Ronald Arthur Turpin was born as Donald Arthur Neumann on April 29, 1933, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. At the time of his birth, his parents were separated, and they officially divorced by 1935. After his mother remarried a man named Emil Turpin, Donald took on the surname “Turpin,” and later began calling himself Ronald for reasons that remain unclear. His early childhood was marked by profound instability and abuse. His mother, reportedly an alcoholic, frequently placed him in the care of various relatives, some of whom sexually abused him. By age 11, Turpin had entered the foster care system and developed a pattern of running away, indicating early signs of trauma and rebellion.

Turpin’s juvenile years quickly escalated into a life of crime. At 16, he was convicted in Ottawa for shopbreaking and theft. By his mid-twenties, he had already accumulated multiple criminal convictions and prison time in both Canada and the United States. These included 18 months for auto theft, two years for mail theft at FCI Danbury and USP Lewisburg, and six months for escaping lawful custody. He drifted between southern Ontario and northern U.S. states, living a transient lifestyle. Around 1960, he relocated to Toronto and found work as a rental agent for furnished apartments. However, his criminal associations persisted.

In 1961, he was tried for assaulting a landlord but acquitted. Around the same time, he became a person of interest in the unsolved October 1960 murder of local petty criminal Lorne Gibson. That same year, he was suspected in a non-fatal shooting at the apartment of Della Burns, his on-and-off girlfriend. Turpin became increasingly paranoid, fearing police retaliation and possible framing in connection to the Wellesley Street shooting. By early 1962, he was back in Toronto, sleeping in different homes every night to avoid detection by police, who were actively seeking his arrest.

In the early morning of February 12, 1962, Ronald Turpin committed the crime that would place him in Canadian history. After burglarizing the Red Rooster restaurant in Scarborough, Turpin was driving a dilapidated 1954 Pontiac sedan with over $600 in stolen cash and a hidden firearm. Toronto police officer Frederick “Jack” Nash, 31, was patrolling alone in his cruiser in the city’s east end when he noticed Turpin’s vehicle had a broken taillight. Nash initiated a routine traffic stop near the corner of Danforth Avenue and Dawes Road. Upon approaching the vehicle, Nash recognized Turpin from a previous police bulletin related to the 1961 Wellesley Street shooting, in which Turpin had been a suspect.

Nash ordered Turpin to exit the vehicle. As he did, Turpin reached under his seat, retrieved the concealed gun, and a shootout ensued. Nash was fatally shot in the abdomen, while Turpin sustained gunshot wounds to the arm and face. Nash, a father of four, was rushed to Toronto East General Hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries. Turpin, apprehended shortly afterward, was charged with capital murder under Canada’s new 1961 murder statute, which classified the murder of a police officer as a capital offense punishable by death.

Turpin’s trial commenced in late 1962 and lasted 15 days. He did not deny that he shot Nash; numerous eyewitnesses testified to witnessing the exchange. His defense argued that he feared for his life and believed the police intended to frame or kill him due to his suspected past and his belief in retaliatory threats from law enforcement. The court rejected this defense, and Turpin was found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to death by hanging.

On December 11, 1962, Ronald Turpin was hanged at Toronto’s Don Jail. Executed alongside him was Arthur Lucas, another prisoner convicted of an unrelated murder. The two became the last individuals ever executed in Canada. In his final moments, Turpin reportedly commented, “Some consolation,” when informed that he might be the final man executed in the country. Another report quoted him saying, “If our dying means capital punishment in this country will be abolished for good, we will not have died in vain.”

Despite Officer Nash’s death, the Toronto Police Service continued to use one-man patrol cars during night shifts for over a decade due to budgetary constraints, even as critics cited the incident as a key reason for systemic change. It wasn’t until 1974 that courts mandated the use of two-man cruisers during all hours. Capital punishment for murder was formally removed from the Canadian Criminal Code in 1976 and was not fully abolished under military law until 1998, making Turpin and Lucas the final footnotes in Canadian execution history.