It’s been 42 years but the Peters family still can’t bring themselves to exit the subway at St. Patrick station. In 1975, 16-year-old Mariam Peters, was brutally murdered in the station’s darkened passageways.

Mariam, a Grade 11 student at A. Y. Jackson Secondary School, was leaving St. Patrick station on Nov. 7, 1975 around 8 p.m. to visit her sick grandfather at Mount Sinai Hospital when she was stabbed 16 times. Police found her on the escalator and she died four days later from her injuries.

“I’m a father of four girls. None of my girls, none of my family get off at the St. Patrick station. A lot of it due to the memory,” Jeffrey Peters, who was 13 at the time of his sister’s murder, said. “I have one daughter who went to school just south of the Mount Sinai Hospital. She would get off at a different subway stop and walk many blocks to go to school every day in order to avoid that subway station.”

Following Mariam’s death, the Peters family, especially Mariam’s mother Merle Peters, were vocal in their push for the installation of closed circuit television scanners to watch the deserted parts of the subway stations.

“When I went down to that subway, I was choked. I had a feeling I was trapped in a dungeon,” Merle, who was unavailable for comment for this story told the Star in a 1976 interview, after returning to the spot of her daughter’s attack. “There was nowhere I could get help from. I can see that when Mariam was attacked, she did not have a chance, especially at St. Patrick. In the subway, it was like being cut off from the world.”

But a joint TTC-Metro police study ruled out closed-circuit TV on the grounds of cost. Officials said installation would cost $1.5 million and salaries would be required for 50 to 150 additional employees. Instead, the TTC adopted $302,000 in other security measures.

Modern-day CCTV cameras started getting installed in the late eighties and cameras have been added on the Yonge-University line subway cars. But the Bloor Danforth line subway cars have yet to be equipped with cameras as “it would be costly and they are eventually to be replaced,” according to Stuart Green, senior communications specialist for the TTC. CCTV cameras will be added when the cars are upgraded to the latest model, the Toronto Rocket.

Jeffrey said the fact that technology available for so long is still not fully installed is “unconscionable.”

Today, there are approximately 15,000 to 16,000 closed circuit television cameras across the TTC with 1,700 specifically at subway stations, according to Green. There are plans to install more around the system in the coming years through the Stations Transformation Project.

“I love my city. I love Toronto. I think that transit is a major component in any urban city,” Jeffrey said. “But can it be better? Absolutely.”

The murder of Mariam, which is unresolved, traumatized the city. A person of interest was identified at the time, and was also linked to another stabbing of a woman that occurred 10 minutes later at Simcoe and Wellington Sts. But no prosecution or arrest was available in either case “due to the lack of direct evidence,” according to Sgt. Stacy Gallant, head of the Toronto Police cold case squad.

Mariam’s funeral was attended by 1,500 people, some who knew her, some who didn’t, but all affected by her death. The stabbing also led to a patrol of uniformed police on the Metro subway line, for the first time in its then 21-year history.

A larger safety initiative that was a direct result of the murder was also put into place, according to Green. While taking the subway through downtown Toronto, riders may not notice two sealed off passages at St. Patrick and Queen’s Park stations. One may pass by them unaware everyday. But the inconspicuous white walls, installed as part of the initiative following Mariam’s death, are one of the only visible reminders of her brutal murder.

Shortly after the homicide, two cross passages, one at St. Patrick station and one at Queen’s Park station, were sealed off to “eliminate potential hiding places for lawbreakers,” according to an article in the April 1977 edition of the TTC’s employee newsletter, The Coupler.

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Mariam’s brother, Jeffrey, said he was unaware the cross passages had been closed, and that it had anything to do with his sister’s death.

The TTC also installed passenger safety alarms on subways, telephones on subway platforms and operator alarms on surface vehicles.

“In the case of these two stations, the cross passages were originally there to protect for a future staircase and permit access between the northbound and southbound platforms,” Green wrote in an email to the Star. “Since each station has two other cross passages, the third could be closed with no real customer inconvenience.”

With files from the Toronto Star Archive