Outraged: The Murder of Shoeshine Boy, Emanuel Jaques

by Robert J. Hoshowsky

The Murder That Changed a City The tragic story of Shoeshine Boy Emanuel Jaques has been the basis of novels, short stories, a documentary, a play, songs, a children’s book on the dangers of abduction, and dozens of essays, but never a True Crime book…until now. The torture and killing of Emanuel over a 12-hour period above a seedy Toronto body rub parlour outraged citizens who demanded change to Toronto’s Yonge Street strip, which by 1977 resembled New York’s grimy 42nd Street with its many X-rated movie theatres, massage parlours, pornographic bookstores, and prostitutes. Through a series of original interviews, archival research, and previously unpublished documents, author Robert J. Hoshowsky recreates in detail Emanuel’s brutal death, the hunt for the boy’s killers, the shocking trial and press coverage, the controversial Yonge Street clean-up, and what remains one of the most sensational True Crime cases in Canadian history.

350 pages, Paperback

Published November 10, 2017

Reviews

[R.J. Gilmour · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hoshowsky's true crime book is a study of the 1977 murder of Emanuel Jacques that shocked Toronto and elicited a moral panic and attacks on the LGBT community. While Hoshowsky's book presents a lot of details about the actual murder, the trial and the events surrounding the moral panic and campaign to 'clean-up' Yonge Street that haven't appeared elsewhere, the book itself is marred by poor writing, a lack of editing and no real analysis. The same details and often the same sentences are repeated in multiple sections of the book and while the author tries to provide a broader review of the material, too often the tone and language of the book repeats the sensationalistic journalism of the period.

"It was during this period, 1971 to 1980, that Canada welcomed 76,602 immigrants from Portugal, the Jacques family among them." 29

"With practically every major Canadian newspaper reporting on what became known as 'the shoeshine boy murder' on August 2, avoiding the issue of the city's downtown sex trade was no longer possible." 45

"On November 21, 1977, less than four months after Emanuel's murder, The Body Politic printed a lengthy feature by Gerald Hannon, a longtime writer for the magazine. In the December 1977/January 1978 issue of the Body Politic was Hannon's article entitled "Men Loving Boys Loving Men." 107

"In the early Seventies, the rising number of body rub parlous became increasingly obvious. By 1971-72, there were 16 sex sex shops...by 1973, the number had grown to 36..." 244