Episode 180 - On September 22, 2015, in Renfrew County, Ontario, 66-year-old Carol Culleton was murdered in her home by her one-time handyman. The man, who’d become obsessed with the recent widow before killing her, then stole Culleton’s car and drove to the home of an ex-girlfriend, Anastasia Kuzyk, 36, and shot Anastasia there with a shotgun as her sister fled the home. However, the killer was not done settling the scores he had cooked up in his head and then drove to the home of another ex-gi...
Jul 26, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Ep 180•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 179 - On April 19, 2018, in the village of Victoria Gracia, a community close to Pucallpa in Peru’s central Amazon region of Ucayali, a man got off his motorcycle. He walked toward the home of Olivia Arevalo Lomas, an 81-year-old shaman and respected elder in her community. The man was irate over a debt owed to him by the woman’s son. After firing a warning shot that drew a crowd of neighbours, the elderly healer came out of her house. After a bit of yelling back and forth, the man gunne...
Jul 19, 2021•1 hr 18 min•Ep 179•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 178: On the evening of January 29, 2017, a young man, armed with a pistol and a rifle concealed inside a guitar case, entered the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec City, a mosque in the Sainte-Foy neighbourhood of the historic city. Just over 40 people were inside the mosque at the time. Just before 8:00 pm, the man entered the prayer hall and began firing and, within two minutes, had killed 6 and seriously injured 5 other worshippers. After the shootings, the killer walked out of the bu...
Jul 12, 2021•1 hr 11 min•Ep 178•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 177: On July 3, 1979, a pair of typical Montreal teenagers, Chantal Dupont, 15 and her friend, Maurice Marcil, 14, went missing as they walked home from a concert. Their loved ones had no idea what had happened to them. A week later they heard the news they dreaded. The bodies of Chantal and Maurice were discovered in different spots along the banks of the St. Lawrence River. The details of how the pair ended up in the water and the events leading up to their murders are horrifying.Sourc...
Jul 05, 2021•1 hr•Ep 177•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 176: On the night of November 13, 1974, In the sleepy community of Amityville on the coast of Long Island, New York, a 23-year-old man named Ronald (Butch) DeFeo Jr. came running into a local bar. He was distraught and claiming his whole family, his mother and father and 4 siblings, had been murdered in their home, a large Dutch Colonial house located at 112 Ocean Avenue. However, it was later determined it was Butch himself who’d annihilated his family. A year later, Butch was convicted...
Jun 28, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Ep 176•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 175: Like any other region, Canada has its share of stories of fantastical creatures that may or may not exist. Dark Poutine has covered a few of them. In episode 25 we learned of Swift Runner, believed to be possessed by the cannibalistic spirit known as Wendigo, we talked about, Ogopogo, the giant serpent in Okanagan Lake in episode 113 and of course, in episode 131 we gave you a primer on Sasquatch aka Bigfoot in Western Canada and the USA. In this episode, you will learn about some o...
Jun 21, 2021•53 min•Ep 175•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 174 - Between 1974 and 1980, a group of three mask-wearing Canadian outlaws named Stephen Reid, Patrick (Paddy) Mitchell, and Lionel Wright, in well-planned, precisely timed and carefully executed heists, robbed at least 140 banks and armoured cars in Canada and the United States making off with a total of more than $15 million in cash, gold and other valuables.Sources:[The Life and Times of the Stopwatch Gang | The Atavist Magazine][Stephen Reid fonds - Search Research Collections][Insi...
Jun 14, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Ep 174•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 173 - On July 6, 2013, in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, an unattended 73-car freight train carrying crude oil rolled down a grade and derailed downtown, multiple tank cars exploded, resulting in a massive fire. More than 30 buildings in the town's core were destroyed, and, sadly, forty-seven people lost their lives.Sources:[Ville Lac-Mégantic - Une ville à coeur ouvert][Déraillement mortel d’un train à Lac-Mégantic - Ville Lac-Mégantic][Balado Découverte - Le Marcheur d’étoiles | Circuit tourist...
Jun 07, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Ep 173•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 172 - To curtail social ills like alcoholism, family violence, and other unsavoury behaviours, religious and puritanical proponents of the Temperance Movement demonized alcohol throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. After numerous U.S. states had become ‘dry’ outlawing the production and sale of alcohol in the years prior, in 1919, the United States ratified the 18th amendment to their constitution, which banned the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors with...
May 31, 2021•1 hr 16 min•Ep 172•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 171 - Rosemary Podgis, 56, and her husband Alfred, 58, were found in a Pennsylvania Ravine. They had been fatally shot in their Loch Arbour, New Jersey home over the Fourth of July weekend in 1982. The apparent perpetrators arrested by police 5 days later were two 18-year-olds: Scott Robert Franz, Rosemary’s son from a previous marriage, and Scott’s Canadian friend Bruce Anthony Curtis, who had been Scott’s classmate at King’s Edgehill private school in Nova Scotia where the pair had jus...
May 24, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Ep 171•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 170 - In November of 1902, a rancher named Issac Belt from Haynes Creek near Red Deer, Alberta, had gone missing. Investigating officers had gone to Belt’s ranch to question a young man calling himself Bert Ellsworth, who was suspected of horse theft, who had been lending a hand there. That young man and Belt were both missing. Police discovered the man claiming to be Ellsworth at a camp on the outskirts of Calgary. Some of Belt’s personal belongings were in Cashel's possession, and Cash...
May 17, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Ep 170•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 169: On the evening of Christmas Day in 2017, upon gaining access to an Oak Bay, British Columbia apartment, police discovered a bloody crime scene. In the suite were the bodies of six-year-old Chloe Berry and her four-year-old sister, Aubrey Berry. They had been murdered in their beds. First responders also discovered Andrew Berry, Chloe and Aubrey’s father, naked, seriously injured and bleeding in the apartment's bathtub. He had penetrating injuries to his left chest and throat. First ...
May 10, 2021•59 min•Ep 169•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 168 - On the evening of July 28, 2010, Nadine Anne Taylor, a 29-year-old woman in Halifax, Nova Scotia, left the Convoy Avenue apartment in Fairview she shared with her boyfriend, Gene. Nadine, who did not have a telephone, told Gene she needed to make a call, left her home and walked a nearby payphone to make a call. She was never seen alive again. Sources and Further Reading:[CANADA - Canada - Nadine Taylor, 29, Halifax NS, 28 July 2010][Police locate human remains | Halifax]R. v. Laff...
May 03, 2021•59 min•Ep 168•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 167: On July 13, 1994, just after 2:00 am, police responded to a 911 call from Sebastian Burns, 18. Sebastian and his friend, Atif Rafay, also 18, claimed they had discovered ‘some kind of break in’ and multiple deaths at Atif’s family home in Bellevue, Washington. A bloody crime scene awaited the first responders. All three of the victims, Tariq and Sultana, Atif’s parents and his sister, Basma, had been bludgeoned to death. Right away, something felt off to the Bellevue Police, who foc...
Apr 26, 2021•1 hr 16 min•Ep 167•Transcript available on Metacast In the early morning hours of November 17, 2001, officers from the Vancouver Police were dispatched to the Second Beach area of Stanley Park. Several callers to 911 indicated that there had been some kind of altercation and a group of man had badly beaten another man. Two VPD constables arrived at the Second Beach parking lot within minutes of being called to find a distraught man frantically providing CPR to a bloodied man on the ground. The man on the ground was naked except for socks and shoe...
Apr 19, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Ep 166•Transcript available on Metacast It’s 2021. It’s been a hell of a year and Dark Poutine is still ticking along. That said, I need a quick break for my sanity and to do some behind the scenes work to freshen up some of the elements the show. Dark Poutine will be returning on April 19, 2021, with the same level of careful research and compassionate, personal story telling with new guest hosts, a shiny new logo and some new music. See you in a month, so until then, don’t forget to be a good egg and not a bad apple. Support the sho...
Mar 15, 2021•2 min•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 165: On the afternoon of July 24, 2015, the RCMP were called by the residents of 192 Pleasant Grove Road, outside of Charlottetown in Prince Edward Island. They said that the night before there had been a fight between a man, Joel Lawrence Clow, 46, and a woman, Clow’s 40-year-old on an off-again girlfriend and mother of one, Traci Lynn Lynch. Responding officers knew they would be investigating a domestic dispute, they’d dealt with Traci and Joel before. Things became more serious when ...
Mar 08, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Ep 165•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 164: On July 12, 1997, in the town of Kitimat, British Columbia, after months of tension, tempers boiled over, and a violent altercation took place between a mad man and four young men. Three of the men, Michael Mauro and Mark Teves, both 20 and 21-year-old David Nunes were dead, and another, 20-year-old Donny Oliveira, was barely clinging to life after a local man named Kevin Louis Vermette allegedly blasted away at the group with a sawed-off shotgun before disappearing into the brush. ...
Mar 01, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Ep 164•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 163: In New Brunswick, in the fall of 1922 a convicted double murderer named Bennie Swim was hanged for the murder of the woman he loved, his first cousin Olive and her husband, Harvey Trenholm. Bennie didn’t die the first time, so the authorities hanged him again. Co-host: Carol BrownePromo: MurderishSources: The Ballad of Benny Swim (original) - Mike Q - YouTube Hanged Twice_Benny Swim Bennie Swim | Cases | Crime and Punishment | Projects | Faculty of Arts | UNB ExecutedToday.com » 192...
Feb 22, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Ep 163•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 162: In July of 2013, on a busy summer night in downtown Toronto, police received several calls about a man on a streetcar brandishing a knife and threatening passengers and the transit operator. After an encounter with police lasting only 50 seconds, 18-year-old Sammy Yatim had been shot nine times and later died from his wounds. As videos of the incident surfaced, many people were outraged, claiming that the police had used excessive force and calling for the head of the officer who ha...
Feb 15, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Ep 162•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 161 - On a warm July day in 1986, 11-year-old Alison Parrott was lured from her Toronto home by a man on the phone claiming to be a sports photographer who wanted to take photos of the young athlete. Two boys discovered Alison’s body in a heavily wooded section of Kings Mill Park two days later. She had been bound, raped and strangled to death. It would take a decade before science caught up to the point where her killer could be brought to justice.Co-Host: Carol BrowneSources:R. v. Roy,...
Feb 08, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Ep 161•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 160 - Elena Tchoudakova was a beautiful, outgoing and vibrant 23-year-old Russian woman attending Interior Design at Toronto’s Ryerson University. In January of 1995 Elena was discovered in her apartment, she’d been brutally beaten to death and left in her bathub. There were a number of suspects with means and motive but only one with opportunity.Co-host: Carol BrowneSources:[The Russian Princess Case: MacDonald, Bruce: Amazon.ca: Kindle Store]R. v. Ho, 1999 CanLII 3823 (ON CA), [50 Camb...
Feb 01, 2021•1 hr•Ep 160•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 159: In the early 1980s near the small town of Rulo, Nebraska a white-supremacist cult leader named Michael Wayne Ryan and his band of followers took over a local farm essentially stealing it from the property owner. They burglarized nearby businesses and residences to fund their survival after the upcoming battle of Armageddon prophesied in the Books of Revelations. Ryan, a proponent the Christian Identity movement’s doctrines with links to an anti-government group called Posse Comitatu...
Jan 25, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Ep 159•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 158 - Twenty-three-year-old nurse and former beauty queen, Alexandra Wiwrachuk, thought the warm spring night in 1962 would be perfect for a walk down by the river before her midnight shift at Saskatoon’s City Hospital. Alexandra did not show up for work that night, and it was not until thirteen days later that children stumbled upon her broken body in a shallow grave. Someone had savagely beaten the young woman, brutally raped her and then buried her alive, leaving her to die. Nearly si...
Jan 18, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Ep 158•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 157 - From the late 1920s until after the Second World War, Lila and William Young ran the Ideal Maternity Home and Sanitarium for Unwed Mothers at East Chester, Nova Scotia. The pair have been referred to as ‘baby farmers’ who sold healthy newborns to wealthy couples with the means to pay and left the less viable to die of starvation. Estimates are that more than 100 and as many as 400 to 600 babies may have died in their care. Many of these deceased infants were quietly buried in woode...
Jan 11, 2021•57 min•Ep 157•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 156 - In 2006, Thomas George Svekla, 38, a man who’d been in and out of trouble since 16, became the focus of a murder investigation lead by the Project KARE task force. Svekla was a suspect in as many as twelve murders. He was only ever charged with two slayings, that of Theresa Innes and Rachel Quinney, but was designated a dangerous offender for his long history of violent offences.Co-host: Carol BrowneSources:R. v. Svekla, 2007 ABQB 557 (CanLII), R. v. Svekla, 2009 ABQB 181 (CanLII),...
Jan 04, 2021•59 min•Ep 156•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 155: The holidays can be a notoriously hard time for people who either miss loved ones or have a hard time being around them so much. For those reasons, we take a break from all the murder and mayhem and try to bring you a little holiday cheer with a bit of a dark edge. This year, for our fourth Christmas, themed episode, we learn about the global depictions of Santa Claus, some dark Christmas traditions from around the world, and Krampus, the Christmas Demon. See you in the new year!Co-...
Dec 21, 2020•57 min•Ep 155•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 154 - Twenty-three year old Gordon Adrian Kralt had been the caretaker for a Bible camp on Vancouver Island when he went missing on Halloween in 1970. Gordon was found two weeks later, he had been brutally slain. Tracking down Gordie’s killer uncovered a career psychopath who was believed to have killed before. Co-host: Carol BrowneWritten by: Josina De BreeSources:Regina v. Stewart, 1972 CanLII 1445 (BC CA), Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/darkpoutine Learn more about your ad ...
Dec 14, 2020•1 hr 4 min•Ep 154•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 153 - Between 2002 and 2005, Charles Eli Kembo, a refugee from Malawi, murdered four people, his business partner, Arden Samuel, his stepdaughter, Rita Yeung, his girlfriend, Sui Yin Ma, and his wife, Margaret Kembo, whose body has never been found. He set up elaborate schemes to steal their identities, set up false bank accounts, insurance claims, and run up credit in his victims’ names. Sources:R. v. Kembo, 2010 BCSC 914 (CanLII), https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/kembo-g...
Dec 07, 2020•1 hr 11 min•Ep 153•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 152: In November of 1992, a twenty-four-year-old woman came forward to Kipling, Saskatchewan RCMP, accusing a respected local doctor, John Schneeberger, of sexual assault. After years of ridicule from other Kipling residents who refused to believe her claims, the young woman finally found some justice. When the truth saw the light, it uncovered one of the strangest and most devious criminals in Canadian history. Co-host: Carol BrownePromo: True Crime IslandSources:Canada v. Schneeberger,...
Nov 30, 2020•1 hr 8 min•Ep 152•Transcript available on Metacast