Front Burner - Weekend Listen: What happened to Christine Harron?

Episode Date: November 23, 2024

Christine Harron, a book-loving teenager from Hanover, Ontario, leaves for school in the spring of 1993 and is never seen again. A suspect emerges, confessing to her murder, but the case falls apart and Christine's family are left without answers.In Season 9 of the award winning podcast Someone Knows Something, David Ridgen, along with Christine's mother, reopen the investigation and come face to face with the man who said he killed Chrissy.Someone Knows Something is the investigative true crime series by award-winning documentarian David Ridgen. Each season tackles an unsolved case, uncovering details and bringing closure to families.More episodes of Someone Knows Something are available at: https://link.chtbl.com/3PSdjpxO

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hey everybody, Jamie here. We have a bonus episode for you today from the brand new season of Someone Knows Something. Christine Herron was a book-loving teenager from Hanover, Ontario. She left for school in the spring of 1993 and was never seen again. A suspect emerges confessing to her murder, but the case falls apart, and Christine's family are left without answers.

In season nine of Someone Knows Something, host David Ridgen, along with Christine's mother, reopen the investigation and come face to face with the man who said he killed Chrissy. Now here's the first episode of Someone Knows Something, season nine, the Christine Herron case. Take a listen. I'm at another river, this one flowing through a southwestern Ontario town on a clear but darkening springtime evening. I recorded these nature sounds well over a decade ago for a TV documentary using the same microphone I now use for the podcast. This thing always seems to be standing between me and the unknown. Somehow oddly comforting. Just crouching at the riverside here in a park in Hanover, Ontario.

This is the Saugine River, which the mouth of the Saugine actually empties out into Lake Huron. It's about 60 kilometers downstream, I think. The river's flowing clear, but there's lots of debris kind of pushed against the shoreline. There's obviously a pretty high floodplain here. There's an old gazebo, a swing set. There's an old gate. I remember focusing on the sounds these things made here.

Chains on a swing, muddy logs at the high watermark, brushy grasses along the path, and that metal gate. I wonder if these objects, or the sounds they made, ever held any actual comfort for anyone. At one time, this park was Christine Herron's favorite place in the whole world, I've been told. If I'd been here before May 18th, 1993, I might have seen her down here, catching frogs or fishing. Nobody here today. Just this path next to the river. The sounds I've recorded here don't reveal any secrets, but I feel pulled back to places like this again and again. Pulled back into long-term investigations, their grief and the hope.

Even after some questions have been answered, there's always more, and more difficult ones. difficult ones. Over 30 years ago, just one week after her 15th birthday, Christine Heron disappeared, and her full story has yet to be told. I'm David Ridgen, and this is Someone Knows Something, Season 9, The Christine Heron Case, Episode 1, Chrissy. I first learned about Christine in the late 2000s as I was scanning through some of the many unsolved cases out of Ontario. I was preparing to make a documentary series for CBC Television's news program, The National, I sorted Chrissy's case into a much smaller pile, a short list of sorts, cases that for some reason spoke to me. We gather here this morning for a celebration of life. We need life and Christine here.

I'd learned that a memorial service was being held at a church 17 years after Christine disappeared, so I travelled west to Hanover in the springtime of 2010. Let us pray. Loving God, look with mercy on those who mourn for Christine, who has died by the violence of our fallen world. Be with us as we struggle with the mysteries of life and death. Framed photos of Christine in curly dark hair and glasses sit on a small table at the front of the church next to the minister.

There are others, sad people whom I assume are her family, standing close by, including the woman that I know is her mother, Mary Ann. Described by her mom as a bit of a loner, Christine didn't have a lot of close friends. In our culture, her loner mentality, fill me with a chill of sadness. Tears suddenly roll down my face for this young person I'd never met. And right there, I decide that I'm going to do this case. This is the last place Chrissy had lived. I would take several more months of information gathering before I contacted Chrissy's mother, Mary Ann. That front window was the living room, and that's where her and I had spent the morning

together watching television, with her laying her head on my lap. I've got Mary Ann framed up in my documentary camera on a cool windy day. Pale-skinned in glasses with meticulous makeup and shorter hair, Marianne stands in front of the small brick two-story she'd been renting back in the spring of 1993 at the time Chrissy disappeared. Marianne gestures to where she says Chrissy walked away from home that day. And then she left to go to school. She walked down the other side of the street and around the corner. And that was the last I've seen of her.

Marianne says she watched from an upstairs window as Chrissy turned the corner. On the way, Marianne thought, to grade 9 classes at John Diefenbaker High School, not that far away. It was sometime between 1.30 and 2 p.m. Chrissy had not felt well that morning, so stayed home. She'd been known to skip classes and didn't want to go to school that afternoon either. She and her mom had argued about it, and Marianne suggested that perhaps Chrissy should get a job instead. Chrissy walked out saying, see you later, and slammed the door. She was wearing blue jeans, a jean jacket, black running shoes, plastic glasses with a broken nose piece on one

side, and possibly a silver bracelet. She was in a good mood that morning, but she was mad that she had to go to school. We were in the process of packing and moving to another place. And she says, well, even let me stay home and I'll pack all the time instead of going that day. But I said, you can't, the truant officer's waiting. There were other tensions in the household at the time as well. Chrissy had been deeply troubled by her parents' divorce years earlier.

Her father, Lorne, lived in Western Canada at the time of Chrissy's disappearance and has since passed away. Chrissy got along with her younger brother named Sean, but did not always see eye to eye with her stepfather, who was also named Sean. Sean Russworm, who was also named sean sean russworm who was then aged 26. well she didn't like keeping her room clean she's kind of a tomboy yeah russworm is a large man in a t-shirt sporting a mustache and smudgy blue line tattoos on each shoulder. Back at their current home, he and Marianne are settled into a couch. Two chihuahuas named Chloe and Angel sit on their laps. As long as they behave, then maybe they can stay.

You know, the best thing to do is to hand her to you and let you hold her. There you go. There, Angel. See? Marianne hands me Angel, the extra small one, so she can get used to me and stop barking. I walk around the room a bit with the dog in hand, looking at some photos of Chrissy spread out on a coffee table, with a yellow lunch pail on her first day of kindergarten, blowing out

birthday candles in red-ribboned pigtails, and Christmas tree moments. I'm just going to try something with that light behind me. Okay, good. Yeah, it is. Yeah. The dogs seem calm, and we start talking about Chrissy. I like to take stuff apart. Put it back together to see what made it work.

She loved kids. Real bookworm. Loved going for walks into cricks, catching frogs and what have you. I see Chrissy seeming to watch me through her big glasses in the photos. I love those glasses. She hated them.

There was times where other people would pick on her younger brother, Sean, and then Chrissy would be right there, sticking up for her brother. Chrissy was right there and punched out a couple of boys that were picking on Sean. This was in public school already. So she could hold her own. She was feisty when she needed to be. Sean admits that his relationship with Chrissy was sometimes strained,

and he says that he's bipolar and sometimes can be aggressive. But he says that one of his last memories of Chrissy is her helping him replace the spark plugs in his car. When we started to get closer, she'd come out to the garage and ask me if she could use my tools. Yeah, they're right there. If I go to help, no, no, she'd want to do it herself. But she wasn't one to go out to parties or anything like that.

Like, she'd come home a couple times and said, well, they're drinking, so I left. So she left. She was against smoking. She was against drinking. We told her we were really proud of her for that. Yeah. She was close to her grandma, my mom. Very close.

Yeah. They spent a lot of time together. We always had a good relationship. For any reason, if she just wanted to talk, she'd call me. She used to spend a lot of time out there with me. And then when, in 93, we moved to Guelph, that's what upset me so bad because I felt if she's out there, she's going to try and reach me,

because she always did if she wanted something or other. And I thought when I move away, she won't have my phone number, and that's upset me. And once I moved away, I couldn't even look at her pictures anymore for a long time. It really upset me bad. It says Grandma. No, it says Grandpa.

It says Grandma. Grandpa. Why don't they solve? C-T-R-A-M-P-A. Grandpa. Uh-huh, it says Grandma. Huh? M-P-H.

Grandpa. Uh-huh, it's a grandma. Huh? Christine sits around a Christmas tree with her family in 1990. I watch the grainy archival video as she quietly makes sure that everyone has a gift to open before she does. Then the footage shifts to a Santa theme park, and Christine's pretending to be a reindeer in front of a big red sleigh. A mischievous strength to her every move,

just three years before she walks off into oblivion. Well, I got a new sewing machine. I remember bringing her out and letting her use it. She made an apron the one time she was out, and we'd bake, and we'd just play games.

We always used to go do worm hunting, and with her, too, and she'd go fishing. I just couldn't believe it when she disappeared and she didn't call me. It's something you can't never forget, I don't know. No matter what, you can't forget about it. No matter what, you can't forget about it. Marianne reported Chrissy missing to Hanover police at 9.21pm on the day she disappeared, May 18th, 1993. Chrissy was known to have a poor sense of direction and would get lost easily, but despite this and her habit of skipping classes or sleeping over at friends' houses,

Marianne and others say that Chrissy would always call home and never go far. When she didn't show home, I started phoning her friends and my family just to see if maybe she went to one of her friends' house after school or something. The story of Christine's case, at least in the beginning, is a familiar one. A teenager leaves home, supposed to be somewhere, school, but never makes it. Local police, investigatively inexperienced, finding nothing and flying in the face of what a mother knows. And nobody had seen her or heard from her. So then the family and I, we started going out and looking for her, looking in parks and in the area just to see, you know, if she was someplace else and just hadn't come home yet.

We had phoned the police, and they said it was too soon yet to do anything. What we actually got from the Hanover police chief himself was that his daughter runs away a lot, takes off for days, so mine probably did the same thing. So she never showed home, and I sat up all night and waited for her, and worried, and I even had the feeling too all along that she was down there by the park somewhere. I kept trying to get them to search more.

And the church and I, we even got together and formed our own search. And we wanted to search down there, and they wouldn't let us. They made us go in the opposite direction. And the town police was very upset when we... Yes. When we set that up. They were not impressed. That you had set up a search?

Yes. They didn't want the public to panic. We were told if we went anywhere near the park that weekend, the very first weekend she disappeared, there would be consequences and repercussions. Who told you that? The police. Yes.

repercussions. Who told you that? The police. There had been an antique car show on at the park that coming Victoria Day weekend, and police were concerned about disrupting it, according to Marianne. The Hanover Police and Fire Department did eventually coordinate and

conduct a single search using volunteers on May 23, 1993, five days after she disappeared. The search encompassed the Hanover Park, the south shore of the Saugeen River going east, and the town water tower. No trace of Christine was found. I think everybody just wanted to believe she was a runaway. Nobody would actually think of her as something had happened, not in a small town, not to their town. So everybody just told us, no, she's a runaway.

She'll come back when she's ready. Even when we were putting up posters, people would take them down. They just didn't want to believe it. The town police took them down. Yeah. But nobody would believe it. I actually got took them down. Yeah. But nobody would believe it. I actually got phone calls from people, you know, stop making such a fuss. She'll come back. Yeah. Did you ever cast any suspicion or doubt suspicious of people in town or anything?

No. No. Marianne and Sean didn't have any suspects, but almost a year later, they had to be ruled out as suspects themselves. Yes, we all were at one point. They asked us to take polygraphs, and I agreed just to rule out being a suspect so that they would get on with the case and find the person that did it.

I did it willingly, knowing that it would clear me and would help the case. I would have done anything at that time. And you went through two of them. I went through two. The first one was fairly basic. It didn't bother me too much. The second one was at a very tense time in my life. My employer at the time was on strike in 1999. I had the interview over at Mount Forest OPP station and I believe it was

October of 1999. And I was interviewed by one of their forensic people from Kingston, supposedly one of their head people. It was very, very intense. It was about a four to five hour process and they accused me in many different ways of murdering Christine, strangling, rape, shooting her, drowning her, and just everything they could to push my buttons. What pushed my buttons the most during this process, I know that they were videotaping and recording the session.

They mentioned that they had Paul Bernardo in another room. They wanted to know what my thoughts were. Paul Bernardo was a serial rapist and murderer in Ontario in the 1980s and 1990s. He and his partner Carla Homolka horribly murdered two young women. Bernardo had been arrested and jailed months before Chrissy disappeared, so using his name here was a tactic to get Sean talking. And with myself already being bipolar and things that were going on in my life at that time, I completely lost it. I jumped out of my seat. I seem to remember throwing a couple of things around. I just said, let me at the son of a bitch because only one of us is going to walk out of the room alive.

I completely lost control. They tried to calm me down. I shook them off. All I had in my mind was looking for Paul Bernardo and wanted Adam, and I wanted him dead. And that's the last I can remember. Russworm had been at work until 3 p.m. in Durham, Ontario at the time Chrissy disappeared, about a 15-minute drive away from Hanover.

After work, he drove to Mary Ann's, where he heard that Christine had left for school shortly before he arrived. And what did they tell you about the results of either of those polygraphs that you took, Sean? That I was cleared. As far as they were concerned, I had nothing to do with it. But they said they had to do what they had to do to prove that I was not guilty.

Sean and Marianne did pass their first polygraph tests, according to documents, and neither was ever arrested or charged in Christine's case. Do I wish anyone to ever go through a process like that? No, it's hell. It's not a very nice process. But they did everything that they needed to do, and I commend them for doing it. I just still wish that we had something more

to bring justice and bring Christine home. I did know before the night was over she was dead though. Call it mother's intuition or whatever, I knew she was gone. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here.

You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a

financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. There weren't many Christine Herron news reports to look at early on in my investigation. Christine Herron news reports to look at early on in my investigation. Items I could find talked about the local Hanover police making no headway in Christine's case, claiming even a year later that there was no evidence of foul play. Even though Chrissy had left her house without her ID, any extra clothing, or the $80 in birthday money she had just received, police continued to suggest that she was a runaway, that there were sightings of her. Christine was in Toronto with skinheads who had been seen in Hanover. She'd dyed her hair blonde and shaved the side of her head, or she'd left home to go live with her father Lorne out west. But she never appeared there, or Toronto, or was seen anywhere else again after May 18th, 1993.

Marianne and I spent a lot of time. The first six months to a year, we went to Kitchener, London, Toronto. Where else did we go, dear? I can't even remember. Even if police weren't looking for Christine, Marianne and Sean were trying their best. Every chance we had going to places that we probably, we checked shelters, we went into, I'm not sure if it was a halfway house or a drug house or what it was. The media would report on these supposed sightings of Chrissy and help to generate more rumors.

And to make matters worse, according to Mary Ann, the few articles that were written were often filled with inaccuracy. I found that whenever you tried to tell them something, they twisted it into something else. It was never what you were trying to explain. They always just took bits and pieces and made their own sentences. It wasn't always the truth that we had said. So it became frustrating and upsetting

to the point where we just had to refuse to speak with them. We were so scared of jeopardizing Christine's case that we shut out all reporters for quite a while. Until now. I've kept most of the clippings in the newspapers all these years. Got those and the posters. Sick little girl. Yes.

So do you think that there's a chance in this case still? Or what's your aim then? Justice or just? I want it solved. Justice and solved. I think there's still a chance. Now I hope I hope this will bring her home. We'll do our best.

No barking. Sure you will. But Hanover does not feel like home anymore. Ever since she went missing. No, not to us. It's not our home. We had the same homeroom in grade nine.

So the only desk was right beside her. So that's how I met her. And from there, we pretty much were like fast friends. The only desk was right beside her. So that's how I met her. And from there, we pretty much were like fast friends. Like, Christy was very shy. Cindy Galen McPherson, one of Christine Herron's school friends. I mean, if you didn't know her, it took a long time to kind of get to know her. And a lot of people liked to pick on her because she was really easy to pick on.

How so? If somebody said, well, why don't you go do this? She'd go and do it because she wanted to be accepted. People would, like, throw her in a locker. She'd just stay there until, like, we were gone. And I'd come and be like, okay, you can quit out now. She really wasn't one for conflict either. If people were fighting or if there was a chance that they could be fighting, she was out of there.

We'd hang out pretty much every weekend. The day she disappeared, I found her house, and her mom answered, and I'm like, it's Christy, though. She's like, no, she hasn't gotten home from school yet. I thought it was kind of weird and I'm like, well, she didn't, she wasn't at school. And her mom's like, oh, okay. And then I think it was about two hours later that I got another phone call and she's like, are you sure Chrissy isn't there? And I'm like, no. Cindy and her father drove the roads that Chrissy might have traveled to get to their farm.

We didn't see her, so my dad's like, well, we can't stay out, you know, so I went home. And I phoned her mom and I said, well, we didn't find her on any of the roads coming from Hanover. Cindy had spoken to Chrissy on the phone the night before she disappeared. They were planning the May long weekend where Chrissy was supposed to come to Cindy's farm. So, like, I was the last person to talk to her. And everything seemed fine. She was excited. She loved being at my house because of all the animals and everything like that. Being there, we had baby goats and sheep and calves and pigs, and she was excited to come

and see them. And I didn't really think anything was up. Okay, so the police then, did they talk to you? Every couple of years, they come and they try to get me. Cindy says she spoke to police several times over the years and that sometimes they would insist that Cindy knew more, that she knew where Chrissy was. But she didn't. The best Cindy could do was tell police about what Chrissy was like, her routines and habits, certain places she liked to go. Chrissy used to go and put on the swings at the park and just drink.

She said that's what she liked to do when she wanted to think, was go and sit on the swings. Like, Chrissy was a very good friend to me, and it kind of hurts me to know that she's missed out on a lot of stuff that I've gotten to do. What's your theory? Everyone's got one. I think somebody picked her up because she would have gotten into a car with somebody. Do you think that she would have gotten into a stranger's car? If they were nice to her? Probably.

She was, like, just striving for some sort of adult approval. So if you were older and you were a nurse car, she would, like, move having a nurse to keep that, like, that, um, I don't even know the word I'm looking for. That kind of attention? Yeah, to keep that attention on her. So, um, you think she got into a car and you think that it was the wrong car? I honestly do. It should be noted here that some feel Chrissy would be shy of strangers or even run away from them if she were alone.

For sure she would have phoned me if she was still alive. Like, for sure she would have phoned me. And I kind of knew deep down I had the feeling, I'm like, she's not around anymore. She's dead. I'm sitting in the passenger seat as Sean and Marianne give me a short tour of Hanover. Main

Street, the river, the school, the park. Population about 7,700, Hanover rose and then fell as a furniture-making capital of Canada, with much of that business gone now overseas. A town at the time of her disappearance down on its luck, but where Chrissy called home. Sean and Marianne moved not long after Chrissy disappeared to shelter themselves from what sounds like an onslaught of neighbors. They were very rude with us. A lot of negativity.

I actually had phone calls. You get a lot of calls in the middle of the night we're hanging up, so we Yeah, I actually had phone calls. You get a lot of calls in the middle of the night. We're hanging up, so we had to hand over police and put a trace on our phone so they could try and find out who was doing the phone calls, but they never did. A brief flurry of police activity surrounded a call that a boy going into grade 10 named Mark Kuntz received in July 1993, a couple of months after Chrissy disappeared. The call, Kuntz told his parents

and police, came from someone who said they were Chrissy. The girl on the other end said she was calling from a payphone and that she was near one of the abandoned factories in town. The person on the phone said she had run out of money and asked Kuntz to meet her behind a shed near the school. She also told him that she wanted to have sex with him. Kuntz says the person sounded like Chrissy, but when he went to the shed with police standing by, nobody appeared. Later that night, another call came in where the girl's voice asked Koontz if he had told police. He said he had, and the voice said, thanks a lot, and hung up. Koontz admitted later that he had previously received crank calls on other topics,

and also that he had not heard Chrissy's voice for well over a year and barely knew her or saw her even then. We had asked for the OPP to be able to step in. We pleaded with the Hanover police to bring the OPP in. They said no, it's their jurisdiction. They don't have to bring an outside source in. And it turned out to be six years later before we were able to have the OPP come in. In 1999, Hanover Police requested the assistance of the Ontario Provincial Police on Chrissy's case. At that time, a cataloging of the case was undertaken by the OPP and new interviews were conducted along with re-interviews. and new interviews were conducted, along with re-interviews.

DNA samples were taken from Mary Ann and a profile obtained for Chrissy from a tube of her lipstick. A reward fund for $30,000 was renewed on the 10-year anniversary of Chrissy's disappearance. In 2003, one of the original investigating officers on the case, Stanley Edwards is charged with several criminal offenses, including robbing a bank, forcible confinement, and sexual assault. None of the charges were connected to Chrissy's case.

Let's move back now. These dogs will be a nice and quiet fight. Did you ever receive any documents from the OPP about the case? No. The OPP wouldn't let us know anything. And since that time, we're now in 2011 here, what has the OPP done to your knowledge?

How have they communicated to you? They followed up on some other leads, but we've never been told any results from those. We haven't heard from them, so as far as I know, the case is closed. I'll get into telling you what I know to myself. I'm going to leave you with some today that you guys can read. Back at Marianne and Sean's place, I share some documents with them that the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General has sent me.

The basic story that they tell is known to Marianne and Sean, but the crucial details have remained hidden and out of reach, until now. Details about a local man named Anthony, who had a frustrating night at an August 2004 party. He'd had a few drinks and then confessed to killing Christine Herron. This season on Someone Knows Something, the Christine Herron case. The Crown Attorney told us it was a slam dunk at one point. He was 90% sure he was going to be convicted. Listen to me very carefully. Right now you're under arrest for the murder of Christine Herron

because you told that police officer that you killed her. This story here moved me till the day I died. Fucking doesn't leave me these lips. Did you know Christine? Did you kill Christine? Why did you confess to her murder? Someone Knows Something is hosted, written, and produced by me, David

Ridgen. The series is also produced by Katie Swires. Sound design by Evan Kelly. Natalia Ferguson is our transcriber. Emily Cannell is our digital producer. Chris Oak is our story editor. Our executive producer is Cecil Fernandez.

Tanya Springer is the senior manager and Arif Noorani is the director of CBC Podcasts. If you want to help new listeners discover the show,

please rate and review wherever you listen. Find us on Facebook by searching Someone Knows Something or on Instagram at CBC Podcasts. You can hear

next week's episode now by searching for the CBC Podcasts. You can hear next week's episode now by searching for the CBC Podcasts channel on YouTube. If you're looking for more investigations, check out the past seasons of Someone Knows Something, from a deadly bomb hidden inside a flashlight to two teenagers killed by the KKK. There are eight seasons of Someone Knows Something you can binge listen to right now

wherever you get your podcasts. Tune in next week for an all-new episode of Someone Knows Something. Or you can binge listen the whole series ad-free by subscribing to our channel on Apple Podcasts. Just click on the link in the show description. that was the first episode of someone knows something season nine the christine heron case you can listen to the second episode right now everywhere you get your podcasts, and be sure to follow. You don't want to miss an episode. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.