Peter Demeter (born April 19, 1933 in Budapest) was a successful real‑estate developer in Toronto who, on July 18, 1973, found his wife Christine Ferrari—a 33‑year‑old Austrian-born model—brutally bludgeoned in the garage of their Mississauga home. Prosecutors revealed through testimony and secretly recorded conversations that he had hired a hitman (nicknamed “The Duck”) to kill her in order to claim a $1 million life‑insurance policy, and that both husband and wife had allegedly discussed plotting to murder the other. In December 1974, Demeter was convicted of arranging the murder—following what was then Canada’s longest trial—and sentenced to life in prison. Later, while in a halfway house during parole, he was convicted in 1985 of planning additional murders—of his cousin’s son and his lawyer’s daughter—resulting in consecutive life sentences that ensure he remains incarcerated to this day