Through his entire life, Jeff Walton Jr. had no idea his father was keeping a secret.
The 35-year-old learned from police earlier this month that his father, who he knew as Jeff Walton the first — a 69-year-old New Orleans Saints fan living in small-town Oklahoma — is not who his son thought him to be.
The senior Walton was born Ronald Stan, a Canadian living in the former Township of East Williams, Middlesex County until September 29, 1977, when he was reported missing after a mysterious early-morning barn fire.
"I'm still trying to put all the puzzle pieces together myself," said the younger Walton reached on the phone. He and the rest of Stan's American family, which includes Walton's stepmom and at least three grandchildren, only found out about his Canadian past this month.
Provincial police in Ontario pieced together the story of Stan in July, when they reopened the file on his disappearance as part of a routine audit of the case file. Const. Laurie Houghton with the Middlesex County OPP attributed the resolution of the case to modern investigative techniques not available in 1977.
"I can't speak to his motives," said Houghton. "We were able to connect the dots."
Stan, who was 32 years old when he disappeared, is considered legally dead in Canada. He was declared deceased by a court in 1986, nearly a decade after his disappearance amid circumstances that still remain murky. Police responded to a fire at a barn near a piece of farmland property owned by Ronald Stan. A witness saw Stan in the area of the barn before the fire and he couldn't be found afterwards.
At least one neighbour recalls the serious blaze in 1977. Bert Toonen said his brother Peter was out with Stan the night of the fire. A young man at the time, Toonen was one of many neighbours who helped investigators search the debris.
"They were my father's pigs in that barn. We were out the next day combing through the wreckage with the police looking for human remains," Toonen said. No human remains were found.
Decades later, Toonen now owns Stan's former property, land which changed hands several times over the years. He lives down the street from Stan's uncle Edward Stan, who moved in down the road with his family shortly after the fire.
Both Toonen and Edward say Stan left behind a wife. Edward says the couple had two children, but that he had little contact with his nephew's family after Ronald Stan's disappearance. The Star attempted to reach people believed to be the wife and children of Stan but was unable to verify whether they were his relatives.
It's not clear how Stan came to be declared deceased. In Ontario at that time, a family member would have had to make the request through court, but Stan's legal status was unclear to at least one family member — his uncle Edward did not know he was legally declared dead. In fact he said he knew Stan was alive, because he saw his nephew in 1997:
"We knew because he came up when his dad died. We saw him then."
Edward said he refused to talk to Stan at his father Henry's funeral, evading the happy-go-lucky nephew he once knew. He knows nothing about Stan's new life in the United States, except for information gathered from provincial police after they contacted him early this month with Stan's whereabouts.
In 2002 the province enacted stricter measures to make it harder to declare someone dead. Prior to the Declarations of Death Act, the court could declare a missing person dead incidentally to another sort of application, said Joshua Eisen, an associate at Toronto law firm Hull and Hull LLP, who deals with wills and estate litigation.
"(A person) would have to start litigation to get their life insurance . . . or something like that," Eisen said. "The court could say that this person is dead for the purposes of a life insurance application or maybe to distribute the money in the will. There had to be some reason for it."
Today, a spouse, next of kin or any person affected by an order declaring that an individual is dead can apply to the courts to have somebody declared dead under only two circumstances: the person has been missing for seven years or they disappeared in circumstance of peril.
The consequences of declaring a person dead are very severe, Eisen said; a person declared dead loses all right to their own property. An applicant has to show nobody has heard from the missing, they've made reasonable inquiries into the person's location, they have no reason to believe the missing person is alive and there has to be enough evidence to find that the person's dead.
Courts, he said, were always reluctant to grant this sort of release.
"You really have to go off the map to be declared dead," said Eisen.
Jeff Walton Jr. doesn't blame his father for what happened but is still dealing with the shock of the new information. He declined to discuss the specifics of his father's flight or any potential motivation.
Stan, now 69 years old, suffers from vascular dementia and heart disease, his son says. He was in a nursing home when the police made the connection. Stan's American wife, Debra Proctor, filed for divorce upon hearing the news, said Walton.
"It's been tough on me, but he's still my father. It doesn't change the man I knew for 35 years," said Walton. "Hopefully one day he can sit down and write a book and remember all the stuff he's been through in his life. It'd be a damn good book I'll tell you that, just from what I've heard."
The Ontario Provincial Police said there are no charges being laid and the case is now closed.
With files from The Canadian Press
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