Episode 403: Nicholas Melady Jr. was 24 years old when he stepped onto a wooden scaffold above the stone walls of Goderich Gaol in December of 1869 , about to become the central figure in Canada’s last public hanging after the brutal murders of his father, Nicholas Melady Sr. and stepmother, Ellen , in a quiet Huron County farmhouse. In this episode, we return to a world of bush farms, rough taverns, and bitter family feuds over land and inheritance, tracing a path from a whispered meeting on a ...
Jan 26, 2026•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 403
Episode 402: On July 31, 1987 , an ordinary summer afternoon in Edmonton, Alberta , ended in catastrophe. A powerful tornado cut through the city’s southeast, killing 27 people and leaving entire neighbourhoods destroyed in minutes. In this episode, we examine the second-deadliest tornado in Canadian history through firsthand survivor accounts and direct statements from officials who faced a disaster few believed could happen in a major Canadian city. The day would later become known as “ Black ...
Jan 19, 2026•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 402
Episode 401: At the start of the twentieth century, Vancouver, B.C., was a fast-growing Pacific port. Most residents were white settlers of British or European descent, but Chinese and Japanese communities were already well established and growing. They lived, worked, and built businesses in neighbourhoods like Chinatown and Powell Street, playing a central role in the city’s economy while being denied political rights and social acceptance. By 1907 , economic anxiety and racial resentment had h...
Jan 12, 2026•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 401
Episode 400: In October 1894, 18-year-old Frank Westwood was shot on the doorstep of his Parkdale home. The killing shocked T oronto and sparked a frantic search for a suspect. Weeks later, a mixed-race tailor named Clara Ford walked into a Toronto police station and was quickly accused of the murder. With no weapon, no motive, and a disputed confession, her trial exposed deep racial bias and divided the city. This episode looks at Clara’s life, the investigation that targeted her, and the after...
Jan 05, 2026•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 400
Episode 399: As the clock strikes midnight, not everyone welcomes the New Year with champagne and resolutions. In this episode of Dark Poutine , we explore the darker, stranger, and sometimes dangerous traditions used around the world—and across Canada—to chase away bad luck and invite prosperity . From gunfire and forgotten parades in Newfoundland, to Hogmanay superstitions, poverty-banishing rituals, icy polar bear swims, and fire-lit celebrations meant to ward off evil, these customs reveal w...
Dec 29, 2025•57 min•Ep. 386
Episode 398: It was supposed to be a quiet Canadian Christmas—until every butter tart in the country vanished overnight. From Nanaimo to Newfoundland , kitchens were left empty, bakers bewildered, and the RCMP at a loss. When the case turns strange, Santa Claus himself steps in, uncovering a nationwide confectionery conspiracy that leads to old grudges, familiar faces, and a suspect far closer to home than anyone expected. Dark, absurd, and very Canadian, The Great Canadian Butter Tart Heist is ...
Dec 22, 2025•54 min•Ep. 398
Episode 397: In April 1895, two young women, both twenty-one, from San Francisco’s Emmanuel Baptist Church vanished days apart. Blanche Lamont , a dedicated teacher-in-training, and Minnie Williams , a hardworking domestic with dreams of her own classroom, both entered the same church and never left. Their bodies were later discovered inside the building, setting off one of the most sensational murder trials in California history. This episode explores the lives of Blanche and Minnie, the discov...
Dec 15, 2025•57 min•Ep. 397
Episode 396: In this episode, we learn about an enigmatic narcissistic psychopath who led the Californian cult called The Children of Thunder . Glenn Taylor Helzer , and the other leadership was comprised of his brother Justin Helzer and their follower Dawn Godman . Raised in a strict Mormon home, Taylor’s life spiralled after years of mental health trouble. By 2000 , the trio had formed a cult under Taylor’s delusional leadership. That summer, they murdered Ivan and Annette Stineman, Selina Bis...
Dec 08, 2025•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 396
Episode 395: On a cold December day in 1983 , McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario , was shaken by a deeply unsettling crime. Dr. Edith Wightman , a respected scholar, was discovered dead in her office: bound with tape, handcuffed, and suffocated with a cloth. The investigation took an even stranger turn when police arrested Michael Allen Crowley , a chemist from Welland, who had been seen on campus in disguise, dressed in women’s clothing and a wig. With no personal connection to the victim...
Dec 01, 2025•54 min•Ep. 395
Episode 394: On an August night in 1991, the quiet fields near Carp, Ontario , were interrupted by strange lights arcing across the sky—a sight so odd it left locals searching for answers. Soon, anonymous packages began to arrive, sent to UFO researchers all over Canada and the United States, packed with photos, documents, and a tape showing what appeared to be a UFO blazing above the marsh . The sender called himself “ Guardian ” and claimed this was not the first time such events occurred near...
Nov 24, 2025•1 hr•Ep. 394
Episode 393: On a cold February day in 2022, tragedy struck the small communities of Creston and Kimberley, British Columbia . Julia Howe , a familiar face to her neighbours, was found lifeless in the bathroom of her partner's home. Just hours later and nearly a hundred kilometres away, David Creamer , a father and trusted friend, was discovered dead in his own house. Both initially believed accidental or natural, no one suspected that these two deaths would soon be linked. The true story was fi...
Nov 17, 2025•54 min
Episode 392: On the morning of June 28, 2022 , as staff and customers began their day at the Bank of Montreal in Saanich, British Columbia , twin brothers Matthew and Isaac Auchterlonie entered the branch clad in body armour and carrying semi-automatic rifles. Within moments, they herded twenty-two people into the bank’s vault and set the stage for one of the most violent confrontations in recent Canadian history. More than a hundred shots were fired in the chaos that followed, leaving six polic...
Nov 10, 2025•51 min•Ep. 392
Episode 391: At dawn on December 26, 2004 , a massive undersea earthquake off Sumatra’s west coast — one of the strongest ever recorded — triggered a devastating tsunami across the Indian Ocean . Waves up to 30 metres high struck Aceh Province within minutes, then swept across Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, the Maldives, and as far as East Africa. Entire communities vanished, and more than 227,000 people in fourteen countries were killed, making it the deadliest tsunami in recorded history. At leas...
Nov 03, 2025•57 min•Ep. 391
Episode 390: When most Canadians think of occult-related witch trials , their minds drift south to Salem, Massachusetts, or across the ocean to medieval Europe. The popular narrative suggests that Canada, with its reputation for tolerance and peace, remained untouched by the supernatural hysteria that gripped other nations. This perception, deeply embedded in the Canadian consciousness, paints our country as somehow above the dark chapters of witch-hunting that stained other societies. Even Dark...
Oct 27, 2025•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 390
Episode 389: On a rain-soaked evening on June 13th, 1833, two young law students faced each other across a muddy field near Perth, Ontario , pistols in hand. John Wilson , a 20-year-old from humble farming stock, gripped his weapon with trembling fingers as rain dripped from his dark hair. Sixty feet away, 22-year-old Robert Lyon , handsome, aristocratic, and the son of a British officer, stood with the practiced composure of a gentleman born to privilege. Between them lay more than just distanc...
Oct 20, 2025•54 min•Ep. 389
Episode 388: On the morning of August 5, 2013, Campbellton, New Brunswick , faced an unthinkable tragedy. Police and first responders were called to an apartment above Reptile Ocean, the town’s reptile and fish shop, where they found Connor and Noah Barthe , brothers aged six and four, dead after a sleepover with their friend Jayce Savoie. Sometime in the night, a 12-foot, 53-pound African rock python owned by shopkeeper Jean-Claude Savoie escaped its enclosure, slithered through a vent, and fat...
Oct 13, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 388
Episode 387: On December 26, 2005 , around 5:15 p.m., there was a gunfight outside the Foot Locker store on Yonge Street in downtown Toronto . Unfortunately, a fifteen-year-old girl named Jane Creba was shot and killed. She was an innocent bystander among hundreds of Boxing Day shoppers who were in the area at the time of the shooting. Sadly, she was caught in the middle of the gunfire and died from a single bullet that hit her in the back and pierced her aorta. In addition to Jane, six other pe...
Oct 06, 2025•1 hr•Ep. 387
Episode 386: In the last episode, we explored the origins of Herbert Baumeister and the early days at Fox Hollow , tracing the stories of early disappearances of gay men around Indiana . The disappearances beginning in the late 1980s and into the 1990s signalled the start of a wave of heartbreak that swept through Indianapolis’s gay community, leaving families and friends desperate for answers. In this episode, we turn our focus to the other lives forever altered by Herb Baumeister’s crimes. We’...
Sep 29, 2025•59 min•Ep. 386
Episode 385: The killings at Fox Hollow Farm are one of Indiana’s darkest chapters. In the early 1990s, Herb Baumeister , a husband, father, and thrift store owner, lived a double life in the upscale suburb of Westfield. Behind the facade of Fox Hollow Farm, he is believed to have lured young men, mostly from local gay bars, to his home, where police later uncovered the remains of at least 25 victims scattered across the estate. Hundreds of burned and crushed bones were found by investigators, r...
Sep 22, 2025•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 385
Episode 384: Driving the prairie roads south of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan , your eyes adjust to an endless sea of grass and sky, where grain elevators rise like sentinels and ragged lines of poplar windbreaks whisper in the steady wind. It’s a landscape that makes you feel both small and free—until, in the middle of the wheat-coloured plains, you come upon a steel-hulled ship sitting high and dry on the grass. This is the Sontiainen , built by F innish immigrant Tom Sukanen , who spent years const...
Sep 15, 2025•57 min•Ep. 384
Episode 383 : On June 18, 2023 , five people boarded the experimental Titan submersible for what was meant to be a once-in-a-lifetime voyage to the wreck of the Titanic , resting nearly four kilometres beneath the North Atlantic. Less than two hours into the descent, all contact with the surface vessel was lost. Over the following days, searchers scoured the area, but hopes for a rescue faded quickly. When remotely operated vehicles finally reached the seabed, they found the Titan reduced to sca...
Sep 08, 2025•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 383
Episode 382: On April 2, 1885 , the tranquil settlement of Frog Lake in what is now Alberta became the scene of a devastating tragedy. Known as the Frog Lake Massacre , this violent episode unfolded during the North-West Rebellion. Nine settlers, among them government officials, two Roman Catholic priests, traders, and a clerk, lost their lives at the hands of a group of Cree warriors led by Wandering Spirit. The attack stemmed from mounting desperation within the Plains Cree community, who face...
Sep 01, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 382
Episode 381: In December 1987 , 12-year-old Trina Campbell , a Métis girl from Brampton, Ontario, was abducted and murdered by Douglas Robert Worth , a violent ex-convict known as the “Pictou Sadist.” Despite psychiatric warnings, Worth had been released months earlier. His relatives’ testimony helped lead police to her remains, and he was convicted of second-degree murder, receiving a life sentence with 23 years before parole eligibility. Now, in 2025, Worth has been released at age 73 and is l...
Aug 25, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 381
Episode 380: The tragic saga of an indigenous man named Stephen Kiyoshk is one of Canada’s most haunting tales of crime, retribution, and the complexities of the justice system. Spanning nearly three decades, the case includes double murder, dramatic trials, passionate community involvement, and a final execution that left deep scars on Walpole Island and the greater Sarnia, Ontario area. The primary victims of this saga were Charles Nahdee and Adam Johns in the notorious 1912 double homicide , ...
Aug 18, 2025•56 min•Ep. 380
Episode 379: In the annals of Canadian folklore and unsolved mysteries, few stories have endured as hauntingly and stubbornly as that of Jerome, the silent, legless man who appeared from out of nowhere on the remote beach of Sandy Cove, Nova Scotia , in September 1863. To this day, no one knows for sure who he was, where he came from, or what chain of events led to his abandonment. What is known, thanks to accounts recorded by locals and later collected by historians and folklorists, is the extr...
Aug 11, 2025•1 hr•Ep. 379
Episode 378 : Fredericton, New Brunswick , in the sultry summer of 1949 , was a community caught between the relief of peacetime and the tensions of post-war hardship. Along the margins of this tidy city lived George Hamilton (25) and Rufus Hamilton (23) , two young black brothers whose lives had been fraught with poverty, exclusion, and desperation. These would be factors in the horrific actions they took, which would soon propel them into local infamy as the last men ever executed in Frederict...
Aug 04, 2025•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 378
Episode 377 : Joyce Carolyn Stevens , the daughter of a preacher from Houston, Texas, and Rose Marie Turford , a Canadian nurse and suburban mother, became infamous as the real-life “ Thelma and Louise .” Their cross-border crime spree in the mid-1990s stunned communities from Houston to Toronto , as they lured, robbed, and humiliated unsuspecting men, all while eluding law enforcement. The case, with its bizarre twists, elaborate disguises, and a mysterious figure named “Avery,” captivated the ...
Jul 28, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 377
Episode 376: On June 6, 2021 , Nathaniel Veltman , 20, deliberately drove his truck into the Afzaal family, Pakistani immigrants, as they walked along the road in London, Ontario. The attack killed four members of the Afzaal family: Talat Afzaal (74), Salman Afzaal (46), Madiha Salman (44), and Yumnah Afzaal (15), and severely injured 9-year-old Fayez Afzaal. Veltman admitted that he had targeted the family solely because they were Muslim, making this Canada’s first fatal vehicle attack prosecut...
Jul 21, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 376
Episode 375: On a bleak November afternoon in 2003, Toronto’s east end became the unlikely stage for a crime so brutal and bizarre that, even years later, it defies belief. The victim was 12-year-old Johnathon Robert Madden , a boy remembered by teachers and friends as “kind and thoughtful,” the kind of child who would go out of his way to walk a younger classmate home just to ensure he was safe. His murder was not the work of a stranger or a notorious criminal, but of his brother, 16-year-old K...
Jul 14, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 375
Episode 374: On a frigid February night in 2020 , the quiet streets of Calgary’s Bowness neighbourhood became the scene of a tragedy that would send shockwaves through the city and beyond. Melissa Rae Blommaert , a loving mother and devoted friend, was found fatally injured—her life stolen in a brutal act of violence. The investigation quickly turned toward someone heartbreakingly close to her: her husband, Ronald John Candaele . As the harrowing details of Melissa’s final hours came to light, s...
Jul 07, 2025•58 min•Ep. 374
