Someone Knows Something - S1 Episode 2: Mr. Ring

Episode Date: March 7, 2016

Another witness was present in the moments leading up to Adrien’s disappearance. SKS host David Ridgen ventures into the backwoods of Eastern Ontario to find him. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sks/season1/someone-knows-something-season-1-adrien-mcnaughton-transcripts-listen-1.3846202

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In 1972, five-year-old Adrian McNaughton vanished while on a fishing trip in eastern Ontario. Documentarian David Ridgen goes back to the small town he grew up in, searching for answers. I have a recurring dream about bears. It's not the only recurring dream I have, but it's the one I remember with unoccluded clarity. It always starts when I'm wandering in the woods,

in rough country, on a beautiful sunny day. But I know it's soon to be interrupted. And even so, when I see the first bear, it's always a shock. It's always just a few steps away. I could touch it if I wanted. Huge brown bears, even though I grew up in an area with black ones. And for some reason, they sometimes have six legs. But I'll always get away from this first one without being seen. And I'll get that false sense of security that maybe this time it will be different. I sneak past the first one and maybe the second, but by the third my luck will run out. There's always one that sees from far away and comes for me without hesitation, like those infected in 28 days later moving so fast. I run and run to finally find a clapboard cabin hidden amongst the spruce and pine

but the doors don't shut right and the bear will find its way in anyway. I get into the last room in the cabin. It's always a bedroom that looks like the one that one of my best friends who died of cancer used to have and I find a gun that's not mine and I'm rifling through a white paint flecked wooden drawer filled with cartridges or bullets that don't quite fit the gun. The bear gets in and I fumble with the bullets and I cock the gun empty, just to feel reassured I guess, and then I wake up like the animal that I am. I've had this dream 20, 30 times, and it's terrifying. But I do admit I'd miss it, strangely, if it suddenly disappeared forever.

If it disappeared, I would never be able to wake up with that euphoric relief again. And I discover in talking to the McNaughtons that their missing son Adrian became a dream of a different sort for Adrian's father Murray. A dream that he wanted gone. This is something I remember and it just came back to me of Murray sleeping on the Chesterfield after it happened. We'd been home maybe a week, ten days. And he was laying on the Chesterfield and he got up and said, I'm going to Holmes Lake. I just had a dream and it said, I just had a dream and it said, Daddy come a dream and it said daddy come and get me I'm still here it's through mining these memories and looking back at cases that new information can come up

and I soon realize as the conversations proceed out of the dream and into the facts and back again. That there was another adult male on the scene the day Adrian disappeared, back on June 12, 1972. So tell me about who else was there with you. Well, I don't know whether he wants me to mention his name or not, Danny Ring, my fishing buddy, but he was with us too. He was probably, he was quite a fisherman and he was all around all the lakes, so I expect he was likely there before. I've read a lot of news articles about the story of Adrian and I've never heard anything about another guy being there. Yeah well I guess what's not important.

Who wouldn't be intrigued by Danny Ring or Donnie as he's also called. The only other adult reported to have been at Holmes Lake on the day of Adrian McNaughton's disappearance and I could be wrong but I don't think anybody back then or now has ever interviewed him, if that's possible. But why? Why would the only other adult at the lake that day never have publicly spoken? And Mr. Ring, do you think that he would talk to me about that day? I don't know if he would or not. That's up to him whether he wants to talk about it or not. I haven't been talking to him for quite a few months. Adrian's brother, Lee McNaughton, tells me

what he can remember of Donnie Ring. Donnie Ring, I remember him telling the story that it's quite tragic how much garbage gets left behind and you know he would bring sometimes a garbage bag and pick some of it up himself or something. Donnie had been Murray's fishing buddy several years. He was there that day. He's still alive so I have to talk to him and I need to start building some theories of my own. Some avenues, some percentages, and my thinking about what this podcast can do here.

It's noon and I'm pulling up at a house in the backwoods near Renfrew, Ontario, not that far from the Calabogie area and Holmes Lake, in fact. How are you? Good. Renfrew, Ontario, not that far from the Kalabogie area and Holmes Lake in fact. Donnie rings in the driveway near his ATV. He doesn't care if I leave my shoes on. He's been out at his deer stand just a short walk away and he's wearing full camouflage hunting gear and big boots. We sit on the back deck near a collection of bird feeders on what has

become the warmest and most pleasant November day I can ever remember. Donnie sits across from me at a wooden deck table and chickadees are shuttling gracefully back and forth from the surrounding trees to the seeds and then back again. For some reason I enjoy knowing that they are there as Donnie talks. The day we went fishing, we had plans to go the following day, but Murray had an appointment or something,

so we changed and went up that evening. And as I remember, everything was going good. I went around the shoreline to a rock and I think Lisa and Adrian and one of the other kids came with me. Lisa is Adrian's sister and would be closest to him in age. And we fished there for a while

and there was nothing going on so I came back and Murray set a line for Adrian. Right down at the shore there was an old dead tree out in the water and the other kids they went ahead and they set their own lines they were old enough and i tried fishing a little bit there and then i thought well i'll leave the the space for the kids and i'll go out to this other kind of a point there was a cedar tree on it and i climbed out there and I started fishing there. And Murray set the line for Adrian right at the end of that tree. And Adrian decided he wanted to play with his line.

So he kept pulling his line in a little bit and a little bit. And finally, he got tangled up in the tree. So Murray told him, just go and sit down and he would get it untangled for him. So I heard Murray telling the kid this and everything was good. I looked over and I seen Adrian sitting up on the rock that was kind of a flat rock, like a step. So he sat on the rock with his legs down, comfortable. And Murray fiddled around, got the line on done, and then I believe it was Lee went out to the care.

I'm not sure what he went for, but he went out to the care. Lee is Adrian's eldest brother. Murray told, I guess he turned around to tell Adrian that his line was ready, that it was set again for him and that, and then he says, where's Adrian? To nobody in particular, and nobody knew.

And Murray shouted out to Lee at the care I'm pretty sure it was Lee it was in the care he's the oldest boy I'm pretty sure and he asked Lee if Adrian was in the care or if he was sleeping or something like that and Lee said yes because I was actually closer to Lee and the car, and I heard him saying yes, so we thought no more of it. We went ahead fishing, and, oh, I don't think it would be 10 minutes, maybe at the very most Lee came back to the where we were fishing and marine asked asked Lee if Adrian was sleeping and Lee said no I didn't see him or something to that effect and right away Murray said well is he not

sleeping in the care? Or did he get something to eat? Or what did he do? Never seen him. Well, right away, we started looking. As Donnie Ring speaks, I find his lilt and cadence oddly comforting, even though he's obviously confronting his memories for the first time in a long while, and he's possibly the furthest thing from comfortable

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The earlier they understand your situation, the more options and relief measures could be available to you. Learn more at Canada.ca slash ItPaysToKnow. A message from the Government of Canada. Everyone present so far agrees that Adrian stopped fishing, then went up the little hill an astonishingly short distance away to sit on a flat rock. Donnie says Adrian stopped fishing because his went up the little hill, an astonishingly short distance away, to sit on a flat rock. Donnie says Adrian stopped fishing because his line was snarled.

Murray and Lee McNaughton say that Adrian simply got tired of fishing and then went up the hill to sit. And Lee thinks he was the last person to see Adrian. He must have got bored with the fishing, and he got back just behind me on the rock, and he was playing there. Did you see him playing? Playing and then, according to all accounts, gone within minutes after that. Throwing some things, kicking the dirt, you know, he was turned around, he was puttering away sort of as a five-year-old would and then I went back to fishing. The moment when Murray discovers Adrian's not on the rock he asks Lee to go check the car and then both Donnie's and Lee's account of that moment are effectively the same.

And this is where an odd thing happened. My father because he wasn't that far away, shouted, is he there? And sometimes when you respond to someone, I wasn't responding, I said yes, meaning, pardon me, what did you say? Lee says he misheard his dad, and the other accounts support this, and no one has ever had any reason to doubt that or suspect him in any way. But the likely mishearing allowed Adrian's disappearance to continue for another precious few minutes without the family actually knowing he was gone. What time of day would that have been when you noticed he was gone and then you started looking? I believe that would be around probably 5.30 in the evening.

We started looking for Adrian. And we looked for a few minutes, we went around, I went back over to where I had been at the rock at the first, checked all the way back over there and I called here and there on the way over, it was only a couple hundred yards anyway, and Murray, he went out toward the care and down the other road toward Centre Lake

calling and waiting and listening for an answer and we never got any answer. So I met up with Murray again a few minutes later and I said well maybe we better get some help. I went down to Jocko's and I phoned the OPP from there. And it took them a while to get there. But we got back in there and then we started searching again and then it just escalated from there. The word got out and the next thing we know there's people everywhere and there's no sign of him, no sign of any of his clothing. There was absolutely nothing found.

When Donnie returned from his trip to seek help, he had the police with him. He said that he waited for them on the Calabogie Road and that they had to have their headlights on when they pulled in at Holmes Lake. So it was dark and after 9.30 p.m. on that late spring evening. The remainder of the McNaughton family, meanwhile, stayed behind. Now, like I say, when we were around here, the kids, we started calling them, and I went up around to the,

walked up around to the end of the lake. When I came back, I said, stop calling them because their voices echoed through the bush. I think he was up there and got lost, and he echoed over there, and he followed his way over there. So the McNaughtons continued to look, without yelling for Adrian, into the night. And very shortly, and on into the next day, the numbers of searchers increased.

Yeah, I think there was quite a few OPPs in there too, and the ministry, the MNR was there. The MNR would be the Ministry of Natural Resources. They kept lakes on Crown land, like Holmes Lake and Centre Lake, stocked with fish. There was lots of stuff found, none of it Adrian's. It was probably stuff hunters had dropped in there, or fishermen, or, you know know things Adrian wouldn't have especially and

I have never been able to figure out what happened I have been back there quite a few times and you always look nothing that's pretty sad. Oh, sorry. Yeah, they were good friends of mine. It bothers me. But I just don't know what could have possibly happened to him. He'd be, what, about 46 now? It's weird how he could disappear just, you know.

Each time Donnie's emotions rush to the surface, I feel like I'm looking at a man who hasn't allowed himself to cry about anything for 43 years. And the lump in my own throat keeps getting larger. For a long time, you know, I found myself going back up there and walking around and, you know, looking at every little hole in the ground. I couldn't, you couldn't get it out of your mind at the time. It's just, especially having a little kid myself at the time.

Yeah. And Bourbon and Murray, like, they idolized those kids. They were just, they were having a rough time of it too, I guess, and just trying to make ends meet. The kids were well looked after, and, you know, it's hurting the nerves. And have you spoken about this to any reporters or anything since that time? Actually, at the time, well, I was talking to the OPP, and the reporter was sitting in the car.

I said something. He just took my words and switched them all around. And I thought, that's not what I said, you know? You ask me a question or the cop asked me a question, I gave him my answer. Now don't you try to tell the cop what I said. And I said, I told the cop, I said, if he stays in the car, I'm not saying another word.

And that was it. I wouldn't talk. So, I just don't like people trying to tell me what happened when they weren't there. You know, my temper was really short. A lot of people as soon as I said well you know I was there I know what happened where the hell did you get your information? They shut up. They knew that they were talking, you know, nonsense, more or less. But there's still some that would just, wouldn't stop.

Yeah. That's when you walk away. All you can do. I mean, Adrian was only five years old at the time, if I remember rightly, and he was a very tiny child, very tiny, very quiet little fella. And if he answered, none of us heard him. There was enough of us there. One of us should have heard him answering, but nobody heard a peep at him. We tried. We looked and looked and we scoured that bush like every inch of it and there's nothing. So I have no idea what happened to him. Only speculation, but I think he might have went out to the road and somebody picked him up. That's the only way he could disappear.

Like everybody's saying, oh, a bear got him, a cougar got him, this, that, and the other thing. We would have heard him screaming or something if a bear had tackled them. Or we would have heard the noise a bear would make. My hearing was real good then. It's not so good now, but it's just, I wish I knew. I'm sure Murray and Barb would like to know it too. So why didn't Adrian call out? Or if he did, why didn't anyone hear him?

Was he somehow incapacitated very shortly after leaving the fishing area? Had he gotten so far away under his own power or someone else's that he couldn't hear the desperate calls for him? So when you left, which way did you turn? Do you remember if you went out toward Calabogie or if you went out toward Black Donald on that road? You know, you can go both ways on that. When I left, I went out to Highway 508

and turned left and went down to Calabogie. Mr. McNaughton and Barb said that afterwards there were a lot of suspicions cast on the family. There were, like, people were saying things, people were... Can you talk a little bit about that? And I bet you suspicions were cast on you as well because you were there, right? Oh, yeah. So, can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, there was all kinds of accusations made.

There was really ridiculous things like somebody found him nailed to the bottom of a boat at Jocko's or one of the other marinas there in Kalabogie. There was crap like that. I shouldn't say this, but my sister gave one girl a pounding because some girl accused me directly, said, oh, she knew that I did it. And my sister knew I did. And I guess my sister's got a bad temper too. But that's long gone now. There were so many stories that I can't... It was speculation. Somebody got these stupid ideas in their head.

I don't know why people do that, but they do. I had to hold myself back a few times, too. Like, I used to go to the old New Bern Hotel in Arranprior and be sitting there and you'd hear people talking and all the damnedest stories you could imagine. And you just wanted to get up and, you know, let them have it, but you had to keep it, keep your mouth shut and try to just ignore it because if I had stuck my nose in, there would have been fish flying.

And I know that because I won't be accused of doing something I didn't do. That's just the way I am. And so to the chances of Adrian still being alive and things like that, like the McNaughtons hold out the hope, of course, that he's still alive and has been raised by somebody else or is, unbeknownst to him, is their son in some other situation. What do you think of that sort of scenario? Well, I have often thought about that myself.

And I thought if he was picked up by somebody and it was a family that couldn't have children of their own or something, and they raised him. He may be doing well today. I don't know. You know, that's looking at the good side of things I guess. But if he was picked up let's hope it was somebody who treated him right. He was he was a good kid. The only person that could know where he is, is if somebody picked him up. They would know.

And if that happened, they should come forward. Yeah, it gets to you. It just, it would be so nice to know, even one way or the other, you know. It's, like I said, if somebody took them, it's time they admitted it. I can't believe people would do that though I can I can believe people would do anything

But what's the probability? What's the percentage chance of a bear being picked up, being lost dead, alive some of the above at least one of the above Well, Donnie says he turned left out of Holmes Lake and we'd assume he'd have seen Adrian on the road in

that direction if he had gotten there and also turned left so that narrows that possibility and there's still people to talk to and information to sift but right now a picture's forming, crazy quilt, of some possibilities where Adrian could be or might be. And that, and the sunny day, and the chickadees, and the quiet lake that's still here, despite it all, gives me heart. Adrian! Adrian! Adrian! Adrian! Adrian!

Adrian! On the next episode of Someone Knows Something... We were fishing off the rocks, and we could hear people shouting on the far side of the lake, but we didn't know why the people were shouting at the time. We found out the next day that there was somebody missing up there, so that's when the whole thing started. Visit cbc.ca slash sks to see a map of the locations connected to the case

or to catch up on past episodes from the series. Subscribe in iTunes or your favorite podcast app. If you like the show, tell your friends. Someone Knows Something is hosted, written, and produced by David Ridgen. The show is also produced by Ashley Walters, Sandra Bartlett, and Steph Kampf. The music is by Bob Wiseman. I will never stop my love. I will never sleep.

Something here is precious. Memory I keep I will never stop my life, I will never sleep All I want's an answer for this mystery I fear Maybe one day we will all look up at the sun And know a light that shines the truth on our loved one I will never stop my love I will never sleep Something here is precious

A memory I keep I will never, never stop my love I will never sleep All I want is an answer For this mystery we keep For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.