True Crime Conversations acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast was recorded on. In nineteen ninety three, fifteen year old Canadian Chrissy Harn was being a typical teenager. She didn't love school. In fact, she had a history of skipping classes. She was messy, a bit of a tomboy, and, according to a friend, a bit of an easy target for bullies too. She'd been struggling with her parents' divorce.
Her dad lived too far away for regular visits. She didn't really get along with her new stepdad, but she was trying. Amongst the arguments, there would also be moments where they would connect, helping him out in the garage replacing the spark plugs in his car. A sensitive and shy girl, Chrissy wasn't a partier. In fact, her parents had praised her when she'd returned from an event because she said she felt uncomfortable with her peers drinking and smoking.
Chrissy loved her mind Mary Anne, but like any teen parent relationship, they also fought, and so when her mum told her to get to school on the afternoon of May eighteen, nineteen ninety three, she put on her jacket and reluctantly started the short walkover. Mary Anne will remember this moment for the rest of her life like a scar that never heals, because that argument would be the last time she would ever speak to her daughter.
And then she lacked to go to school.
She walked down the other side of the street and around the corner, and that was the last I've seen of her. I'm Claire Murphy and this is True Crime Conversations, a podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the most about them. It's a parent's worst nightmare, a missing child, a police pease force who thinks every teenager is a runaway, and a mother who desperately searches despite the roadblock she faces from
the authorities. The case of missing Ontario teen Chrissy Haron would not be one sold in a year, not even a decade on from her disappearance, but a shock confession, a botched court case, an undercover sting, and more than twenty years later, someone would finally be held accountable for her death. Chrissy Harron's body has never been found, but the person who took her life is paying for his crime thanks to the dedication of a mother and one.
Independent film and podcast maker David Ridgan worked alongside Chrissy's mother, Mary Anne for more than fifteen years as they brought her killer to justice. The host of the Someone Knows Something podcast sat down with us to tell us how a mother's undying love can outlast at all. Before we dive into the interview with David, there are a few key points you should understand to fully grasp Chrissy's story
and David's investigation. Police kept Anthony Ringle in custody for thirty seven hours, five hours of that was before he was even read his rights. He was allowed phone calls to lawyers after he requested legal representation, spending a total of around twenty minutes only on calls with them, but no lawyer attended the questioning. When asked to explain himself on the record, Ringle would only say no questions, no comment. Despite this, police continued to question him, often without taking
notes or recording the conversation. A second officer stepped in to take over the interrogation after it had seemingly wrapped up. Ringle said he did not want to continue and said he was advised by the lawyer not to take them to the place that he had had initially told the officer after calling nine to one one that Chrissy's body was, but they took him anyway. The list of questionable police conduct was adding up as Ringle's confusing and sometimes barely
audible responses continued. He would switch from admitting to the murder to no comment. When asked why he would confess to it if he didn't do it, he gave no real answer. Several undercover police officers would infiltrate the trailer park where Ringle lived. They connected with him by telling him how they too were victims doing it tough in life. Then one night they sat down and watched the documentary
about him. In the footage taken over many hours, Ringle would get upset with what he said were inconsistencies in the documentary's telling of his story. He would say they got it wrong when they claimed he drowned her. He had, in fact, more suffocated Chrissy by pushing her face down into the mud. He explained how he'd used her jacket to restrict her hands as he had nothing to tie her up with that enabled him. He said to remove
her pants. He described the location where it all took place, just across the river, and how he had just come across her in the park that day, a place she used to frequent. He explained how he left her out there the first night, before returning to cover her body with sticks and logs the next day. Ringle also told the undercover officers how he'd thought about doing it again, but in almost attempting to justify the crime, Ringle said that by only doing it once and never again, essentially
he'd been a good person. He even went as far as to say that he hoped he had the opportunity to apologize to Chrissy in the afterlife, where he would ask her was her life better before or after he did what he did. I know you've been investigating the case of Christine or Chrissy as she was known harn For gosh, it must be getting close to two decades now, but I'd love to take you back to the beginning. When did you first hear about her story and what led you to really focus in on this.
One for Christine Herron. I'm a documentary filmmaker before I was a podcaster, and I had been looking at cold cases in general for television since two thousand and four, and at the time I found out about Chrissie's case, I was developing some television documentaries for CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in late two thousands. I think about cold cases obviously, and I recall Chrissie's case made the shortlist
pretty much right away for several reasons. I attended a memorial service for her in Hanover, which is a small town here in Ontario, southwest Ontario, just to do some initial research and something about the service for her, her photo up there on the stand, how people spoke about her, the whole atmosphere, it was very thick. It made me want to try to help, and I remember I remember saying to the associate producer who was there with me at the time, that Chrissy was someone I wish I
had been able to meet. And I remember actually crying, and I remember feeling this kind of heat of frustration about the case. You know, I just kind of knew that I wanted to help on it, but I wasn't able to at the time. There are other cases took over in the early stages, but eventually I did get to Chrissie's case as the fourth in a series of films I made for CBC, and then the podcast kind of came after that, So there's several stages of production that went into Chrissie's case.
Well, talk to me a bit about what it was about Chrissy that made you feel like she was someone that you wanted to meet. What was she like and what did you learn about who she was as a person.
Christine was fifteen at the time she disappeared. She was rebellious, she didn't like school, but she enjoyed her walks outside. She liked the natural world, she liked reading, she liked being around children. She had that kind of, like I say, kind of counterintuitive nature that maybe she didn't get along with everybody, but she was very kind and I could just tell the way people were talking about her. But
that's what she was like. And you know, when I met her mother, Mary Anne, I saw some video of Chrissy at the time and it was quite touching around the Christmas tree and things like that. It's hard to explain really what makes me want to take on a case. There's some other factors that were interesting as well, but mainly just the way it struck me at that ceremony for her.
Well, let's delve into Chrissy's story. It's May eighteen, nineteen ninety three. You mentioned there that she didn't love going to school, and she'd woken up that morning and claimed to be unwell. Whether she actually was or not is a question many parents ask themselves about their children when
they're trying to get out of going to school. But her mum was a bit concerned about the truancy officer Maryann who you mentioned, and insisted her daughter does go to school that day, so she kind of sends her off. What was Chrissy's reaction to her mom trying to force her to go to school that day.
Well, I think it's like anything, if you try to make it happen, the opposite happens. If you try to force that idea out of your head, it's actually it galvanizes the idea in your head. So I think that by trying to get Chrissy to go to school, she was less likely to want to go. But eventually I think maybe it formulate a plan formulated in Chrissy's head that Okay, I'll go to school, but not go to school.
You know, I'll go to school the school the long way, and it turned out that on that morning she was sick. And it was May eighteenth, nineteen ninety three. As you said, they had an argument and the obtruancy officer called, and so it was I guess it was around one or midday in the afternoon that Chrissy finally said okay, got up, left and slammed the door. And this was allegedly on her way to school. Mary Anne saw go down the street and turn the corner and that was the last
that she ever saw of her. And it turns out that Christy didn't go to school that day.
Was her mother, then, the last person to actually see her alive, apart from the person who would take her life. Did anybody else spot her in the aftermath of her disappearance.
There was nobody else that came forward at the time. Nobody else reported to police or buy police in to my knowledge, and I've looked through thousands of pages of investigative information over two different police departments, the local department and the opp the Ontario Provincial Police which took over in nineteen ninety nine. Nobody else saw Christy that day to my knowledge or anybody else's except for the person who killed her.
So Marianne does what most parents would do in this situation where their kid, who is known for skipping classes at school, does calls all their friends. Doesn't have a big circle of friends, but she know none of them have seen her. Police states too early to really do anything, but she does report it to police later that What was the police's initial response to mary Anne's request for them to search for her daughter.
Well, initially, police, and in many cases this happens, right or wrong, police suggests that she'll come back, you know, so she's a runaway, and usually that's a pretty temporary maneuver by police. Usually it's give it some time. Unfortunately, everybody knows in the true crime world at the first seventy two hours and blah blah blah are important, and they are. And in this case though the police kept
to that story, kept to that narrative. The local police chief his daughter had a habit of departing, apparently according to him, so he was saying, citing these kind of anecdotal stories of she'll be back, my daughter always comes
back kind of thing. But that went on for like a year, and there were these false sightings of Christy and Toronto police kept, you know, suggesting that maybe she was with those people that were being seen in Toronto, or she was with a bunch of punk rockers or something. But basically, nothing ever came back of a real true sighting of Chrissy, and in the meantime, important time was passing.
If you get to know the story, you'll realize that this was a massive mistake at this time because they could have probably found her if they did a proper search. They only undertook a rudimentary search around town and they never found any trace of her. But if they had taken it a little bit more seriously, I'm not sure what would have made them take it more seriously, maybe more experience. It was a very small force, local town
force they had over police. In fact, the guy, the man who investigated the case in the beginning, was later arrested for you know, some kind of horrible crimes he himself committed, So I'm not sure how great of an investigator he was. The Ontario Provincial Police when they took over the case, reinvestigated everything, They reinterviewed everybody, They talked to other people that they hadn't talked to before, and the other investigation, but still nothing happened. You know, that
was nineteen ninety nine. This happened in nineteen ninety three, so nothing the police did really made any difference to the case.
You're listening to True Crime Conversations with me Claire Murphy. I'm speaking with David Ridgan, host of the podcast Someone Knows Something about the case of Chrissy Haron. Next, David and I dive into why Marianne searched for her daughter was derailed and how the community in Hanover, Ontario not only failed to help, but actually told her to give up.
Do you think the police's attitude to Chrissy's disappearance contributed to how the community responded to Marianne and her other family members in that time, because Marianne spoke to you and said that she would put up posters asking for information about the whereabouts of her missing daughter that would get torn down, and that people kept telling her to kind of let it go, and that you know, Chrissy
was just off, you know, being a rebellious teenager. Do you think the police's attitude didn't help that the community didn't seem to rally around them.
Yeah, I'm not sure that it did. Help. I think the communities tend to have kind of a singular mind sometimes, and if one person thinks that something, then many of them will think the same thing. You know. They definitely Chrissy and Marianne were not wealthy people. They were not from a wealthy background or family, working class family very much so. And I'm not sure how much that impacted
the case, but I can only imagine it. Did you know, this person's not as important as everybody else, which is another part of the reason I thought the case was important. Yeah, I mean, if police take it seriously, other people will take it seriously too.
We did mention that eventually the opp does take over the case from the local police, but that is six years down the track. Do we know what actually led to that being escalated beyond the local police.
I think that I think the local police in Hannover asked, but I also think that there was some pressure from Marianna and her family about this case, and I think that that eventually took over. See, the OPP in Ontario at that time was expanding and they were trying to basically user small town forces and take over them and be paid by the municipality instead of the small town force. So they would argue, for example, we're a force of a thousand members investigators, we have a huge forensic team,
and we got lots of money. Why would you want to have four men or four people, you know, policing your city or town of six thousand when you could have you know, uber force taking over. But you know a lot of times towns did pay to have OPP come in and then we're unhappy because the sort of roster or menu of what they were going to be
providing investigatively was not what they expected. However, in this case, the OPP took over the case and I think eventually took over policing in the town, just like many other small towns on Ontario at the time. So I guess it was part of an expansionist effort. So it kind of worked into the parents requesting that the OPP take it over. So you know, it might have been the thin edge of the wedge that allowed the OPP to kind of start to make their move on that town
as well. I maybe talking out of my ass on that one. I'm not exactly sure about that history, but that's pretty much what I think happened.
What Chrissy's family told anything about these investigations, like how much information were they given after the escalation to the opp.
Very little, and that's not abnormal. But when you hide things from parents, you do it to help protect the case to some extent. I understand the impulse to do that. You don't want to distribute information to somebody who you think might then tell someone else that there's a suspect or that you're talking to this guy or you know, and then that information gets sed it around the community and soon enough, everybody's pointing at the same guy just
because the police said they're interviewing him to somebody. Right, So you're kind of seeding the information, the poisoning the case by giving out too much information. But you would think that at some point police would learn to trust family members and realize that they kind of need the information to kind of help them get through their day to day, you know, they need something to hold on to.
You can see how that might be an issue because the place where they live is not big, right, It's not a huge community of people. It's less than ten thousand, and that's pretty small town mentality when you think.
About it, right, Yeah, it's pretty small. It was a pretty big industrial base when it started, it was like a furniture making place in Ontario. I think a lot of German settlers moved in at one point and lots of furniture production. But when I started working there and when Chrissy disappeared, it was kind of a shadow of that. Most lot of abandoned buildings and old factories around, and it was a small town down on its luck to some extent. Yeah, when I got in there.
We mentioned out factories. What's a really interesting piece of evidence was that a young man in that community claimed, in the aftermath of Chrissy's disappearance that he received a phone call from someone claiming to be her and that she was in fact at one of these old abandoned factories. Did anything come of that?
Nothing came of that, and in any of the documentation I've read extensively on that, it feels like somebody was playing a joke on this guy. I'm sure he got the call, but it felt like somebody was making a prank call on him, and I think that's what police figured out at the end as well. I mean, obviously Chrissy didn't show up. It was two or two months later. I think she would have had no resources. It's a small town, like, yeah, you can hide in a building
for a couple of days, but it's not credible. And there was some other issues with the person who got the call, which I'm not going to mention now, but it seems like that it wasn't the first time that crank calls were made. What's to say, Well, let's fuss forward.
Eleven years has passed since Chrissie's disappeared. It's August two thousand and four. There's finally a breakthrough in the case, but it does not come from any police investigation. Can you talk us through a bit of the surprise confession?
Part of the reason I was intrigued by Chrissy's case. The other part is because there appeared to be a suspect. But this is a suspect that the police had not found. Up until August of two thousand and four. Police had no idea what happened to Christy, as I just talked about. And remember, Christy disappeared, as he said, eleven years ago,
eleven years before in May of nineteen ninety three. So in August two thousand and four, at a party with his family members, a man aged thirty five at the time. Near the end of the evening, after some drinks and some kind of upset he had with his family, started telling people that he had killed Christine Herron. He picked up phone, he dialed nine one one and then he
hung up. He changed his mind, but the police responded anyway, I don't know what happens in Australia, but here, even on a hang up to a nine one one call, they will respond to find out what the hang up was all about. So the police officer arrives, the man notices and starts walking down the stairs towards him, holding his hands up as if he wants to be handcuffed, and he confesses again I killed Chrissy, says I killed Chrissy to the responding officer, and he says, I can
show police where I left her. And at the same time, eleven years earlier, when Chrissy disappeared, the guy would have been twenty four years old at that time, and his name was Anthony Edward Wringle. And this is a guy police said no and was not on the radar. Local guy,
local guy. And he was born on December tenth, nineteen sixty eight, one of six children five for nine or thereabouts, blunt features, thin browning hair, and he had worked at the local Canadian Tire which is like a hardware store that yes does sell tires here, but he was unemployed at the time in May nineteen ninety three when Chrissy left the house to allegedly go to school that May, and when I met him, he was living between locations like at a family member's house, couch surfing, and at
a local trailer park. So Anthony Ringo goes through the stages that what would have been a murder trial in two thousand and six. They took him to the police station and interrogated him, but the judge throws the case out basically because of police mistakes. So this is two thousand and six, and I heard about the case in two thousand and nine, so the case has stayed in two thousand and six for a year. So basically it sits in suspended animation until new evidence is brought forward.
But no new evidence was brought forward, so Ringo is freed and nothing new happens, and it just sits there from two thousand and six onwards, And at the time
Anthony still lived in the area. Nobody did anything. There was very little reporting on it, like there was like article in the paper about this, No reporter talks to him, no police action can be seen happening still two thousand and six, and then add three years more and I come on the scene two thousand and nine, church service, et cetera, and I begin working with Chrissy's mom, Mary Anne.
Police barely assist me, but regardless, we're able to uncover many of the court files and investigative documents from the case. By freedom of information. Mary Anne for the first time learns what's actually happening or what happened, why did it fail, why did the case get thrown out? Some of what Anthony said, and we go from there. That's the television doc part. So that's what I'm shooting with my camera for television. So the podcast covers that and takes over
with the new process. So throughout the process we have mary Anne confronting the murderer, Like we try to go to visit him, he won't talk to us. It doesn't work out the scenario the way we had imagined it. So I go try to speak to this guy myself, Anthony Wringle, I do meet him. I knock, cold knock, on his trailer door at a trailer park, the same trailer park. We speak for a long time and I ask him the direct and pointed question did you kill Christine?
And you'll hear the answers and podcasts. So all that information about the case, the court drama, talking to Ringo, all that stuff goes into a twenty minute doc made for CBC goes to air in the spring of twenty twelve. And then shortly after the documentary went to air the television documentary, police start an undercover operation on Anthony Wringle
in the same trailer park where I met him. So then the podcast takes over and tells that story and picks up with the TV show left off because nobody knows about this on an undercover operation. This is all brand new news that this podcast is breaking.
Basically, So do police actually tell you that your documentary is the catalyst for this undercover operation? Do they say why they actually start this when they've left this case? Kind of just sit this as.
I long, I can only assume that it had something to do with it, because it basically the documentary exposes a ton of police errors and mistakes, and it's very embarrassing for the opp who's been telling people that they're such an amazing investigative force, and to some extent, they are. So it picks up tells the story of the undercover operation, and it shows directly that the work Mary and I did is literally used by police so they can arrest Anthony again. So the film is literally used so they
can get them again in February twenty thirteen. So except this time, the trial in twenty sixteen goes forward and he's convicted and now is serving a life sentence here in Ontario in a federal penitentiary, a second degree murder. They got him on and yeah, I feel good about it. That's the next question. How do you feel about that? And it's pretty amazing that the work did its job, So that's all I can say about it. You know,
I think people have to listen for themselves. But it's a real up and down roller coaster and quite satisfying. It's over fifteen years of work.
So what's really interesting too, is you know that work. You have worked alongside Marianne for that entire time, and without you, she would not know the majority of the things that happened during the first court case or even during the second because she was considered a potential witness, so wasn't allowed to sit in court, so she never got to see any of those undercover videos that were recorded by police. You actually played them to her? What
was that like? Because Ringle goes into quite a bit of detail about what he actually did, and that would have been heartbreaking to show to her.
It is heartbreaking and it's awful, and Marianne wanted to see it, and I still didn't show her. She knows this. I didn't show her everything because some of it is
just too it's really hard. It's one thing that you know that somebody killed someone, there's the perpetrator, but when you hear them talking about it in such great detail in the confession that they gave to the undercover officer and they don't know they're being filmed, it's a real vulnerability that they kind of expose everything about what they're thinking was and it's quite dark in a way that's blacker than black, you know, in terms of that kind
of darkness. So I didn't want to expose Marianne to that level. But I do think, and she believes too, that confronting the stuff actually helps. So we made the decision to watch it together some of the confession just to kind of get the story of what happened that day, like why did you take her? Et cetera. And I mean the answer why is like I hate mondays, you know,
like why did you do it? I mean, that's not really that interesting actually to me, and I don't think to Marianne, but it's more sort of tell me what happened, you know, what happened that day. So I think that's what she had in head. And we watched some of the undercover stuff together. I try to talk about the other things that I didn't show her sort of in a general way, and I think it did help her. I mean she's told me it has, That's all I can go on. And she's told others that it has.
So she does say to you though that and she said this to other Metia outlets too, that not even Wringle ending up with a life sentence is closure for her. That you can never truly get closure in a case like this, but you have been trying to help her kind of get as close as possible to that. Right. Has Ringle ever agreed to sit down and speak with Marianne about what happened.
That day, not yet. I mean, for I think closures bullshit myself, and I think Marianne kind of agrees. But I think it's kind of a media presentation, what the idea of closure, because it kind of adds an ending to a story. I don't think closure is actually possible. I think it's more acceptance that you're looking for and trying to be able to move away from having to try to solve the case every day and every second in your head. It's okay to walk away from that,
and it's okay to have a good time. It's okay to live my life again, you know. And I don't think that means closure. I just think it means that you have to accept this thing in you that's horrible. You know that you're this lost. You have to accept that and just live with it like a bubble inside you that's never going to go away, and then continue. And that's that's what she's looking for. But also she
wants to know where Chrissy is. And that's one of the things that I've found in many cold cases or with the families of missing people, is that they don't care about the perpetrator. They don't give a fuck about that person. They don't give a fuck about what that person wanted to do or what they did. They just want to know where their loved one is. They want to know where their daughter is. Bring her to me. I don't care about you, you know, bring her to me,
Tell me where she is. And I think if some perps knew exactly how simple it might be to help themselves and help the families, they could just tell that a little part of the equation, you know. So I've been trying to help Marianne find Chrissy because we know where generally she was led to by Wringle that day, very specifically actually, and we did try with kadaver dogs.
Kim Cooper, whom I'm known to be, you know, to work with and on other cases, came with me, and we went too late in the season because the ferns were almost above my head and the dogs. It helps to have an open area dogs. It can't be closed in like big umbrellas over the ground. It has to
be open so the smell moves around. So we're going back on Good Friday actually this month, because the ferns won't be opposite high I actually don't even think they'll be emerged that be what they call fiddle heads here, which is like the tiny one foot high things, but that will be much more preferable. I think we have a good chance of getting scent and maybe finding Chrissy or some element of Chrissy's remains, So we're going to go back and try again.
David, How do cases like this impact you personally? I mean, you see something like this where it is it is literally people's worst nightmare that a stranger will come out of nowhere snatch you or snatch your child and horrifically, you know, rape and murder you or your child like that is the stuff of nightmares. How do you personally emotionally get through that, especially when you're there with mary Anne with her mum, and not take some of that emotion on board.
Well, I guess there's no real secret. I guess I do take it on board, and I don't really deal with it, you know, Like I think at a younger age in this process, I might have thought that I could get through it without getting affected. But the truth is, like I can just keep pushing things downstream, and then when the work's over, maybe six months later, that wave catches up and I often feel sudden, a sudden panic attack or can't breathe, or moment where it's just overwhelming
sleep problems. And I've got another case i'm working on right now, and several more planned. I don't know how much more I can do. You know, I'm not a younger man. I think people think I'm like twenty five. But I've done a ton of these, and I feel like I've work cases just as hard, if not harder, than some police investigators have, and certainly been as exposed or maybe even more to some of the stuff because of the relationship with the family and how close and
how long the relationship is. But I did choose this. It's not, oh poor David, you know, like I chose. I choose to be in the seats talking to you, and it's you know, the families and the police that experience these cases have my sympathies, and I'm, you know that part of the reason. I know what they're feeling, and I know that this situation, I can help the situation. So I feel like I'm using the things I've learned and helping them to help myself, which.
If that makes sense, David, It's been nearly ten years since Ringo pled guilty back in twenty sixteen. What do we know of him now? Is there any chance of him getting out of jail anytime soon? Any possibility he might let the family know what happened that day or where Chrissy is.
We've been trying to get in touch with him. I think that eventually he will get out. There will be an opportunity to be released. He may or may not make that opportunity on the first time or two. Eventually, I think he will be released, and I think eventually we will be able to talk to him, Like I'm not giving up on that approach to him. Once he gets out, he'll be in the community again. He'll be
right back, probably in the same trailer park. And I'm just going to go back up and knock on the door. If I'm eighty, I'll do it, you know, like I don't go away, which is part of the problem, but it's also part of the promise that I make. So that's how I get into these cases.
Thanks to David for helping us tell this story. True Crime Conversations is hosted by me Claire Murphy and produced by Charlie Blackman, with audio design by Jacob Brown, thank you so much for listening. I'll be back next week with another true crime conversation.