The Quiet Neighbor

Alicia Goes Missing

On August 16th, 2005, Sean Hine pulled up outside his girlfriend’s house with a pit in his stomach. He’d only seen her the night before and had even dropped her off at her front door around midnight, but since then, Alicia Ross hadn’t been answering her phone. He’d only called twice, but when the twenty-five-year-old woman didn’t show up for work the following morning, Sean knew that something was wrong.

Alicia’s car was still parked outside her house, but she didn’t answer the door. Then even more agitated and on edge after seeing all of this, Sean called Alicia’s parents to ask if they had seen or heard from her. The answer was no.

Sean then called the police to report Alicia missing, and her parents rushed to their daughter’s home to find it already crawling with investigators.

Alicia’s mother, Sharon Fortis, later wrote: “In Alicia’s room were her cell phone, her purse, her cigarettes, her keys. Her bed had not been slept in. Her laundry lay folded, ready to be put away. Her ring was by the bathroom sink… The backyard was strewn with Alicia’s shoes, a glass, a cigarette, and the backyard gate had been left open. A sickness fell over us.”

It was now clear that Alicia had made it home the night before. According to the items left at the scene, she’d gotten herself ready for bed and was potentially having a late-night cigarette when something had happened to her. 

It looked like she’d been swept away into the night. And with all of her personal belongings left in the house, it was unlikely that Alicia had actually planned on leaving or that she had gone willingly. 

A Case That Runs Cold

Investigators immediately found the scene suspicious and launched a search of the area to see if they could pick up on Alicia’s trail. They were quickly flooded by locals and volunteers who wanted to help, so much so that they had to limit the number of volunteers that they could work with to 100 at one time.

Several days passed with nothing, dimming the fire and the hope that Alicia would be found alive, but then the investigators honed in on a potential suspect. He was the very last person to have seen Alicia alive - her boyfriend Sean Hine.

Thus began the game of cat and mouse. Sean wasn’t named an official suspect in the investigation, but the police canvassed his neighborhood and asked his neighbors if anyone had actually seen him during the hours that Alicia had disappeared. The authorities were tracking Sean’s movements, trying to trip him up and see if he would crack. The idea behind it being that it was unusual that someone would race to fill in a missing person’s report after only two missed phone calls. 

That was, of course, unless they knew something that the police didn’t.

Sean then refused to cooperate with the investigators any further, including refusing to take a polygraph test, but he also didn’t crack.

With no new leads to go off of, the investigation then began to lose steam. Resources, volunteers and media coverage trickled out and Alicia’s trail officially went cold until this case had a startling and unexpected turn of events.

Daniel Sylvester Comes Forward

About a month after Alicia had first disappeared, a man turned himself into the police, saying that he had murdered Alicia and had hidden her body. The investigators followed his directions to a wooded location about fifty miles away from Alicia’s house, and there they found the remains of a young woman. Alicia was dead and had been dead this entire time, and her killer had been right under everyone’s noses.

The investigators had even talked to him that very first day that Alicia was reported missing, and his name was not Sean Hine but Daniel Sylvester.

The community was speechless. With so much media coverage and attention drawn to Alicia’s boyfriend, and supposedly the last person to have seen her alive, no one had suspected her quiet and unassuming next door neighbor.

Thirty-one-year-old Daniel kept mainly to himself. He didn’t really like people and people didn’t really seem to like him either and, according to himself, that’s the way things had always been. He later said: “It’s not something I want to admit to, but that’s the way it is and it is very embarrassing and I wish it was different. I’m not someone (who) is compatible with most people… I feel very nervous and apprehensive around people, especially in large classroom settings.” 

He was referring specifically to his time in school, where he claimed that the other children would constantly bully him and call him a “loser.”

In the time leading up to that fateful night with Alicia, the police had been called to his house on at least one occasion when he’d threatened to kill himself, and he was hospitalized on at least one other occasion. He described himself as someone who suffered from many mental health problems and was a borderline alcoholic.

In his taped confession that was later played in court, Daniel described what had happened that night when he’d approached Alicia shortly after Sean had dropped her off home. According to Daniel, he and Alicia had quickly gotten into a heated argument.

“She insulted me and called me a loser, and that’s what really got me going.”

He then slapped Alicia across the face and pushed her to the ground. He then began kneeing her in the chest over and over until Alicia was winded and couldn’t fight back anymore. Then he took her head and banged it into the ground until Alicia was dead.

Daniel then lined the inside of his truck to make sure he wouldn’t leave any evidence behind, and drove her body to the wooded location she was later found in. He also discarded some of her remains and other evidence in that same location three weeks after her death. When Daniel returned home that night, he cleaned up the scene and taken a shower. All actions that the prosecution would argue meant that Daniel had committed murder when he’d killed Alicia.

The Trial and Aftermath

The prosecution was in a position to put this to the court because Daniel wanted to plead guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter to avoid going to trial. The courts found that they agreed with the prosecution. Daniel’s actions that night were underlined with cold calculations and chilling problem-solving that had left the investigators stumped. If he hadn’t come forward himself, who knows if the police would ever have turned their suspicions away from Sean and towards Daniel on their own.

At trial, the video of Daniel’s taped confession continued to play. When asked to write a letter to Alicia and her loved ones, Daniel then broke down and started crying. “I would say I had no right to take your daughter’s life. I am beyond words. I cannot possibly express how sorry I am for what I have (done).”

Sharon Fortis, Alicia’s mother, sat in the second row of the courtroom, watching the confession and crying into her tissues.

Daniel’s mother, Olga, sat in the very back, listening to the words her son says he spoke to her, her fingers around her rosary as Daniel could be heard saying: “I should never have been born. I told her (his mother) that… I’d never do this to hurt you, I’d never put you in this position. All the shame and humiliation you’re going to have to bear being associated with me… You know that she doesn’t need that. (She’s) 71.”

At trial, Daniel appeared unmoved by the footage of himself, but perhaps seeing the crying members of the jury had already clued him into what was in store for him.

When faced with the dilemma of whether Daniel had meant to kill Alicia that night or not, the jury took three hours and forty-five minutes to think it through. If it had been an accident, or had at least not been premeditated, Daniel would be found guilty of manslaughter and not murder and would be given a lesser sentence.

The jury agreed with the prosecution. The continued beating and kneeing on Alicia, followed by the cold and calculated way Daniel had taken care of covering up his crimes, meant that it had at least been intentional to some degree. Maybe Daniel hadn’t approached Alicia that night with the idea or motive to kill her, but he had several points in time where he could have stopped before things became irreversible.

Daniel was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to life with the possibility of parole after sixteen years. 

Sean Hine’s Name Is Cleared

With his name now officially cleared, Alicia’s boyfriend Sean Hine was able to breathe a sigh of relief and start the process of healing. His father, Ken Hine, spoke to the Toronto Sun shortly after Daniel Sylvester had turned himself in and said that Sean was: “going through a lot of emotions,” and only just coming to terms with the fact that: “his girlfriend was murdered and not coming back.” 

On behalf of the public, columnist Mike Strobel wrote an article in the Toronto Sun, apologizing to Sean Hine and what he had gone through during the course of Alicia’s investigation.