Home sweet homewreck: This is the worst reno story you will ever hear
Jim Pantaleo’s phone winked out sometime after 6:00 a.m. on Aug. 1, 2012. The last message he sent before it died was to his wife, Allison. “Love you forever,” it said. And then, nothing. Jim had spent the day before writing and drinking, slowly. From his perch at the corner of an L-shaped bar at a pub in Toronto’s east end, he tapped away at his laptop. He sipped beer and he did shots of “liquid cocaine,” a mix of Jagermeister and Goldschlager schnapps. Jim had arrived at the pub, Rails and Ales, at about 3 p.m. “He seemed very normal,” says Len Grammenopoulos, the bar’s owner. He ate some food. He joked around. Sometime after midnight, he sent his mother an email with seven letters inside. At about 2:30 a.m., he paid his tab — maybe $60, $70. He high-fived Len and he walked out. “I remember him saying ‘I’m gone,’” Len says. “And that was it.” Jim was gone. When Jim and Allison Pantaleo first met — as coworkers at a pub called Gabby ’s on the Danforth — it was something close to ...