on a bit with a medium amount of repetition.
September 24, 2012
This was mainly interesting because of the way it seemed that this couple came all the way from the peeling antiquities of Europe, only to have one of them killed and the other's life ruined.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews