Someone Knows Something - S1 Episode 5: Breeze & Grief

Episode Date: March 27, 2016

Two cadaver dogs are brought in to search the area of Holmes Lake where five-year-old Adrien McNaughton was last seen. 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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You're listening to Someone Knows Something from CBC Radio. 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'm hiking along the rugged shoreline of a small placid lake near Kalabogie in eastern Ontario. There's a honey-colored dog running past me with a bell on its collar, bringing the sounds of a Christmas that's only a few days away into these unseasonably warm backcountry woods. The dog's name is Breeze, and she's moving in a zig-zag pattern, orbiting around a woman who's up ahead, wearing a

bright red jacket with a search and rescue patch on it. It's certainly passable, but it's only another 30 meters to the end anyway. And it's pretty steep up on the other side. That's Kim Cooper, Breeze's handler. And Kim's got a stride that someone twice her height would have trouble keeping up with. She's watching every move that Breeze makes, as if all the life around us depends on it. It's the first time a dog like Breeze has been here, I think.

Holmes Lake, where five-year-old Adrian McNaughton disappeared 43 years ago without a trace. Breeze is a Belgian Malinois, like a German shepherd, but different. And she's very focused in her constant motion on a single outcome. And today, that outcome isn't a rescue. Because Breeze is a cadaver dog, and she's trained to find only human remains. And there's a lot more to say about that but this is our second day out here and it's probably better if I go back now, start from the beginning, since the next thing that's about to happen

here won't make any sense. Well that's interesting. Holy fuck. Right here in Calabogie at Shooter's Bar outside Shooter's just doing some room tone. It's 8am and I'm standing in the gravel parking lot of a local Calabogie roadhouse. There's nobody around on this warm, clear December day. And I'm recording room tone. The sound that this empty gravel parking lot is making when Kim Cooper's truck pulls in.

Hi, how are you? I'm good. How are you doing? I'm alright. Nice to see you. So, I'm David. I figured, yes. Dog handlers always drive pickup trucks with cabs on the back. But as far as I've seen, the dogs never seem to ride in the back. No, they're up front on the seats, but ready to work. I've got two in the car.

The one who's probably going to work, well, who will work first is Breeze. And I have a young male named Grief who's not got her experience, but it might be a good opportunity for him to get a little mileage in. So what I think we should do is just head up there and talk about what we're going to do up there, if that's all right. Well, we'll meet the guy at the dog loft there. And we drive off toward the unknowns of Holmes Lake once more. But meeting in this Calabogie parking lot isn't really the beginning either of this chapter

in the mysterious disappearance of five-year-old Adrian McNaughton on June 12, 1972. Hello. Hello, how are you? How are you? Not bad. You still awake, are you? No more, Van. Oh, I go to bed really early. A couple of weeks before this, I returned for another visit to the McNaughton's home, the place where Adrian's now elderly parents live in Earnprior. I start into my questions, but it's not going over that well with Adrian's father, Murray.

What the hell has that got to do with finding Adrian? I just want to know if there's a difference in story between the people that are there, and I'm trying to clear it up just for the history of the case, just for an understanding of the case. Just cool it, Murray. I've just asked Murray about a discrepancy between his fishing buddy, Donnie Ring, saying he took part in the gigantic search for Adrian after he went missing, and Murray remembering that Donnie didn't take part in it.

Yeah, no, I'm not trying to upset you. I'm trying to find out what happened. And when someone says the complete opposite, I just wanted to know, from your perspective, what you remembered from that time. I don't remember being there, and I told you that a minute ago. Right.

I don't want to frustrate people. I know Murray a little bit frustrated, and I know that this kind of stuff is Right. I don't want to frustrate people. I know we're a little bit frustrated, and I know that this kind of stuff is the worst kind of thing to bring up, isn't it? It's like opening the wound again, isn't it? So it's more about speaking about memory, like what's the baseline of fact that we have. Murray and the others qualify later that he's not been feeling well for the past few weeks

and not to take his mood personally. But I can't help but wonder, again, if I'm creating a story that's leading this family into an abyss and I just walk away when it's over? Like tonight, I was dreading you coming. You know, and I was quite fond of you when you were here, but I was dreading it. Tonight just everything being brought up again, eh? Well, thanks for your trying anyhow, whatever does come out of it, you know?

Because I know you do have our interest at heart. It's pretty simple. Find Adrian. You've got the sketches. Now what else? So to try to make use of all the information I'm getting and to feel like this process is leading somewhere other than just telling a story to people,

I'm going to take some actions, and I wanted to ask you guys. I want to go back up there with another dog, and they say that it is possible, there is a tiny chance that the dog will find Adrian or anybody if they're up there. Why not take the chance, right? I can take the dog up, I'll go with the searcher, spend a couple of days, search the main areas

where we think that a little boy could... Most definitely. Am I right, do you not feel... Yeah, go for it. Well, the thing is if... Here, Greg McNaughton, Adrian's second-eldest brother, speaks up for the first time. If you do take a dog up there and they do find remains, it would finally give this family some closure.

But then there's the sort of 95% failure. I want you guys to know. Well, you're not. No, we don't. I want to try everything. And I don't think Murray does either. To me, cadaver dogs are an obvious step. Going with simplicity, Adrian is either in the Holmes Lake area or he isn't.

And if he's there, it'll be in the form of bones and maybe bits of clothing like his rubber soles, but the bones would be the most enduring parts of him, and that's what the dogs would search for. I consult with Lee McNaughton, Adrian's eldest brother, who lives in Toronto, just to be sure I'm covering the bases here. There's another strand of possibility. His body is up there somewhere, and the search simply missed him. That's actually strand of possibility. His body is up there somewhere and the search

simply missed him. Missed him. That's actually probably my assumption. So you need to get a cadaver dog. So what do you think about me commissioning a cadaver dog for example? I think you'd have to have something miraculous happen for a cadaver dog to probably find his body. Armed with the family's understanding that doing a cadaver dog search will almost certainly turn up nothing,

43 years after the fact, brings us back to Holmes Lake. Yes, stay here. Is it? Figured. And this is where they were? Yeah. They were just out for a day of fishing, eh? We're standing in a small parking area right next to Holmes Lake. Just a little fishing trip after school. Nearby is the trailhead for the same little path that Adrian and his family would have used to get to their fishing spot 43 years ago.

If only all the paths we walk could speak. What else? Water snacks. Get a signal? Go. Okay. Just getting the GPS's all synchroed in so they know where they are. So it'll keep a track of everything that we do today. And we'll be able to put it onto a computer later on and make sure we haven't left any major holes in what we're covering. A little different than 1972. Kim and her crew are highly trained volunteers, part of a more or less exclusive network of such people around the country that work on their own or with local police departments, like the Ontario Provincial Police, or OPP as we call them.

We all meet standards that are established by the OPP. So if a search comes up... Everyone's anxious to get going, especially the dogs. But we're waiting for one other person. Adrienne's sister Chantel will be joining us soon, but she's decided to walk up by herself on the bush road we just drove in on from the highway. So we have some time to spare.

I pull out my laptop and rest it on a tailgate, and we go over the strategy for how we might conduct a search. I've never done this before. So, let's look at this computer. I just wanted to show you some of these maps that have little green marks where the hunt camps were around here. So where we came in, there's supposedly three right near the road there. Okay.

And there's another two across. So I'm thinking that it would be interesting to go and look around those grounds if we can find them. Okay. My dad pointed out these hunt camps to me on his old maps, but it's hard to know for sure how extensively or even if they or the grounds they sat on were searched back in 1972. We're looking for his remains here. We're not obviously looking for signs of an abduction or something like that. Now there is another possibility. If he was abducted, taken,

killed, would the killer over the years have grown some remorse, brought him back to the area you know is there that there's that's happened before where they someone has returned the body or moved the body i mean these are all slim slim chances we're talking about yeah you know the rubber from his souls would be one of the things that survive today okay uh so if we see a shoe rubber that's 60 that looks like something from 43 years ago could be his what's your experience with bones and like are they just going to be lying on the ground or how does yeah they'll just be lying on the ground there's going to have been animal activity of course so

there'd be scatter i mean that means over about 100 meters 150 meters animals don't don't drag things that far when they move things and surviving bones at this stage of the game, we're looking at maybe skull, maybe a femur, and then against a child's femur. So our best bet would be actually to find skull, jawbone. Those are the most likely things. Near the parking area are the remains of the old outhouse I found when I was up with my dad a few weeks before.

I don't know if this old creaky thing was here or somewhere nearby at the time of Adrian's disappearance. So I had a couple of ideas that I want you to entertain in terms of where we might go. There's an outhouse right there. Could he have fallen in the outhouse while he was playing and no one looked? Well, this is a quick thing to have a look at. I'll actually let my young male a have a shot in this area.

Grief is younger and seems bigger than Breeze and he loves to play with anyone at hand but once the thick collar with the single bell on it comes out, he transforms his body, taut with attention and poise and focus. The collar and bell let Grief know that his workday is starting and helps the handler pinpoint his position in the thick woods. I'll cry. Sometimes if I talk too much he'll come back and check in.

Grief combs around the remains of the outhouse, nose to the ground for long periods, then up, switching back on new ground automatically. But yeah, he's just casting around, seeing if he can pick up on any odours. If he was to hit an odour of importance, his body language would change. So now he's kind of wild and free,

and there's no rhyme or reason to what he's doing. If he picked up on an odour, he would turn and hone in on the odour. Beautiful creatures, trained to smell human remains. If I want to cover larger ground, I'll be moving out and marching, and he would search all around me as I walk.

And just then, Chantelle McNaughton arrives from her solo trek up the bush road. She smiles as she approaches, backlit by that magical mid-December light. She's wearing an exercise outfit, carrying a large take-out coffee, and it's warm enough for no hat. Nobody would know she was here to help look for the possibility of her brother's bones. mississauga into the vibrant city it is today this brand new series created by visit mississauga celebrates a city 50 years in the making paying homage to ontario's vibrant diverse and dynamic third largest city tune in to visit mississauga's brand new podcast we built this city to learn more available now on cbz listen are you sure you parked over here? Do you see it anywhere?

I think it's back this way. Come on. Hey, you're going the wrong way. Feeling distracted? You're not alone. Whether renting, considering buying a home, or renewing a mortgage, many Canadians are finding it hard to focus with housing costs on their minds. For free tools and resources to help you manage your home finances and clear your head,

visit Canada.ca slash ItPaysToKnow. A message from the Government of Canada. This is Chantal. Hi, Chantal. I'm Kim. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. And we just did a little search around the area of the outhouse here. And maybe, Kim, you can just... So Chantal is the youngest sibling in the McNaughton family.

She wasn't here the day Adrian disappeared, but she's here now. Yep. And she wants to kind of just hang out. And how long do you have? How long you need me? I'm sick today. My boss knows, so he knows why. So maybe, Kim, you can maybe describe to Chantel what we're going to do today

and give her some information about the kind of searches you do. Sure. Okay. So we thought what we'd do is have a run up between these two lakes here and just see if we can't find any kind of a fragment or essentially we're looking at bones at this stage of the game. Sure. And again we're talking mainly surface kind of things at this point in time. Okay. And yeah we'll just let the dogs have a big romp around and see if they hit on anything interesting. Only one dog has worked in an area at any given time.

This is so that the handler can be attentive to one dog and also gives the other dog a rest. We'll continue the day with Grief and return for Breeze later. So she gets to stay in the truck. Stay, stay. turn for Breeze later, so she gets to stay in the truck. Stay. Stay. Breeze.

No, you're not coming. Stay, stay. Grief, grief. Stay. Stay. What would the dog do if it found something? She would come get me. She'd come and she'd bark at me and then I'd ask her, you know, where is it? And she'd zoom straight back to it and lead me back in.

So let's head into the next section then. We head directly into the thickness of the bush. It's rugged and pristine and unpredictable. And it's hard not to watch our feet for every single step. Searchers in the early 70s would have certainly faced the identical terrain, except with more foliage in the trees and of course mosquitoes and black flies. As we move along with grief circling around us the group's attentions turn to Chantelle. This story must have been just the core of your family for like a decade. Yes and no. It's not like we, it's not like it was something we, oh you don't talk about that.

You know what I mean? Yeah, it was a choice. a choice yeah absolutely wasn't every part of everyday conversation right it's the strangest thing walking in you know and i'm looking around and you think of these creepy horror movies where there's something sticking out of the dirt like really but it does it just pops into your head, unbidden. It's all just totally conflicting emotions. You want to find something, yet you don't. And if you do, how do you want to find it? Our trek through the never-ending bush continues, and it's tough going, but nobody seems to complain or falter. Periodically, we come across trails cut for all-terrain vehicles,

and sometimes we follow them but mostly we just dive into the nearly opaque wall of branches on the other side and keep going. Kim's an expert on the GPS and we never hit the same place twice. We continue around an unnamed lake to the northeast of Holmes Lake and squish over a few beaver dams. All right, here we go. Here we go, keep it. As we pass alongside a clear flowing stream that snakes its way toward Holmes Lake

far in the unseen distance, gray clouds begin to drift in and the temperature drops noticeably. A few small snowflakes fall, drifting onto the water like ashes from an ancient campfire. And another question occurs to me. What about water and scent around water? Scent around water?

Yes, they can smell bodies underwater. It's far from an exact science, but we know that they can. But there's also occasions where they can't. And we don't really know what differentiates one from another. So usually what we do if we're trying to search a body of water is we would put the dog in a boat and get out there and crisscross the water and give them access to as much of the gases that are coming up from the body underneath. So maybe we could get a scent off the lake if there was something in the lake. Yeah if there was something in the lake and we

were on the downwind edge of the lake if the wind is blowing off the lake to the shore where we're at and if there is an odor indeed there yeah the dog could pick up on it. How far? Maybe only about 30 meters or so. But for something to be in the lake and stay submerged, this lake has to have a certain depth. We continue marching through the woods, passing more water, swamps and the bigger lakes, and eventually reach the trucks again where we switch out the dogs. So far, we've covered vast areas near homes and centre lakes and then north of there. Great progress coverage wise and we've seen trees, rocks, mud, stream beds, marshes, some tin cans and bottles and an outhouse. But as the day draws to a close no signs from the dogs of any actual human remains.

Oh, it looks like there was a tarp covering it. Water bottle. Some old barbecue here. Some old gas. This may have been where our hunt camp was. Yeah, overall I think it was a pretty good day. We covered a lot of ground i'm going to guess that we did about 10 kilometers with two dogs and stayed focused on landmarks natural features dogs were working well weather conditions were great so in terms of search day the only thing that would have been better would have been to find something.

Chantelle won't be joining us tomorrow, and while she looks tired and appears happy, I wonder what is actually going on inside her. No, I mean, I don't know what I was expecting. I kind of pictured, like you see in the movies, the dog on the leash with the nose glued to the ground. So this was quite a bit different it was it was interesting to watch for sure and as you say the best result would have been to find something but that may not be a bad thing either that's true you know we could find him somewhere still yep well we'll continue reconvene tomorrow I'm being driven back down the bush road from Holmes Lake to the highway, standing in the back of an old pickup truck at the end of the day.

There's a cold rain hitting my face and my feet are soaked, but I feel like we did something. We still have tomorrow, one more day here to search with the dogs. But I can't stop thinking of how beautiful this place is. And the odd thought hits me that if you're going to disappear into the wild, this would be the best place to do it. I thought I would never forget the clothing he had on. And now it's pretty well a blank with me.

How can I forget things when I'm the mother? Wouldn't you think I would never forget anything about it? A lot of times feelings get buried very deep, and that's just the way some people deal with things. There's a family that has for over a generation now wants to know where their son and brother is gone. If anyone knows, please say something. On the next episode of Someone Knows Something... Are the dogs? All that they are telling us is that they are detecting an odor here.

I wonder what's going on here. I mean, like you say, something's going on here. I mean, like you say, something's going on here. Visit cbc.ca slash sks and click on this week's episode to see a video of the cadaver dogs at work. To listen from the beginning, go to cbc.ca slash sks or download the podcast from iTunes or your favorite app. Someone Knows Something is hosted, written, and produced by David Ridgen. The show is also produced by Ashley Walters, Sandra Bartlett, Steph Kampf, and executive producer Arif Noorani. The music is by Bob Wiseman, vocals by Mary Margaret O'Hara and Jess Reimer. I will never stop my love, I will never sleep

All I want's an answer for this mystery I leave Maybe one day we will all look out at the sun and no light that shines to our love 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 Maybe one day we will all look out on the sun And know a light that shines the truth on her love oh Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.