MANDEL: Almost 50 years later, Toronto shoe-shine boy killer wins taste of freedom

Saul Betesh, who raped and killed 12-year-old Emanuel Jaques in 1977, granted his first escorted temporary absence

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Published Apr 22, 2026  •  4 minute read

Pedophile killer Saul Betesh. Photo by HANDOUT /TORONTO POLICE

WARNING: Graphic details

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After almost half a century in prison, sadistic child killer Saul Betesh has just won his first step toward freedom.

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Following a parole board hearing at the Pacific Institution, the Toronto man who raped and killed 12-year-old Emanuel Jaques in 1977 was granted his first escorted temporary absence — with a Correctional Service Canada escort, the 76-year-old will spend the day at a halfway house for elderly inmates, where he can learn about its facilities.

But even one day on the outside is too good for this child predator.

Now portly and bald, Betesh told the board he probably only has a few more years to live: he’s had heart bypass surgery, multiple stents, needs a walker and is in danger of losing his legs due to diabetes. He once considered MAID (medical assistance in dying), but the practising Wiccan said he now realizes he was put on earth for a reason.

The Wicca religion believes all life is sacred, he explained without a trace of irony.

“You participated in taking a life,” board member Ian Mackenzie reminded him. “How do you reconcile that?”

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Shoeshine boy killer Saul Betesh is shown here in his profile photo from a matchmaking website. (canadianinmatesconnect.com)

‘I’m an entirely different person’

“I can’t,” Betesh replied. “I’m entirely a different person because of my beliefs now.”

It was both chilling and nauseating to listen to the child killer describe the grisly rape and murder that rocked Toronto and sparked a clean-up of Yonge St.’s sin strip.

Betesh was a 27-year-old steel rigger who had worked on the CN Tower by day and as a male prostitute by night. Violent and remorseless, he’d been in and out of psychiatric treatment since he was five and poured nail polish remover in his babysitter’s ear.

On July 28, 1977, Betesh said he’d made an appointment the next day to talk to a psychiatrist about his concerning attraction to “younger and younger” boys.

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“I was starting to get interested in nine and 10-year-olds,” he told the parole board. And yes, he admitted, most were vulnerable street kids.

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He’d never made it to his appointment.

His good buddy Robert Wayne Kribs, a bouncer at the Charlie’s Angels Body Rub, shared his taste for underage boys. Betesh told the board Kribs and his two fellow squatters — Joseph Woods and Werner Gruener — were heading west the next day and wanted to know if he knew “anybody for the night.”

Betesh went hunting.

Emanuel Jaques

Young victim wanted to earn money for puppy

Emanuel had set up a homemade shoe-shine box at Yonge and Dundas, hoping to earn enough money to buy food for the new puppy he was going to get from his neighbour. When Betesh offered him a princely $35 to move photography equipment, he eagerly agreed.

The slim, pretty child with the brown medium-length hair and hazel eyes had no idea the horror awaiting him in the third-floor apartment at 245 Yonge St.

For 12 tortuous hours, Emanuel was held captive, stripped naked, photographed, beaten and sexually tortured by Kribs and Betesh.

Betesh glossed over those details. While Kribs had his turn with him, he said he heard the boy crying, screaming and threatening to tell his parents.

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“Kribs basically came out and says, ‘We’ve got to get rid of him,’ Betesh said at the parole hearing.

“I didn’t want to do that so I told him I’d take care of it. I went in and I put a plastic cord around his neck until he passed out and I said, ‘Alright, it’s done. Let’s go.”

Kribs, though, went in and found a pulse. Betesh said he was told to help carry the boy to the sink where Kribs held his head under water until he was dead.

He denied getting sexually aroused by the murder.

“Do you think about what you’ve done?” Mackenzie asked.

‘Against my nature’: Betesh

“I haven’t stopped thinking about it,” Betesh replied. “Until that point, it was totally against my nature. There’s a big step between having sex and killing someone.”

Even after all these years, he still won’t take responsibility.

“I basically followed Kribs’ orders. I was not as big as I am now and Kribs is a lot bigger.”

Lucky for him, the death penalty had been outlawed just the year before.

Despite his past, the parole board was impressed Betesh hasn’t been in any violent confrontations in prison since 2020, he poses a low risk since he’ll be supervised and the escorted temporary absence is a “desirable” first step toward eventual reintegration.

A one-day supervised pass is hardly alarming. But it has thrown open the door to the eventual release on day parole of a monster we all assumed would — and should — be carried out of prison in a pine box.

And consider this terrifying fact: the pedophile also admitted to the parole board that five decades on, he’s still sexually attracted to young boys.

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