Someone Knows Something - S2 Episode 12: Lavoie

Episode Date: February 13, 2017

Where is Sheryl Sheppard? David looks into her potential whereabouts and makes direct contact with the man police have named as the prime suspect in Sheryl's disappearance: Michael Lavoie. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sks/season2/someone-knows-something-season-2-sheryl-sheppard-transcript-listen-1.3846237

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Previously on SKS. Meanwhile, police in Hamilton-Wentworth need your assistance in locating a missing person. Detectives are asking for any information pertaining to the whereabouts of 29-year-old Cheryl Shepard Sweeney from Queenston Road in Hamilton. When was the last time you talked to Cheryl ever? The last time I talked to Cheryl was the day she told me, Grace, don't be surprised if I go missing. That was the last time. Do you remember Cheryl ever talking to you about being worried about Mike? Yes. She gave me a tape, a little micro tape, and she said if anything was to ever happen to her,

to give it to the police. She knew everything. She said, my life will be in danger if once I spill the beans. He wrote me a letter, and he mailed it, and I didn't get it until after he'd come home from the hospital. He said, I'm sorry. Give my girls a kiss for me. Right?

Now, this case is peculiar to me. There is a prime suspect who's been named as the prime suspect by police here. Correct? Yes. And who is that prime suspect? Michael LaVoy. This is Episode 12. LaVoy. This is Episode 12, Lavoie.

Early morning, Hamilton time. I'm sitting in a van outside a bricked house lit by a dim splash of sodium light, where a woman named Evelyn Dick lived in the 1940s. At the time, Evelyn's husband's headless, limbless torso was found on the side of Hamilton Mountain, and a baby was found in a suitcase encased in concrete inside the attic I'm now staring up at. And while Evelyn Dick was eventually convicted of murdering the child, doubts remain to this day that she was actually to blame for any of it.

But I'm not here to talk about Evelyn, really, though I would like to speak to her, to hear her side of that story. I've pulled up into this side street to prepare my audio gear because, just a short drive away in Hamilton's downtown area, sits the house of another person whose story I want to hear, and whose involvement in a case needs clarity. Michael Lavoie. I've been waiting for the right moment to approach him. The best opportunity to ask the questions. And since Brian Sweeney hasn't actually made himself available yet as originally planned.

Hey, what's up? What's up? Come on. Come over here. Just wondering if Brian's around. He was wanting to talk, so that's... Jay says Brian's at work, so now Michael LaVoy. I really want Michael just to tell me what he knows about the case and Cheryl and what she was like and dispel any of these rumors or dispel any of these things we've been finding out. Did he drop her off at the Concord?

Why did he go in the storage locker? This discussion about blackmail that we've been hearing about from two different sources at least and any of the other allegations and thoughts that come up during the podcast, there's only one person that can really answer any of that, that can really respond to much of what we've heard, and that's Michael Lavoie. It's late fall and the witches, cobwebs and ghosts of Halloween decorate almost every house on Michael's street. Big solid brick homes that harken to the glory years of Hamilton's past. This is just my first attempt at trying to speak to Michael Lavoie. I pass a wind chime and a gurgling fountain

on a front lawn, my personal soundtrack as I wait for Michael to make his appearance. And it reminds me of what I hear every time I go to Odette's place.

So how have you been since I was last here, Odette? Just a few weeks earlier, I visited Odette once again at her trailer. One of Odette's prime interests in taking part in this podcast was so that she could finally find Cheryl's remains. Because Odette has come to believe that Cheryl Shepard is dead. And so have I. We've heard many stories about what might have happened to her.

But Odette is certain Michael Lavoie killed her. Why do you think the Hamilton police have not arrested Michael? They can run it to me without a body. They can't do much. Without a body, they can't do much. Without a body, they can't do much. You know what? How many times have they turned around, they've been charged without a body? You know what? If I had a way to go to Ottawa and push this, you know, I would push it.

To even start thinking about an examination into Cheryl's whereabouts, a monumental, possibly impossible task, I want to map out the searches Odette and others have undertaken for her since she disappeared. When we did the first, some search, you know, just my uncle, my aunt and I, we just drove around and we went on First Road East. We just checked the woods and stuff like that, you know, around there. And was there ever any article of clothing or anything found anywhere?

A lot, and they asked me to identify it, and I knew Cheryl's clothes, and it was not hers. So a lot of stuff was found, but it wasn't Cheryl's? No. Police report that Brian Sweeney was also consulted on clothing that was found during searches since he had bought clothes for Cheryl during their on and off relationship. By the way I should correct a few mistakes I've been alerted to through messages from Brian and members of Michael Lavoie's family. Brian had a relationship and children with Tracy Lavoie before he married Cheryl, not after as I may have implied. Steve Lavoie's wife is 42, younger than I had guessed, and Mike's van was more blue than grey.

And then another time I had to be pulled off the road, I had to go and meet them at the house. Apparently they find a body in Kitchener, inside of the road in a ditch. And they showed me the picture. They said it's, you know, gruesome. But I just, it looks like Cheryl. And I looked at it. And I said, no, that's not Cheryl. But they wanted to show it to me. That was hard. The search for Cheryl can be drawn across a map over many months and years.

A search that Michael Lavoie has, to the best of available knowledge and according to his family, never taken part in aside from showing Cheryl's picture at Niagara Strip Clubs on January 5th, 1998. As we've heard, Lavoie's conduct after Cheryl disappeared has fueled much of the suspicion directed at him. He's denied having anything to do with Cheryl's disappearance, but he needs to talk, and he should talk now. I'll come back to Michael's street and his house later in this episode. In the meantime, we'll embark on a journey through the searches for Cheryl and meet some of the people who did help Odette along the way.

We'll also go to that conservation area that you're thinking of. It's on the right-hand side on that road. One of the first and possibly grimmest places police looked was the Hamilton Waste Transfer Station. If Cheryl met an end in or around her building, would the perpetrator have seen the city trash system as a means to an end? Former detective Don Forgan. Okay, and then the dump search in Hamilton was carried out fairly quickly after Cheryl disappeared, I understand.

As soon as they realized that the garbage had been picked up at the apartment. The transfer station and the dump? I think it was actually the transfer station on Canora Avenue, which is close to the apartment. Yeah, the first thing I saw when I went into that apartment, the people that let us in there, that live in there, I went to the balcony and the first thing I saw when I went into that apartment, the people that let us in there, that live in there, I went to the balcony and the first thing I saw looking out were these two massive dumpsters. And to your satisfaction, investigation satisfaction,

the dump or transfer stations were searched thoroughly with dogs? I don't know if the transfer station was searched with dogs. I don't think it was. I think it was just a physical search. Okay. Other searches for Cheryl concentrated on places that Michael Lavoie was known to have been during the time that Cheryl disappeared. Warren Correll says it's a potentially large area based on Michael's movements. You know, we had information that Mike had gone missing until he was found in the garage. And we'd actually tracked him to areas in Ontario through different means. Niagara Falls was one of them, and then sort of in southern Ontario

that he could have been from January 2nd until he was found, which is a huge area, right? And if it was ever thought that he killed her, she could be in a lot of different places, and it was very difficult to just pinpoint one specific point down to start searching. So here's Highway 20. Yeah. You say that Michael used to always drive to Chippewa on the 20th.

Yeah. Right. This is sort of a shortcut down to Chippewa then. Yeah, it's the fastest way, yeah. And this is also the route where a lot of the searches were undertaken for Cheryl. Yeah. Quite a few places we did, you know. Farmer's Fields? Was it Farmer's Fields at that time?

Yeah. Yeah? And is this the road that Balls Falls and all those... That's right, that's the one I was thinking of. We did the search on that too. Don Forgan says that in addition to searches Odette and Cheryl's friends organized, several different police searches were also undertaken. The first search took place on the 19th of January, 1998, down in Niagara.

Niagara Regional Police received a phone call about some blonde hair that had been found near a body of water. So they had their dive team do a search, and it came up negative. Another search was in the Hamilton area, using information received from a confidential informant who knew a private place that Michael used to go to. But nothing was found. That was in the Hamilton area. Next, we searched the Devil's Punch Ball area in Stony Creek. The ground search and with the cadaver dogs. And that was based on information that I received from Michelle as a result of an interview

of her in school. That was May 1998. Based on information from Michelle, Michael Lavoie's daughter. I went to the school with Gwen's permission and spoke to Michelle there. She said that Mike Lavoie had taken her, all three kids, to the cross, just above the Devil's Punchbowl area. When did he take them there?

Sometime prior to December 97. She said it was before the snow came. So this is before Cheryl disappeared? Yeah. He took them there with Cheryl? Yep. We brought cadaver dogs in and we also did a physical ground search.

July 1998 and it was a pond down Niagara Way near Beamsville, and it was as a result of information received from Niagara Regional Police. Somebody had reported that they thought they saw a human hand in a like a lagoon type pond so we had the the divers do a complete search of the lagoon and it turned out negative did you take dogs with you no not for that one it was just the search of the lagoon would you be willing to give me the coordinates of that lagoon? It's in, like, a park near Beamsville. Okay, and there's one pond there? There's, like, a lagoon, a pond-type thing. This may be a place we can look at searching ourselves.

And there's also what looks like a gravel pit directly across from the storage locker Michael was found in that police say was never searched. And there's a golf course location I've heard about too. It may be time to call on Kim Cooper from season one and her fellow searchers and dogs. The next search was of a small lake down in Niagara region. Also in December 1998, we had cadaver dogs do a ground search and we had divers do a search of the body of water. It was also negative.

However, there was a spot in the body of water that couldn't be searched because of the mud. A sixth police-organized search took place on Francis Street in Hamilton in January 2001. I'll give you something else that has never come out publicly before. I dug a basement up and I brought cadaver domes in based on information from somebody. I've heard from a few different sources about a basement that I should be seeking out and searching. This is the first I've heard that police also knew of this place. And my information was new concrete applied to a basement and we should check that out. Don Forgan says the Ontario Provincial Police supplied a cadaver dog and handler to the operation.

But the dog did not make any indications of smelling human remains. It didn't hit on any of the... We dug it up and we drilled holes and it didn't hit on anything. Was it concrete or dirt? It was concrete. I broke the floor up. And then we refinished it ourselves. So that basement was taken care of. Okay, and in the triangle, as Coral referred to it once, sort of Stratford, Orillia, Niagara Falls,

were there any searches sort of north of Hamilton, or was it all concentrated southerly? It was all southerly. So there was nothing in Stratford, nothing Orillia, nothing along those routes? Nope. So from Michael's drive north and west of Hamilton,

the upper two points of the alleged triangle, in the period leading up to his time in the storage locker, there have been no searches for Cheryl. And there's no information on whether Michael might have tried to visit John Abbott, the man JP

alleges is Michael's father, in Cannington, Ontario, on the way. Abbott is now deceased, but I've been told that Michael was close to his father at the time. After leaving Gwen with his tearful goodbye on Monday, January 5th, it is now known that Michael drove over two hours to Stratford, Ontario, and had some interaction with a Royal Bank ATM, then returned to his mother's house in Hamilton for a while, and then left again to drive north to Casino Rama, where his car was seen on the morning of the 6th. On the other end of the triangle,

Forgan's former police partner, Warren Correll, says there was particular attention focused around the Niagara River itself. There's places that I've been told that if a person goes into the upper river, near the hydro ducts and that sort of thing, that people can go missing and never be found again and you know for a couple of years anytime hydro cleaned out the catch basins underneath their hydro ducts there would be a lot of bones found there right and they would come down to the forensic pathology unit here at McMaster and they would be able to

type the bones you know to say okay they came out of you know a male you know so more this came out of a female you know based mostly through the pelvic bones and that sort of thing these like shredded bones or like full actually full bones you know like if you. This is an awful picture, but there's grates in front of those hydro ducts. And there's such a force of water. If you can picture a body getting pinned up against these things. And then little pebbles coming off the bottom of the river floor. And basically, literally sandblasting a person. And all of the skin and tissue and organs

leave the bones and the bones get left down below some of them broken you know and that sort of thing but yeah that's the sort of stuff that got cleaned out and so i had collected dna from odette and then also from cheryl's father and if anything is ever found that we should be able to figure out if it's Cheryl or not. Police say they exhausted the idea that Cheryl left of her own accord and never returned no matter how far away it took them. That included going to Florida a place that Cheryl loved. You know, she always wanted to go to Florida, you know, and all of this sort of stuff. And other people were saying, you know, she always wanted to go to Disney World and things like that.

And in this sort of situation, it was one of those things, well, you know what, you've got to kind of follow every single lead that comes in. Even I went to Florida on a holiday and was sort of in certain areas that it was thought that, you know, she might have gone to. And I actually took pictures down there and went to the homicide branches and they sent them around. But to me, it was one of those things that I could say I did it, but I didn't ever expect that it was going to pan out. You know, we would have people say, yeah, I think we saw this girl here. Like, even after it happened, there was a lady who said that she saw Cheryl at the casino. And we researched that through video. There was another lady who said that she saw her in, like, the Niagara Falls area, I think it was.

You know, and we tracked all of that down, but again, nothing ever panned out. Odette has shown me several knick-knacks Cheryl collected over her life, including from her trips to Florida. Within these, Mickey Mouse figured prominently on magnets and framed pictures. In a conversation I had with Gwen, Mickey Mouse figured prominently on magnets and framed pictures. In a conversation I had with Gwen, she said that across the weekend Cheryl disappeared, Michael Lavoie at one point allegedly told his children that Cheryl's gone to see Mickey Mouse.

If this was said, it's not known why. Back to the road with Odette. We went that way also, that road. That's when we find a brand new blanket. We were just walking by and we see that brand new blanket. So we went in the wood there, like not too far from the road, and we took a stick and it opened and it was a skull. So we had to go to Tim Horton and use a pay phone. And I said, I want to talk to Don Forgan.

He said, you know, I said, is this an emergency? I said, yeah. And it was a whole bunch of police came and the sergeant and they followed me to where the area and you know somebody had to come and pick that up you know and they checked it and then i got a call at home that it was an animal skull like why would you put an animal skull in a brand new blanket you know there was another animal skull like not a human skull that's what they said yeah Niagara region devil's punch. We checked that out, yeah. Albion Falls. Yeah. As Odette and I drive anywhere, it quickly becomes overwhelming, the amount of spaces and places.

Independent searches organized by Odette and friends of Cheryl's found clothing and other items, but none of it that could be connected to Cheryl. For what it's worth, the research shows that there's a slightly higher probability that the offender disposed of a body in water rather than burying it. Now, if something goes in the water, it often will come up, but if it hasn't come up by now, it's gone. Kim Rosmo is a Canadian criminologist and former police officer at the forefront of a forensic technique known as geographic profiling. He's based out of a Texas university where I've reached him on the phone.

Kim uses geoprofiling software to analyze crime locations and help locate murderers. I asked him about the likely situations or settings where somebody might move a body. You know, this could be all sorts of reasons. It came up and no one would see it. It got washed down by current. It was weighted down. But by now, if it did go into the water, it would be virtually totally lost, barring some extreme luck.

And if it was buried, then if you knew the location, you might actually find a body. If it was just dumped, it would be extremely disarticulated and spread all over the place. And unless you found the skull or something obvious, it would be, again, very, very difficult. I mean, just so much time has gone by. I just don't know what could be done. I have a question for you. Are there sort of average distances that someone will travel or, you know, into the woods or things like that?

Or what are the more average situations where disposal might happen for an unpremeditated murder? Well, the distances are huge, but, you know, sometimes they could be up as high as 10 or 20 miles, depending. I think it kind of depends how much time is available to the person. You know, in some of these cases, because it was not anticipated, the offender is operating under time constraint and has to fairly quickly get rid of the body. And are there minimum or maximum distances in those cases? Do we have numbers that we can sort of rely on, or is it just every case is different?

No, there are some numbers. They find that more often than not, unless you're dealing with organized crime figures, criminals don't usually bury the body more than about six inches under the ground. A murderer is unlikely to carry a body of a victim found within 15 meters of a road or trail. Any searches you want to do should follow the road network or path network rather than grid searches. Vendors often take paths of least resistance. If you're looking for bones, you need to consider the nests and burrows and traveled roots of animals in the area. I don't know if you remember Chandra Levy, the intern that was murdered in Washington, D.C. Yes. It took them one year to find her body. Her body

had been put in Rock Creek Park, which is an urban park. No animal bigger than a fox in that park. But still, after one year, her skeleton was distributed over an area the size of about two football fields. You know, so this stuff happens fairly quickly. But again, I'm going to point to the fact that because the remains haven't shown up, you know that whoever put her somewhere has been successful in choosing the location. I wonder about how weather can potentially help to narrow down possibilities. Temperature, snow cover. Rosmo doesn't have that information, but the data is available,

and I asked Odette what it was like at the beginning of January 1998. Because that winter, it was a bad winter, eh? See, the pictures in the time that I saw of the storage area where Michael parked the car that time with the car on, it looked wet. It didn't look like there was any snow on the ground at all. Yeah. Looking back at the meteorological data, it was mild and even rainy on or around the time Cheryl disappeared.

Temperatures from December 31st, 97 ranged from a low of minus 15 degrees Celsius, but a warming trend meant that by January 6th, the high would be around 12 degrees. Don Forgan remembers that on the way down to Niagara Falls on January 5th, 1998 to check the strip clubs, that it was warmer and there was no snow on the ground. Disposing of a body in frozen ground would be difficult, though milder weather could have made that easier. With little or no snow cover, at least in that week, going off-road and hoping not to leave evidence of your tracks and travels would be easier. So this section of Highway 20 doesn't look like it's been developed a lot.

That's the cornfields and country roads and little towns here along here. Grassy fields. See like, stuff like that, this is what the psychic, you know, like, a lot of people don't believe in psychic and I don't know what to believe in her, but the police has got a tape of it. Yeah, my experience with psychics and information from psychics is that none of it actually has ever led anywhere. So coming down Highway 20, I keep thinking, where would somebody, you know, stow a body? You would wonder if somebody would need help in order to find a place to conceal a body.

But that shower was very light. In one and a half kilometers, turn left on Portage Road. There's the falls, Niagara Falls. We come to the end of the road, literally, and I turn around to take Odette home. On the way, I learn about a search she conducted with her cousin, Carmen. And it was like a ravine, but I just felt an urge to go there. On the way, I learn about a search she conducted with her cousin Carmen. And it was like a ravine, but I just felt an urge to go there. Digging a hole in a ravine because their gut told them Cheryl could be there.

The water was constantly running, and we tried digging and digging and digging it, but the water kept filling back up. The hole kept filling up with water, but they continued digging into the night until they were exhausted. It would be a perfect spot, you know. The futility of their actions then and possibly of our trip today is not lost on us. But Odette can't move forward.

Maybe nobody can without the act of knowing, actually knowing, what exactly happened to Cheryl. Cheryl is present and behind everything Odette does. You have a gut feeling? Yeah. Want to tell me that? It's just, since this morning, I don't know, something just told me, you know.

Told you what? Just a feeling I have, you know, like, it's going to end soon. I hope so. I need to return to the former Concord Hotel. Ever since seeing the young blonde woman going up the fire escape outside while looking at the building with Odette, I've wanted to get inside. This is the place Michael Lavoie says he dropped Cheryl off, and a key part of his story. I park behind the former Concord, now a bar called The Big Texas, and see a man standing at the back door.

He's sweating and jovial and has the air of someone in charge, and I think he works here. As I walk up, he asks me if I'm looking for ghosts. I guess I am looking for ghosts. Hey, how are you doing? I'm David. Do you own this place? No, but I'm the general manager here. I'm the head security, I'm the property manager, and I'm the janitor. I'm just a guy you own this place? No, but I'm the general manager here. I'm the head of security, I'm the property manager, and I'm the janitor. I'm just a guy deserving from the boss. I'm glad you're doing this because it brings some disclosures to the families, too. You know, that's really cool that you're doing that.

You know, there's rooms upstairs, too. There's apartments upstairs, eh? I'm in charge of them. I'm super for that, too. I follow Antonio inside to see what the place looks like now. Apparently, the rooms upstairs rent for over $800 a month, and there's no vacancy. The hotel has changed hands since it was the Concord, so the rooms may or may not have been monthly rentals at the time.

That's fine. Come on in. Come on in. So when this used to be a strip club, do you guys know where the stage used to be? Yeah, I can tell you exactly where the stage was Stage, exactly right here It came up with a runway like this There's a little runway like this Around here used to be the Pervert's Row, I remember So the dancing used to happen just right there Yes, the dancing happened to happen just right there.

Yes, the dancing happened. That was the stage where the VIP section is up there. That definitely was the stage, 1,000%. There's nobody else in here. Wooden floors, beer advertising. According to everyone I've spoken to, Cheryl was not in here across the weekend she disappeared. Looking to the left, not far from where the strip stage used to be, there's a new claim to fame, a mechanical bull. But oddly, it barely makes a sound.

So if Cheryl was dropped off, but never went inside the Concord, did police check to make sure there wasn't any connection to other known murders in the area? Niagara Falls has had its share of women going missing, some linked to dancing and prostitution. Was there ever any comparisons to Cheryl going missing in Niagara Falls to other cases of missing women in Niagara Falls, like other possible perpetrators or possible people that may have been involved in disappearing other women in the area?

The Niagara Falls Homicide Branch, we worked with down there, and were well aware of this case and assisted us at different times. If there was some sort of a link, if there was some sort of concern in relation to that, they would have told us. And as you know, especially now, these things continue to be investigated. There's things that are in place where unsolved cases are put into power case. If there is some sort of a pattern of people that are gone missing out of the Niagara Falls area, the detectives who have these cases now would certainly know about it. And we never ever saw any evidence to suggest that it was linked to missing people.

Corll's former partner, Detective Don Forgan, agrees. He says that detectives assigned to the task force from the Hamilton police were also the very ones who were among the first to investigate Cheryl's disappearance. There was a task force established to look at the disappearance of street workers and others. Greg Jackson and actually Steve Harab were involved in the task force looking at the disappearances of these women. So there was interaction between the two investigations. And there were people involved in that task force that had intimate knowledge of the Cheryl Shepard investigation. So yes, that was covered off. So there was never any connection found between Cheryl's disappearance and

possibly other perpetrators or other sort of patterns of disappearance in the area Niagara Falls or Hamilton area? No. And there's no sort of path or theory that Cheryl might still be alive has been discounted, I guess, at this point? I doubt that. There's not been one shred of evidence to suggest that she's still alive. Not a lot of evidence to suggest that she's not alive.

Leaving your wallet at home, in your closet, in your coat, is telltale. For police, all of the searches and following a trail of leads, no matter how remote, just brought them back to the same spot every time. Well, I always ask, what didn't we do that we could have done that would have brought closure to this? I don't know. We did everything that we could think of. We did a lot of creative things, but I always ask myself, did we do everything that we could have?

Do you have to have a body to have a case? No, not necessarily, and we've certainly seen investigations resulting in convictions without a body. I ask Warren Correll the same question. Can a case be solved without a body. I ask Warren Correll the same question. Can a case be solved without a body? Can a conviction happen without a body? Oh, absolutely, it can. And in this case, it may go that way one day.

As the podcast has rolled out, people have come forward who say they spoke to Cheryl around the time she disappeared. These are friends of hers. Some of these conversations, all on the phone, helped to shed some brighter light on the crucial moments leading up to Cheryl's disappearance. I was trying to avoid her when she was with him because I didn't like him at all. Through her sister Pam, daughter Kara, and her father Bill, and by listening to the podcast, Paula Branton, one of Cheryl's closest friends,

has finally been moved to speak to me. She's agreed to meet at a billiards hall where she's playing pool with her team. Take both four and eight. Monte Carlo and focus. Paula's a champion player who recently won at an event in Las Vegas. Well, my name's Paula Branton,

and I've known her for at least 13, 15 years. I can't remember exactly how long. She was my best friend. We did everything together. Like if I was somewhere and I needed her help, I would call her and she would just come right away. She'd be there for me like within 10 minutes. Doesn't matter what she's doing, she's stopped what she's doing to come. Paula has some important insights into Cheryl's behavior, what was normal and abnormal for her, and about the time period around when Cheryl went missing. And Paula says Cheryl had in fact danced at the

Concord Hotel, but not in many years. So when she danced at the Concord, how many times would you say you danced there and when was that? I danced with her there twice. Right and so when was that at the Concord? That was like back in around 89, 90. Like many years. That was a long time ago so I know she wouldn't do that. She wouldn't do it anymore. That was back in the years. Cheryl if she was gonna go dancing. She wouldn't have. She wouldn't have done it later I guess you're saying. She wouldn't have done it later, I guess you're saying. She wouldn't have done it. She would tell me. Would she go on her...

If she was at the time, like back before, like in 89 or whatever, would she ever go alone? Nope. She always went with somebody. Always. Never would just... Never by herself. Say, hey, drop me off.

Nope. Nope, never. 100% guaranteed. She would tell me. 100% guaranteed. She would tell me she was going. Yeah, no matter what, even if she went somewhere or anything, she would have called me for sure, 100% guaranteed. She's stuck or something, she'd say, Paula, don't tell anyone, just can I come over?

I'd say, Paula, don't tell anyone, just can I come over? I'd say, no problem. And for Paula, other things just don't make sense about Cheryl's disappearance. Yeah, but she would always wear her glasses, right, because she needed her glasses for her. That's why I don't understand why her glasses were at home. But she would take her glasses? Yeah. I would try to talk her into not wearing them, but yeah.

Glasses or contacts, both were found in Cheryl's apartment. Paula, through a series of phone calls, also provides some key points on the timeline of exactly when Cheryl disappeared. She told me she got engaged on New Year's Eve on TV when they went down to the convention center. Paula spoke to Cheryl on the phone on January 1st, New Year's Day. And I just said, he gave you a ring.

He actually gave you a ring. He had money to buy a ring. And she was like, yeah. And I'm like, well, how can he afford to get you a ring when he doesn't even work? I was kind of giggling, right? And, oh, Paula, don't be like that. And I'm like, well, I don't like them. Whatever.

According to Gerald Davidson's story about Michael Lavoie with garbage bags sometime after January 1st, Michael said that Cheryl was too sick to call her mother. She wasn't acting sick or saying she was throwing up? Not that I know of, no. It sounded like she was happy, but maybe I'm wrong. I think about Pat Lavoie's comment that the marriage proposal was a joke that Cheryl and Michael concocted together. Was there any indication that it was a joke,

like that they'd done it just to get on TV? No, I think she, well she married Brian before too. Just like that, like, I don't know. Just something simple. Anyone can get engaged. You can get engaged for years and not get married, right? You can always say, oh take your ring back, right? But she didn't say, we just did it to get on TV.

No. We didn't really mean it. No, she never said that to me. After the call on the 1st, Paula says she called Cheryl again on January 2nd. And the next day I called her because we normally talk every day or even like if we're upset with each other, we'll call each other anyway. Just say, hey, what are you doing today? So I called her on the second and Mike answered the phone

and I said, is Cheryl home? Oh no, she's in the shower right now. I'm like, okay, tell her to call me. Okay, hung up. Then she never called back. Paula says she waited a while, perhaps an hour or so, and called Cheryl's number again. This is January 2nd.

So I called back, and then he said, oh, she went out. I'm like, she didn't even call me, though. Oh, I don't know. But she would normally call you back? Yeah. For sure, for sure, like 100%. I kept on phoning the phone, but the machine kept on coming on. That was it. And I never heard from her again. I just kept on calling her phone, calling her,

like calling the house phone because she only had a pager right? Nothing. Just a machine, machine, machine. Anywhere she is even though she's hiding from someone she'll phone and tell me and tell me not to say anything to anyone. But she never called. Paula tears up often during her recollections and I find myself getting caught up in the emotion around her final phone call with Cheryl. Shortly after this season began, we heard from another friend of Cheryl's who talked to her on the phone, one of the last people believed to have done so before she disappeared. But even more critical is what this friend says Cheryl whispered to her on the early morning of January 1st, 1998,

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For your next trip, do yourself a favor, skip traffic and take Via Rail. Watch both episodes now on cbc.ca slash Via Rail. Paid content with Via Rail Canada. Let's just make sure we're at the right place. Apartment 1. Hello? Oh, hey Pam, it's Dave Ridgen. I'm just outside here. You're outside Ridgen. I'm just outside here.

You're outside? Yeah, I'm on your porch. Oh, okay. I'll let you in. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Pam Jensen is a cautious, quiet-seeming woman, mid-40s, pale and blonde, and preoccupied

with some pending major surgery. A forlorn, blind chihuahua named Chiquita sprawls across one of the couches in Pam's compact but nicely decorated and homey apartment. Hello there. Hello sweetheart. Hi. That's okay. And is she blind? Yes.

Yeah. She's like 80 years old. She's very, uh, she doesn't like people. Sorry to say that, but yeah. Well that's too bad. Come on Chiquita, eat honey. I'm Pam Jensen. How did you know Cheryl? Well we used to always go for coffees back in the 90s and 80s and at Main and Wentworth, Tim Hortons and I met her there through another friend And we became good friends, me and her.

It seems like a meeting place, Tim Hortons. Yes, it always has been. Always has been. Everybody that knew Cheryl always went to Timmy's. Yeah. For years. Years we went there. Yeah. I remember the last time her we went there. Yeah.

I remember the last time we were sitting in there. She was sitting on the seat and she had her feet up on the bar. And she had on the cutest little sweater and everything. Pam says police did talk to her back in 1998, but were called away mid-interview and may not have heard everything she's about to say. She tells me what she remembers about the night of the New Year's Eve TV proposal. I was at my friend's house that night,

and we had the TV on watching the countdown. We flipped it over to CHCH because they had a program on and we seen Cheryl and Mike. And I'm like, oh my god, that's Cheryl and Mike. So we sat there and we were watching it. And that's when he proposed to her and Cheryl absolutely accepted it. And I was thinking to myself, my God, like, what is she doing? You know, because I knew that she didn't want to be with Mike that way. I knew that. And so anyways, it was around 3 in the morning.

And I finally got a hold of her on her phone. And I said to her, I said, Cheryl, like, what's going on? Like, you accepted Mike's marriage opposable? And she's like, well, she kind of put me on the spot, and I'm going to tell him that I can't marry him. And I'm like, and why? Like, you know, I was, and then she said to me, because I didn't sign my divorce papers from Brian.

And I'm like, you know so she said to me um I have to speak lowly you know so he doesn't hear her and um she said um I'm going to take him to a public place so that he doesn't flip out because because Mike had a bad temper. We knew this, right? She said, I might take him to a bingo hall, because you have to be quiet in there. And she said, but I'm not sure yet exactly what I'm going to do. But she said, I am going to tell him tomorrow, not tonight.

She said tomorrow, when they were both sober, because Cheryl was drunk. And I thought, oh, okay. You know, I guess that's not going to go over well so anyways uh that was the last time I spoke to her I wished her a happy new year and that was the end of the conversation so I never talked to her since She was a little pissed off that Mike put her on the spot like that, you know, on television. And she told me that that was the only, that was why she answered yes, because she didn't know what else to do.

She was on the spot, and, you know, everybody was listening and watching, and she, yeah, she was pretty upset over that and she um she was she told me she was definitely going to tell him no did she ever imply or tell you or infer in the call that it was a joke that the whole the whole proposal was a setup or some kind of a joke that they had come up with together she and mike no no how did that call end oh well she told me that you know she'd be i'll get a hold of you like through the week and i said yeah okay cheryl and pretty much that was the end of it, yeah. She said she'd get a hold of you later in the week.

Yeah, you know, like we normally would do. She'd call me or I'd call her or whatever. You want to go for coffee? You know, we'll set up a time and we go, right? But that never happened. Pam Jensen's call supplies a possible explanation for how events might have unfolded next for Cheryl. Records show that Cheryl's divorce from Brian was finalized as of June 1997.

These divorce records were obtained by Odette after Cheryl disappeared. Odette went through the process of getting them because, Odette says, Brian came to her again after Cheryl disappeared and told her that he and Cheryl were not officially divorced. Until I speak to Brian, I won't know his take on this, but I'm going to keep trying with him. Did Cheryl see Brian Sweeney when, as George Lyons says, she went into Brian's house on New Year's Day? Did Cheryl actually believe she was still married to Brian, or was her statement to Pam Jensen the rehearsal of an idea in her head of how she could get out of her engagement to Michael Lavoie. Mike was very jealous of Cheryl. And he had a bad temper. And every time they would get into an argument or a fight,

he had a bad habit of grabbing her by her throat. I interviewed Pam Jensen before episode 9 that contained Gerald Davidson's eyewitness account of Michael grabbing Cheryl by the throat. That was, I guess, one of the things he did. I don't know. So is that something that you saw or that she told you about? She told me, yes.

She just said, like, if they were arguing, and he would grab her by her throat. That was one of the things he did. Yes. She just said, like if they were arguing, and he would grab her by her throat. That was one of the things he did when he got mad. He would go for her throat all the time. And Cheryl was a little afraid of him, you know. So she was very careful on how she would talk to Mike. She was, you know, she was careful on how she said things and stuff like that.

And she also mentioned at one point that she was thinking about leaving him. Pam goes on to describe a conversation she says she had with Cheryl at a Tim Hortons. We were talking, and she was just fed up with his temper and his flipping out. And she said if it didn't stop, that she was going to leave. And you recall Cheryl having a bit of a temper. Oh, yes. Cheryl would just go right after you. If you made her mad enough, she would just come at you

and put you in your place. That's the type of girl she was. She wasn't a girl that you wanted to piss off. But I mean, she was nice, don't get me wrong. Cheryl would give you the shirt off her back. But she also was the type that you didn't, you know, she didn't like to be pushed around. She told me that she didn't like his temper and she told me that she didn't like it that he was so jealous over her.

He was getting like controlling and Cheryl didn't like to be controlled. So it would always cause fights. And yeah, she, that's when she, she told me straight out that if it didn't stop, she was going to leave. Yeah. So why, why come forward now? Like why wait to talk about what you know? Like what is it that made you want to talk now? I seen it on Facebook and I thought about it a hundred times. I didn't know if I wanted to because of Mike. I was afraid

that he'd come after me or something. I miss her so much, though. I used to have pictures up of her, but I couldn't take it anymore, so I put them away. They're gone. I couldn't deal with it anymore. It was just too hard to keep looking at them all the time and wondering, you know, what happened to her? I can't say Mike killed her, but I believe he did.

Because of his temper with her. His temper. Lavoie's temper, something we've already heard about. Did something escalate, go too far? An argument. Jensen says that a month or perhaps two after Cheryl disappeared, she received a phone call from Michael Lavoie. Well, I got a phone call from Mike.

And he sounded very upset on the phone. And he said he needed somebody to talk to, somebody that was close around them, that were around them all the time. And he said, Pam, would you meet me privately? I want to talk to you. This is Mike LaVoy. Mm-hmm.

And I said to him, I said, well, I don't know, Mike. Like, where would you want to meet? Because I was leery of him now. And he said, well, I don't care. Like, where it's just me and you, though. He goes, I don't want no one else around. And I said, well, let me think about it and get back to me. Because he called me private. And he said, okay.

He said, how about I call you tomorrow and you can let me know. And I said, all right. So that day, I went to Timmy's, and I ran into Brian's mom, Dorothy. And I sat down with her, and I told her that Mike had called me and asked me to meet him privately. Well, Dorothy said to me, I don't think it's a good idea, and I don't think you should go. That man is dangerous, and, you know, you could be in trouble with him.

She said, I don't want you to do it. So I said, okay. So when he called me back and I told Mike, I said, Mike, I don't think it's a good idea, and I don't care to meet with you. And then he just hung up the phone. He had nothing more to say, so I haven't heard from him since. But I always wondered if I should have went to talk to him. Yeah.

What do you think might have, like, did he usually confide in you, or was it something? No, that was something, no, Mike never ever, no. That was, like, unexpected. I never expected him to call me, ever. I would love to know what he wanted to talk to me about. It's been bugging me all these years. Why me? Out of all the people?

Yeah. Back at the soundtrack that accompanies me waiting to talk to Michael Lavoie. It's my birthday, coincidentally, and just a few weeks before launch of Season 2. I want to talk to Michael before we start dropping episodes to give him every chance to tell his story and respond to things I've discovered so far. I'm not forgetting about Brian. In fact, a source who would know has told me that Brian was not with Tracy Lavoie on Friday, January 2nd, 1998, as his police alibi suggests. Police have said that at the time, Brian's alibi for the Friday was confirmed by friends and relatives, but I need to ask him. And I haven't forgotten about anyone else who might know something that I'd still like to speak to. People I won't name here, yet.

But throughout the series, my findings have continued to lead me back here, to Michael Lavoie himself, and I hope he'll talk. I wait, parked in my van, behind a truck. In front of that truck, there sits the only spot left on the street. I feel confident that Lavoie will park there upon his return from delivering newspapers, and around 7am, he pulls up in a silver SUV and parks there. I slide open the door of the van and wait behind the truck until Michael emerges from his vehicle. Then I walk up to him as he crosses the street toward his house. He's shaved bald, a bit puffier and stockier overall than he appears in the proposal video,

and he's fiddling with his cell phone. Mike? You're Mike. You're Mike LeVoy? I don't know, am I? Well, I'm Dave Rich, and sorry to meet you so early in the morning here. I'm a CBC radio guy, and I'm doing a documentary that I think you might be able to help me with about Cheryl. And I wondered if you would be able to talk to me about her.

Absolutely not. Sorry? Absolutely not. Because you were the last person seen with her, right? And who said that you dropped her off at the Concord. Can I give you my card, Mike? Mike, I'll give you my card and you can just give me a call. Get off the property.

We're doing a documentary where we talk about you. I want to give you a chance to talk about Cheryl and about... I'll just leave the card here, Mike, under the pumpkin. It happened so fast, I can't remember what I said to Michael until I re-listened to the meeting in the van. But I remember his body language clearly. As I say Cheryl's name, he flinches away, coiling his body core downward to the right, as if preparing for a brawl. The moment ends quickly though and he uses his twisting motion to propel himself toward the house

and up the few steps to an expansive veranda with a porch swing. I really thought he would talk to me. And back inside the van, I almost can't comprehend that he didn't utter a word that might answer any of my questions. I don't know if he took the card from under the pumpkin, but I have his home number, so I've called him. And I've written Michael, mailed two letters and even hand-delivered another one to the same door that just slammed shut. He's got to know about the podcast. But I respect his legal right to say nothing.

And maybe he's done nothing. But equally, I respect an interest in asking questions. We've heard a lot of circumstantial evidence and some eyewitness testimony, been through raw moments and dark corners, gotten to know Cheryl and hopefully not judge her or others along the way. I believe Michael's friends and his family and the city they live in need to look beyond their codes of silence and their DNA to help lift the mass of doubt off the case and themselves. What happened? And if it's said that there's no mass, no hurtful

weight, I know that can't be true. She was just always just such a, you know, such a happy person. I did have a dream about her once, and it was her calling me and saying, she was saying to me, I found you. And I'm like, what do you mean you found me? We're looking for you. And that's all it was. That was my dream. And the weight applies to everyone. The family of Michael Lavoie.

That must have been a pretty stressful time for you. It was. It must have been unbelievably stressful for you. It was. I was getting over cancer surgery at the time and taking chemotherapy. And, you know, it took its toll on me. You know, I lost so much weight. I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. You know.

For a long time, it was hell. The kids just seemed to get sicker and sicker. They would just start screaming like dreams you would not believe. They couldn't shower alone or bath alone for years. Trying to come to terms with all this. When Mark Dempsey, the stepbrother of Episode 6, passed away because of an aneurysm earlier this month, I was contacted independently by five people with connections to the Lavoie and Dempsey families to let me know. These are people who may not even talk to each other.

Through the matrix of connections I've made investigating this case, I put the word to Michael that I wanted him to call me, and I heard back that he was thinking of contacting me this past Friday. The day came and went, but I'm still waiting. So, Michael, if you are listening, and you should be, or your friends and those who support you can tell you, you're always welcome on my phone and in my home, actually, if you want to talk. Did Cheryl tell you that she did not want to marry you?

What happened in the argument or arguments you had with Cheryl that you told different people about? Sheila Darbison says she saw scratches and a bite mark. He's sitting on my couch, his shirt off, and on his upper arm there's a bite mark. There's a pretty good bite mark, like the bottom teeth went in. So that didn't quite sit too well with me. We've heard from people who knew her that Cheryl would not back down, and that the first time Gwen fought back, she says, is the time you broke her cheekbone.

Why did Cheryl think she was in danger, tell her friends so, and give a tape of a conversation between you and her about a case that involved you to Sheila? The last time I talked to Cheryl was the day she told me, Grace, don't be surprised if I go missing. And why did you tell different stories of where Cheryl was or what she was doing around the time she disappeared? To Pat, your mother, Gwen, your former partner, Odette,

police, the dancing and stripping. The evidence says that Cheryl wasn't at the Concord in early January 1998, or even around that time. What happened after the argument you had in the foyer where, according to what we've heard, Cheryl wanted to return to dancing. Only you, Michael, can tell us. And nobody has come forward to say, Michael, that you went back to look for Cheryl on Friday, January 2nd, as your mother, Pat, told police. People saw bruises on Cheryl, including Margaret and Kara and Paula Branton. And they say that you made those bruises.

I just remember him slapping her in the face, and I was scared. And you wrote and mailed at least one letter before ending up nearly dead from the exhaust fumes in the storage locker. A letter where you said, according to your mother, I'm sorry. And he just said, I'm a very unhappy man, mother. He said, I'm sorry, but he said, give my girls a kiss for me. Sorry for what? That's a big step to take just the day after Cheryl was reported missing, and it's one of your steps that, in the minds of many,

means that you might have had something to do with her disappearance. Clyde Phillips. Did you hear all my messages that I left her? Oh God, I called that phone over and over again. Especially after I found out what had happened. I just needed to hear that message. I was so happy that it wasn't disconnected every time I called. Yeah, I don't know how many times I called it, but I called it so many times.

There's a picture in the photo album that's written to Cheryl from you. November 3rd, to Cheryl to Cheryl my breath of fresh air is always be good and strong in the days ahead hope you like it yeah she was that's what I called her always my breath of fresh air every time I got to see her we that was one of our things she used to actually breathe right into me and I would take it in and that was our way of always reconnecting it's known Michael that you were with other women around the time Cheryl disappeared. Hardly an indictment, but after having proposed to Cheryl, is it odd? Not only Sheila Darbison, but others that I've not mentioned to preserve their privacy. Sheila Darbison says you seemed to call out Cheryl's name while having sex with Sheila, but she also said that in the first week in the dark of her basement,

you were grabbing her throat while you said Cheryl's name. Gerald Davidson says he saw you, Michael, grabbing Cheryl's throat and threatening her weeks before she disappeared in the underground parking garage at 851 Queenston. He says if you keep fucking around with me, something's going to happen to you. And your late stepbrother, Mark, says he saw something in your expression and behavior at a Blue Jays game

that made him think you had something to do with Cheryl's disappearance. And I looked him in the eye and I said, did you do it? Right? And he gave me the look and I was like, oh yeah, he did it. We can read each other. I've known him since he's 10, right? And when Odette asked you, where is Cheryl?

You said, quote, obviously I'm not going to answer that, close quote. Do you not yourself even find this a curious answer? Followed by, I know you see your daughters out west. Michelle, the oldest, has tattooed her body for Cheryl with the phrase of her recurring nightmares. Not knowing is the worst suffering. Can you tell her that you did not have anything to do with Cheryl's disappearance and end her speculation?

I always used to say, she's a scrapper. She's going to get out of this. But so far she hasn't gotten away I don't know what it is in my heart I maybe I don't want to accept it I don't think that she's dead for some reason I don't know I don't feel it and you have to come to reality sooner or later you know after all these years I keep thinking that she's going to pop up one day and say, surprise. It takes a village to solve a crime.

And it takes time. And we're here for that run. We'll periodically release additional episodes as we continue to investigate, conduct interviews, and assess information. But it also takes a willing police department and prosecutor to sift the evidence and take the risks. Re-interview people to get their full memories. Find the healthcare professionals who admitted Michael Lavoie to the hospital after

the locker. Can they confirm if he had bite marks and scratches? Find the letter or letters Michael wrote. They might still exist. Find out what happened to the 1987 Blue Mercury Cougar, still registered to Bill Dempsey, but that had been reportedly driven by Michael and his sister Tracy back in 1997-1998. I've heard that either the car was taken to a wrecker or that it was allegedly found burned. But it was never searched and neither was the apartment building supervised by Michael's mother Pat, where Michael went on the late afternoon of January 2nd by his own admission and says he placed the call from that left the message for Cheryl found on her answering machine, a message that police characterize as odd.

Was there blackmail afoot involving videotapes? Listeners must continue to come forward and keep telling us more, even go to police directly. I've been involved in investigating eight cold cases with 11 victims. Of those, so far, there have been three arrests with two convicted directly related to my work. One was a 43-year-old Klan double murder in the American South. I started the case in 2004, and the indictment of James Seal came in 2007, three years later. In another, the murder of Christine Herron from Hanover, Ontario, I started in 2009, and the arrest of Anthony Ringel came four years later, in 2013,

and his conviction came three years after that. There's no easy bows to tie in this process, and in every one of these cases, someone knew something that they thought wasn't important. I still always want to hope that there's a chance that she will be found or that she is somewhere and that she'll be able to come back. But I think over the years I've kind of made an uneasy peace with it of just thinking she's hopefully at rest somewhere. So, Michael, if you're listening, please get in touch.

I'd like to give you the opportunity to share your story. No bullshit. Until then, your silence echoes Cheryl's. A voice her friends haven't heard in years. She'd fight no problem. It doesn't matter if it was a girl or a guy. There was no holding back. She would fight until the end.

Scratching, punching. She was so tiny though, so they probably wouldn't feel her punch. She wouldn't go down without a fight. You miss her? Very much so. Mm-hmm. I'm gonna start to cry now. She would just do anything for anyone.

She had a heart of gold. Sorry. A couple times I went to the casino, just to clear my head, just sit there, push on the button, you know. Coming out, Mike was there with his stepfather. I forgot to tell you about that. I was shaking. I wanted to go and grab him by the arm and say, Mike, where is she? What did you do to her? But I was scared that the security would probably throw me out, because I'm the one who was aggressive, because he could have said she's attacking me, you know. Sometimes I drive by the apartment, you know, and I just look up and...

Just hoping that she would be here, you know? I know he was violent with her. Then he would say, I'm sorry, you know, but I mean, I know that... I know he hurt her that night. I love you. You have been listening to Episode 12, Lavoie. Visit cbc.ca slash sks to take part in a short survey. It won't take more than a few minutes, and we'd really appreciate your feedback. If you've enjoyed our work this season, consider leaving a review in iTunes or your favorite podcast app. Someone Knows Something is hosted, written, and produced by David Ridgen and mixed by Cecil Fernandez. The series is also produced by Chris Oak, Steph Kampf, and executive producer Arif Noorani.

The senior director of audio innovation is Leslie Merklinger. The director of CBC Radio Digital is Jeff Ulster. And executive producer is Paul Gorbold. Our digital producer is Olsi Sirakina. Our video producer is Rick Nye. And I'm Angeline Tedueo. Our theme song is by Bob Wiseman with vocals by Mary Margaret O'Hara and Jess Reimer. I'm not alone Hi, we're unable to take your call right now. Please leave your name and number and we'll get back to you.

Thanks. Please leave your message after the tone. Hi, it's David Ridgen calling from CBC. I'm doing a podcast about the Cheryl Shepard case and I tried to speak to Michael before. I just wanted to call to encourage Michael to give me a call as soon as possible. You know, Michael was one of the people who knew her best and I'd really like him to come forward and talk to me. You've got people saying Michael had a role in her disappearance, had killed Cheryl, or, you know, other people saying that you had nothing to do with it.

And really, Michael, I think that you should come and talk for yourself. Everybody's waiting for you to give your side of the story, and I would give you every opportunity to do that. And I hope that you choose to do so. Give me a call again anytime. And I look forward to speaking to you whenever you like. You can text me. We can talk on Facebook. We can do any kinds of communication you like. Thanks very much. I'll talk to you soon, hopefully. Bye. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.