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You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
journalist and author Dan Zufanski, Good Evening. When forty year old Esther Castellani died a slow, in agonizing death in nineteen sixty five, the official cause was at first undetermined. The day after Ester's funeral, her husband, Renee, packed up his girlfriend Lallie, his daughter Jeanine, and Lolly's son Dawn
in the company car and took off for Disneyland. If not for the doggedness of the doctor who treated Esther, Renee, then a charismatic and handsome radio personality, would have been free to marry Lawley, who was the station's pretty twenty somethings receptionist. Instead, Renee was charged with capital murder for
poisoning his wife with arsenic laced milkshakes. Murder by Milkshake is the compelling story of the Castellanis and of their daughter, Jeanine, who was eleven at the time of her mother's murder and who clung to her father's innocence, even committing perjury
during his trial. Rigorously researched and based on dozens of interviews with family, friends, and co workers, Murdered by Milkshake documents the sensational case that kept the city spellbound while providing a snapshot of the man mad men s, social
and political realities of the sixties. The book that we're featuring this evening is Murdered by Milkshake, an astonishing true story of adultery, arsenic and a charismatic killer, with my special guest journalists, an author and crime historian Eve Lazareth. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for agreeing to this interview. Eve Lazareth, thanks so much for
having me. Thank you very much. But first off, tell us a little bit about your work as a crime historian, a journalist and an author that puts you in a position to write about this case. Initially, originally before you've decided to write this book. So tell us a little bit about your background and how you came in a position to be able to write this book. Tell us about the crime Museum and your blog, and tell us all about that background, please sure.
I first heard about this case at the Vancouver Police Museum, and that would have been back in the nineteen nineties, and it was a true kind display that it was mainly at that stage focused on reading Castellani the Murderer, and I thought, you know, it was kind of a really interesting, obviously bizarre case, and I'd written about it in my first book, at Home with History, and the idea behind that book was a house has a history or a genealogy like a person's, and I was telling
stories that happened in the house, filtered through the house. And I told the story of the Castellini murder filtered through that Carrisdale, Vancouver duplex where most of the poisoning took place. And it's been written about several times as a chapter in different people's books. And you know, it's quite a well known or actually not as well known as I thought after the book came out, but fairly
well known. Murder case were called in Vancouver and Petty never thought about doing a book, but I did, right. I have a blog called every Place Has a Story, and several years ago I'd written up the story on my blog again filtered through the duplex where the poisoning took place, and fortunately for me, I made a mistake. I said that Lolly Reni's mistress had a six year old daughter. And a little while later I got this note from a woman named Debbie Miller, and she said,
you're wrong. Lolly had a son and he's my husband, Don and he's been looking for Janine, the Castellani daughter for almost fifty years. Do you know where she is? And Janine was eleven when her father murdered her mother, and I'd always wondered what had happened to Janine, you know, what is someone's life like after something that awful happens?
And didn't again, didn't think much more about it. And then book called Blood, Sweat and Fear in twenty seventeen, and I had the book launch back at the bank as the Police Museum, and Janine came to my book launch and introduced herself. So I'd sort of met Janine and I'd said to her, oh my god, I got, you know, an email from Debbie Mello Don's husband saying that he's been looking for you, and she got really emotional and she said, well, I've been looking for him
for nearly fifty years as well. And I just got so intrigued by this story. I really wanted to tell the story from Janine's point of view and really, as much as possible, try to give Esther back a voice in this whole story. And Janine and she has two daughters now, and we met, oh many, many many times, and she had a lot of the family album, you know, photos that you can see throughout the book. And I'd managed to get the testimotive is at the Capital murder trial,
and so the story it's a bit different. It touches on the history of Vancouver in the sixties. It's definitely Janine's story, and in some ways that the murder became the least interesting part of writing this book for me.
Let's talk about the outline of the crime itself in July nineteen sixty five, and can go back to previous about Esther's health, but take us back to the actual event, and let's talk about just previous to that, the living situation. You talk about Renee working at c K and W of Radio Popular radio station tell us about their family situation that Janine with her father and her mother esther she was living at that time in nineteen sixty five.
Sure well, Rennie was kind of a a celebrity. He was a radio personality with c K and W out here in Vancouver and he did all the promotions and back then probably the more sober Now, ratings were just huge, and these stations would just do anything, you know, they kept dreaming out the most outrageous promotions possible, and he was well known for doing some of these crazy stunts.
He was known as a dizzy dialer. It was kind of a like a radio version of Canadad Camera where you'd call up someone and basically punk them on the air, and he was known as a dizzy dialer. He did an outrageous promotion as the Maharaja of Ali Baba where the opposition station had brought up the guy that hosts whose name I can't remember right now, but he did a show called who Wants to Be a Millionaire and
they brought him up from the States. He handed out, you know, wads of cash to people and he came w were desperate to come up with something, and they came up with this Mari Maharaja of Ali Baba, where they dressed up Reni in these sheikh's robes and said he'd come to buy the province. And it was so convincing that people came out with signs saying, you know, keep DC British as it was in those days nineteen in the early sixties, and so he was getting quite
a name for himself. He was before that, he had bounced around from job to job. He prepared, so he was in the Wars radio operator in Second World War. He looked after washing machines. He was a maintenance guy. He had run a hotel up in Campbell River, Northern BC in the early sixties for a while, and they'd moved from house to house. It was a pretty unstable sort of life, but a fairly happy one, according to Janine in the early years, and so they were bouncing
around from sort of house to house. He'd finally got hired on after the Maharaja success, so he was working full time and Esther was working as a manager at a children's boutique in Kristylist where they lived, and Janine was going to the little flour Academy. It was a Catholic boarding schools, so life was getting pretty good for them. And then Reenie met and fell in love with Lolly the twenty something I think she was twenty five at
that point. She was a young widow, beautiful woman, had been lefts some money from her constance's earlier death, and I guess for Reenie it looked like, you know, something that he could down upgrades a younger wife, a younger, beautiful, rich wife, and he looked at how he could get
rid of Esther and found Arsnext. She loved milkshakes, apparently, especially once from White Spot Vanilla milkshakes, and talking to various scientists, apparently milk and milkshakes in particular a fantastic delivery system for arsenic because you can't taste it or see it, and it's a diabolically clever murder weapon. When it's given in small doses, it mimics natural causes like the flu or viruses, which is what they thought it was.
For many, many months, Esther had started getting sick when she'd found a letter in Renie's wallet signed Love Lilly, and confronted him about this, and he denied having an affair, but pretty soon after that started poisoning her. Do you want to keep going?
Well, the thing is you talk about this poisoning. What was you write in the book about her doctor Sector and his assessment of what was happening during that time of the poisoning. So tell us what he thought and what she thought was she did she suspect that there was anything a file? And what did the doctor suspect? What was his treatment?
Actually, I'm very angry at doctor Sector, who's long dead now that he was incredibly patronizing here. She was really suffering, and she would go see him. I think she saw him seven times, and each time he'd kind of pat her on the head and say, well, you're a bit plump, aren't she Probably, you know, improve your diet, and he'd give her an antacid and sort of commiserate with her long suffering husband, and off she'd go, thinking it was
her own fault that she was getting sick. And as she got sicker and sick of her family was so worried for her that they got another doctor, a specialist, to have a look at her, and he immediately put her into Vancouver General Hospital, where she was for seven weeks before her death. She had over one hundred and twenty different tests and was seen by several specialists and no one could figure out what was wrong with her.
At this time. He wrote, and this is part of the incredible story that this guy that would do anything for a promotional, man that would do anything for a radio stunt to promote the radio station while his wife was in the hospital. He cooked up an especially sensational promotional scheme. Tell us about this promotional.
And that also did him in in the end, which was quite interesting. Yeah. One of the promotions was one of the clients for c kW was a car dealership with Broadway here in Vancouver, and it was Bomack and Jimmy Patterson, who's caught a zillionaire and owns Huff Canada, was originally working at this car dealership. He was a manager of it in nineteen fifty nine and he had this Neon sign built and it was the biggest freestanding Neon sign in North America at that time, and it
was all lit up with these huge ladders. It's still there, unfortunately now it's covered by a Toys r Us sign, but it's still there and huge, huge, but much bigger back then when building for very small, and the stunt was that Reni would climb to the top and live in a car until every last car on the dealership
was sold. And they built scaffolding up next to the sign and it was about, I guess forty foot high, and he would live in this car and there was a sort of port a potty or something put up there, and they'd get his food up there, hoisted up and people would wave and honk their horns and their encouraged seams, so it was highly visible up on this sign. He
was up there for a total of nine days. And while he was up there, Esther was in the hospital and she got better and better, and the day after he came down, she got really, really sick and died not long after that. And after he was caught and everything came out and they were able to chart the amount of arsenic through her nails and through her hair that she'd ingested in a rough timeline of when she
took it. And you know, surprise a prize, it coincided with the time that he was up on top of the Bomac sign.
Yeah, now tell us about her death. And then we talked about the darkness of this. Doctor Moskovich tell us how he recognizes that there's something a foul and what does he do as a result, and tell us about her actual death and sixty.
Five, Well, doctor Moskovitch was a specialist that was brought in after doctor Sector failed her miserably, and he'd had a put into a hospital and had done that, as I mentioned, one hundred and twenty tests and called in a whole bunch of different specialists to try and find out what was wrong with her, and to no avail, obviously because she died. But he really liked esther and it just drove in nuts and he couldn't figure out
what was wrong. And she'd had a hospital autopsy done just after her death, and that still didn't bring out a cause of guests, and he just couldn't let it go, and he went back over everything, all the case notes, everything, and then he suddenly realized, aha, arsenik could cause these symptoms. And then as now you have to be tested specifically for arsenith. It just doesn't come up with any other tests.
And why would you write it? Was you know, a popular way to offer someone in seventeen and eighteen hundreds, But it's virtually unheard of last century, and it was.
So.
Anyway, he sent off from the sorry from the autopsy that had some of her organs still, and he'd sent those off to the city analysts to have them tested, and it came back that she'd had fifteen hundred times for normal amount of arsnik in her organs that were found in the human body. And so they had their sort of cause of death. And so you asked when she died. She died in July nineteen sixty five, after spending seven weeks in hospital.
Now right away, of course, investigations might be different today, and certainly they were different then. But you write this incredible part of the story where he packs up his girlfriend Lally, his die Janine, and her son Don and in the company car. And you write in the book too that he had prepared the radio station saying that he was going to use the company car for a family outing, certainly not what he ended up doing. So, and in this company car he took off for Disneyland
one day after the funeral. Tell us more about the suspicion that is aroused by this, and what does the police do. You talk about a particularly again dogged detective that suspects him early on, tell us what happens.
Yeah, it was the day after the funeral. As you mentioned, he'd got the company car and he had told the station and he told the family that he was taking Janine away. He was taking her to Disneyland and to get away and make a fresh start of it, and they were quite encouraging. They loaned him the car for that, and the family gave him cash to you know, take away on the holiday. But of course he didn't tell anyone that he was also taking his mistress and her
six year old son. And the other really bizarre thing that he did was no one before this, no one suspected him. He was a loving husband, he played the role really well. And the other had he got her cremated, by the way, everything would have gone away, he would have got away with murder. But he didn't have a
cremated for whatever reason. I think he just got really arrogant that he'd got away with the poisoning for so long and thought all the specialists and I imagine that he just felt invincible by this point and so could
just do anything. And one of the other done things he did a couple of weeks before Esther died, was he and Lolly went and took out a mortgage for a house in their new married names, right, and then a couple when the police found out about Gidney Land and said hello, he's got a mistress, and then found out about the mortgage, then they really centered their investigation
on him. And by this time they were all living together, he and Lolly and the two kids in a house just outside Vancouver proper, And so that was all going along.
Right, you talk about that. He eventually agrees to a search of the home and what do police find under the sink?
Yeah, The police by this time, when they found out about all this, were really looking at him quite closely, and turned out one day and asked him if they could look inside his house, and another stupid thing he did would say come on in. And they got really excited when they looked under the kitchen sink and found a can of also trial Also trials is about ninety percent arsenic, and it was a popular weed killer and a rat killer back then. Arsnik was used for both.
And they looked around the garden and saw that Rennie wasn't a gardener, and Janine's confirmed that her mother didn't a garden either, So they got the can of also trials and had it analyzed, and it was missing about the same amount that would have been needed to kill esther. Now, again, all of this is circumstantial evidence. They had no actual proof, but the circumstantial evidence was building rapidly.
Now from there, what is their break, what is their impetus to be able to arrest Renee for the murder of his wife?
Well, they were, as mentioned, they were living together as a family then and did so for the next several months, and then Rene and Lolly took out a marriage license and the police swooped because they knew that if they were married that they couldn't force Lolly to testify against her husband. So he was arrested straight away. They'd put off arresting him, I'm told because they were hoping that he would do something really dumb and lead them to
real evidence that they could charge him with. But he never did that.
What type of information did police believe that Lollie might have and what did Lollie tell them if anything about Renee and his plans did get from that?
Not much that She never did testify at the court trials and I'm not sure why that was, but she did testify at the inquest and pretty well lied. She was the problem for me, I believe if she's still alive, but I couldn't find her, and I really don't know whether she was another victim of his or whether she was complicit in the murder. I get the sense that he probably he told everyone he was getting the divorced except for his wife, and I suspect he originally told
her the same thing, but after he was arrested. I mean, she must have known that he was responsible, you know, when they found out that Esther was murdered through Arsnek and she still stuck by him, and she then Jeanine after he went to jail, Jeanine stayed with her and Don for the next five years.
Now you talk about that stay with her, and you write in the book because of course he had this incredible access with the meeting with Jeanine, how did Lolly treat her and what was the home life like with Don and herself, but also what was the situation with Renee in prison and Janine's relationship with Esther's parents, her grandparents, what did they say to her ab both them and in real terms. What was the relationship with her grandparents after this?
Yeah, that was really awful. Actually, she had a close relationship with her grandparents esther's mom and dad before all this, and while her mother was alive, and after Renee was convicted of capital murder, which at that point came into death penalty, he still had custody of Jeanine and he'd put over his custody to Jeanine to Lolly, so Lolly actually had custody of Jeanine's and so that was really bizarre.
And he wouldn't let her see her grandparents, and he told Janine that they were going to kidnap, that they were horrible people, that if she went anywhere near them, that she'd never see him again. And he had her basically manipulated and brainwashed into being really frightened dolphin, And so she wasn't allowed to see them and didn't for the next five years, and Lolly and Don became her only family. Don she's the babysit a light and they were really close, and I was really interested about how
Lolly treated her. I had a certain amount of sympathy for this woman. She was only twenty six, she had a six year old son. She was a widow. She'd been fired from c KMW for having an affair with a senior manager while he kept his job, which I just find outrageous. And then she was financially responsible for this thirteen year old by that point, which can't have been great. But Janine never remembers her being mean to her. She said Lolly was very strict, but she was never mean.
Threw a party at one point, and yet Don, her son is estranged from his mother, so she's evil and believed she had something to do with it. So I had really mixed feelings about Lolly and Janine stayed there for almost five years until Lolly dumped her father and found another man, and Janine was kind of taken and dropped off at Rennie's sisters, had a name changed and told never to talk about it again.
Before that, before she was told never to talk about it again. What information did she have? What was she told in that ensuing five years or even in ensuing two years before she went to trial and testified. What did she know above the story itself? What was she told? Was she encouraged to get information? What did she actually know?
She completely believed her father was innocent, and she didn't see him for two years after he was rested and put in jail, and he went through one trial and was convicted and given the death penalty, and they had no defense. They put on no defense. He didn't take the stand and didn't have any defense witnesses. And the second trial he did take the stand, and so did Jeanine. Jeanine was only thirteen at that time, and she was basically told what to say. She was she committed perdurance.
When I got the transcripts, I was reading them back to her when I was doing the book, and I said, was this true? With this part true? And she'd say no. I was told to say that, you know, things like, you know, we're Lolly and Rene sleeping together when you went to Disneyland, and they were, and she was told to say, no, they weren't, and you know, awful stuff to do to a child. And I think she, you know, well,
I know that she's really bitter about that now. But she believed her father was innocent, and you know, she had no one else, she'd been cut off from the family, living with Lolly and Dome, hugging that her father would you know, get out of jail. And this was also the fifth time that she'd seen him in two years, So it's just really awful.
She was the only you write that incredibly, she was the only defense witness at the trial for her father and thirteen years of age. And you said that when you got the trial transcripts then and she hadn't seen it, you asked her questions and like that, she told you that, well, the police told her to say that, no, my my dad was when went.
To yeah, pardon me, her lawyers, yeah, yeah, now this what else was she.
Course to say on that stand? And from your experience dealing with her, how traumatic was that experience for her among all the other traumatic experiences.
Well, I think I just mentioned that it was incredibly traumatic. She's steel very bitter about that step.
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Right now with this living arrangement, you say that five years later she is living with her dad's sister and she is does not see and does have no contact with Dawn anymore or Lolly after that period of time, I'm correct. What I found the most one of the most fascinating parts of this book is the when you talk about the society at that time and the death penalty.
When was he tell us how close it was that he would have been hung for his crimes, and then what happens afterwards, which is again diametrically opposed to the death penalty.
Yeah, fascinating. Actually, that was one of my most interesting parts of the book as well. When he was sentenced the second time to hang, the death penalty was commuted two weeks before he was actually scheduled to hang, So
he was incredibly lucky, and he got even luckier. You know, his sentence was obviously giving life in prison, and he was sent to Masqui, which was a brand new prison out in outpast Abbotstorade here in BC, and it was mainly for drug addicts and drug pushes, and he was one of the few that wasn't incultivated because of drugs, and he was given just a huge amount of latitude.
He was quickly. They had this grading system where he went through different grades, and when you got to grade four you were given certain liberties like you could leave cell door unlocked, you could go to the library yourself,
and you could get out into the community. And so within a couple of years, this guy's gone from getting the death penalty to life in prison in this very you know o'kala prison, which is a very tough jail, to this pretty lax it was meeting security that compared to the others, it was a fairly nice place where they could actually see their family and Jane could visit him and you know, hug him and stuff like that. It wasn't glass in between them. And then he could
actually go out to the community. So within a couple of years he'd got a volunteer job full time with Community Services and Abbotsfeid, which meant he'd leaves for work every day and then come back to jail that night, and he had full access to the community. I talked to people that knew him in those days, and he
would be arranged. He was a very smart man and very good at promotions, and he did a lot of things for people, and it was incredibly popular and well liked, and within probably five to seven years, he was getting weekend passes and Jeanine remembers him bringing a different woman around on weekends or being asked to come and visit him at a different woman's place, and it was almost like his women were checking him out of jails for
the weekend. Within ten years he was working for an Abbotsford radio station and he was fully paroled, remarried, moved to Nanaimo where he worked for another radio start up stations.
And.
Laver for his rest of his life, which unfortunately wasn't very long.
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then a visit with her fiance. Say in prison, tell us about this whole event that happens that she's come into some money and what the father has plans for that money and his relationship with her new fiance.
Later her husband right.
At the second trial on the night that he was convicted for capital murder and given the death sentence. Janine of course, is living with Lolly, and she'd gone out that night and she was crossing the road with a couple of friends and it was a rainy, dark night and she was hit by a police car and thrown into the air and almost killed. She had her right eyelid ripped off and she had you know, she was in hospital for a month and had to learn to walk again. It was just it was a tragic accident.
It was a police can't chasing someone and he wasn't particularly speeding or anything, and just really awful around. But she did get a settlement from the city and was eligible when she turned twenty one. Well, RENI for some reason thought that he deserved part of his settlement and was just starting to harass her for the money. And I can't remember exactly how much it was. I think
about twenty thousand or something like. It wasn't a huge fortune by any means, but she'd at this time met her fiance Dale, and Dale had been driven her out a few times to visit a father because she was still going regularly. She still believed he was innocent, and Reenie was starting to have work for the money, and Dale was starting to say, no, no, you're not going to give him any money. He doesn't deserve any money. And Renie was starting to really worry them both. He
was going to send her a threatening letter. At one point, he'd asked her to sort of put his put her arms around his waist when she was visiting, and pull on this string. And she got this note out, and when she got home, this note was all about how she was, you know, just turned into a pub crawler and that's sort of no good. And he was that
fiance was awful and all of this stuff. And he would get out for on the weekend pass and come by their house, and she was so really afraid that he would, you know, put a bomb or something in the car. It was really bizarre, and she started to really she went back and started to read all the articles about the trial and talk to people, talk to her family, and then she realized, oh my god, he really did murder my mother, and she cut off all contact she actually never saw in the game.
Right now, from this, from this incredible research that you've done, you've had to trial transcripts. Tell us how it seems unusual that you would have access to the police reports in what is considered still an unsolved crime.
Please explain that, Oh, it's definitely not an unsolved crime. It's definitely a solved crime. I wouldn't been able to get unsolved. So because it was a capital murder case and went with the death penalty, all the transcripts are in Ottawa, complete with the police investigations, so that was really useful. And a woman named Colin Hardwick was going to do a movie never eventuated that had got all of this from Ottawa twenty five years or so ago and very generously loaned them all to me. So that
was great. So I had access to all the transcripts, and I ordered up the inquest for Victorian from bcar Clives here. And the inquest always has an incredible amount of information and hear say information is allowed and stuff that's just not allowed at the trial. So that was brilliant. And that's like two inches six So I was able to get a lot of the dialogue from the friends at new esther and Renie's own words and things from that, which I think sort of made it a bit more lively and interesting.
Was what was the reason for the inquest?
Well, they us your back then anyway, they would always have an inquest. It was suspicious, it was at that point. It was, you know, just to discover her cause of death and whether someone was responsible for it, not who was responsible, but you know whether it was murder, suicidal or natural causes. And it's a coroner's inquest that was held actually in the old police where the police museum is today with the old Coigner's Court, and that's also where her body was brought when it was exhumed.
You rate above the research used that You spoke to many people, co workers, people that worked with Renie before he was arrested, and then people that worked with him like a radio station at in Abbersford afterwards. Tell us what they all said about his character and what they all said, weirdly enough, about his guilt.
Everyone I talked to really liked him. Everyone told me how smart he was, how never, how much funny was to work for And in every case I had stated them, well, do you think he did it, and every time everyone said, oh yeah, everyone thought this guy did it, but they liked him anyway. It's done that fascinating. And there are a couple of things that I just couldn't answer, a couple of disconnects and things like that about why he
did what he did and what he was like. And I had a woman named Heather Burke, and she's a forensic psychologist and she was kind enough to go over the first draft and really look at him, and she said, wow, you know, he picks off every box on the psychopath checklist. His charismatic, he's smart, he was manipulative, just everything that on that list. And so I've just done that really interesting. And as she said, you know, psychopaths are just quite
fine until you get in their way. And of course Esa got in his way, and later Jeanine did as well.
You talk about that. He addressed the jury and made a speech to them that would be memorable. What did he say to the jury at the after end of the second trial.
Right the judge had gone through the spiel about you know, may God had mercy on your soul, and he turned around and looked at the jury and really said that back to them. I can't remember the exact words off hand. Do you have it best?
He said to just have mercy, that God would have mercy on their souls the jury.
Yeah, so he was pretty boldy.
Yes, you talk about the effort that he does and seems to be successful in rebuilding his life and reputation. I find this especially interesting that he went from hanging to out in the community and being accepted in this same community, even though this crime was very high profile. And you say maybe not as many people knew about it, but at the time as this was well known, I find this odd that he was able to rehabilitate his reputation and his career. Tell us what you found.
Yeah, I talked to the guy. Bob Singleton was the manager of the Abbot Said radio station that hide him. He was also on the board for Masquig Prisons, so he knew him from Masquene. He knew his reputation, and he hired him anyway, hided him while he was still in jail. After community services, he went to the radio station where he went he was known as Renee the road Runner, and he did all the traffic reports for
the station. There's also a bit of a maintenance guy, as while he was good at fixing things, but Bob had said he really liked him. He had no qualms. He did a great job apparently, but he said he did keep under the radar, like he didn't use his last name. He was an attitude, which is, you know, fair way out of Vancouver. I remember George Garrett, who was a reporter with c K and W for over forty years, and you Renie annually actually, and he's still
very much around. And George told me that he was. It was a sister station apparently, this Abstrad radio station to c K and W. I mean he was out there one day and I guess it was around the early nineteen seventies. He said, I couldn't believe that. When Renee came around the corner and said, Hi, George, how are you, he said, you know, he really fainted because he had no idea he was out of jail. So I suspect that most people didn't know.
You write about Janine finding out after the altercation with her father and the threats to her fiance and her being criticized by him, and she started doing reading for the first time. You say family and friends, family, but friends had especially kept a lot of this information, and one way or another, she didn't know much and she started to look at his guilt. What was in talking
to her and in this book? What was the process like for her to realize that the father had betrayed her, had deceived her, and that she had to move on? How did she do that? How was she able to cope with that reality?
Well, I think what she would say is that she didn't cope very well until this book. It was hugely important for her to have this story out. I remember when I'd finished the first draft of the book and sent it to her, and I was really worried, you know, because she didn't hold anything back for the book. Everything's in there, and some of it's pretty awful stuff, you know, including the time that she was riped. But she's really she was told to forget about it, did not talk
about it, and she didn't. And I think that's been festering for almost fifty years and when the book. Going through this process with me with the book has been cathartics for her, and I think it's really helped her with a greeting process and to be able to acknowledge what's has been done to her and go through it, and her two daughters have been incredibly supportive as well
as have a bunch of friends. When we had the book launch, we must have had two hundred and fifty people at the launch, and many of them were there to support Jeanine. And Janine got up on stage with me and she never talked publicly before about it, and this was the first time, and she was amazing. We just sat in sort of like two women talking on stage and just talking about what had meant to her and wanted to be done to her. It's pretty powerful.
You right about too. And it was anti climatic in the end, but it was very interesting that Janine picked it. Was hesitant to tell her children about her past, but then what prompted her was again the Police Museum exhibit. Tell us what she did with the police exhibit in terms of sheltering her children, and then what she eventually that event where she eventually told her children about her past.
Right when her oldest daughter, Lindsay was twelve, the school were going to a visit to the Police Museum and Janina had never been there and had no idea that the true Crime exhibit was there. And a friend had sort of phoned her and said and told her about this, and after she was aware of it, and Janine thought,
oh god, it's tomorrow. Any really need to tell that kids if I don't want them to fighting out that way because they knew, you know, that her parents' names and they think photos of Vesta and she was, you know, of course knew that they would recognize it straight away. So she called the curator of the museum and asked he he'd cover it, which he did reluctantly, apparently not sure why. And anyway, so they went to the museum and when they came home, she take the kids aside
and just told them the story. And you know, they was incredibly supportive, even as really young children, and said, well, why would you be worried about this moment had nothing to do with you, And they've remained incredibly supportive. I think that's been huge for her.
You write about the trial as well, that the prosecution didn't just roll over. They tried to introduce things as ridiculous as that as He's sister might have had an affair with Renie at some point. They did put on a very vigorous defense, didn't he.
The prosecution. Yeah, the defense wasn't particularly rigorous, but yeah, the prosecution certainly were coming out with all guns blazing because I knew it was circumstantial at best, and it's quite possible. Actually, I got tapes of an interview or several interviews that had done with guest as sister Gloria by a letter called Susan McNichols. She was going to write a book about fifteen years ago and ill health prevented her, and she incredibly generously gave me these tapes
which had Esther's sister's voice on them. And Gloria does say that she was called into the prosecution's office actually and asked if she'd had an affair with reading. So the prosecution thought that that may have come up, and so the defense, I guess had been trying to use as an example, and she denied that. They also tried es the sister Gloria had a lot of problems. She had been physically abused by his family. Esther had as well.
She'd been physically and sexually abused by her stepfather. So they had a lot of awful things happened to them
in their young life. And Gloria was going through a divorce and was pretty messed up and tried to kill herself a few times, and I guess the defense thought that she'd make a great Patsy, and they tried to insinuate that she had tried to poison her sister, I guess because she was in love with Reenie and she'd been also out of the country for a long time while the poisoning was taken in a place, so that
just sort of fell apart completely. But Janine was coaxed to say that she'd seen her aunt come round and make joo for a mother in the kitchen and shut the doors and stuff like that. So it was pretty insidious what they did.
You rate that it didn't take long for the jury to deliberate and come back with the guilty conviction.
Did it, No, not long at all, And there was no recommendation for Mercyly one of the jurors told a reporter that they looked at it really closely, because you know, no one wanted to give some of the death penalty, but they couldn't find any thing that would make them go easy on him.
How big a case was this in the media, Oh.
God, it was huge. It was front page every day. It was insane, like people with just you know, everyone was talking about it around the water coolers, and it was just incredible gossip. I mean, it was so scandalous and had so many elements in it, you know, the actual method of cause of guests and Reenie who was so well known, and you know, the beautiful mistress and all of that. Yeah, it was really kittilating for Vancouver.
And it was also one of the fascinating things for me about writing a book was the time that it took place. It was the sixties, so you've got Vancouver in nineteen sixties five, still living in nineteen fifty sensibilities right where you know, drinking it happened, and women wore fox and everyone went to church and it was all
very nice and all of that. But you're also seeing by the trial sixty six sixty seven, when the two trials took place, this huge change where hippies are coming up and draft dodgers from the States, and there's spin and there's free love and this whole catafly, you know,
just complete seismic shift in sensibility. So it was interested in sort of following that, and a lot of people think that because it was nineteen sixty five and still not quite you know, still in this kind of fifties sort of thing, that he was convicted because of his affairs rather than you know, any evidence. And aiden now, when I talked to lawyers today saying well, what do you think would happen if it's happened now, it's still a tough up whether he'd be convicted or not.
Really interesting. What what was the reaction when he was I mean, obviously was known when he was released after a couple of years. Was there any blowback from that from the media? Was there any criticism of that decision?
Nothing? I didn't find a thing, and that might be because I just didn't know.
Wow, yeah, this could be true. Now with this you you write about and I know that Janine has made their first public appearance at one of your book signings, you interview her. What about the relationship that was severed years ago for forty year, fifty years Don Miller and herself, Janine? What was that reconciliation Lake and what does it look like today?
That was one of the greatest things about writing the books for me, that they got back together and it's you know, it's just been really incredible. They've become really close, their families are really close. They think of each other as you know, long lost brother and sister. Janine's daughter just got married a couple of weekends ago, and Don and Debbie were there at the wedding and either at
the book launch, and they've been incredibly supportive as well. So, yeah, that was one of the really nice things to come out.
And I think when you you know, I've been to lunch with them and stuff like that, and when you hear them talk about the horrors that they went through and Don's life wasn't particularly nice either, that you sort of look at them and think, oh my god, they turned out to be such nice, warm, wonderful peace with great jobs and great families, and you know, so that was a nice thing to at least find that out that their lives had turned out okay.
To spite all this, when did Renee Castellani pass away? And what were the circumstances?
He as karma? Karma got him in the end, he got pancreatic cancer not long after he'd moved, remarried and moved to Absford and died of cancer in nineteen eighty two. He was fifty six years old.
Yeah, it's pretty young. M What has this book? You talk about that public appearance with Janine? What was that like you talk about you know it was overused word cathartic event, But what has this done for her in terms of people knowing this story? You say that one of the attentions was to give her mother a voice. What does she think of this book? You did put the transcripts to her and then waited for her response. You say that was a nervous bit of time. Well,
what is this book done for her? And what has it done for her? It's allowed to grieve her mother finally, and that's obviously very important.
Oh my god, it's been huge. I think it's been life changing.
And was there was it important too to also? I mean, you talk about giving the mother a voice, but you do write in a book and we didn't talk so much about it, but you talk about her being brave and courageous and also a unique woman, being a businesswoman in success at that time in the sixties, So she
was a remarkable woman. This Esther, and this is part of what this book does is to talk about Esther and who she was at that time and not again, so much as it been to focus on this charismatic killer husband.
Right, And you know, that was one of the struggles that I had writing the book because I had Janine's perspective of her mother, but she was eleven years old when she died, so you know, it's from a small child. Most of the people I could esther sister, Gloria, is still alive, but not in good shape, and I couldn't talk to her, and she's still really upset about the whole thing, so it's not an easy subject for her.
I couldn't find any of her colleagues or friends that were still alive that could sort of help round her out as an adult, so that was hard, and I had to rely a lot on the transcripts and police reports of these people that were giving evidence. It's about her, and I'm talking about what she told them and things like that to try to keep her a voice there.
Now with this you met Janine at the Blood, Sweat and Fear book signing that you were talking about this book, and you met her at the Police Museum. I wanted to ask you about all of the things that you're doing now. I had read that you were planning a
series of podcasts. Maybe you can explain it better than I about what your plans are for a murder by Milkshake with a podcast series that you've done previously, with other work that you've done, tell us a little bit about that and tell us about that.
Sure, I've started a podcast a couple of months ago based on my book, Blood, Sweat and Fear, and the book was about inspective dance. He was a first forensic scientist, really one of the earliest in North America, and he works for the Bank of the Police Department out of the building which is now the Vancouver Police Museums, and a lot of his lab is still intact. It's amazing. He retired in nineteen forty nine, so you know, it's
a pretty incredible feat and it's part of that. When I was doing the research, I found a lot of his grandchildren he died in sixty five. Uncovered these boxes that he'd packed up when he retired and was full of crimes and information and even his diary. So it became a fascinating book to write. And each chapter follows
a different case, mainly murders that Vance worked on. So it became a sort of a natural for a podcast, and I published seven episodes of that Blood, Sweat and See are now and that's been a lot of fun. But as you know, there's a huge learning curve when you haven't done this before and I'm hosting, I'm producing. I had to learn all the editing software and all of that. So I'm just starting now to introduce interviews with lawyers and police officials and things like that, and
I'm just having so much fun with it. It's been amazing. And yeah, I'd like to another book I wrote with Cold Case Vancouver. It's all about unsolved murders in Vancouver, so that'll be my next one. And I'd like to work up to Murder by Milkshake. I think it would make you know with Janine to do that with her would make an incredible podcast as well. The book has been optioned for a movie on TV rights and documentary,
So thank you so much here. So I also don't want to do anything though to negatively affect that.
M hmm. Absolutely. I want to thank you for coming on and talking about your book Murder by a Milkshake and astonishing true story of adultery, arsenic and a charismatic killer. For those that might want to take a look at your other work, your blog, this podcast that we talked about. Do you have a website Facebook page? Tell us about that.
Please, yes, all through my name Evelazarus dot com. That's e V E l A z a r us. My blog every place has a story which is I kind of call it heritage, history and murder. And my podcast is all through. That podcast is on podbeam that can be accessed through that and through Apple and all the usual podcatches.
Yes, absolutely, and Michael thank you as well. Well. Thank you that's great. Thank you very much for coming on and talking about murder, my milkshake. It has been a pleasure. Thank you very much. Eve Lazarus my pleasure, my pleasure.
Thank you so much, thank you, good night, hye byee