Episode 210: In the summer of 2003, Ardeth Wood, a 27-year-old PhD candidate studying philosophy at the University of Waterloo, was enjoying a well needed break at her parent’s home in the Orleans neighbourhood of Ottawa. In the early afternoon of August 6, 2003, wanting to take advantage of a beautiful, warm summer day Ardeth borrowed her brother’s bike to go for a ride. Ardeth never came home. Ardeth’s disappearance triggered one of the largest searches in Ottawa’s history up to that point cov...
Mar 07, 2022•1 hr 20 min•Ep 210•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 209: Daleen Kay Bosse, was a 26-year-old, wife and mother of Cree heritage and member of the Onion Lake First Nation in Saskatchewan near Saskatoon. On May 18, 2004, after a night out with friends Daleen did not return home. Her family grew worried. When she still hadn’t come home the next day Jeremiah, Daleen’s husband, contacted police, who, initially did not respond with much enthusiasm, telling Jeremiah and Daleen’s concerned parents to wait; that she would probably either come home ...
Feb 28, 2022•1 hr 19 min•Ep 209•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 208: On Feb 4, 1880, just past midnight 5 members of the Donnelly family (A mother and father, two sons, and a niece) we brutally murdered by a mob in their homes just outside of Lucan, Ontario, in Biddolph township. A crime that happened 142 years ago this month, but it is one that had its roots in the distant past, and that has echoed into the future in Canada right up to today. The family and their story became legendary, and often shocks people into the realization of how dark, and u...
Feb 21, 2022•1 hr 14 min•Ep 208•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 207: After World War II, Canada’s economy rose. Work was much easier to come by than during the depression. Even though he’d been able to secure decent employment, family man and world war veteran with movie star good looks, Edwin Alonzo Boyd, was bored. He’d had his share of trouble already and was feeling the itch again. In the fall of 1949, he robbed his first bank. This crime kicked off events that would lead to one of the most infamous Canadian criminal gangs of the era. Over just a...
Feb 14, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Ep 207•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 206: Starting on the evening of June 29 and going into the early morning of June 30, 2002, Lisa Marie Young, a 21-year-old indigenous woman, was celebrating with friends in her hometown, Nanaimo, B.C. It was not only Canada Day long weekend, but also her friend Dallas’s birthday. The group went to several nightclubs and then attended a pair of house parties outside the city. Lisa left the party with a man the group had met just that evening. There were several frantic texts from Lisa sho...
Feb 07, 2022•1 hr 27 min•Ep 206•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 205: In this Away Game we are off to post World War One Germany where in the early 1920s, a brutal serial killer, Fritz Haarmann, killed at least 27 young men and boys. Many of his crimes, it appears, were committed to impress his lover, a man named Hans Grans. Although Haarmann admitted it was he who murdered and dismembered the victims, he claimed that ultimately, in a few cases, it was Grans who chose who was to die. Sources: Weimar Republic - HISTORY List of German serial killers - W...
Jan 31, 2022•2 hr 43 min•Ep 205•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 204: Between 1957 and 1964 in Montreal, Quebec, experiments were undertaken that compromised and invaded people’s minds, their agency to make decisions for themselves removed and their brains mucked about in, both physically and psychologically. These barbaric, Orwellian experiments often involved mind expanding drugs like LSD, sensory deprivation, shock treatments and periods of sleep induced for weeks at a time as well as other treatments that could easily be called torturous. They wer...
Jan 24, 2022•1 hr 20 min•Ep 204•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 203: On May 7, 1992, after the McDonald’s restaurant on Kings Road near Keltic Drive in Sydney River, Nova Scotia, closed for the night and the overnight crew was coming in and the evening crew was leaving. Three young men, armed with a shovel handle, knives and a .22 calibre pistol robbed the establishment. They beat, stabbed and shot 4 of the restaurant workers, killing three, Jimmy Fagan, 27, Donna Warren, 22, and Neil Burroughs Jr., 29, and critically wounding 20-year-old, Arlene Mac...
Jan 17, 2022•2 hr 33 min•Ep 203•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 202: Mathew Charles Lamb was a troubled and disturbed youngster. He was born in Windsor, Ontario, unwanted, to a teenage mother and bounced from one relative’s home to another, never having close relationships with any of them. To him they were merely his keepers. The rules they laid out for him to follow were bothersome to him. Young Matt was incorrigible. He became violent early on, many of the other kids in his family and in the neighbourhood were terrified of him. After a number of r...
Jan 10, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Ep 202•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 201: On October 14, 2007, after a gruelling 20-hour journey from Poland, Robert Dziekanski, arrived at the YVR airport’s international terminal in Richmond, B.C. Dziekanski, who spoke nor read any English, was unable to read the signs directing him to what he should do next or where he should go. The confused man spent ten hours in the airport wandering around the secure customs area. His mother was waiting for him with a friend only a few meters away in the public waiting area. Had the ...
Jan 03, 2022•1 hr 27 min•Ep 201•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 200: The story we are about to tell is a harrowing tale of child neglect that leaves a young boy badly scarred for life. In December of 1990, after being overlooked by his family who were on their way to Paris for a Christmas visit, Kevin McCallister is left on his own in the family’s large Winnetka, Illinois home. There the 7-year-old not only has to care for himself, but has to do his best fend off two serial burglars, a team known as the Wet Bandits, attempting to break into the McCal...
Dec 20, 2021•2 hr 30 min•Ep 200•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 199: In all the recent photos I could find of Melissa Ann Shepard, she looks like an ordinary, little old lady. But Melissa, Millie to some, has a criminal record a mile long, including convictions for fraud, impersonation and forgery. But, she is best known for, luring men via the internet, drugging them and taking control of all aspects of their lives. Melissa also caused the death of one of her husbands in Nova Scotia, was suspected in another’s death and at least two more men came cl...
Dec 13, 2021•1 hr 19 min•Ep 199•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 198: If you’ve had any interest in the Wild West, you’ve no doubt heard of a many of the storied gunmen and bandits from the era like Butch Cassidy, Jesse James and Billy the Kid. You probably also think of the United States, but Canada has its own legends and colourful characters from the era on both sides of the border. For example, legendary gunslinger and lawman, Bat Masterson, was was born in Henryville, Quebec. Sometimes the outlaws were women, like one notorious Canadian-born, lad...
Dec 06, 2021•1 hr 14 min•Ep 198•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 197: In our last episode we learned a bit about the life and depraved, early crimes of David Russell Williams, a 46-year-old decorated colonel and commander of the Canadian Forces Base (CFB) in Trenton, Ontario - one of the largest and busiest air force bases in Canada. The Canadian military’s rising star also had some dark secrets. Williams had been involved in dozens of instances of break, enter and theft of women’s undergarments in the communities in which he lived. The homeowners and...
Nov 29, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Ep 197•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 196 - In September of 2009, in Cosy Cove, a quiet, rural neighbourhood near Tweed, Ontario, an anonymous young woman sleeping in her home was brutally sexually assaulted by an unknown assailant who’d broken into her home. During the violent, two-hour sexual assault, as her 8 week old daughter slept in another room, the rapist snapped photos of the woman, before escaping into the night. Two weeks later, in the same small neighbourhood, the creeper struck again, sexually assaulting another...
Nov 22, 2021•1 hr 16 min•Ep 196•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 195: Hannah Buxbaum was found dead July 5, 1984 on a highway near London, Ontario after having been shot by roadside bandits three times in the head as her husband Helmuth Buxbaum and their young nephew, Roy, in town from Vancouver for a visit watched helplessly. The bandits sped off with Hanna’s purse and police were called. No one could figure out why anyone would want to murder Hanna Buxbaum, who was as close to being a living saint that anyone could find. The press initially labelled...
Nov 15, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Ep 195•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 194: On June 25, 1950, after months of increasing tension, the Korean War or what has been called Canada’s forgotten war, began when North Korean troops invaded South Korea. Countries, including Canada, belonging to the newly formed United Nations jumped in quickly to defend democratic South Korea from the the communist forces from the north. Canada contributed the third largest number of soldiers among UN countries to the war. More than 26,000 Canadians served in the conflict on land, a...
Nov 08, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Ep 194•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 193: On September 5, 2009, Hilary Bonnell, 16, disappeared from Esgenoopetitj formerly known as, Burnt Church, in the Miramichi region of New Brunswick. Over the next several months her mother, stepfather, family and friends pulled out all the stops searching for the teen. Despite their tireless efforts, during which they utilized the media and a widespread poster campaign, they could not find Hilary. On Sunday, November 8, 2009, Curtis Wayne Bonnell, Hilary’s first cousin, was arrested ...
Nov 01, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Ep 193•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 192: If you’re willing to look you’ll see that human culture and all other endeavors are shot through with one predominant and frightening idea, that one day everything, including us, must come to an end. One day we will die. Human beings are, as far as we know, the only animal capable of understanding that inevitably every one of us, good eggs and bad apples alike, will expire. Hopefully, a long time from now, we will pass away, be sleeping with the fishes, or, if you like, have met our...
Oct 25, 2021•2 hr 34 min•Ep 192•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 191: On the evening of July 30, 2008, Tim McLean, a 22-year-old Canadian carnival barker was returning home to Winnipeg riding a Greyhound bus when he was viciously stabbed, beheaded, and cannibalized by another passenger about 18 km west of Portage la Prairie, Manitoba. After arriving on scene, RCMP watched for hours as the perpetrator, Vince Li, 40, desecrated Tim’s body inside the bus after the driver and remaining passengers had fled, powerless to stop the man’s frenzy. Less than a y...
Oct 18, 2021•1 hr 20 min•Ep 191•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 190: Old Mike Todor’s body was found in his east end Regina home in the spring of 1955. He’d lain there for more than 14 months and had been beaten to death. Someone had killed him, but who? Elizabeth “Tootsie” LaFleche, Mike’s 30-something-year-old wife, who’d been living with a friend for months, was telling a lot of stories about what had become of Mike. None of the tales made a lot of sense. After police found Mike’s body, a number of arrests were made, charges were laid and several ...
Oct 11, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Ep 190•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 189: Starting in 1963 and stretching over the next seven years, a militant French separatist group called the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) terrorized La Belle Province. Their aim was to overthrow the Quebec government and leave Canada creating an independent Marxist- Leninist Quebec state. By 1970 the group had committed more than 200 violent criminal and terroristic acts including, bombings and high profile kidnappings. The group’s activities ultimately claimed the lives of eight...
Oct 04, 2021•1 hr 14 min•Ep 189•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 188: In early October of 1994, during a bizarre, nearly simultaneous sequence of murder / suicides, in Quebec, and across the Atlantic in Switzerland, 53 members of the Order of the Solar Temple were found dead in burned out buildings. The deaths fulfilled what the cult’s leaders claimed was the group’s “final transit” or return to Unity with God required before the impending end of the world. Even though it appeared to be over, more cult members were yet to die. Over a year later, in De...
Sep 20, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Ep 188•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 187: Between 1974 and 1976, a series of rapes and murders took place in and around the small town of Strathroy, in South Western Ontario, perpetrated by Christian Herbert Harold Magee. He sexually assaulted and murdered 3 women, and raped two others. Written by: Mathew Stockton Sources: R. v. Magee, 1997 CanLII 2431 (ON CA), Mental Health Centre, Penetanguishene v. Magee, 2006 CanLII 16077 (ON CA), https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/118607/carried-away-by-alice-munro/9780307264862/e...
Sep 13, 2021•1 hr 11 min•Ep 187•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 186: Twenty years ago, on the morning of September 11, 2001, as the world watched in horror, 19 radical Islamist al-Qaeda terrorists launched a group of coordinated attacks using four commuter planes as weapons, hitting several preplanned targets in the eastern United States. Two of the airliners were flown deliberately into each of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, a third plane smashed into the U.S. Pentagon. A fourth plane believed to have been bound for the ...
Sep 06, 2021•2 hr 33 min•Ep 186•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 185: RCMP officers arrived at the Blackman family residence on Spuraway Avenue in Coquitlam, B.C.’s Ranch Park subdivision in the early morning hours of January 18th, 1983. A neighbour had called 911after hearing screams and then witnessing what appeared to be a domestic argument next door that escalated into a shooting. Inside the eerily silent home as the cold winter rain fell, the responding officers found a horrific and bloody scene; six members of the Blackman family were dead. The ...
Aug 30, 2021•1 hr 13 min•Ep 185•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 184: In Mississauga, Ontario in 1973 and early 1974, the discoveries of the murdered bodies of two young women, Constance Dickey, 19, and Neda Novak, 18, only months apart, left the community shaken. Both women, it appeared, had been abducted, sexually assaulted, then murdered and dumped by a yet unknown killer. On August 19, 1974, after being sexually assaulted and left for dead, a sixteen-year-old girl, Julia Sheldon, identified a twenty-four-year-old, married father of two named Henry...
Aug 23, 2021•58 min•Ep 184•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 183 - Early on a cold morning on January 7, 1922, two Montreal city Public Works Department employees, on their way to their works shed, discovered the body of a man laying on the frozen ground near the corners of Coolbrook and Snowden Street. The man, who’d been shot was later identified by a Catholic Priest named Adélard Delorme as his half-brother, Raoul Delorme. When police investigated they were surprised that their evidence pointed to one, very unusual suspect. This case would beco...
Aug 16, 2021•1 hr 22 min•Ep 183•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 182: This is a story of two talented people whose final interaction would lead to the death of one of comedy’s rising stars and a notorious place in Hollywood history for the other. On March 5, 1982, after an all too brief but stellar career in film and television, actor and comedian John Belushi, 33, was found dead in his bungalow at the infamous Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California. Investigators soon discovered that a Canadian woman, Catherine Evelyn or Cathy S...
Aug 09, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Ep 182•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 181 - The region in the South Nahanni River played host to several unexplained and disturbing occurrences in the first half of the twentieth century. Between1905 and 1945, in the remote and rugged wilderness in the lower west corner of Mackenzie Mountains in the Northwest Territories and other unexplained events, there were at least 44 people who went missing under mysterious circumstances. Most unsettling of all were the four bodies that were found during that time in three separate inc...
Aug 02, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Ep 181•Transcript available on Metacast 
