Police know a lot about what Robert Rempel was up to in the weeks and months before his death – but they’ve yet to conclusively prove who killed him.
The body of the then-49-year-old Rempel was found on Nov. 11, 2007, on the front porch of a farmhouse in the Maryhill area.
There were no stab wounds or bullet marks.
“It’s clear to us that he was beaten,” says Waterloo Regional Police Sgt. Richard Dorling.
Rempel first moved to Ontario from his native British Columbia in the 1980s.
By 2007, he was living in Kitchener, where he was in and out of jail as he dealt with an addiction to crack cocaine.
Most people knew him only as Animal.
That fall, he was recruited by The Family to move to Guelph and work as an enforcer in their fledgling drug organization.
“It wasn’t really even a gang. It was just people using a title … to do their business,” says Dorling.
“The Family would often take over residences in Guelph – people that were drug users. They would come into their apartments, take them over and turn them into a crack house. They’d come up with these ridiculous amounts of money that they owed to the drug dealers.”
When the victims were unable to pay The Family, Dorling says, Rempel and others would drive them from Guelph to Maryhill and beat them.
What led to Rempel receiving that fate himself has never been determined.
The day before his body was found, police say, he was seen at a drop-in centre in Guelph.
He was then seen at an apartment complex on Waterloo Avenue, and leaving the city in a vehicle.
Investigators have never learned what happened between then and when his body was discovered.
For brother Dietrich Rempel, the oldest of Robert Rempel’s seven siblings, the lack of closure remains a frustration.
“It always nags in the back of your mind. We’d like to see whoever’s responsible caught,” he says.
Various members of The Family were later arrested on unrelated matters, but police say they’ve never had enough evidence to charge them in connection with Rempel’s murder.
