MANDEL: Cop killer Clinton Gayle won’t be jetting off to Jamaica to serve out his life sentence

The Parole Board said there wouldn't be enough supervision in Jamaica – where Gayle would be deported if granted any kind of release

Published Jul 30, 2026  •  Last updated 24 minutes ago  •  4 minute read

Seen in this 1995 photo, Clinton Gayle, now 58, is serving a life sentence for executing Metro Toronto Police Const. Todd Baylis and attempting to kill his partner Mike Leone in 1994. Photo by Toronto Sun files

Thirty-two years after he executed Toronto Police Const. Todd Baylis in cold blood, Clinton Gayle will not get his wish to be paroled and deported back to Jamaica.

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It didn’t help his cause that he advanced yet another theory that portrayed him as the victim and not the heartless aggressor.

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At Gayle’s fourth hearing held at his minimum security prison in British Columbia, the parole board said that while the cop killer has made progress and is considered a low risk to reoffend, they can’t properly supervise his rehabilitation on day parole since he’s under a deportation order and would be sent back to Jamaica.

It would be up to his family there to keep him straight – and that’s not enough to protect the public.

After the lengthy hearing, board member Ian Mackenzie told Gayle they deliberated an unusually long time because they still can’t understand his shifting versions of what happened that day.

Gayle, 58, still insists he killed Baylis in self-defence, and for the first time, claims he was the one who was hit first by police gunfire and wildly fired back in response.

Toronto Police Const. Todd Baylis is forever honoured on a monument to fallen police officers outside Charles O. Bick College. Photo by David Lucas / Files /Toronto Sun

Outrageous pack of lies

What an outrageous pack of lies.

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But finally, the board called B.S. on his newest manipulative narrative.

“I know you don’t like the word ‘version’ – I’ll use the word ‘account, explanation’ whatever – but you’ve been before the board a few times now and your explanations or accounts have changed and even today,” Mackenzie said.

“We’re not convinced or satisfied that you have sufficient insight into exactly why you use such extreme violence.”

Gayle is serving life for first-degree murder in the June 1994 execution of Baylis, just 25, and the attempted murder of his partner Mike Leone while the two officers were on routine patrol in a public housing building on Trethewey Dr.

“What’s up?” Baylis had asked, unaware Gayle was a career crack dealer under a deportation order and determined not to be arrested.

In the ensuing struggle, Baylis, his gun still holstered, was knocked to the ground. Leone tried pepper spray and Gayle opened fire – hitting Leone in the shoulder – and then placed his illegal handgun less than six inches from Baylis’s temple and pulled the trigger.

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Gayle then aimed again at Leone but luckily, his gun jammed.

“Clinton Gayle was so close to me when he shot me I could taste the gunpowder,” Leone said in his victim impact statement.

Only then did the surviving officer draw his own firearm and shoot.

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Yet ever since, Gayle has had the gall to insist he was acting in self-defence – except for one brief admission in 2021 that he “may” have been mistaken – only to revert back to his original position at his following hearing in 2024.

Filled with barely-controlled rage, Baylis’s brother Cory spent an unprecedented hour detailing the pain Gayle has inflicted on his family and the lies the ruthless killer has continued to tell as he sought his freedom for the fourth time.

“Gayle would love immigration officials to act on his deportation order and to send him back to Jamaica. This would end his life sentence. He would be free,” Cory Baylis warned.

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His life sentence should mean just that, he argued. Life should mean life.

Cory Baylis urged the parole board not to fall for his “smoke and mirrors show,” that Gayle still has shown no remorse.

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Cop killer ‘has never apologized’

In his mother’s heartbreaking victim impact statement, she insisted the same.

“He has never even tried to apologize for this. He has never apologized for walking over to my son as he lay injured and defenceless on the ground, his service weapon still locked in his holster, purposefully putting his gun to my son’s temple and wholly without any concern for my son’s life, pulled the trigger,” wrote 80-year-old Sharon Baylis.

“It takes a special kind of evil to do this to another human being.”

Her son told the board not to be fooled by the web of deceit Gayle will spin.

“He lies and deceives in an attempt to tell you what he thinks you want to hear instead of telling you the truth,” Cory Baylis said.

And so he tried.

Gayle maintained he’s a changed man thanks to his new spirituality, his rejection of the criminal lifestyle and his genuine remorse.

“I see how they feel about me and that doesn’t make me feel good,” he said of the victims. “They say I can never change. I don’t believe that.”

The cunning Gayle had obviously taken notes of what he needed to do.

“I apologize sincerely. I know what I’ve done. It was not my intention,” he told them. “I’m not the same person I was back then and I will carry this with me for the rest of my life.”

And well he should – and at least for now, within the confines of a Canadian prison.

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