Former Huronia Regional Centre resident went missing more than 40 years ago

Robin Kenneth Windross disappeared from the Huronia Regional Centre on Nov. 15, 1977, at age 21.

The ensuing police search failed to locate the longtime centre resident, who was said to have the intellectual capacity of a six-year-old.

Now, his parents Betty and Allan Bellchambers are seeking an answer to the mystery that has haunted the family for more than 40 years: What happened to Robin?

“I still feel he is alive,” said Betty, who turns 81 in May. “He could be gone and he could still be alive. We don’t know that.”

Windross was placed at HRC at age five on the recommendation of specialists at Toronto’s Hospital For Sick Children.

“Both doctors said that if he got to be 15, he could be violent at that time,” recalled Betty. “But he was never a violent kid.”

Whenever Windross came home for visits, he did not want to return to the facility, telling Betty “they are mean,” she said.

“They hit me,” she remembers him saying. “At that time, I didn’t know what to do.”

Prior to his disappearance, Windross had been transferred from a children’s ward at HRC to one of its adult units.

According to a newspaper account published Nov. 17, 1977, counsellors in his building realized he was missing at approximately 10:30 p.m. on the evening in question.

“It was thought that he’d gone to the Orillia Terriers-Cambridge Hornets hockey game that night,” the paper reported.

Staff was unable to make contact with the arena and waited until the bus ferrying HRC residents from the game returned.

However, a driver’s record confirmed that Windross wasn't at the game.

When Betty received the call later that night informing her he’d gone missing, she leaned into a wall and dropped to the floor.

“I said, ‘Allan, take this’,” she recalled. “I couldn’t answer.”

While the Bellchambers were initially told their son hadn’t been seen since 6 p.m. that night, some staff reported having observed him later in the evening.

A description of Windross was broadcast over the radio the following afternoon.

Searches of the HRC, local neighbourhoods and outlying areas by Orillia police, aided by local citizens band radio clubs, failed to locate him.

There was speculation that a friend who previously lived at the HRC may have visited him that evening, and that the two left together.

According to his parents, he was not one to wander.

“We didn’t know what to believe,” said Allan, Robin’s stepfather.

Without an answer, the couple said their goodbyes during a funeral service, held at their request, in 1978.

It was, “the hardest day of our lives,” Allan said.

But the service wouldn’t put to rest the couple’s yearning for the truth.

“Every time I (saw) a young lad, I was looking to see if it was him,” Betty said.

Sharon Bellchambers, one of two sisters to Robin, was 17 when he went missing.

While telling Simcoe.com she wants closure, Sharon says she has mixed feelings about pursuing the matter now, adding she had “come to terms with it.

“It just brings up memories, all the things that he’s missed,” she said.

OPP detectives visited Betty and Allan's home in recent years, swabbing Betty’s mouth for DNA.

Det.-Insp. Martin Graham, of the OPP’s criminal investigation branch, confirmed police have revisited the case and others related to the HRC.

A review was undertaken after the province issued an apology and financial settlement to former residents who were mistreated at the facility.

Police re-examined the Windross case.

“Unfortunately, despite our best efforts during that time we were unable to further that investigation, or to give the answers that we know the family is seeking as relating to their loved one,” Graham said, adding the case is classified as a missing person where foul play cannot be excluded.

Investigators took the swab sample from Betty after discovering police did not have any familial DNA to compare with a missing person or unidentified remains.

“Unfortunately, there were no hits on any unidentified remains,” Graham said.

A profile of Windross on the federal website canadasmissing.ca states, “he may have left Huronia Regional Centre because he was concerned about being transferred in the facility to a unit with mostly adults.”

In telling their story publicly, the Bellchambers hope that circumstances surrounding his disappearance may come to light.

“I’d like to know where he is, and if he is still alive,” Betty said.

Whether a missing person case is actively investigated “depends on what, if any information is around or whether there is any further investigative avenues or strategies that can be developed from that,” Graham added.

Police say they welcome any new information.

“Obviously with the passage of time and, physically the number of human beings that would have any knowledge of this particular incident lessens with each year,” he said.

Anyone with information can contact police at 705-326-3536.

By Frank Matys, Orillia Today