Someone Knows Something - S1 Prologue: 'Do it, David. Do it.'

Episode Date: March 1, 2016

David Ridgen considers whether he should create the podcast Someone Knows Something.

This is a CBC Original Podcast. 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. When CBC called me to talk about this podcast, I'd just begun shooting a feature film up in an old Ontario mining town. We were using a series of abandoned farmhouses as our sets and what what the farm family's left behind as our props. The film's a drama I've written that takes place in this kind of dilapidated future where a group of homeless people stumble through a situation where they have to help someone when they have no means or resources to do it,

and in fact, they have no understanding of what the actual situation is until the very end. So, a classic puzzler slash horror, I guess. Without giving it all away, it's a story where a character tries to escape from abductors. They try to liberate themselves and get away from the people who took them, and not end up sprawled in the woods or a ditch or pushed into a fridge or somewhere, a shallow grave. Anyway, CBC wanted to talk podcast because I'm assuming years before I'd made a series of documentaries about cold cases at the CBC. Some of them I made in the US and some in Canada. But they were all haunting and haunted by malicious humans, hard images, crime scenes, aching family members,

and boxes and boxes of documents that still line the walls of my Toronto semi-detached like a kind of desperate installation and in these cases and all the cases I've worked on obviously none of the victims get away any power or life is taken away from them they never get to see autumn light or listen to Dylan or Drake or binge on anything or do anything else involving breathing the fresh air. And being immersed in that as I was, it's hard not to despise humanity, what we can do, how we think, our nature, our selfishness. I hated it. Close to the end of my investigations when I was at CBC, I'd spontaneously erupt in tears during meetings and I'd have to leave the room. It just came out of nowhere.

I'd have crime scene images present themselves suddenly during months of non-sleep. The exploded flashlight bits from Wayne Gravett's filthy murder by a coward I'd still like to meet face to face. Black and white police photos of Dennis Melvin Howe's apartment from Sharon Keenan's case on Brunswick Avenue in Toronto here. The body of Catherine Mary Herbert, out in Abbotsford, BC, found under a rotten outhouse in the woods, blurred for TV but not for my brain. I'd go into full panic mode if my son was a minute later than I expected from school and just stay away from people as much as possible.

It's not healthy, I know. It's just the beginning compared to what families and detectives go through, obviously. But this is me and it's me you've got to deal with on this. So being brutally honest, as I'm prone to, getting back into cold cases with a podcast series didn't feel like the best thing for me. Not a no-brainer. Come back and do a series, Dave.

No, I'd rather work it out in a no-budget feature film in abandoned houses. But I obviously thought about it, and long story short, before saying yes to this podcast and CBC was looking for a first-season run of several cases, I called every family I've worked with on a cold case and asked them if they thought what we did together was worth anything.

Looking through the cases, the documents, photos, talking to people they'd always wanted to talk to. Opening that wound to heal it more was the theory. Throw him in the elevator, he's claustrophobic. I believe that. I believe in that approach. Some of the work led, or I guess helped to lead somewhere, too. Got an indictment and a conviction in a federal U.S. court of a Klansman for a double murder in 1964 Mississippi.

A grand jury on another Klan case in Louisiana. Arrests of alleged perpetrators in two other cases here in Canada. New information and others. The family got to dig into the muck and grime of places they never thought they could or would. And I'm sure it sucked the pipe for them, and I know it did. But doing nothing is that better, that was my question. Do or don't. I guess I wanted to hear these family members tell me that I was a shameless muckraker,

taking advantage of families and their grief to get explosive stories to air. But instead, they all just said I should do it. Do it, David. Do it. Do it. You're an idiot. So I said okay. Coming up this season on Someone Knows Something. Quite normal little five-and-a-half-year year old, real busy old lad. He couldn't tie his shoes, he was only five. He was a little guy, shy little guy.

So he would have lost his shoes in that bush, it was very thick. Bad things happen to little boys sometimes. Visit cbc.ca slash sks to see David's documentary about confronting former Mississippi Klansmen. 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 series 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. Some things here are precious. A memory we keep I will never stop my love I will never, never sleep

All I want is an answer For this mystery we keep.