Someone Knows Something - S2 Episode 2: The Hammer

Episode Date: November 28, 2016

Hamilton police discover Sheryl Sheppard’s fiancé, Michael Lavoie, parked in a storage locker overcome by exhaust fumes. SKS host David Ridgen talks to police about their original investigation to begin piecing together what happened that fateful weekend. 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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Turn on possibilities. Visit our website to see what you can achieve at the YMCA. This will be the day. This is a CBC Podcast. You are listening to Season 2 of Someone Knows Something from CBC Radio. Previously on SKS. East End Station detectives are asking for any information pertaining to the whereabouts of 29-year-old Cheryl Shepard Sweeney from Queenston Road. I said, where's Cheryl? He said, I haven't seen her since Friday.

He said, we're engaged. I proposed to her on TV. I'd like to ask you to mirror me, Cheryl. I can't believe this! The answer was yes! Her glasses was there, her contact lens. Cheryl needed either one of them. She has to have that. And that was there.

And also the question, why? A few days after Cheryl Shepard disappeared, was Michael Lavoie, her newly public fiancé, found in a Hamilton storage locker, unconscious, overcome by carbon monoxide fumes? She deserved this. This is Episode 2, The Hammer. This is the place at 1120 Stonechurch Road East in Hamilton, Ontario, that Michael Lavoie was drawn to almost 19 years ago

on the evening of Tuesday, January 6th, 1998. A storage locker, number A14, 10 feet by 20, big enough for a car inside with the door closed. What dark tunnel brought Michael to this bleak spot? Was he here because of sadness for his loss of Cheryl Shepard, his new fiancée? Or because he knew she wasn't coming back.

So we couldn't actually find Mike for a short period of time until, of course, we'd learned about the vehicles he owned. So we put it out to all the police officers in the area, and a very astute officer thought he had seen it go into a storage area. And he went back to the storage area and sure enough found out that Mike Lavoie had rented a storage unit there and in fact had gone into it and had not came out of it. And what actually happened when police rolled the storage locker door open

to see the concrete room and the hulk of Cheryl's 86 white Buick Regal? To find out that answer i'll visit with hamilton police and actually uh there was officers on the scene and it was uh rob and i who opened the door to the garage and we could hear snoring which is a a symptom you know of somebody who's uh got carbon monoxide poisoning and hasn't quite died. Retired Hamilton police detective Warren Correll was called to storage locker A14 on Stonechurch Road

almost 19 years ago. In fact, his arrival at the scene marked the beginning of his long-term involvement in Cheryl's case. He looks like either George Bush Jr. or George Clooney, I can't decide. And he's sitting across from me on a couch in his upscale Hamilton home. As he speaks, he's referring to a thick sheaf of case notes in his lap. There was a strong smell of exhaust, and we looked inside, and Mike Lavoie was laying in the back

with his head facing to the west side and he'd already aspirated, which is a real close sign of, you know, he was heading close to dying. Had already aspirated. Coral means here that Lavoie had vomited while unconscious. I immediately popped the trunk to see if, you know, Cheryl might have been in the trunk, and obviously she wasn't in there. But that's how this all started. Lavoie didn't die, but police say he almost did. He had booked the storage locker on the afternoon of Tuesday, January 6, 1998,

and was found at 1.20 a.m. on Wednesday the 7th. He was supposed to meet his parents on the Tuesday and attend his first police interview at the Hamilton East End Station, but ended up instead at the storage locker. So Mike ended up going to the Henderson Hospital emergency area where he was treated, his car was seized. We started doing search warrants for Mike's car to see if in fact there would be blood found or whatever. And again, we never came up with any sort of overt signs

that in those spots that there was trauma involved. And again, in those spots. He had high, high levels of... CO? Yeah. And I've got to tell you something. That officer who detected him being in there saved his life. Because he would have been dead.

That's one of the things Mike used to come into the police station to get. We had his glasses and things like that. And his lawyer at the time, you know, wanted to come and pick this stuff up. And we wanted every opportunity we could to talk to Mike, right? So I remember his lawyer coming in and saying, oh, I'm here to pick up Mike's stuff. I said, that's not our policy. He's going to have to sign for it.

Tell Mike to come and get him. They're here. So whenever he would come in, you know, one time we had Odette in the hallway, knew he was coming in, and she's pleading with him in the hallway of the police station, you know, which was orchestrated. And, you know, we're watching him, you know,

to see, you know, what he's saying, what he's doing. And he just kept his head down. You know, he was, he never responded. You know, there was another time he came in to pick something up. And, you know, I said to him, I said, you know, when I opened up that garage door, I saved your life. And I said, is this the way you treat people who do things like that? And you can't even stand here and talk to me and answer my questions, head down, out the door he goes.

We tried, right? Not talking doesn't mean Michael Lavoie is guilty of anything. To date, after Lavoie left the hospital, he has not spoken about the incident publicly. Coral says that Michael had 48% CO, or carbon monoxide, measured in his blood. Less than 5%, which is actually a measure of something called carboxyhemoglobin, is considered normal, and anything over 50% can be fatal. The last thing anybody wants to do is convict a person that's not guilty, right?

Like, that I would lose sleep over. But, you know, there's also ways that after a while, you know, you have got to step up, you know. If you want the heat to go away, you know, then help out.

Right? And that, this never happened. And I know, you know if you want the heat to go away you know and then help out right and that this never happened and i know you know you know you talk to a defense lawyer they'll say well then that's his right you know yeah that's his right but uh when the whole world you know as small as it may be is uh is looking at you and thinking you know this woman, uh, and there's things that you could do to help out, you know, like, like again, who, who wouldn't have gone on an international or a national show, you know, to, to appeal for her to come back personally, you know, I had a pretty good career as a, as a detective and, you know, for a good success rate of solving these things. But, you know, this is, this is outstanding.

And there isn't a day that goes by, you know, like if I ever hear of any found remains and in my head automatically, I think of Cheryl. Then as Warren talks about Cheryl, he remembers something else. Something about Michael Lavoie and the locker. Something else that he found on the scene in the car. You know, I was looking around for a suicide note

and that sort of thing. Hopefully, you know, that was going to put some thought into what exactly had happened. But that was never found. Didn't mean that one wasn't written. There was actually, we found a pad of paper and there was some impression on the paper that you could see that something had been written. And, you know, there was a few things that suggested it was a suicide note. It's always a thought that it was sent to somebody. There's a thought that it was sent to a family member. And that's why we always thought that there was people who knew about what had happened

and weren't weren't coming forward to to help out with it wow that's that's interesting did you ever do the charcoal trick actually that that that pad went to the center of forensic science and some things were brought up uh but you know not quite enough you can't tell me any fragment of what was on it? Actually, I could. When I read my notes, this might take a little bit to find it. As luck wouldn't have it, Warren can't find the forensics on that notepad right away.

But there's more ground to cover with more police, and I'll be talking to Warren Corll again later in the episode. I leave Corll's upscale neighborhood and descend toward Hamilton Harbor on my way to police headquarters. Hamilton's a city that's a character in this story, one with many names. Steel Town, the ambitious city, the hammer, the armpit. It's a city where mob and biker bosses have lived and that has struggled with serious crime and unemployment, and a steel industry gone bust,

but it now seems on an upswing, with artists arriving, flowery parks, and lots of film and TV productions. It's a cinematic place, and as you drive over the gigantic Skyway Bridge into the city, the view, in day or night, is distinctly Blade Runner post-apocalyptic. Unrelenting flames and brimstone and the strangely redolent odor of steelmaking fills the air. A port city of hard labor and true grit. Detective Tom, how are you? Steve, how are you?

Nice to see you. Is this yourself? This is just me. Just me and my microphone. Detective Sergeant Peter Tom appears younger than I expected. Tall, white shirt, grey tie and glasses, silver cufflinks, salt and pepper goatee, shorter hair moving toward thinning but not quite, and an obvious Scottish accent. So, how are things?

Things are good. Things are good. Peter currently holds carriage of the Shepherd case and has worked on it since 2008. And I quickly learned that he can be very tight-lipped, at least on this first visit. Thank you. Which way? This office over here. visit. Thank you. Which way? The office we enter is actually what police call an interview room. He shushes me when I call it an interrogation room. Stark, claustrophobic, soundproof,

video camera on the ceiling. This is where, here at the downtown Hamilton police headquarters, police interview suspects. How long have you been in Hamilton? Police service? 25 years. Came from Scotland when I was in my 20s. I was a police officer over there for a while. Let's grab a seat. Okay, great. Okay. Are we on at the moment? Yeah, the greeting is always on. Since he's been on the case, Peter's reviewed and re-interviewed people

and done media blitzes around the New Year anniversary of Cheryl's disappearance. A lot of minutes of years have rolled on, we've done a few things. There was a lot of work done initially on this investigation by the initial investigators. Everyone seems to remember this one because of the engagement on the New Year's.

The answer was yes! We have a love connection. Now, this case is peculiar to me and to many in that there is a prime suspect who's been named as the prime suspect by police here, correct? Correct, yes. And who is that prime suspect? The last person that claimed to have seen Sean alive was Michael LaVoy.

What were the events that led up to Cheryl's disappearance as it is now? A missing person investigation was commenced. They got the preliminary information from Michael LaVoy. He'd last dropped her off down in Niagara Falls. She was supposed to have made arrangements there to meet a friend, and there's some other information from him that she was going to be dancing at one of the clubs down there, the Concord. That's interesting. So what friend? I haven't actually heard that one. Unknown friend. It's the first mention of a friend Cheryl was supposed to meet that I've heard.

I file it away as something to look into in the near future. Every article I've seen, the headline has dancer or stripper in it. And she allegedly hadn't danced for a couple of years. She was working at Tim Hortons at the time. Exactly, and that's, you have to ask your colleagues in the media. In the early aftermath of Cheryl's disappearance, the media went with the live TV engagement story, Mystery of Kissing Couple,

and rolled out Lavoie's story as he presented it to police and Odette. At least in the beginning, most of the headlines in the first few days after her disappearance included the words stripper or exotic dancer or simply dancer, despite the fact that Cheryl had a full-time job at Tim Hortons. Even after Lavoie's trip to the storage locker, one headline read, missing stripper's boyfriend in suicide bid. Mystery deepens. I mean, it's a more glamorous headline to throw that in. It captures the eye people want to know about that side of things, right?

Rather than the facts involved in the case. I mean, even if she is a dancer, like what? It's got no bearing on what happened. Absolutely zero. Like it really upsets me. It really upsets me.

Yeah. By calling or branding Cheryl a stripper, the media helped enable Lavoie's story, true or not. And it helped to reinforce the unstated that somehow Cheryl's story and ultimately her disappearance could be reduced to the already loaded job description, stripper. A person whose life is worth as much as any others. Depending on the friends that you speak to, Cheryl, some will tell you she hasn't danced in years, others will say that she was dancing up until a couple of months beforehand. Going forward, I'm interested in Cheryl's past because it forms part of Michael Lavoie's story of where he says he last saw her. Could it be conceivable

that she would have been dropped off at the Concord Hotel at that time in her life? Is Lavoie's story credible? So he dropped her off there at the hotel and then what? That was the last time he saw her. So there's a number of conflicting versions as to how she was supposed to have returned to Hamilton that night, and she never did. So when you went to the apartment where Michael and Cheryl Shepherd lived,

and Odette, what was found there? Ultimately, there was a search conducted off the apartment, forensically. From the initial investigation, it seemed that there was something suspicious. It wasn't a regular missing person case. There were some elements that caused some flags to be raised. There was some further developments there that added to the suspicion that Cheryl just hadn't upped and left. There was some concern for her safety at that point. So Odette mentioned that after the period of time when the forensic guys were finished in the apartment,

she went back in and she mentioned these circles on the walls and something that looked like someone had tried to clean the walls. And she has said that these were blood stains on the walls. Can you confirm whether they were blood stains on the walls. Can you confirm whether they were blood stains or not? I can't get into that. We obviously can't try the case in the public domain and there's reason for that and like I touched on it earlier, if we give something up that turns into being of evidential value

and it's been put out in the media, it just dilutes it for evidentiary purposes in court and it doesn't do, it won't do Cheryl any favors, it won't do Odette any favors, it doesn't do society any favors. So. Right, I just wanted to understand if there was an actual crime scene deemed, can you say that there was a crime scene deemed to be at the apartment? There was. It wouldn't be. It's not your stereotypical what you would expect. There wasn't, like, blood all over the apartment.

Cheryl's wallet, her glasses, and her contacts were found in the apartment. Yes. Okay. Yeah. And my understanding, and Odette said that Cheryl wasn't able to see without the glasses and without the contacts. That's my understanding, yeah. Okay.

I asked Peter about the hockey bag Odette says she noticed was missing when she returned from New Brunswick on the evening of January 4th. But again, Detective Tom is reticent with the details. Suffice to say, no other evidence of Cheryl's whereabouts or remains has ever been found. My mind moves back to the storage locker incident once more. It's one of the facts of the case that can be seen differently depending on how you hold the light on it,

and I want to know Tom's perspective. Okay so the implication is that carbon monoxide self-destruction or suicide? That's one way it could be looked at. I'm sure if you spoke to a defense lawyer he may have been fixing his car at that time of the night and just got overcome by fumes. I'm being a little bit flippant at the moment, but that's what I mean. You have to be objective in what other explanation is. There's what makes sense, but you can't exclude that and rule out any other possible explanation.

Was he distraught because Cheryl never came home? Or was he distraught because he had to go speak to police? These are all good questions. And how cooperative has Michael Lavoie been with the police? He has not been overly co-optive. So a total number of minutes that he's spoken to police, would you estimate? Probably less than 30. In the whole history of the case, Michael Lavoie has only spoken to police less than 30 minutes of his time. And in that time, would you say that he is denied having anything to do with her disappearance? Absolutely, yep.

He's denied having anything to do with it. And has he provided any other information other than the dropping off at the hotel story that might have led you down other paths? No, just that he'd tried to do his own investigation and went down to the hotels in Niagara prior to the police detectives going down there. After Odette reported Cheryl missing on Monday, January 5th, 1998, police canvassed the Niagara strip clubs to see if she had worked at any of them that past weekend. Their search came up negative, but just before police arrived at the clubs, Michael Lavoie had apparently just been there, showing a photo of Cheryl and asking if club owners had seen her. Police say Lavoie conducted his own investigation after Odette informed him that she was going to talk to the police.

And he has never appeared in the media to plea for Cheryl's safe return, nor has he ever taken part in any organized search for Cheryl. Since Cheryl went missing, some of his behavior has added to grounds to believe that he would be a suspect in this. How so? Tell me about some of that. I'm not going to get into the specifics of it, but we call it post-offence conduct. Some of his behaviours and relationships,

given the fact that his fiancée has gone missing, would certainly not be something I would consider the norm. Police asked Lavoie to take part in a polygraph or lie detector test, and to date, he has refused. Lie detectors are often used to exclude suspects, and their results are not normally admissible as evidence in Canadian criminal courts. I'll be examining Michael Lavoie's story that Cheryl went to Niagara Falls to strip in detail.

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And have there been ever any other suspects in the case other than Michael Lavoie? Well, depending on if you keep an open mind on any case, he's claiming that he dropped her off there. Is that a possibility? Absolutely. He says that she made arrangements to meet a friend down there, an unknown friend. Is that a possibility? Absolutely. There is not really a named person. No, there's not.

But it's not to say that his version of events did not happen. Have there been any findings of surveillance cameras that were able to corroborate Cheryl's movements that night or the night she may have disappeared? No, we understand they were at a local bingo hall together earlier on in that day. Eyewitnesses saw them there? Yeah.

An employee at the Centennial Bingo Hall, at the time located directly across the street from Odette and Cheryl's apartment on Queenston Road, reported the last known sighting of Cheryl outside of Lavoie's account. She was with a male whom the employee identified as Michael Lavoie between 9 a.m. and 12.30 p.m. on Friday, January 2, 1998. I need to drill down into Michael's story

about the last time he says he saw Cheryl. There has to be more clues there. Back to Odette at the trailer. So Cheryl spent Christmas 97 with Mike. That's right, and his girls. In Hamilton. Yes, yes. I was down east.

And Cheryl was here. Yes. Before he was with Cheryl, Michael Lavoie had a relationship with a woman named Gwen that spanned several years and ended around the mid-90s. Gwen's referred to sometimes as his ex-wife, but they were never married, though they did have three daughters together. The girls come up in a discussion

when Odette gets home to discover Cheryl missing on the evening of January 4th. Odette says Michael was very agitated and flipping a set of cards over and over again at a table. Did he seem worried, upset, sad? Nervous. Nervous because what would you flip your card like that over and over

and over, you know, and I couldn't take it anymore. So he said, I'm sorry. He said, I'm just nervous. I don't know where she is. And I thought, well, you dropped her off. He said, yeah, but I dropped her off in the alleyway over there on Concord. I said, didn't you not watch that she went in?

He says, no. He said, I had to go pick up the girls. According to police, Michael said he dropped Cheryl off at the Concord Hotel, then headed to the small town of Chippewa, a short drive up the Niagara River, to pick up his three daughters. He tells Odette he didn't have time to see if Cheryl went into the Concord because he had to rush to pick up his children. The dates and timing are important. This is Friday evening, January 2nd, 1998,

the evening of the day that Cheryl is suspected to have disappeared. So he went to pick up his girls. He just came to pick the girls up, and he said, I'll bring them back Sunday. When he picked her up, the three girls, on the way to Hamilton, he didn't bring them to the house. He brought them to his mother and asked his mother if she could babysit the three girls for the night. And she said, where's Cheryl? He just said, Cheryl's at home sleeping.

So he's told two different stories. That's right. Two different stories. Cheryl dropped at the Concord and Cheryl home sleeping. And she kept the girls for the night. And that, I don't know what happened when he came home.

And how do you know that he took them there? How do you know that? His ex-wife told me. His ex-wife told you that? Find out, and his mother told me. Two people told you that? Two people, yeah. As anybody's memory of meetings so long ago can be mistaken,

I'd like to talk to Pat and Gwen to see what was said here to Odette. They both seem to be people who might have stories to tell and potential roles in helping to solve Cheryl's case. Some little thing can turn into something bigger. And then he went back to your house. You're assuming he left the kids there and then you don't know where he went, but you assume he went back to your house. You're assuming he left the kids there, and then you don't know where he went, but you assume he went back to the house.

To the house. Okay. You know. And the next day, he went back to his mother's, picked up the girls, and went back to your house. That's right. And how do you know he did that? His mother told me.

Okay. And did you ever talk to the kids about any of this? No, no, no. The police did, though. Here's the timeline I know so far, based on the police and Odette. Cheryl is last seen at the bingo hall between 9.30 a.m. and 12.30 p.m. on Friday, January 2nd, 1998. Jump ahead to 6.45, 7pm, and that's when Michael Lavoie says he dropped Cheryl off at the Concord Hotel in Niagara Falls. He then went to Chippewa to pick up his daughters

from his former partner Gwen between 7 and 7.30pm. Then, instead of bringing his daughters back to the Hamilton apartment, Lavoie takes his children to his mother Pat's house, also in Hamilton, and leaves his kids there for the night. There are several holes in this timeline where Lavoie's whereabouts are unknown, but his daughters were with him off and on throughout that weekend. He took them home to Gwen in Chippewa a bit earlier than expected on Sunday the 4th, around 6 or 7 p.m. Three was just at the door of my bedroom and knocking,

so I pulled the blanket out and said, come on, get in, you know. Odette knew Michael's three girls, and they were often at the apartment visiting when he had them on weekends. Odette remembers one morning when Lavoie's children happily jumped into bed with her. So I had them in bed, just chatting away, and I said, what would you like for breakfast? I said, how about I make pancakes?

Cheryl could hear them chatting away. She chuckled. She could hear them. So I said, okay, we're all going to get up and make breakfast. So I set them all at the table, got the crayons and the coloring book. They were busy while I was making the pancake. So when it was done, I said, put everything away now. I'll set the table, and they all sat after that. I put the movie on.

That's when Cheryl got out of bed, you know. Yeah, she said, Mom said, that's so cute, you know, you could hear them just chatting away, you know. Yeah, and then that's when they turned around, they asked their father, is it okay if I call her Grandma, you know. So Michael's kids would call you Grandma? They started calling me Grandma, yeah. And did you meet with his ex-wife?

I did. The police made an arrangement. They phoned her to make an arrangement. Would you want to meet Cheryl's mother? And she just wanted, you know, to bring something to the girls. And, you know, questioned her.

What did Michael's ex-wife say to you when you met her? Well, she was nervous, and I was nervous. She knew that. And we sat down, and the girls was quite happy. They see me, and she sent the girls to their room. I brought them each a doll, and they were quite happy with it. So she sent them, you know, that we want to talk, eh? And what she said to me, she says, I hope he didn't do it, you know.

And she said he was very abusive to her. Odette also met with Pat, Michael Lavoie's mother. Shortly after police forensically examined Odette's apartment, she received a phone call. Wednesday, I got a... The phone rang, and I pick up the phone, and the lady on the phone was crying. And I didn't know who it was.

You know, can we meet to have a coffee? I thought, you know, who is this? Pat. And then Pat. Pat is Mike's mother. Oh, Mike's mother. And when she came in, she seen the dots on the, and she says, she cries, said, I hope it's not him that did it. I asked her so many questions. I wrote all the questions down. I wrote all the answers down. The police got it, and she left, and that was it. Back to Peter Tom. So if there's a discrepancy in his story between what he told

different people, is that important to the case? It can be. Yeah, absolutely. And is that part of the reason there's suspicion on Mr. Lavoie? Yes. Sometime between the bingo on Friday afternoon, when she was last seen in the presence of Michael Lavoie, and when Odette came home on the Sunday, Cheryl disappeared. And it would have had to have been likely before the end of day Friday because the girls I don't think saw her, nor did the mother. No. So nobody saw Cheryl after the bingo

on Friday afternoon? Correct. Michael LaVoy says that he dropped her off in Niagara Falls on that Friday evening. Police at the time spoke to Gwen and her girls, and Peter Tom says they were helpful. So police have named Michael Lavoie the prime suspect in the case, and why hasn't he been brought in? Like, why hasn't he been arrested at least once? Well, like I said, there was a lot of work done initially. The officers at the time,

their belief likely then was they didn't have sufficient grounds to make an arrest or to bring him in. But for me to be able to do that, I have to satisfy myself and the corpse that there'd be something new has come to light that wasn't known back then. That's the quandary at the moment. I know I'm talking in riddles. I know. It's okay. I'll try to unravel them. Police have also spoken to members of the Lavoie family, and while statements were given, some have been more helpful than others.

There's a level of frustration in the cooperation of some of the persons surrounding the case. Do people know what happened. I believe they do. I believe there's a tight-knit group of individuals that probably know the whole story that haven't chosen to come forward. It's tough. Her file sits on my desk.

They look at it every day when I'm at work. Loyalties change. That's a big thing I've noticed in my eight years in the Homicide Unit. People's loyalties change. Whether it's a boyfriend, girlfriend, whether it's two friends have a falling out, whether someone gets arrested and has knowledge and wants to make a trade for some consideration on their own charges to give up someone else. And that's not occurred at this juncture.

Certainly I want to resolve this case. I want to find where Cheryl is and give Odette the closure that she deserves. I mean, how... It's 18 years, and how can the information sit with somebody and how can that not come out of the person, you know? I just don't understand how someone can hold on to that and not become sick or alcoholic or...

Maybe they are. Maybe it's eating away from them. They'll have to clear their conscience at some point in their life. Maybe they lose a family member to something similar that gives them an insight as to what it's like to have a person taken from you the way Cheryl was. Okay, well thanks very much. Okay.

Oh, there it is. In the final minutes of my interview, Warren Correll finds the forensic report about the notepad found in Lavoie's car. So, Greg Dawson of the CFS, from the document section, I spoke to him about the note, and I advised him of the way that I read it, and it was, I went to see a movie, Jackie Brown, it was all right. I am at Cheers now, and Cheers was a gambling bar up on the East Mountain, not far from the storage unit. In fact, Cheers was a bar about 60 meters from the locker Michael was found in. Coral continues speaking the words determined to have been written on the pad by Lavoie. Uh, bedding ponies. Not doing well. My wings just showed hungry. Well, I want a couple. I'm about even now. Well, time to go. I love you. Please keep. And then this undiscernible word with kids. So, you know, time to go.

You know, I love you. So, yeah, he was up at Cheers betting the race, like they used to have races on there. And that was a part of the note that he wrote. Please keep in with kids. And I recall, you know, talking to his ex-wife, and, you know, she didn't get a note, and she was, you know, I thought believable, and I always thought that,

I know that Pat had some dealings with the kids and you know I thought that that the a letter would have gone to her. Here Warren refers to Pat Michael Lavoie's mother. That's interesting it doesn't sound like a typical sort of suicide note. And this, again, is on a pad of paper that was found in his car. And it's an impression, right? Like, you know, I want the person who committed this offense. And I believe it's an offense. I think she's dead. I wish we could find her. But I think that there may be...

I think that... I don't know if Mike has confided in anybody, but I think that if people came forward, specifically family members, I think they'll know a lot more about what went on. That note that I know he delivered, I think it was delivered to a family member, and they've never come forward to tell us exactly what it was

or whether it's still around. So anyhow, that's why we're talking, is maybe this will get this thing rolling, and we can solve it. On the evening Michael drove into the storage locker, Pat Lavoie, his mother, allegedly told Odette that her son Michael had called her to say he loved her and that he was going away for a while. Did he also write a note?

And was it the one found by Coral in the car? Eighteen years later, we don't know. And still no resolution in the hammer for Cheryl. Much of the circumstantial evidence we've heard so far seems to point in the same direction, Michael Lavoie. Lavoie is either the unluckiest person in the world who didn't have anything to do with Cheryl's disappearance or he's the luckiest and he remains free.

As the investigation continues, we'll look more closely at Michael Lavoie. What kind of person was he? How could someone who asked Cheryl to marry him then, as his story goes, drop her off in Niagara Falls at a strip club with no apparent way to get home. Why the apparent suicide attempt? Does a group of individuals have knowledge of what happened to Cheryl, as both police Tom and Coral intriguingly imply? We'll talk to the people who know Michael to try to find out.

And the questions keep coming, not only about Michael, but also about Cheryl. Who was she really? Who were her friends? And what about the fact that Cheryl was married twice before meeting Michael, to friends of his? And the neighborhood Cheryl worked in, or her self-described friend with benefits, a man who says he should have married her, and the secret life that Cheryl led, that Odette knew nothing about. You have been listening to Episode 2, The Hammer. Visit cbc.ca slash sks to see more photos, articles, and videos about the case. Subscribe in iTunes or your favorite podcast app. If you've already subscribed, please consider leaving a review. Someone Knows Something is hosted, written, and produced by David Ridgen and mixed by Cecil Fernandez.

The series is also produced by Chris Oak, Ashley Walters, Steph Kampf, and executive producer Arif Noorani. Our theme music is by Bob Wiseman, with vocals by Mary Margaret O'Hara and Jess Reimer. Maybe one day we will Look out on the sun and Jess Reimer. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.