Someone Knows Something - S1 Episode 7: First Attempt

Episode Date: April 10, 2016

A divemaster prepares to search Holmes Lake before winter arrives ​and the lake freezes over. And John Gervais identifies the mysterious vehicle he saw at the lake the day Adrien disappeared. 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. ah it's got to be minus 15 up here today. It's gorgeous though. Very blue sky, nice and clear, low sun. Winter is coming, and up till now, three days after Christmas 2015, it's been the warmest December I can remember in 47 years. But three centimeters of snow has fallen overnight and there's another 25 coming and that will soon make this bush road up to Holmes Lake that I'm once again walking on impassable except by snowmobile or ATV, at least until spring.

Morning! How are you doing? Not too bad. I'm David, nice to meet you. I'm Mike. Nice to meet you, Mike. Mike Grebler has driven up from Ottawa. He's here to help in the next stage of the journey in trying to find Adrian McNaughton, who mysteriously 43 years ago, at the age of five, disappeared without a trace from this area. The trees overhanging the bush road are heavy with ice, and they slap the truck as we drive by. My name's Mike Rubler. I'm retired from the Canadian Coast Guard

after about 36 years of service. My background is as a mariner and part of that I was also a fleet diver in the early 80s. I got involved with this just by pure chance about eight or nine years ago when I saw a posting on one of the diver scuba board sites where they were looking for volunteers to help train search and rescue dogs and And that kind of perked my interest, because I really had no idea how you would do something like that. And that's how I ran into Kim.

Mike's a big guy, with a salt and pepper mustache and sunglasses. And he drives a big truck filled with scuba gear. There's five red Remembrance Day poppies pinned on the visor above his head. And like Kim Cooper, who has also come up today with her dogs, he wears a big red search and rescue style jacket. And he has a Canadian Coast Guard insignia on his thick wool hat. Mike's a qualified dive master, someone who leads and is responsible for all the other divers on a site. And he projects a kind of amiable authority in everything he does.

Have you ever done or conducted dives for human remains before? The short answer to that is yes. We've done some actual searches for Kim. And the people that we're trying to help are, would be the family members that are remaining. So when we do this, out of respect for the family, we do not advertise that we're doing this because it builds a false hope. What we're doing here is very very difficult and

our chances of finding anything are very very very low. I've been worried about building false hope and family members ever since the four cadaver dogs were here. All of them independently made intriguing signals at a location on the eastern side of Holmes Lake. That's why we're here today. As volunteers, we're not law enforcement. So if we do find something, we obviously treat this as a crime scene. We mark it so that police divers can go in and actually do a proper investigation. We do not try to remove, touch, disturb anything. That gets turned over to

the police. What I have to do in order to get the police involved, I must be able to describe something that actually makes it worthwhile for them to come up here. We arrive at the parking spot near Holmes Lake, a place that's covered in snow and it's freezing cold, but still starkly beautiful. So the lake is just down the road here, 50 meters, so we could just have a walk down and see the lake.

Oh, excellent! Kim has brought her dogs, Breeze and Grief. But for now, I have a feeling they'll be just staying in the truck. The dive site's 300-400 meters away, but you can see the lake right here at 50 meters. Oh, okay. That's a little different than last time we were here, I guess. Yeah. That is solid white. We crunch over the snow at the spot the 1956 black and white Dodge must have been parked.

The one that John Gervais told me he saw on June 12, 1972, around midday. And it reminds me that I've done a bit of legwork on that. So we'll come back to the lake. Just turning into John Gervais' house. Kalabogie, Ontario. Going to ask him about the black car, see if I can get some imagery that matches with his memory of what he saw that day, June 12 1972 Good day sir! Come on in. How are you? I think I'm a bit early there, but I realized as I pulled up. So I just want to go through a few of these images of the Dodge.

A Dodge 56, black and white. And one of these images could be the car that you saw. Okay, so I'll just open all of these images First of all, so Dodge Had a coronet on 50 56 and it had the Royal Lancer hardtop and they look very similar But basically the color combination was like that Now this is the Lancer and it has the black on the underside and the white on the top. And you could get the reverse too. You could get black on the top and white on the bottom.

I'm sure black bottom, I'm sure. You think it was a black bottom? Yeah, black bottom. Okay, so more like that one, the Lancer? Do you have any 55s in there? We can look. 55 didn't seem to have black and white as an option. No. Do you have any 55s in there? We can look. 55 didn't seem to have black and white as an option.

It would have been an extra paint job that someone did, which I don't know would have been something to do back then. Did the police do this with you? No. But did they take you through pictures and stuff? No. No pictures, nothing. They just took the statement and wrote it down, and that was it.

Never said, is this the car you saw? Is this the car? No. No, really? You feel that would be kind of almost elementary. You would think so, yeah. Now, anyway. Somewhere, someone will remember a 1956 black and white Dodge.

Won't they? Back to the winter chill of Holmes Lake. There we go. Does not look promising. Not today, eh? No. Mike had planned to do a preliminary suit up and walk about in the shallows with his scuba gear on. But the ice formation looks like it's getting in the way.

We've got an inch thickness worth of ice. To break this and actually do something productive is not worth it. So I wouldn't go in the water and I wouldn't send anybody else into the water today. This unfortunately, the search is going to wait until spring. But at least we can do a little bit of planning. Good. Okay, so let's do that. Okay, so let's go and then I'll ask you to get past.

No! No! So what are we about to go do here? We're going to take, what, 500 meters? Yeah, go walk up to where the dogs had indicated. You can see the lay of the land from there, and maybe that'll help refine any spring plans you want to make. Yeah, and take a couple of pictures so that we can say, okay, you know, datum, start here. Yeah. So what's datum?

What does that mean? Well, datum is either, let's say, if you're looking for someone, it's the last known position that either a person or a vessel was seen and it starts to become your starting point for a search. In this case we don't really have that because Adrian disappeared and no one saw him disappear. So what I use as datum is Kim's position that the dogs give her. We also have the place last seen,

which is about 150 meters from where the dogs have been indicating. And that's up here, that's just up here. So let's keep going here. Now, Adrian went missing June 12th, 1972. They were fishing, he was fishing with his family here, just up here. And his dad, I guess he had tangled his line or he had gotten weary of fishing and Adrian was told to go sit up the hill and I'll show you where they were, just over here.

So he was down here, spot last seen. Careful here everybody, it's really slippery. Then he was told to go up the hill. Went up the hill and he was seen playing up here with some rocks, picking some stones. They turned around, kept fishing. It was between five and twenty-five minutes that they noticed he was gone and started yelling. But to search this lake by like with divers would take you days. It'd be a phenomenal amount of logistics that you'd have to pull in here. The entire search, 9,000 people including army and volunteers and Ministry of National Resources was two weeks. So I'm thinking if they searched this lake

twice it couldn't have taken them that they would must have done a pretty quick was two weeks. So I'm thinking if they searched this lake twice, it couldn't have taken them that. They must have done it pretty quick, pretty quickly. They searched this lake twice. The OPP says he's not in here. Hopefully he's right. The only thing that would bring someone like me here is what Kim's dogs have said.

Otherwise, I would put my faith in the OPP diver who did the search in 1972. Yeah it's pretty cold. Is it possible that they missed him back in 1972 in the lake? I've been in situations where I lose a diver visually within a body length and he's got some of the brightest lights that you've ever seen and you lose sight of him. So we could pass sometimes within a couple of feet and miss the target. And now it's become more difficult because we're not even sure exactly what the target looks like anymore. So what we're looking for is whatever remains of Adriensil exist.

That's been 40 years plus you're going to have to work your way around all these trees and debris that's in the water. And the instant you disturb anything, you're in tea-coloured water, that reduces your visibility considerably. I could swim past you and not see you. Okay, well, let's go to the datum point. As we move back to the datum point, where the four dogs made their intriguing displays, I pass a familiar rock.

The pine tree with the plastic string wrapped around it, over the little creek. There's the blackened cooking grill on the branch, the charred rocks around the fire pit. I'm getting to know this place now, and I feel like I could come back here in other circumstances and stay for a while. And think about Adrian, the little five-year-old blonde boy who went missing here. And that'd be okay. Like I'm trying to picture what attracts a five-year-old boy into the water. Was he, I don't know, chasing a frog?

Okay. I mean, he allegedly disappeared and not a sound. So how does that happen what does the bottom contours in this lake look like he was in very shallow water and then it suddenly drops off five-year-old boy non-swimmer suddenly finds himself into deep water he would disappear without a sound and where would you start looking? I can see the gears working in Mike's head. He wants to get into the water.

He wants to put on his dry suit, the kind that keeps you warmer in cold water. But the ice cannot be broken easily. He grabs a stout branch and pounds at the lake. You see if we didn't have the ice problem and this was a dam and it goes here and by the rock outcropping. Yeah, I get you to put me in just over there At that tree? At that tree. Yeah.

And not disturb anything here and then sort of swimming quietly and just see if there's anything there okay so this area this rock is exactly all the dogs have lighted on this rock and looked that way and smelled that way and done a quiet sort of like that on that rock in this direction this direction here that way yep and that's the way the wind was coming from yeah it swings around here a little bit but yeah and then and I think all the dogs had reactions along that coastline over there at different spots and of course we're talking different days so the winds gonna change ever so slightly from one day to the next yeah well it could change dramatically from one day to the next but we had three dogs in here on from one day to the next. It could change dramatically from one day to the next.

But we had three dogs in here on the one day, on the same day. And on that day, everyone was on that rock, either indicating or actually out here swimming and biting the water. That's how you start formulating a plan. You take what Kim provides and you take what the OPP dyers have provided and you start thinking like a five-year-old kid and you kind of go, okay, what could have happened? And start there. And in terms of the information... Turn off hesitation. Turn off doubt.

Turn off fears. The YMCA helps you turn off whatever's holding you back so you can let your potential shine. Through our wide range of programs and services, you can turn on confidence, turn on connections, turn on possibilities. Visit our website to see what you can achieve at confidence, turn on connections, turn on possibilities. Visit our website to see what you can achieve at the YMCA.

This will be the day. 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 It Pays to Know. A message from the Government of Canada.ca slash itpaystoknow. A message from the Government of Canada. We'll go over to this place where this log is, and then I'll talk to you about how many people and things like that. So I'm guessing that's the log. That's the only one that looks big enough to have walked out on. That's it, in fact. And the distance from the rock that we keep referring to here is only 30 meters max, 25 meters.

30 meters by 100 meters. Okay, start breaking it up. Yeah. You need two dive teams. Yeah, so the dog was probably halfway out on that log right there. Halfway out, yep. Smelling, tasting.

It all comes back to where was the wind coming in from. And it's not even the wind at that moment. In something like this, it's more of the wind that's been happening for the past six hours. What's the majority? Because it's a buildup of molecules coming in. There's so few of them coming in. But they attach themselves to a tree trunk or to

an eddy and when enough of them build up then the dog you know it triggers that they're um they're alert in their brain that oh hold it a second picking up that odor here so how long mike do you think it would take to search what you see here this area you could spend a day here without blinking with two dive tubes. And you probably won't get all of it. Because you'll get slowed down by the trees and the water and visibility. These are things you have to figure out, work around. And you're also going to be bogged down with simple logistics. And things that surprise you are like you put a diver with all that heavy gear in into that bottom.

I don't know what the bottom's like. I'm presuming it's leaf litter and silt and sediment. Suddenly you've got a diver standing on his knees. So how do you get, now you need someone to help get in. It's logistically very demanding. There's no doubt that these guys in 1972 faced the same bit of misery. Pat Patterson is the dive master who conducted the dives in the search for Adrian in 1972. In the water, it wasn't a deep lake. If I remember, it was mostly around that 30 feet. So do you always just go right down to near the bottom when you're searching,

or do you sort of do the water column, you know? No, on that particular type of dive, we would start at shore, and we're just not walk in, but as if you were walking and gradually make your way down a hill until you hit the level of the lake bottom, you know. And just go right across. Yeah, yeah. And sometimes, like I say, you might hit a hole which would be 40 feet deep,

but you'd be back up in a minute. Or you'd hit the odd place and come up to 20 feet. I got Pat on the phone, so Mike and I could ask him questions directly. When you walked across the lake with the rope, were you putting your hands in the muck all the way across? On the bottom? Yeah. Oh, more or less, you know.

Yeah. Okay. Because you'd get close to the bottom, of course, and then you'd shove off so you didn't disturb it. Otherwise, you've got clouds around you. I'm going to say you tried to stay a limit of two to three feet above the bottom type of thing, you know. Did you have a lot of obstructions in there? I've got to say not really. It was fairly clean.

Very little weeds in the time. A few little parts of trees closer to some of the shores, you know, stuff that had fallen in years prior to that and really hadn't rotted away yet. Actually, we saw quite a few dead trout on the bottom. The lake is going dead at that time, you know. Seems to me maybe one end of the lake might have been a little more swampy or something or weedy. I was intrigued to hear about the number of times you dove, two or three times you searched Holmes Lake, and you said that the first search happened,

and then a week later you would have done the other search. Yeah, and there was upwards of three or four lakes within, say, one to two miles that we'd go and check, too, you know. And then as we're taking a rest, we'll say, well, okay, in the morning we'll go back up to Holmes, let's do it again. Right, I see. So you started at Holmes Lake, then you came out and went to other lakes, then came back to Holmes Lake.

And then the timing when you first hit the water after Adrian disappeared. So Adrian disappeared June 12th in the evening of 1972. And so would you have hit the water like June 13th in the morning? No it would be it was the next day but it would be probably more in the you know around noon. Okay so we'll say you started midday June 13th. I would say that'd be pretty close yeah. Pat's version of the dives conducted in Holmes Lake and the surrounding lakes back in 1972 sounds pretty thorough. But was there room for error in what they did? How important is it to understand the history of the case and the history of the original dives and all that stuff?

How much research do you have to do before you get into this? As much research as you can put your hands on. Everything helps, every shred of information. Anything that the police divers can provide on a lake bathymetry, the conditions that they ran into, obstacles, debris, anything like that is helpful in a search area, how they conducted it, what they did. Right down to, for us now, looking at a target. You know, was Adrian, what are the covered clothes Adrian was wearing? Right, right. And we do know that he had a blue quilted jacket on, nylon quilted jacket.

And he had rubber blue quilted jacket on nylon quilted jacket and he had rubber soled shoes. How does a body work in water? Like how do you, does a body like if it falls in there is it going to stay right there or is he gonna slowly with wave action kind of find the lowest point in the lake? How does that work? If it's a drowning victim the body will sink and then after a period of three or four days, depending on temperature, the body will rise again because of the buildup of gases in the body. And is there some theory that says that a smaller body may not produce enough gas to rise as much? That could be now. We're working well outside of my area of expertise when it comes to

those kinds of opinions. My task is to go in and to actually find what's there. So when the body sinks, does it find the lowest point until it gets snagged? It could get snagged, it'll just rest on the bottom. When you're looking at bodies from recent incidents, it'll be comfortably laying there. Adrian, if you had fallen in here in a shallow area, it would have had a whole night to kind of settle more and more and more

before people were able to come and look again in the morning. So if there was any wave action at all, could we assume that we would move further into the lake? That's a possibility. Okay, well what do we do now? We go get the wind. I don't like being so speculative, but I feel like I have to, or else nothing makes sense.

What would the timing be then? Sort of first melt, or like how would you do that? Well, we don't mind a little bit of ice as long as it's thin and we can we can break through it. Is colder water better for visibility? It lowers the silt or something? Well, just less bacteria growth. So literally like right after the ice gets in would probably be best for your perspective? Yeah. Okay. So visibility is better in cold water? Actually visibility underneath the ice gets in would probably be best for your perspective? Yeah. Okay. Oh, so visibility is better in cold water?

Actually, visibility underneath the ice usually is pretty spectacular. But now you're into a whole other level of risk to put people in. Okay. All right, well, let's go. So, I mean, it could be middle of March because it does break out. It's an El Nino year. The ice keeps the wave action to zero, and sediment doesn't stir into the water, which keeps it clearer.

Also, in winter, there's less bacterial action in the cold water, and that improves visibility too. But we'll still need to wait for spring thaw. So what do we do for the next three or four months, this sort of thing? Well, we just So what do we do for the next three or four months? Well, we just think about it non-stop for the next three or four months and come up and check out the lake every second weekend in March until it breaks up. We head back to the trucks and leave the unknowns of Holmes Lake under the frozen ice. I would have liked to have gotten into the water, but it is what it is, right? Because I know the goals that you and Kim had would be to have a miracle, by some fluke, by some miracle, I find something. My goal, which is not that far different,

is actually to put together a plan. You increase the probability of finding something. So would you say in your estimation Mike, if you go in and do this dive in the spring and don't find something, is that conclusive in any way? No, no. That's the hard, hard part is that we could go back in the spring and we can do a search again and take a very disciplined approach and not find anything and that still doesn't mean that Adrian is not there. He could still be there. This part of the story will have to wait until we can get through that ice. But we have more to explore on this case before then. So we're working on this one being the operative?

I would assume so, yes. It's the best of my knowledge now. And it was black and white, I'm positive of that. And 56, I'm pretty positive of that too. So that must be the color combination right there. Were the people that were there hanging around the car, were they like sitting on it or around it or just anywhere just nearby it? They were nearby because their camp site was right there too.

We only stopped a few seconds type of thing and walked ahead past them. It was a day site, do you think, or was there a tent? I think there was right there too. We only stopped a few seconds, type of thing, and walked ahead past them. It was a day site, do you think, or was there a tent? I think there was a tent. Do you think they were there just for the day, or was it...? No, I think they were there for the weekend, type of thing, because there was a bonfire and things like that. They weren't there just to fish for an hour or so. They were set up for camping.

And so the fire... The black-and-white car and the people apparently camping around it are important. We'll get an image similar to the 1956 Dodge Lancer that John Gervais says he saw that day onto our SKS website and out through social media. Also, and a bit on a tangent, maybe even a far-fetched one, I've read of an abduction attempt nearby within a month of Adrian's disappearance. Another young boy. And yes, the psychics who told the McNaughton family what they thought happened to Adrian back in 1972,

should they actually be looked at? But as I head back to my home, my mind movie is still at the bottom of that frozen lake, and I can see myself looking down through the sheen of Someone Knows Something... There's other things that still run through my mind. Psychics gave us a bunch of stories. What kinds of things did the psychics say? Well, there was one lady who came from England. She told the whole story

just about the way it was at Holmes Lake. She told the story that Adrian had walked away and there was a guy in there and he picked him up. Visit cbc.ca slash sks and click on this week's episode

to see a photo of the 1956 Dodge Lancer similar to the one at Holmes Lake the day Adrian disappeared. Subscribe in iTunes or your favorite podcast app to catch up on previous episodes. 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, 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 stop my love, I will never sleep. Something here's an answer for this mystery I leave Maybe one day we will all look out at the sun

And know a light that shines the truth Out our loved ones 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 our lives Hello again, SKS listeners. We just want to remind you again about the Someone Knows Something audience survey on our website. If you want to tell us what you think of the show and how we can make it better, visit cbc.ca.sks. Thanks for listening. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.