Murder of Alison Parrott

Parrott's murder was one of the cases examined in the 2007 documentary Forgiveness: Stories For Our Time.

In 2003, the Court of Appeal for Ontario rejected an appeal by Roy, who claimed that police at his interrogation had denied him his right to remain silent.

A decade later, a link analysis helped Toronto homicide detectives match the DNA evidence with a man who was charged with the crime. Francis Carl Roy was convicted of first-degree murder on April 13, 1999. Sentenced to life in prison, he has been eligible for parole since 2021.

After a month-long trial and six days of deliberation, on April 13, 1999, the jury returned a verdict of guilty of first-degree murder. Roy was sentenced to automatic life imprisonment without possibility of parole for 25 years.

The fourth episode of season 1 of Cold Case Files, titled "Answer in the Box; Maternal Instinct" (1999), follows the disappearance of Alison and subsequent investigation of the crime.

Killer in a Box (1999) was the second episode of season 3 of Exhibit A: Secrets of Forensic Science, a Canadian documentary television program, hosted by Graham Greene, that revisited criminal cases.

In 1989, suspicion again fell on Roy when a man arrested in Vancouver informed police that they should consider Roy a suspect in the murders of sex workers in that city earlier that year. Roy was never charged with those crimes, but the two Vancouver officers didn't forget the tip. In 1996, they gave their information to the Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System (ViCLAS) link analysis database and detectives in Toronto's homicide division picked up the file as part of a cold cases review. Reading over the initial police interview and other reports from Roy's parole officer, they were struck by inconsistencies and deceptions in the suspect's story. The division put a tail on Roy, who had returned to Toronto in 1991. The officers collected Roy's DNA from used cigarette butts and a coffee cup in Toronto bars and made a positive match with the DNA found on semen in Alison's body. Roy was arrested on July 31, 1996, just over a decade after Alison's murder.

The trial judge chose not to make certain evidence known to the jury citing a 1988 Supreme Court of Canada decision, as he feared this knowledge would prejudice the jury against the defendant and preclude his right to a fair trial. The withheld evidence included Roy's previous two convictions for rape, the fact that both rapes were committed on teenagers, and that one of the victims had been "tricked, abducted and bound, much like Alison".

In May 1987, Lesley Parrott, aided by colleagues at the advertising agency where she worked, launched the Canada-wide Stay Alert ... Stay Safe program. Aimed at children aged seven through ten, the program's main objective was to attune children's instincts to dangerous situations, whether at home or elsewhere.

Shortly before 11 o'clock on the morning of July 25, 1986, Alison received a phone call at her Summerhill Avenue home in midtown Toronto. A male caller, claiming to be a photographer, asked her to meet him at the University of Toronto's Varsity Stadium where, he said, he would be taking publicity photos of her and her teammates. Alison had trained at the Varsity Stadium sports field the previous fall. No one else was at home when Alison received the call. Alison phoned her mother at work and received permission to attend the photo session. They discussed the route she would take and arranged that she would return home by 2:30 pm. Riders reported seeing her alone on her 20-minute subway route. When Alison failed to return on time, her parents waited until 5 pm to begin inquiring among their friends and neighbours as to her whereabouts. At 6 pm, they called police. Hundreds joined the search in the following days. Alison's body was found two days later by two boys walking in a densely wooded area of Kings Mill Park, on the Humber River just below the Old Mill subway station; she had been bound, raped, and strangled.

Alison May Campbell Parrott (September 28, 1974 – July 25, 1986) was an 11-year-old girl who was lured out of her home by a male phone caller in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Her remains were found two days later in a densely wooded area of Kings Mill Park.

Alison May Campbell Parrott was born on September 28, 1974 in Toronto. Her father, Peter Parrott, was a civil engineer; her mother Lesley was an advertising executive. At the time of her murder, Alison attended a French immersion elementary school and frequently used public transit. She was also an avid runner and a member of the Tom Longboat track club for youth aged 8 to 12. She had won her first race that summer and qualified to participate in an international track-and-field meet in New Jersey, scheduled for 1 August. Her name, along with those of other youth qualifying for the New Jersey event, had been published in the Toronto Star.

Francis Carl Roy (born September 18, 1957) was questioned by police during their first round of interviews, as he used the same training facility as Alison's track club, and also because he had a criminal record. Roy was a First Nations man from Manitoulin Island. He was an avid runner with a keen interest in photography. He had a criminal record dating back to 1976, including possession of stolen property, petty theft, fraud, assault, breaking and entering, and rape. At the time of Alison's murder, Roy had been on parole after serving only two and a half years of a consecutive 11-year sentence for the rapes of a 14 year old girl and 19 year old woman. He moved to Vancouver in 1988 and obtained a job with the city as a youth counselor, claiming to have a degree in psychology from the University of Toronto. He got the job without a background check. He left the city in 1991 after being involved in a bar fight and returned to Toronto.