The mother of a woman who was beaten before plunging from a downtown London balcony more than a decade ago is outraged after discovering her daughter’s attacker has a social media account declaring his innocence and promoting a book he wrote behind bars.
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Justin Primmer, a mixed martial arts fighter with links to the Hells Angels, was labelled a dangerous offender in 2017 after notching nearly four dozen convictions and spending 14 years behind bars for violent crimes including manslaughter and assault causing bodily harm.
Susan Gerth has been raising the alarm about the danger Primmer, 40, poses to the community since her daughter Desiree Gallagher suffered a near-fatal fall from the seventh-floor balcony of his Talbot Street apartment in 2013.
Primmer was given a six-month sentence after pleading guilty to assault causing bodily harm — police seized a cellphone containing photographs of Gallagher’s badly beaten face — but the cause of the fall was never determined and remains under investigation.
Gerth, whose daughter died in 2015 at age 23 from complications related to injuries from the fall, has fought to keep Desiree’s memory alive and Primmer locked up.
She recently discovered an account for Primmer, who changed his name to Justin Ruhl, on the social media platform X.
“It’s a bit shocking to find out he can have social media from inside prison,” Gerth said. “I was like, ‘How could that be?’ But it’s possible somebody from the outside is posting for him.”
The posts on the X account, created a year ago, are mostly related to boxing, mixed martial arts, right-wing politics and promoting Primmer’s self-published book on Muay Thai boxing. Some photos posted on the account show Primmer training in prison and posing with other inmates.
It’s unclear who is making the posts on the account. Inmates in Canadian federal prisons aren’t allowed to access the internet. An interview request sent to the X user went unanswered.
Other posts claim Primmer was wrongfully convicted and attack police, the Crown and the courts. Some posts link to a website, freejustinruhl.com, that’s no longer active.
“As everyone knows, I’m wrongfully convicted . . . But I’m fighting to prove my innocence and get back to my fight life,” Primmer says in a recording from a video call from prison posted on X in September.
Gerth said she plans to report the social media content to Corrections Canada, the federal agency responsible for incarceration and rehabilitation of convicts.
“He’s not taking accountability for his actions,” Gerth said of Primmer. “He never will.”
Gerth is also encouraging social media users to share the stories of her daughter and Bill Welch, the Stratford man Primmer stabbed to death in 2003, with Primmer’s followers.
This isn’t the first time Primmer’s presence online has surprised and upset Gerth. In 2018, she stumbled across his profile on an inmate dating website while Googling her daughter’s name. In his profile, Primmer claimed he was falsely convicted and had a “warm heart.”
A three-page letter sent to The Free Press in 2021 signed by Primmer and addressed from the Beaver Creek Institution, a federal prison in Gravenhurst, proclaimed Primmer’s innocence, took aim at the justice system and his defence lawyers and mentioned his upcoming book.
Primmer is now an inmate at the Millhaven Institution, west of Kingston, where Gerth travelled in August 2023 to read a victim impact statement at his parole hearing. Also at the hearing was Welch’s widow. Primmer was denied parole, but he’ll be eligible to reapply this year.
The convictions that led to Primmer’s dangerous offender designation, which carries an indeterminate sentence with no chance of parole for seven years, involved assaults on his then-girlfriend. One beating was for refusing to have sex with one of Primmer’s friends in exchange for cocaine, court heard.
The assaults weren’t reported to police until 2014 after Primmer’s attack on Gallagher. The balcony fall left Gallagher, a Mohawk College student who met Primmer during a visit to London, with a traumatic brain injury, broken spine, loss of sight and other injuries.
But Gallagher vowed she’d walk again and was making progress in the months before her death.
“I was so proud of her to see the fight she had in her,” Gerth said in an interview after her daughter’s death. “She came so far in two years.”
Gerth launched the Ride for Desiree, an annual motorcycle fundraiser honouring Gallagher and raising money for victims of violent crime. The event, now in its 10th year, will be held Aug. 16.