Cold Case Files - REOPENED: License To Kill

Episode Date: July 18, 2024

In 1997, a couple moves into a brand new home in rural Ontario. During renovations, they discover a buried clue that is the key to solving a brutal double murder.

In 1997, a couple moved into their newly purchased home in Blind River, Ontario. They did what any couple does after moving into a new house. They made it their own. That included some fresh paint and a few renovations. But when the couple dug into the old walls, they found something that didn't belong there. A clue that would solve a 37-year-old murder and bring a killer to justice. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files. If you've listened to this podcast before, you probably already know that I'm from a small town. I'm familiar with how they work, and I know how trusting people in small towns can be.

So, Gormley, Ontario, just north of Toronto, sounds really familiar to me. In the 1970s, it was the kind of place where people leave their doors unlocked. Or they used to, until the unthinkable happened. One spring morning. In May of 1970, former nurse Doreen Morby was busy doing household chores and taking care of her 21-month-old son when a stranger knocked on her door.

Like any good neighbor, Doreen opened the door to greet the man on her front step. Several hours later, her husband returned home from his job as a school teacher to find Doreen in a pool of her own blood. She'd been sexually assaulted and shot to death. Their baby boy was where she had left him, in the same room, unharmed.

The Gormley community was stunned. How could something like this happen in a remote corner of their safe little town? Sadly, they would not be the only community impacted by such brutal violence. Less than two weeks later, and 25 miles away, nine-year-old Dale Ferguson was homesick from school. His mom Helen stayed home with him. She was also a former nurse, so Dale was in good hands. But the two weren't home alone together for long. Here's Dale Ferguson, remembering that horrible day. The doorbell rang and my mother poked her head in the door and there was a man with her. She said that he had a sick boy in the car and she was going to give

him directions to the hospital. Helen Ferguson left Dale's room and walked down the hall with a stranger. It's the last time Dale would see his mother alive. Scared, sick, and alone, Dale called out for his mom. She didn't answer. So I got out of bed and looked down the hall, and she was laying on her back, and it looked like tar. I thought, that man tarred my mummy to the ground. And then I went over there and realized that she was,

well, there was something wrong with her because you could just look in her eyes. Just like Jareen Morby, Helen Ferguson had been sexually assaulted and shot to death in her own home while her child was in the house. With the similarities stacking, the Ontario Provincial Police decided to send backup. Detective Don McNeil was sent to work the case alongside the local officers. Here's Detective McNeil. A murder was an uncommon thing in that particular municipalities and especially two of them which were so similar. Both women were nurses, both women were married to school teachers. There were sort of common denominators

there that they thought, you know, is this Ontario's first serial killer? The detectives' first step was to confirm a suspicion that both women were killed by the same man, or at least with the same gun. The bullets from both crime scenes were submitted to ballistics experts at the Center for Forensic Sciences. Forensic scientist Finn Nielsen handled the examination. We examined them microscopically and were able to tell them that, yes, these are.22 caliber rimfire projectiles,

and they were fired from a firearm rifled six grooves, right-hand twist. Investigators now believed it was highly likely that a single gun fired the shots that killed both Doreen Morby and Holland Ferguson. But without the gun itself, officers needed to find another way to track down the killer. So next, investigators examined the semen samples collected at the crime scene. But in the 1970s, DNA testing didn't really exist. Genetic testing could determine the killer's blood type. But beyond that, the trail went cold.

A true crime podcast. It got me upset because this is someone's kid and someone knows she's gone. That takes a different approach. It was shocking for something like this to happen in our little town. Focusing on the communities affected by life-shattering crimes. It made news throughout the entire region that these two people had been shot while they slept in such a safe community. To give a new perspective on the devastation crimes can cause. It was shocking for something like this to happen in our little town.

Featuring cases from quiet towns to bustling cities and interviewing the people closest to the case. My first thought was that it's an unusual location for us to have a homicide. Listen to the true crime podcast, City Confidential, and step beyond the yellow tape to learn just how far a crime can reach. There are certain cases in the history of Boston that I think sort of define the city. I think this is one of them. New episodes of the City Confidential podcast are available every Thursday, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Without any usable physical evidence, the detectives turned to their sole eyewitness, nine-year-old Dale Ferguson. They needed him to give a physical description of the man who killed his mother. Well, they give you a big binder, pages with noses and eyes and ears. So they say, well, flip through here and find a nose that looks most like this guy's nose. And they say the eyes, the ears, and then the hair and shape of the face and all that. Dale helped the police sketch artist put together a rough sketch of the murder suspect, and it was released to the local news. Now, I've seen the sketch, and it looks like your average white man. He has sort of a broad nose.

But other than that, I probably couldn't pick him out of a lineup. With a generic police sketch and a terrified community, it's not a surprise that the police got hundreds of phone calls. Detectives investigated every plausible lead and ID'd dozens of potential suspects. They even issued blood type screenings to their most likely suspects. Forensic scientist Nielsen also worked on the blood typing investigation. If we found out a subject, you know, was off work or was available at the time of the homicides, and we had him give us a sputum sample, which was me spitting on a Kleenex, letting it air dry, and then having it sent down to the Center for Frenzic Science and tested.

Sergeant Don Hillock was one of the dozens of cops canvassing for suspects and tracking down positive matches. We had all kinds of people come back. Blood grew a bay. Then you have to go back and re-interview them and get their alibis, and it was, oh, frustrating. Totally frustrating. One by one, every suspect was eliminated, and eventually the case went cold.

But the impact of the crime and the fear it inspired wasn't going anywhere. Ben Nielsen and Sergeant Hillock remember what it felt like in that small town almost 50 years ago. People were getting very alarmed. People were locking their doors where at one time in a rural area you didn't lock your door sort of thing. We'd go try and interview neighbors and they would talk to us outside of a second story window. They like they wouldn't talk to anybody. The fear was just unreal. An act of violence can send shockwaves through an entire community, but two vicious murders within weeks of each other? That can change the fabric of a place forever. In 1995, 25 years after two women were brutally raped and murdered,

their file sat on the cold case shelf collecting dust. Inside that file was what little evidence detectives had been able to scrape together. A police sketch, a ballistics report stating that both women were killed with a.22 caliber pistol, and a blood type report for dozens of suspects, all cleared. For a quarter century, the case stays cold. Meanwhile, in nearby Sol St. Marie, Ontario, another crime spree grabs the attention of local authorities. A series of robberies has rocked the rural town. Detective Sergeant Mike Davey heads up the local investigation. It began in June of 1995 with a robbery in a private residence.

Shortly after that, there was a robbery that we became aware of at a boutique. Then there was a robbery at a fur and jewelry store that took place beside the courthouse here in Sault Ste. Marie. It doesn't take long for the Ontario Provincial Police to recognize that the burglar in Sault Ste. Marie might be responsible for a larger string of stick-ups. A series of armed robberies had occurred in northern Ontario. Three had occurred in the city of Sault Ste. Marie and one in Sudbury in Ontario.

The last robbery occurred in our jurisdiction in a small village called Iron Bridge. That was Ontario Detective Ed Pellerin, who joined the robbery investigation in 1995, along with detectives from three separate agencies. With five robberies reported across northern Ontario, all with the same M.O., the task force believed that a single person was responsible. Their best shot was to start at local pawn shops, looking for the stolen goods. That's when Detective Mike Davey got a call. I got a call the following day from one of our detectives in Sudbury

and that an individual a week prior did attend this particular pawn shop and pawned off a ring that was similar in description to a ring that was taken from the robbery in Sault Ste. Marie. According to the pawn shop records, the man who pawned the stolen ring presented a valid license under the name Ronald Glenn West. But when the police run a background check on West, the results don't sound like your average jewelry thief. West was a Toronto cop. He retired in 1972. But since then, he had built

up a long string of arrests for battery and drug possession. And when investigators took a closer look at West, the pieces started to come together. It looked like West was their man. Here's Detective Palloran to explain. And we did surveillance on the house. There's two vehicles in a driveway that match the description of the vehicle that left the iron robbery in Iron Bridge. The matching vehicle descriptions were enough to get a search warrant. And evidence inside West's home confirmed investigators' suspicions. Here's Detective Davey. We found jewelry that had come from Valentino Furs, the fur jewelry store that had been robbed, as well as jewelry that had come from the boutique. Ronald Glenn West was arrested and convicted on five counts of armed robbery

and sentenced to 10 years in prison. And as his life unravels, so do the secrets of his past. Facing ten years behind bars, Ronald West decides to sell his home. And two years after the robbery investigation, a new couple moves in. The new owners begin renovations and start tearing down walls and opening up ceilings. But the construction crew finds more than faulty wiring or leaky pipes. And while they're renovating the basement, the owner had pulled back some ceiling boards, and an envelope was concealed behind these boards.

Inside the envelope contained these two firearm permits, with Ron West's name on it from 1969 and 1970. That was Detective Pellerin, who received the report from two confused and concerned new homeowners. Pellerin knew all about West's criminal past, but he couldn't quite piece together the two permits, so he shared them with a colleague, Detective Don McNeil. That's the same Don McNeil that was the lead detective on the Ferguson and Morby murders over 35 years ago. In the fine print on the gun permits, McNeil notices a clue that triggers a connection. It was for a nine-shot.22 caliber pistol. The weapon believed to be used in the 1970 murders was believed to be a nine-shot.22 caliber pistol.

Despite it being three decades since McNeil had worked the Morby Ferguson murders, he never forgot the details. Now the veteran detective was working on a solid hunch that he thought might just close the case. So he started digging into West's background. Where he was born and brought up was in the area of Helen Ferguson. And I noticed too that in those days on the police department, even on the OPP, when you went on your holidays, your annual leave, you had to leave word at your detachment

where you were going to be and how you could be contacted. And I noticed that he vacationed in the area of Durian Marby. Without a shred of new evidence for almost 30 years, Detective McNeil finally seemed to have found a likely suspect. He could place West in the area when both murders took place. And he knew that West owned a gun matching the caliber bullet that killed both women. He even knew how West might have been able to walk right in the front door of his victim's homes. He was a police officer and both victims were nurses. I believe even today that nurses and policemen get along like a horse and carriage. And I thought, well, maybe this guy used his badge to get in the house. All that was left was to scientifically link West to the crime scene.

And the first step was to find the murder weapon. It's summertime and with Pluto TV's Summer of Cinema, the streaming is easy. Stream hundreds of free movies on all your favorite devices all summer long. Chill out poolside with Mission Impossible and Transformers. Or stay cool inside watching Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, Titanic, or The Wolf of Wall Street. No matter your vibe, download the Pluto TV app to spend summer doing what you love, watching endless movies. Tell me that's not the deal of the summer.

Summer of Cinema on Pluto TV. Stream now. Pay never. With the information that was on the firearms permit, we had contacted our Provincial Weapons Enforcement Unit and asked for their assistance in tracing the serial number of the gun and the permit number. That was Detective Pellerin, who used the gun and the permit number. That was Detective Pellerin, who used the information from the Weapons Enforcement Unit to track down the.22 caliber pistol that once belonged to Ron West. The current owner is a gun collector in Ontario, who offers up the gun for forensic testing. Finn Nielsen, the same forensic scientist who tested the bullets back in 1970, examines the gun.

He's looking to match West's pistol to the fine lines, or striations, that are embedded into a bullet as it travels through the chamber. There were a couple of very gross lines on the exhibit projectiles, the projectiles from the dead people, which were repeated on the revolver. But that was all. There wasn't any really, really fine striae, which you also like to have in order to make what you believe, in your opinion, is a positive match. My gut feeling was that they probably had the right revolver, but I would never say so in court. Without concrete evidence that West's gun fired the bullets

which killed Helen Ferguson and Doreen Morby, investigators are back to the drawing board when it comes to scientific evidence. Fortunately for detectives, genetic testing has come a long way since the initial investigation in 1970, and the investigators on the original case worked so diligently to collect genetic samples from the crime scene, they've been almost perfectly preserved. Forensic scientists compare the two genetic samples from each crime scene and get a match, definitively proving that one man assaulted and murdered both women. Now all detectives needed to do was test that sample against Ron West's DNA.

Luckily, they knew just where they might find his DNA. Investigators revisit Kingston Penitentiary, where West was held while on trial for armed robbery. It turns out, West wrote several letters while he was incarcerated, including one addressed to his wife in Toronto. Here's Detective Pellerin. He had sent her a letter and she kept it for a while and then she called us and advised us that she had the letter. She was throwing it out and wanted to know if we were interested in it. Detectives received the letter and turned it over to forensic investigators to examine it for potential DNA. Here's Detective Pellerin again. I had sent it to the Center of Forensic Science in Toronto

and requested an examination of the stamp to see if there was any DNA present and if a profile could be obtained. Then, investigators have nothing to do but hope and wait. DNA specialist Pamela Newell tests the stamp and the envelope, hoping to extract human cells that got trapped in the glue when West licked them. She's only able to pull a partial profile and compares it to the evidence found at the murder scenes. Here's Pamela Newell. The person who had licked the postage stamp may well have been the person who raped both of these women. The frequency of occurrence might have been perhaps 1 in 1,000

for this combined profile, which would mean that if you had 10,000 men in any one area, that any 10 of them could have contributed this particular sample. By now, it's September of 1998, and it's beginning to look like investigators have once again run out of leads. The last hope is that the partial match on the stamp might be good enough to convince a judge that West is a likely suspect. After we got the results of the DNA from the stamp might be good enough to convince a judge that West is a likely suspect. After we got the results of the DNA from the stamp that gave us sufficient grounds to obtain

a judicial warrant and to obtain blood. On March 26, 1999, with a warrant in hand, detectives visit West in prison and extract a blood sample. After years of false leads and incomplete tests, they finally have the evidence they need to confirm their hunch. Pamela Newell runs another DNA test against the evidence at the scene. This time, the results are certain. The numbers for one of the deceased women were in excess of one in six billion, the population of the world. So that's very, very conclusive DNA evidence.

31 years later, Ronald Glenn West is finally charged with the murders he committed. And for Detective Don McNeil, the resolution brings closure to his 37-year career on the force. I don't know how to put it. I think there's no doubt that I probably had a couple of smashes of scotch that night sort of thing, but it was great satisfaction. And for little Dale Ferguson, who's now a grown man, there's a different kind of closure. All those other years when it was kind of a factor in our lives, it was always just, you know, I had my mother stolen from me. Then when I went back and I thought about, well, this guy held a gun to my mother's head,

made her have sex with him and then killed her. And what was that like for her? Which, you know, I never thought about that for 30 years. And I never dreamt that there'd ever be an arrest. I didn't even really think about it anymore. Cold Case Files, the podcast, is hosted by Brooke Giddings. Produced by McKamey Lynn and Steve Dolomater. Thank you. Curtis. Check out more cold case files at aetv.com or learn more about cases like this one by visiting the A&E Real Crime blog at aetv.com slash real crime.