What we know about alleged Ontario cottage country killer and why police said threat has passed

A manhunt was still underway Tuesday for a suspect in a triple murder investigation in Ontario’s Muskoka district, as questions emerged around why police, in lifting a shelter-in-place order, said there was no threat to public safety after earlier warning a potentially armed and dangerous person they believed had just shot someone and burned a house down remained on the loose.

Mitchell Gray, 29, a local man who knows the woods well, is wanted in connection with murder and arson after three bodies were discovered at a residence near Bracebridge, Ont., in the middle of prime cottage country, located about 185 kilometres north of Toronto.

When police responded to reports of shots fired at a home on Beatrice Town Line Road Friday night, they arrived to find one man dead in the driveway and the residence fully engulfed in flames, as well as outer buildings and vehicles.

Ontario Provincial Police issued a shelter-in-place order, advising local residents to get and stay indoors, lock all doors and windows and call 911 immediately if they encountered the suspect.

The OPP shared the advisory through social media and media releases.

An emergency alert system was not used, police told National Post Tuesday.

When the shelter-in-place order was lifted about four hours later, at 1:48 am Saturday, residents were advised that the “individual previously considered armed and potentially dangerous has not been located, but is not believed to pose an immediate threat to public safety.”

The next day, police reported that two more bodies had been discovered inside the torched house.

That left some concerned residents and cottagers alarmed. “Triple murder suspect is on the loose but there’s no threat to public safety? Do you even hear yourselves,” one person commented on an OPP Facebook page.

A law enforcement source, who spoke on the condition of not being identified, also said he found it “a little confusing” why police said there was no longer a threat to public safety when they did not have the suspect in custody.

“I don’t understand why the police said that. That doesn’t make sense to me. He’s not in custody, and they lifted it,” the source said.

“Was (the murder) a business thing? A family thing, and they don’t suspect he’s going to hurt anybody else?

“If that’s the case, that’s pretty weak, because when someone is running from police, they get desperate, and sometimes they do things that may not be really the kind of normal pattern,” the source said.

“Was the gun left there, so they’re not worried about him having a gun? Do they know he had only one gun? But that doesn’t mean he couldn’t get more guns. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a knife or an axe. I just find the whole thing bizarre,” the source said, adding that the incident, on the surface, has eerie echoes of Gabriel Wortman, the serial killer behind a devastating gun rampage in Portapique, N.S., in 2020, Canada’s deadliest mass killing. Wortman, who posed as an RCMP officer with a uniform and mocked up cruiser, killed 22 people; 13 were shot, and nine died in house fires.

In the Wortman case, police “kept finding more and more bodies, and people were hearing gunshots in neighbour’s houses,” the source said. Gray, the suspect in the Bracebridge homicides, “has just gone quiet since this occurred,” the source said.

“It’s not like Portapique. But it’s still weird. I’d be really interested to know what their thinking was when the dust settles on this.”

In a statement to National Post, an OPP spokesperson said the shelter in place order was initiated as a precaution while officers searched the area.

“It was lifted when the suspect was not found to be in the area,” Sgt. Joe Brisebois, of the OPP’s Central Region headquarters, wrote. “We never believed there were any threat to public safety since the incident was between individuals that were known to each other.”

The OPP “recognizes that major police operations can be concerning for those who live, work or travel in the area,” he said. “We understand the importance of keeping the public informed about police activity in their communities.”

Emergency alerts related to police are reserved for situations involving “an ongoing, urgent and significant threat to life that is neither isolated nor contained,” Brisebois said.

“Although the operation was active, it remained isolated and confined to a specific area under police control. As such, it did not meet the criteria for a broadcast intrusive emergency alert,” he said.

“While we were not authorized to issue a broadcast alert, the OPP shared timely updates with the public through social media and media releases,” Brisebois added.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Gray remained “outstanding,” he said, and the search was continuing. “We ask that anyone with information about this incident or his whereabouts to contact police or Crime Stoppers.”

On his Facebook page, last updated in April 2019, Gray described himself as a mechanic at Bracebridge Yamaha, but he hasn’t worked there since 2017. “It was before my time and actually the guys here never worked with him, either. The new owners never met him,” said service advisor Greg Williams.

“I was a bit shocked, to have that up here. Don’t usually get that stuff up here,” he said.

It could take weeks to identify the two bodies found inside the house gutted by fire. “Until the fire cooled off and they could get in there, they wouldn’t even know that there were more bodies inside,” the law enforcement source said.

“They’ve got the forensics around all three bodies. Who knows what else is in that outside scene, whether casings in the driveway, footprints in the mud. All that normal scene analysis would be occurring.

“And then the investigation into who he is and why this happened,” the source said.

“That’s part of the normal criminal investigation process: why, and who, and all the particulars around that to prove he did it. And then finding him.”

National Post

• Police continue search for suspect after three found dead in Ontario's prime cottage country
• Police catch inmates, including murderer, who escaped Ontario prison by simply walking away

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.