Cold Case Files - Mr. Big Sting

Episode Date: August 3, 2021

When a convenience store clerk is murdered in cold blood, an investigator goes undercover as a mafia boss in an elaborate sting that will snare a killer.  Check out our great sponsors!! LifeLock: Join now and save up to 25% off your first year at LifeLock.com/coldcase  Purple: Get 10% off any order of $200 or more at Purple.com/coldcase10 and use code "coldcase10" Total Wireless: Do amazing with Total Wireless! Learn more at TotalWireless.com  Progressive: Get a quote today at Progressive.com and see why 4 out of 5 new auto customers recommend Progressive!

Thank you for listening to this Podcast One production, available on Apple Podcasts and Podcast One. An A&E original podcast. This episode contains descriptions of violence. Use your best judgment. Cape Breton is a small island at the tip of Nova Scotia in Canada. While traveling on the road that circles around the island, a person would pass a state park that offers whale watching. They would see forests and coastline, and they would even discover a giant violin statue on the waterfront,

a tribute to the traditional fiddle music the island is known for. It's a beautiful place to visit. But in 1988, Marie and Doug Dupe weren't just visiting Cape Breton. They had plans to retire there. This is Doug. We come back to retire and live a slower life. Live in the country. We bought a house, six acres of land on the water,

and we figured this was going to be it. Retiring to a beautiful island seems like it would be a relaxing experience, at the very least. And it was. But Marie was becoming bored with her abundance of relaxation time. So she found herself a job at the local convenience store.

This is Doug Dupe again. I asked her, I said, you could find a better job than this. She said, well, I'm going to give it a try. She said, I'm getting bored laying around the house. It's the wintertime, nothing to do. So I'm going to give it a try. She gave it a try.

On March 21, 1992, Marie was scheduled for her first night shift at the Big Bend convenience store. That same night, an unscheduled blizzard made an appearance in Cape Breton. Doug pleaded with her to stay home, but Marie was determined to work her shift. Marie had arrived safely at work despite the blizzard. She didn't make it safely back home, though. But it wasn't because despite the blizzard. She didn't make it safely back home, though. But it wasn't because of the blizzard. That night, while working her shift,

Marie was murdered. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files. Around 4 a.m. on March 22nd, a local man came to the store looking for a cup of coffee to warm him up. Instead, though, he found Marie Dupe on the floor surrounded by blood.

The man called the police, and Sergeant Jim McLean was the one to respond. I walked down to the back of the store, and I could see that this lady was brutally stabbed. Her throat was slashed. The side of her face was slashed. Her right ear was severed right off. She had blood, it seemed to me, coming out of everywhere. I was horrified. Marie Dupe was still alive. But despite all the efforts to save her life,

she died less than an hour after she was found. She had lost too much blood. At the crime scene, the investigators were struggling to find evidence. The blizzard had ruined any chance of the killer leaving any type of tracks outside. Inside the store, Detective Paul Doyle was also having a difficult time. The scene was a mess. Of course, the snow was melting, and the water was running across the floor, and there was blood on the floor,

and it was even washing in with the exhibits that were on the floor. Even though the crime scene had presented many challenges, the investigators had discovered some key evidence. This is Sergeant Dave Morrison. There was a lunch counter area in the store. There was one ashtray there that contained one cigarette butt. There was an ashtray on top of the poker machines. I think it had three or four cigarette butts in it. And several cigarette butts were picked up off the floor from various locations in the store.

In 1992, DNA testing wasn't very widely available in Canada. The cigarettes and cans were collected for future testing. Four hours after Marie had been discovered, the investigators visited the Duke home to both inform Doug of what had happened and, likely, to also rule him out as a suspect. This is Doug again. Three Malys walking through snow right up to their middle, finally get to your house, and they walk and they say, well, Doug, we got some bad news for you. And right off the bat, I says, my wife did.

What else could be the bad news? Doug's choice of words was unfortunate, because he was then escorted to the police station and investigated as the main suspect. When other people in Cape Benton learned that their newest neighbor was a murder suspect, the investigators were flooded with false tips. Among them were rumors of drug dealing and mafia ties. Here's Detective Doyle.

I think this just ended up being a rumor that that somehow got started and and fed on itself and as people heard this rumor they felt it was their obligation to pass it on and it was based on nothing. After several more interviews and two polygraph tests the police determined that Doug Dupe didn't have any involvement in his wife's murder. The investigation had to start again from the beginning. In early April, the snow in Cape Breton had started to melt, and a new lead was on the verge of being uncovered. Outside the convenience store,

the detectives discovered the handle of a uncovered. Outside the convenience store, the detectives discovered the handle of a knife sticking out of some dirty snow. It was a sandwich knife used at the lunch counter in the store, and the blade was stained with blood. The blood was tested and identified as belonging to Marie Du. Believing it was likely a store customer that had murdered Marie, the investigators used the receipts to identify who had been at the store the night of the murder. We tracked each transaction that took place from the time Mrs. Stoop got to work. We found out who made the purchase, and we went and we interviewed that person. One of the only purchases that the police couldn't track down

happened at 3.16 a.m. It was a pack of cigarettes. At 3.18 a.m., a different customer, a woman, had bought a sub sandwich. She told the police what she remembered from that night. So we walked into the store, and the guy that was just standing over there at the table, he was just, like, not moving.

It was like a statue. And the only moment that you seen out of him was like when he was having a puff of a cigarette or when he went to lift up his coffee cup. Other than that, he was like a statue. He didn't move. And I had asked the lady, I said, does he bother you? And she said, well, yeah, he's creeping me out a little bit.

I said, well, maybe you should call the police because like he seems a little, you know what I mean, spaced out. And it was just weird looking. The witness helped the police to develop a sketch of the stranger. He was a young-looking white man wearing a Blue Jays baseball cap. He said, do you think that if you've seen this guy, you would recognize him? I said, yeah. And he said, how do you figure that?

I said, the eyes. The eyes would give him away. Because I've never seen eyes that deep and, as I would say, like dead. For the next year, the police actively investigated thousands of leads and interviewed hundreds of suspects. But they didn't come any closer to identifying the man in the sketch. In 1997, seven years after Maria Dupe was murdered at the Big Bend convenience store during her night shift, the evidence was able to be tested for DNA.

The unknown genetic profile that was developed was entered into the Canadian DNA databanks. It wasn't until the summer of 2001 that a match to the profile was found. Here's Detective Doyle again. Ernest Gordon Strollbridge was a young guy from Newfoundland. He came over to the Cape Breton area when he was 17 years old. He worked at a few different locations around Cape Breton.

At the time of the murder, Strobridge only lived a couple of miles from the convenience store. By 2001, he had moved to Ontario. So Detective Boyle contacted Detective Glenn Bowmaster from the Ontario Provincial Police. He explained that they were looking for Strobridge because of the DNA match. This is Detective Bowmaster. Well, really, all the DNA did was put him in the crime scene. It's a pretty big stretch from putting someone in the crime scene to saying he committed the murder. Detective Bowmaster thought that Doyle would need a confession to make his case.

He suggested that he went about it delicately. You have one kick at it here, and I think once you burn that bridge and he now knows he's a suspect, if he's not confessing, it's too late to try and do something after that. Bowmaster planned an undercover operation to trick his suspect into talking about the crime. On September 8, 2002, Gordy Strobridge had a meeting in the hotel penthouse with a person he believed was a Canadian crime boss. The crime boss was actually Detective Bob Deasy, Bowmaster's colleague. The scenario is quite simply the suspect coming forward to a job interview.

Strobridge had been the subject of an undercover sting running with members of a supposed crime family. He stood lookout while people unloaded bootleg liquor and delivered packages he thought contained stolen diamonds. Now the time had come for Strobridge to be promoted. Here's some of the audio from the meeting between Detective Deasy and Gordy Strobridge. You know why you're up here tonight. I wanted to meet you. Maybe it's possible that you can come into our little family, which I very much hope to.

When he realizes that this is the kind of life I would really like to have, and then I'll explain to him exactly the insurance policy of the crime family, is that you need to offer us something of equal value because we certainly don't want to lose what we have. Once we kind of bear our souls to you, we're exposed. And there's got to be a trade-off. Yeah.

The trade-off they were referring to was reeling any big crimes that Strobridge had committed. Here's more audio from the meeting. That was close. There was a thing called the Big Ben's murder. Big Ben's? Yeah. Mercedes Benz?

No, that's right. It was a convenience store on Princess Street. And I didn't realize I'd done it until the next day. Because I blacked out and then when I woke up the next day I was covered in my own blood. Okay, you kind of lost me. What are we talking about? Well, there was a murder there. Yeah, and I done it. Well, that's pretty heavy.

All I can remember seeing is that she was flashing on this knife. She was? Yeah. So I grabbed the knife and I stabbed her. That's life's control. I was about to wear her. Detective Deasy had to think quickly on his feet. That really took me aback.

And I then had to think backwards from that point because essentially we began with the climax. I think he was as nervous as I was. I believe that he was viewing this as the break of his life. He was finally going to be secure in a crime family, and I think he was so anxious to start that procedure that he began the interview with confessing to the murder. The conversation went on for around an hour, and when it was over,

Strobridge felt confident in his decision to share. The reason why I told you is because I understood, you know, it's part of the trust relationship. I appreciate that. The day after the meeting, Strobridge was having a very different kind of conversation in the interrogation room with Detective Doyle. You kind of had, I guess, a bit of a surprise this afternoon.

Do you remember being at the hotel last night? Yeah. Interrupting. Do you remember talking to a guy by the name of Bob Deasley? Yeah. Do you remember telling him that you killed a lady at Big Ben's on Prince Street, Sidney? I don't recall. You don't recall telling them that?

It's on videotape. I think it was starting to sink in that he was in trouble, and he was there because he was going to be charged And what he told me was what he told the undercover operator and it doesn't mean that I don't feel bad for the family and it doesn't mean that... Listen, Gordon, I know that you're human and it's a pretty big burden for a young guy like yourself. I know that. Almost one year after his videotaped statements,

Ernest Gordon Strobridge pled guilty to murder. Because Strobridge was a juvenile when he killed Marie Dupe, he was sentenced juvenile time, a life sentence with a possibility of parole in seven years. Doug Dupe doesn't believe that the sentence is enough, but at least he was able to find some peace through closure. No, it's not enough. He did his first 12 years not being caught.

That was his parole. The guy should be doing life right now. But I'm glad it was before I went to my grave myself, because it's nice to see it settled. Cold Case Files, the podcast, is hosted by Brooke Giddings, produced by McKamey Lynn and Steve Delamater. Our executive producer is Ted Butler. Our music was created by Blake Maples.

This podcast is distributed by Podcast One. The Cold Case Files TV series was produced by Curtis Productions and is hosted by Bill Curtis. You can find me, at Brooke Giddings, on Twitter and at Brooke the Podcaster on Instagram. This podcast is brought to you by AETV.