The Horrors On The 22nd Floor

Warning: Details in this story are violent and explicit and could be triggering for some people.

I live in a building that echoes with the silent screams of a teenage girl who was held captive, starved, brutally beaten, and finally murdered. I didn’t know about the previous tenants of the building before I moved in but I knew about the case.

Second balcony from the left — third from the top — author’s photo

I was working for a Toronto television news station in 1994 when we first heard about the discovery of a body in a burning suitcase in York Region north of the city. Investigators had very little to go on and it would be several years before the victim could be identified. She would be known only as the “girl in the burning suitcase”.

I was living overseas when investigators finally were able to get the break they were looking for. It was 2011 and police in Niagara Region were told by a church pastor that a woman had confided in him that her husband had killed two of their children including the beating and starvation of her stepdaughter. At the time, Elaine Biddersingh didn’t realize that she had triggered an investigation to be reopened in an unsolved cold murder case. Investigators finally had some leads to go on.

17-year-old Melonie Biddersingh had suffered unspeakable horrors…