Toledo police are trying to determine if a homeless man’s recent death will close an international missing-person case that has gone unsolved for more than 30 years.
Pending confirmation through a DNA test, officials believe the 75-year-old man who died Nov. 18 at Hospice of Northwest Ohio in Perrysburg of an undisclosed type of cancer to be Robert St. Louis, a father of five and furrier in the Montreal suburb of Laval, Que., who was declared missing north of the border in June, 1988.
“Mr. St. Louis” did not officially resurface after his disappearance until August, 2014, when he had the first of five encounters with the Toledo Police Department. Between then and May, 2016, police records show, he was cited as a homeless man on Toledo’s streets for charges of criminal trespass, falsification, loitering, and public indecency.
Police said recently they have no further details about how long the man had been in Toledo before 2014, or his exact whereabouts between their last involvement with him 27 months later and his death last month.
Jeff Buehrer and Rich Kirby, who own American Cremation Events in north Toledo, said they discovered the man’s unusual circumstance soon after they received his body in late November.
“This is pretty unique,” Mr. Buehrer said of the situation he and his business partner had uncovered.
Mr. Buehrer worked with Douglas Taylor, an Oregon lawyer who said he had since 2017 been the legal guardian of a Robert St. Louis after the homeless man, who had family history of schizophrenia and accelerating dementia, was hospitalized several times in short order. Mr. Taylor requested assistance in finding Mr. St. Louis’ next of kin, as he had no forms of identification and no Social Security number.
American Cremation takes for its records fingerprints from all remains it brings in, so in Mr. St. Louis’ case they then submitted those fingerprints to the police department to see if he had a record, Mr. Kirby said.
Sure enough, the fingerprints led them to the aforementioned cases between 2014 and 2016, for which Toledo Municipal Court records showed the various offenses charged at multiple locations in North Toledo and South Toledo against Mr. St. Louis, whose guardian described him as a regular at group homes and care centers around the city.
“During that period, he had two names. He had an alias name, which was Bob Navarro,” Mr. Buehrer said of Mr. St. Louis’ later years.
Mr. Buehrer and Mr. Kirby said that while they don’t know for sure how the Bob Navarro name originated, they suspect it was derived either from Navarre Avenue, one of Mr. St. Louis’ preferred hangouts, or from Mike Navarre, the former Toledo and Oregon police chief who now is the Lucas County sheriff, because of Mr. St. Louis’ repeated police run-ins.
Court records show Mr. St. Louis also gave other names to police at various times, including Johnny Thomasino and Randova Cajo.
William Goodlet, a Toledo Police Department detective, was assigned to the case in October, which was during the time Mr. St. Louis was ill at Hospice. That police involvement came just after an initial call between the crematory and Mr. St. Louis’ guardian, and Canadian authorities were brought in soon thereafter. Detective Goodlet said the key step now is to confirm a DNA match with that of Mr. St. Louis’ daughter, Nathalie, now 53, who lives in the Laval area and has taken the lead in the push to find more information about the man who could be her father.
Though Detective Goodlet is a Toledo police veteran, working an international case like this is new to him.
“It's the first time for me,” he said. “Obviously, we're just trying to assist and it's hard. It's difficult when you see somebody within your own area or maybe a joining county, but outside the United States? It could be a little more challenging.”
Across the border, Stéphane Luce is a Quebec-based private investigator who runs a website in French and English for missing-persons cases called Meutres et Disparations Irrésolus du Québec or Murders and Unsolved Disappearances of Quebec. Mr. Luce has known the St. Louis family for years and took up Robert St. Louis’ case in 2019, soon after publishing a profile of the missing man on his website.
According to Mr. Luce, Nathalie St. Louis did not know someone named Robert St. Louis might be in Toledo until February, 2020, when Joseph Hassaneyn, a West Toledo lawyer, emailed her describing himself as a “public interest attorney” who wanted to know where Mr. St. Louis was from, what cities he would have visited, if he had another first name, and where he was born.
But Mr. Hassaneyn’s contact with the St. Louis family after that was only sporadic, including a long time when he did not return any messages or calls from Ms. St. Louis. When The Blade tried to reach Mr. Hassaneyn’s office for comment, the phone number listed on his website was disconnected.
The lawyer next popped up in March after a 13-month silence, when he set up a video call with Mr. St. Louis, Ms. St. Louis, and himself.
According to Mr. Luce, Ms. St. Louis asked several questions during that call to the man who could be her father, such as identifying his grandmother, and he gave correct answers. Ms. St. Louis tried to schedule a DNA test soon thereafter, but Mr. Hassaneyn did not respond to a query about where to send the kit.
This all frustrated Ms. St. Louis, who did not know her father to be the type who would have left without saying anything, Mr. Luce said.
“[Robert] was a very, very kind man, who apparently had his heart in his hand,” Mr. Luce said on Ms. St. Louis’ behalf after she declined The Blade’s request to comment directly. “He was a good communicator with her, and I know they spent the day together before he went missing.”
Mr. Luce had tried publicizing the case with signs and billboards in Quebec that yielded no substantive leads. Ms. St. Louis’ DNA samples have now arrived at a laboratory in Taylor, Mich., that is expected to issue results from the comparison testing next week.
First Published December 11, 2021, 12:00 p.m.
