Episode 437: Tyrone William ‘Ty’ Conn became the first man in over forty years to climb over the wall at Kingston Penitentiary, Canada's oldest and most secure federal prison. Born to a teenage mother in 1967 and adopted at age three by a prominent Belleville psychiatrist, his childhood unravelled into a cycle of theft, institutionalization, and escape that would follow him for the rest of his life. By the time he was thirty-two, a string of armed bank robberies and repeated prison breaks had compounded into a forty-seven-year sentence, a number that raised eyebrows given that not one of his crimes had ever physically harmed another person. On May 6, 1999, using a homemade ladder and a length of sewn canvas, he scaled Kingston's wall and disappeared into the Ontario countryside, setting off a thirteen-day manhunt that captivated the country. What happened when police finally caught up with him in a Toronto basement apartment two weeks later remains, to this day, a matter of dispute, one his own mother was never able to get answered.

Sources:
Tyrone William Conn | Brief Biography
Ty Conn: A Life Imprisoned (2000) | The Fifth Estate
Ty Conn : My Brother The Outlaw | YouTube
Ty Conn : My Brother The Outlaw | Facebook
Who Killed Ty Conn by Linden Macintyre, (Paperback) | Indigo
Ty Conn Project Materials - York University
Ty Conn | Wikipedia
Tyrone Conn's escape ends in death | CBC News
7 Things You Need to Know About Kingston Penitentiary
Niagara Falls Review • Wed, Mar 14, 1984 • Page 8
The Kingston Whig-Standard • Thu, Mar 15, 1984 • Page 1
The Ottawa Citizen • Sat, Mar 07, 1987 • Page 8
The Kingston Whig-Standard • Fri, Jun 30, 1989 • Page 2
The Kingston Whig-Standard • Mon, Dec 18, 1989 • Page 9
The Kingston Whig-Standard • Thu, Jun 28, 2001 • Page 1
The Kingston Whig-Standard • Thu, Jun 28, 2001 • Page 10

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode 436: In June 1967, two of northern Saskatchewan's most respected bushmen, Métis political organizer James Brady and Cree band councillor Absolom Halkett, were dropped off by float plane to prospect for uranium near La Ronge. A week later, their employer found the camp standing, the beds slept in, the canoe still tied to shore. Both men were gone. The RCMP searched for three weeks, found a trail of unexplained clues, and closed the case without finding either man. More than fifty years later, a small team of researchers and family members went looking for answers the original investigation never sought, and what they discovered at the bottom of a northern lake raises more questions than it resolves.

Sources:

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode 435: In November 1944, the Imperial Japanese Army began launching paper balloons from the coast of Honshu — each one carrying incendiary and anti-personnel bombs, designed to ride the jet stream across the Pacific and set fire to the forests of North America. They called the program Fu-Go. Canada called them White Paper. Over the following five months, more than sixty balloons came down on Canadian soil, from the British Columbia coast to Manitoba, and a small team of Canadian Army bomb disposal officers spent eight months recovering live ordnance from some of the most remote terrain in the country under a blanket of total secrecy that reached all the way to the Prime Minister's office. 

Sources:

Fu-Go Balloon Bomb — Wikipedia
Japan's WWII Balloon Bomb Attacks on North America — Smithsonian Magazine
Balloon Bombs: Japan's Answer to Doolittle — National Museum of the United States Air Force


On Paper Wings — IMDB
On Paper Wings Retrospective — Oregon Humanities
On Paper Wings — Oregon ArtsWatch
On Paper Wings Screening — Japanese American National Museum
On 75th Anniversary, Bly Remains Connected to Tragic WWII Event — Herald and News
Japanese Balloon Bomb Explosion Location — PBS History Detectives
WWII-Era Balloon Bomb in B.C. Blown to Smithereens — Global News
BC Studies No. 203 — Balloon Bombs, the Alaska Highway, and Influenza: Tsek'ehne Perspectives — BC Studies
East, Captain Charles A. Japanese Balloons of World War Two. Prince George: College of New Caledonia Press, 1993.
Coen, Ross. Fu-Go: The Curious History of Japan's Balloon Bomb Attack on America. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2014.
Mikesh, Robert C. Japan's World War II Balloon Bomb Attacks on North America. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1973.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode 434: On the morning of February 25th, 2005, Crystal Taman, a forty-year-old dental assistant, wife, and mother of three, left her home in East St. Paul, Manitoba on her way to work. She never arrived. Stopped at a red light on Highway 59 at the Perimeter Highway, her car was struck at highway speed by a blue Dodge Dakota truck driven by an off-duty Winnipeg Police Service constable named Derek Harvey-Zenk, who had spent the night drinking with fellow officers at a north-end bar and a colleague's home. Crystal died on impact. Harvey-Zenk refused to provide a breath sample and was charged with impaired driving causing death, dangerous driving causing death, criminal negligence causing death, and refusal to provide a breath sample. More than two years later, all charges except dangerous driving causing death were stayed in a plea deal, and Harvey-Zenk was sentenced to two years less a day — served at home, with no conditions. The outcome sparked a public inquiry.

Sources:
TAMAN CRYSTAL - Obituaries - Winnipeg Free Press Passages
Taman Inquiry | Wikipedia
Crystal Ann Sveinson Taman (1964-2005) - Find a...
http://www.tamaninquiry.ca/
May 2012: No memory of fatal crash: Harvey-Zenk | Winnipeg Free Press
Review clears police force after controversial case | Global News
Harvey-Zenk appeared tired, not drunk, at party before crash, inquiry hears | CBC News
Province of Manitoba | Archived News Releases | Taman Report Published
Former cop finally takes the stand | Global News
Major changes to how police officers will be investigated | CTV News
Police told cousin Harvey Zenk was drunk | Global News
Jun 2012: Ex-officer from Taman inquiry sues RCMP, police | Winnipeg Free Press
Bringing the Thin Blue Line into Line: Bill 16, the Police Services Act, 2011 CanLIIDocs 256
Disgraced cop’s lawyer slams Taman inquiry | Global News

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode 433: On August 16, 1995, Avis Ottey came home to her townhouse in Scarborough, Ontario, expecting to find her daughters packing for the future. Instead, she found nineteen-year-old Marsha Ottey and sixteen-year-old Tamara "Tami" Ottey murdered in the basement.

Marsha was just two days away from leaving for Arkansas State University on an athletic scholarship she had worked years to earn. She had also confided something chilling to her mother while packing her bags: "If anything should happen to me, it's Rohan."

What followed was a seven-month investigation that stretched beyond the murders of the Ottey sisters. Two unsolved sexual assaults, a seemingly unrelated killing at a Toronto subway station, that of TTC employee Dimitrija Trajceski, DNA evidence, and the largest manhunt in Toronto Police history ultimately exposed the truth behind a crime driven by obsession, control, and extraordinary violence.

Sources:
https://www.canlii.org/en/on/onsc/doc/1999/1999canlii14909/1999canlii14909.html
https://www.canlii.org/en/on/onca/doc/2003/2003canlii15438/2003canlii15438.html
https://www.canlii.org/en/on/onca/doc/2003/2003canlii32900/2003canlii32900.html
https://www.canlii.org/en/on/onca/doc/2003/2003canlii52177/2003canlii52177.html
https://www.canlii.org/en/on/onca/doc/2011/2011onca311/2011onca311.html
https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/scc-l/doc/2012/2012canlii5501/2012canlii5501.html
Guilty verdict in 1995 slaying of Toronto sisters | CBC News
Walk in memory of Agincourt Collegiate’s Ottey sisters
If anything happens to me: The murder of the Ottey sisters | Global News
Crime Beat: If Anything Happens To Me - The Ottey Sisters | S1 E8
Murder suspect appears in Canada court - UPI Archives
MANDEL: Killer of Ottey sisters granted 60-day unescorted pass
Rosie DiManno: Killer of the Ottey sisters, now out on parole, still has a life ahead of him, unlike his victims
MANDEL: Killer of Ottey sisters granted full parole despite risk
ISN CEO Revisits One of His “Most Challenging Cases” In Global TV's ‘Crime Beat’ Episode
88 Valley Stream Drive, Toronto, ON, CA

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode 432: In February 1884, a Scottish storekeeper named James Bell was shot dead in his cabin along Telegraph Road in Washington Territory, just south of the Canadian border. Within days, a fifteen-year-old Semá:th boy named Louie Sam was arrested on suspicion of murder and placed in lawful Canadian custody on Sumas Prairie. He never made it to trial. On the night of February 27, a mob of seventy armed and disguised men crossed the international boundary from Washington Territory into British Columbia, took Sam from his cell, and hanged him from a roadside tree 169 paces north of the border. No one else was ever charged for Louie Sam’s lynching, and the investigation into Bell’s death seems to have stopped with Sam’s death.

Sources:

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode 431: In the fall of 2011, the first of three indigenous women disappeared from a stretch of Winnipeg's West End that those who worked there called the Street of Tears. Their families searched, put up posters, and made phone calls that went nowhere. The man believed responsible had been known to police for decades. His criminal record ran to 109 convictions. He was already on their radar when the final woman disappeared. This is the story of Tanya Nepinak, Carolyn Sinclair, and Lorna Blacksmith.

Sources:

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode 430: On the morning of May 28, 1998, police were called to a home on Encino Avenue in Encino, California. Inside the master bedroom, they found Phil Hartman — one of the most versatile performers in the history of North American television — shot three times at close range while he slept. His wife, Brynn, had pulled the trigger sometime around 2:30 in the morning, then driven to a friend's house and confessed. By the time police arrived, she was back in the bedroom. She never came out.

Phil Hartman was 49 years old and born in Brantford, Ontario. He had just wrapped his fourth season of NewsRadio. He had a film opening in July. Behind the public face of a thriving career was a marriage under years of sustained pressure — addiction, relapse, escalating volatility, and a final argument that ended in the worst possible way. The motive was listed as unknown. It remains unknown.

Sources:

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode 429: In January 1995, DNA testing excluded Guy Paul Morin, the man convicted of the 1984 murder of Christine Jessop, from the crime. The Ontario Court of Appeal set aside his conviction, and Morin was released. The man whose semen was recovered from Christine Jessop's underwear in 1984 remained unidentified.

A public inquiry led by Justice Fred Kaufman spent 10 months examining how an innocent man had been convicted twice. It produced 1,380 pages and 119 recommendations. The real killer remained unnamed for another twenty-five years — until a detective named Steve Smith, a Texas laboratory, and a forensic genealogist pulled a family tree apart and found a killer at the end of it.

Sources

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode 428: On October 3, 1984, nine-year-old Christine Jessop stepped off a school bus in Queensville, Ontario, and walked toward home. She was never seen alive again. Her body was found on New Year's Eve, fifty-six kilometres away. She had been sexually assaulted and stabbed.

What followed was one of the most consequential criminal proceedings in Canadian history — and the quiet destruction of a man who lived next door.

This is Part One of a two-part series.

Sources:

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices