Should Ron Moffatt be compensated for his wrongful murder conviction?

The closest thing to an apology that Ron Moffatt got for his wrongful murder conviction happened in the summer of 1957.

That was a few weeks after his successful appeal.

Moffatt, then 15, was strolling down Toronto's College Street when he was spotted by Insp. Adolphus Payne, the tough-as-nails cop who'd arrested him the previous year for murdering seven-year-old Wayne Mallette at the Canadian National Exhibition grounds.

"He recognized me and called me over," Moffatt recently told true-crime writer Nate Hendley, author of The Boy on the Bicycle, a compelling new book about the six-decade-old case.

"He asked how I was doing," Moffatt said. "I wasn't interested in talking to him and just wanted to get away and yet he kept going on about how sorry he was about what happened, blah, blah. I was cordial but underneath I was very upset that I was being confronted by the SOB who was to blame for my nightmare," he told Hendley.

As SooToday reported earlier today, Moffatt has been living in Sault Ste. Marie since 1970, working as a caretaker at local schools and as the cartoonist who draws SooToday's Sunday Funny feature.

He kept the dark secret of his wrongful conviction secret for decades from his wife and three children, and never received a formal apology or compensation for time served.

Full disclosure: the youthful Ron Moffatt was no innocent, either before or after he was accused of murdering Wayne Mallette.

A year or two before the murder, he'd been placed on probation for taking money from a cigar box at the St. Lawrence Market.

After successfully appealing his wrongful murder conviction, he didn't return to school but fell in with some old acquaintances who broke into restaurants, taking whatever cash they found on the premises, sometimes brazenly hanging around to broil burgers.

Known as the Joker Gang, they were eventually arrested.

"Three of the older boys in the Joker Gang were sent to juvenile detention," Hendley writes. "Moffatt and two others received probation."

But Moffatt was no murderer.

Multiple witnesses placed Moffatt in a movie theatre at the time Wayne Mallette died, but Toronto Police coerced a false confession from him without parents or a lawyer present, something that Hendley explains is by no means unique in criminal law.

Moffatt was incarcerated for just under eight months for a crime he didn't commit.

The real murderer turned out to be Peter Woodcock, Canada's youngest serial killer.

Hendley's book describes Moffatt's efforts to overcome the trauma of his conviction and incarceration, including time spent in psychiatric institutions.

"I think Ron Moffatt is entitled to an official apology from the Ontario government, similar to the apology received by Steven Truscott following his acquittal by the Ontario Court of Appeal in 2007," Hendley tells SooToday.

"Ideally, I would also like to see Ron receive compensation for his horrible ordeal. No 14-year-old boy should ever have to go through what Ron experienced. While Ron was in custody less than a year, he served his sentence under the odious distinction of being a child-killer (among the lowest of the low, in prison hierarchy). Even though Ron was acquitted, his experience marked him for life."

"It's amazing he managed to pull himself together and become as well-adjusted as he is now," Hendley said.

"I still believe that I have not received my dues from those who persecuted me," Moffatt told Hendley.

"I feel I deserve something from them as it was a horrific experience and it affected my life for years. I am hoping that if you agree to write this story of mine that maybe it may prompt a law firm, an advocate, or even the general public to take up my cause and embarrass the authorities into compensating me."

Moffatt says if his parents were still alive, he'd give the lion's share of any compensation to them because they spent all they had to prove his innocence.

Because his parents are no longer alive, he says he'd give money to his children and stepdaughter.

The Boy on the Bicycle is a 230-page trade paperback available August 1 from Five Rivers Publishing Co., Amazon and iBooks.

Watch for further coverage of this story tomorrow on SooToday.

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