Someone Knows Something - S2 Episode 4: Intimation

Episode Date: December 12, 2016

The search for more information about Sheryl’s disappearance begins to both widen and focus on the details, as David uses everything from Facebook to knocking on doors to try to figure out what might have happened to Sheryl. 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

Accessibility is making your education work for you, regardless of circumstance. At Athabasca University, we have no entrance requirements for undergrad programs and automatic acceptance. If you have the desire to learn, AU is a great option. Open your options with a more accessible online degree. And choose an education that works for you, not the other way around. Find out how at athabascau.ca slash options. This is a CBC Podcast. You are listening to Season 2 of Someone Knows Something from CBC Radio.

We're telling the story in order, so if you're new to the series, make sure to listen from the beginning. Previously on SKS. They're like, why would you do this? Like, should you go to someone's house, make money, and then come back out? I said, what did you do in there? You don't want to know what I do in there, but I make good money. Had you ever known anything about that before? Not at all. This is surprising. We were basically, I guess, what people today would say, friends with benefits. Do you have any knowledge of when Cheryl stopped dancing? Cheryl didn't dance for, from when I knew her, she had stopped dancing. She had no need to dance.

15 minutes after her shift started, Sammy, who was the manager at the time, he was like, well, where's Cheryl? So I saw him pick up the phone, and I heard him say, you are not here, you're fired. And then we find out she actually is missing. This is Episode 4, Intimation. What do we have here? This is all the clipping from the internet that we did.

And it tells you the date because a whole bunch of stuff that was in the cake I put all this for you, okay? Yeah, no, that's all really good I'm at Odette's place and she's just brought to her kitchen table an expanding plastic folder she's neatly arranged

and filled with papers from her closet. All cases seem to have these places where information sits in the dark until it's re-remembered or rediscovered. Page after page of handwritten notes, articles, and what looks like printed out Facebook posts from many people since 2009. Just a short time after Michael Lavoie was named the prime suspect in the disappearance of Cheryl Shepard. And some of the people posting appear to have known Cheryl. Can you see? I could turn the light on. I can see this. So this is all, was this all on Facebook? Yeah, yeah. Betty did it for me. I was there sitting beside her when I was watching what people were saying. Recall our visit to see Betty, who married Cheryl's ex-husband, Keith Keeper Dale.

Her chihuahua, Chester, was on my lap. Betty helped Odette in the early days of Cheryl's disappearance, searching and postering and also in keeping her up to date with some of the social media. Odette does not own a computer and has never used one herself. See, there's people here that's on a computer that I did not know. Wow. I don't know that this is all still online. I think it's all been deleted, right?

That I don't know. I don't know. Some of this social media interaction is still online, and some of it appears to have been deleted. And it all seems to have been posted on pages dedicated to the memory of Cheryl Shepard. There's memorials, graphics of angels, and anecdotes by friends, statements by well-wishers, and a lot of writing by family and those who knew Cheryl well. But can public online information that's been sitting around out there for years contain anything useful?

Yeah, it can. Gwen's is over here. I believe Cher would not be, would want to help other women who are in abusive relationship. That's the kind of person Cher was. Odette's reading the words of Gwen Michael Lavoie's former partner there's a lot of writing here by her

here's some excerpts addressed to Mike on March 10th, 2010 did you look into her beautiful eyes and know you went too far? did you wonder what your children would think of you if you were ever caught? did you cry and hate yourself for that moment? And then, in a different note, later, to someone else, Gwen says,

I am scared that we will never know the truth. I am scared that we will know the truth. Powerful words. Odette spoke to Gwen in the wake of Cheryl's disappearance and would like to speak to her again, and so would I. This is Michelle. This is the one I want to see. Okay. So this is a Facebook post by Michelle,

who is Michael LaVoy's daughter. This was done in December 26, 2009. Odette's pointing to a message posted on Facebook by Michelle, Lavoie's eldest daughter that he had with Gwen. Michelle would have been nine years old at the time Cheryl disappeared. She and her sisters were with Michael on and off during the Friday night and weekend Cheryl went missing, back in early January 1998. Michael has denied to police that he had anything to do with Cheryl's disappearance.

The cryptic note his daughter has written on Facebook seems intended for a particular person's eyes. Michelle writes, I know you're reading this page and thinking that this is some way to get back at you. But me being on this page has absolutely nothing to do with you. This is me trying to heal. This is me trying to heal, trying to get past all this. This is a place I can come and see that I'm not the only person who cares and hasn't forgotten about her. So when you come on this page and see that I have posted, remember this. Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing is the worst kind of suffering.

This is the girl I'd like to meet. Oh my God. What does this Facebook post mean? Does Michelle remember anything from the time of Cheryl's disappearance? In another post in April 2010, Michelle includes a photo of a tattoo she had recently got on her back. She says it's the tattoo I got for Cheryl. The tattoo looks to me like intertwined, stylized question marks, and there's a phrase. It says, not knowing is the worst suffering.

Did you ever talk to the kids about any of this? No, no, no. The police did, though. I talked to Michel a couple of years ago, his oldest daughter. She would be, okay, she was 9 years old when this happened, 98. So she would be 19, 26, 27 years old. She'd be in her late 20s. She's up west right now. She's out west right now?

Yeah. Okay. So I'd be interested in talking to her. I would like to meet with her. I would like to talk to Michelle. Getting in touch with people can be hard in a cold case. Gaining their cooperation and actually meeting them even harder. And above all that, every potential meeting and reinvestigating these cases

between victims' family members and those connected to them triggers a special set of considerations and anxieties. Talking about this stuff dredges up a lot of pain, and I'd argue that it's important both for the case and the healing process, but people don't always agree. So wanting to meet with Gwen and her daughter Michelle is one thing, and actually doing it quite another. And I also have other people to meet and some stories to verify first. Just approaching Sammy Valeri's house. I still feel that face-to-face meetings are better than phone calls.

But face-to-face meetings are better than phone calls. But face-to-face means you also roll the dice. Will they be home, and if so, will they talk to you? Sammy was Cheryl's supervisor at the Tim Hortons back in 1997, and early 98, of course. Chrissy Cowley, who worked with Cheryl, remembers Sammy calling Cheryl on January 1st, so I just want to see if Sammy remembers anything about the call or anything about Cheryl or the case that he could help with. Sammy Valeri's call to Cheryl introduces a whole new line of thought that might help Michael Lavoie's story. Valeri fires Cheryl.

Cheryl decides, after hearing the message impulsively, to make money doing something else. What if the part about dropping Cheryl off at the Concord Hotel was true? What then? Oh, hi. Is Sammy here? No. Who is asking? Oh, I work for CBC Radio, and we're working on a documentary that we think he can help us with. Is Sammy?

Yeah. He used to work at the Tim Hortons back in, like, 1998 at the Tim Hortons. I think so. I'm healthcare of his mom. Ah, okay. But is Sammy around, or is he... He has his own house. I don't know where. Oh, okay. He lives somewhere else. Oh, this is his mom's house. Oh, I see. What is your name? I'll try him at his other place later. See you again, Peter. later. In the meantime, I go back to Detective Peter Tom and ask him about Cheryl's work

schedule before she disappeared. Okay, so one of the things I was really interested in learning from you about is Cheryl's work schedule. And do you have any idea of what her work schedule was around the time in late December, early January? From her friend and colleague there, Paula Branton. Paula is Pamela's twin sister. Odette and I spoke to Pamela in the last episode near some parking lot propane tanks. Paula remains someone I also want to meet in person.

Paula advised that Cheryl had taken the month off of December. Paula told police in an interview that Cheryl had taken the month of December off due to health reasons. Her first scheduled day back was January 1st and she never showed up for work that day. And Cheryl told her she wasn't showing up apparently. And then she wasn't scheduled after that. My understanding is that Cheryl believed it because she'd failed to show up. She'd asked Paula to get her dismissal papers basically.

So that's where that came in. So there's no from the file, I haven't managed to find a work schedule per se. That seems to have come from Paula, another friend of Cheryl's, Tracy. Hmm. Paula, and now I'll try to find this friend Tracy to speak to as well. Okay, that's interesting. So did Cheryl think that she was going to be fired because she hadn't showed up?

Yeah, that's reading what Paula and Tracy have said. That was her understanding. So in the phone calls, was there a phone call from Sammy Valeri? There was nothing in the recorded messages, no. So there was no message from Sammy that said, you're fired? No. Okay, because that's what we heard. We heard somebody who witnessed him phone her and say, you're fired? No. Okay, because that's what we heard. We heard somebody who witnessed him phone her

and say, you're fired. Yeah. Maybe he spoke to her. It was allegedly a message, but maybe. Yeah. So she anticipated that because she wasn't going to show up, that she was done. Yeah, maybe in her mind.

That's interesting. Yeah, she hadn't been there for a month. So does that lend credence to the sort of going dancing idea? It's hard to say. I mean, they were on welfare at the time, so it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to jump from one job to another. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

Yeah, that opens up a whole new slew of questions in some ways. If Sammy Valeri did leave a message telling Cheryl she was fired early on New Year's Day 1998, then Cheryl likely already listened to it. And that would explain why police

say there was no message from Sammy on Cheryl's machine. What would Cheryl do if she heard such a message? Would she actually go dancing to make some money, even though that seems to be in her distant past? And would she do this with no known plan for returning to Hamilton when she knew she had to pick up her mother. I need to talk to the owner of the Concord Hotel, a man named Mike Manolovich. Was Cheryl ever there? But on the topic of phone messages, what messages were left after Cheryl disappeared on January 2nd, 1998. Answering machine messages,

were any of the machine messages germane to the investigation? Were any of them of interest to you? No, just confirming timelines, missed appointments, that type of thing. And the first missed appointment, can you recall somebody saying, where are you? When was she first missed? By appointment. There were a number of friends called up asking for it, just congratulating her on her engagement.

Where are you? That type of thing. And the content was what you kind of expect of someone that was calling to speak and keep getting the answering machine and were any of those messages from Michael LaVoy there was one yes oh there was one yeah so can you tell me what the content of the message no I can't so there was a call from him did Can you tell me what time it was? Date and time? It was... I think it was a Friday night. Or afternoon.

Well, that's interesting. That's maddening. So there's no... So was it asking for Cheryl? Or talking about Cheryl? That was for Cheryl or talking about Cheryl or that was for sure we have okay and it would have been Friday afternoon so last sighting was up to about 1230 on the bingo hall on Friday afternoon and then he had to pick up his kids and drop her off according to his story by 645 7 o'clock so his message would have had to have been left between 1 o'clock

and, I don't know, 5 o'clock or something like that on Friday. Police have confirmed that the call made by Michael Lavoie on Friday, January 2nd, the day Cheryl disappeared, was on a landline at 4.40pm.

Lavoie claimed to police that he had made the call from his parents' place on Mohawk Road and Upper Sherman, about a 15-minute drive away from the Queenston Road apartment. But police say they were unable to trace the call to verify its origin. I'd like to know what was said or if the call was made from his parents. It adds to the timeline of Lavoie's whereabouts. Any message still active on the machine hadn't been heard by Cheryl and may also help determine her timeline on the day she disappeared. Perhaps Pat Lavoie, Michael's mother, can shed some light on this call. Oh, that's interesting. If they were just last

seen together and he's leaving a message for her at that time. There's a number of strange things in the ways of this investigation. I finish up with Peter Tom and while I'm in Hamilton, I need to check out Betty Juergen's garbage bag story and try to find the

building supervisor she says she spoke to. Betty says the supervisor told her that he had seen Michael Lavoie struggling with large garbage bags on the weekend Cheryl disappeared. To find this person, I have to visit the former owner of the apartments where Cheryl and Odette used to live. His name is Roy Magna.

Oh, hi. Is Roy Magna here? Yes. Oh, OK, great. We work for CBC Radio. People like Roy Magna are part of the process of investigating. Good morning. Oh, you're actually here, Mr Magna. How are you? Important because they hold a single piece of information, like a name or a phone number.

You get it and then you pass through. We had a superintendent there. That's the person, yeah. And the superintendent was Art McDonald. He still works for us. Ah, okay. So you may want to speak to him. So he was there at the time. So that would be the person. You meet, follow the leads, to wherever they go, for as long as you can.

Art MacDonald was the person that I think Betty might have spoken to and heard the story of the garbage bags from. Okay, great. All right. Thanks very much. You're welcome. Take care. Nice to see you.

Hello. How are you? Good, yourself? Do you live in this building here? Yes. I'm looking for Art. I know, I was expecting you. Oh, you're Art. Oh, good? Good, yourself? Do you live in this building here? Yes. I'm looking for Art. I know, I was expecting you. Oh, you're Art. Oh, good. Okay, great.

It feels like it could be the beginning of a successful interview. Art is wearing a cowboy hat and boots and a beige T-shirt with a confused squirrel on the front. I read the caption and it doesn't sound promising. I'm so old I can't find my nuts. Hell yeah. Yep. Ask the wife. The older you get, you know what happens after that, right?

I'm only 47, man. Oh yeah, you're okay. Okay, but do you know anything? And you were the superintendent of 851 Queenston at the time that Cheryl disappeared. Yep. And how long were you the superintendent? There. Oh, at the time that Cheryl disappeared and how long were you the superintendent there oh there 10 years 10 years okay and and at the time when Cheryl disappeared what happened what happened at that time I don't remember did police come and speak

to you I don't remember that either probably did but I don't remember that's my problem but I don't remember. That's my problem now. I don't remember some things now. It comes with age, eh? Do you remember around the time Cheryl disappeared, seeing Michael Lavoie with garbage bags, and he said he was going to do laundry? I couldn't remember. Because I spoke to a woman who said she spoke to you, and that you told her you saw him with laundry bags on that. It must have been true then.

She wouldn't make a story up like that, because the tenants were pretty good in there. But if you can't remember... I trust what she said. Yeah. This seems like something someone would remember. Maybe it wasn't art that Betty Yergin spoke to. Do you remember where police searched in the building? All through it.

Elevator, behind the elevators and on the staircases. That's it. Everything else is nowhere. No entrance. Furnace room and all that? It's all locked. And did you search too? Did you look? Yes, I helped them. I walked with them for a little bit of time. And what were you thinking at the time? I wasn't thinking. I didn't know what to think. And they didn't say too much either. They keep it to themselves. I don't know. I didn't know what to think. They didn't say too much either. They keep it to themselves. I don't know. I don't know. Then I was wondering if she's into prostitution stuff.

Maybe she's doing it for him. You never know. It's just something about both of them. But she was a nice girl. She didn't get treated right. That's for sure. Art's suspicions and gut feelings here don't inspire confidence, but it was good to hear that a search of the building was conducted.

Okay, thanks very much. Yeah, thank you. Have a good day. Nice again meeting you. Yeah, yeah. Take care, man. Ciao. I head to 851 Queenston Road in Hamilton, Art's old building and the place where Cheryl lived with Odette at the time of her disappearance. I want to see if anyone there can remember anything. I'm feeling drawn to the 7th floor apartment where Cheryl and her mother lived at the time.

I want to see inside. This is the stairwell that leads out the back of A51 Queenston. I'm just going upstairs to see if I can find anybody that remembers Cheryl and what her apartment looked like and things like that. I want to see if this back stairwell comes out where I think it does, right next to Cheryl's old seventh floor apartment. If you were to go down on these echoey gray primered stairs, you come to an exit door that leads to a secluded area and small parking lot outside. But if you keep going down further, you get to the basement where there's a coin laundry, elevators, and the entrance to the underground parking lot. Odette has told me that Cheryl normally parked her white Buick in the underground lot while Mike parked his grey van in the small above-ground lot out back.

As I continue the climb upstairs, I keep wondering. On the day Cheryl disappeared, did she leave this building for the last time using these stairs? And if so, what state was she in? Unfortunately, there are no surveillance cameras to help tell that story. The current occupants of Cheryl and Odette's old place generously let us in, just as they themselves are in a rush to get out. I don't know if I'd let strangers into my place,

especially one holding a microphone and a camera. Do you want to make a picture from our apartment? Apart from the renovating. Yeah, yeah. I had no idea what it was. Was it completely new, like this one, when you moved in? No, we did just this year. This is definitely it.

It looks exactly like I pictured it. Kitchen, when you walk in, opening into the living room, dining room. Balcony beyond. To the left, a small bedroom. And to the right, the hallway leading to two other bedrooms and the bathroom. There's something innately resonant about locations like this. The ghosts of the past that I've seen in Odette's photographs and her descriptions of the stories that played out here become more solid. Was this also a crime scene? Being here gives me a chance to look at the rooms, distances, the view from the balcony,

the wall Odette saw with the circles, the room where she noticed the hockey bag missing, and a feeling for something intangible. This would have been Cheryl's room right here. This was the hallway that had the circles on it, the little points all the way along here. And there was, is there a storage room yeah no no well yeah we just wanted to see what the layout was of the apartment this is the place where the hockey bags would have been sir can Sir, can I get a picture of this wall?

Just of the wall? Oh, and can I take a picture off the balcony? Just nothing to do with here, just off the balcony. Thank you. Thanks so much. Sorry to bug you. As the door closes, I catch a final glimpse of the living room. And then, it's gone. So this hallway would be her hallway, right?

It looks identical to what I pictured in my head. I approach the superintendent, but he wasn't here at the time, and knocks on doors of the few long-term residents in the building prove fruitless, as most of them weren't here in 1997 or 98. We're actively trying to track people who we know lived on the seventh floor back then, and maybe something will yet come of that. It takes time, sometimes, to find people. Accessibility is making your education work for you, regardless of circumstance.

At Athabasca University, we have no entrance requirements for undergrad programs and automatic acceptance. If you have the desire to learn, AU is a great option. Open your options with a more accessible online degree and choose an education that works for you, not the other way around. Find out how at athabascaU.ca slash options.

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

Visit our website to see what you can achieve at the YMCA. This will be the day. I love meeting people in cars. This is my office. I take statements here all the time. Okay. I've been trying to contact Don Forgan, one of the original long-time investigators on the Shepard case for months. And luckily, very recently, we were able to meet up in his car on an East Toronto street. Don's shaved bald, has a neat mustache, blue glasses

to match his blue car, phone on a belt clip, nearly invisible hearing aid, and he's retired from the Hamilton Police Service. He's come into this interview without much time to fully refresh his memory from notes like Warren Correll did. I ask if Forgan knows anything about Michael Lavoie being seen with garbage bags. Yes, that would be Gerald and Sharon Davidson they lived in the same building and they had a hard time pinpointing the date but they said it was after January 1st they ran into Lavoie in the underground parking again and he had bags of clothing

one was a green garbage bag the other one was a clear plastic bag, and they recognized that it was clothing because they could see socks and clothing in it. Gerald Davidson could be the person that Betty Juergen spoke to about seeing Lavoie with garbage bags. Gerald asked Lavoie, he says, I haven't seen Cheryl for a while, where is she? And he said, she's upstairs, she's sick, she's vomiting. And he made another comment to the fact that she's so sick that she hasn't contacted her mother. That's a quote from Gerald?

Yeah, from Gerald. Cheryl phoned her mother on New Year's Day to organize picking her up at Toronto's Union Station. There was no mention of being sick, and it was a long call as the phone was being passed around to all the relatives in New Brunswick before being handed back to Odette to say her final goodbyes. If accurate, the Davidsons' conversation with Lavoie in the basement car park sometime after January 1st elicits more questions around Lavoie's Concord

Hotel story. If Cheryl wasn't sick in the apartment on New Year's Day when she did call her mother, was Cheryl sick after her appearance at the bingo on January 2nd? If so, she cannot be both vomiting in her apartment in Hamilton and also at the Concord Hotel in Niagara Falls. According to Odette and what she says she found out from Michael Lavoie's mother, Pat, Michael told differing stories about where Cheryl was on the Friday, January 2nd she's thought to have disappeared. Now, according to Forgan, here's another story in the mix from a different person.

But I still need to verify what might or might not have been said about Cheryl's whereabouts with Gwen and Pat, and it's important to note that Michael Lavoie has denied having anything to do with Cheryl's disappearance. Gerald knew Cheryl from the Tim Hortons at Main and Wentworth, where she worked. I'll need to track down the Davidsons to get this story directly from them if I can. But first, Sammy Valeri, Cheryl's boss at Tim Hortons,

one more time. Check, check. Sammy Valeri, take 18. I could hear somebody yelling in there. The lights are all off here too, right? There was a dog, and then someone yelled, and then nothing. So I guess we can just call back. It did sound like there was commotion going on inside, and then it suddenly stopped.

I'll have to courier a letter to Sammy Valeri so it's clear that I'm only looking for information about Cheryl. This is what it's like tracking down or verifying each piece of information that might be interesting. People need to know that every little piece of information makes a difference. Sometimes you get somewhere, and sometimes you don't. Hello. Hello. Looking for a guy named Mike?

Mike Milolovic? Who's me? That's you? Okay, just a moment. Yeah. I've just walked up a wide paved driveway to Mike Milolovic's brown bungalow in Niagara Falls. Milolovic is the former owner of the Concord Hotel, the strip club where Michael

Lavoie says he dropped Cheryl off. I need to get to the bottom of whether Cheryl was ever there. It's a warm day and most of the grass on the sizable front lawn is dead. An older man in a lawn chair by the garage that I initially took for Mr. Manolovich has gone into the house. And another man with a light green golf shirt, short grey hair and glasses emerges. I can't quite make out what his dog looks like through the screen porch where it's barking at me. Oh hi, you're Mike. Hi I'm David. I work for CBC Radio and we're doing a story about Cheryl Shepard who went missing a long time ago in Hamilton in 98 and you owned a club called The Concord. And do you remember the case that I'm talking about whether the boyfriend had said that

he dropped Cheryl off at The Concord? Did you remember seeing her? No, I never saw her. And so she was not... No, no, no. She never... That was a bullshit. Whatever I mean.

You didn't have any surveillance cameras so you couldn't... on your place, eh? You couldn't... Interesting. He's bullshitting, dropping her off there. I know that because she never worked there for me. You know, she never worked. And what there for me you know she never worked and what happened to the concord did it still it's not still there is it well it's i sold it so now it's country western oh okay so if someone had shown up at your club say on that it would have

been uh january 2nd 1998 in the evening if someone had shown up, a female, say Cheryl, and said, hi, I want to dance, what would you have said? She would have to provide the license that she is allowed to dance in Niagara Falls. Right. Because there was a license in that time. There was a license for Hamilton. There was a license for Niagara Falls. There was a license for Toronto.

So if she got a Toronto license, she wouldn't be able to dance in Niagara Falls. She would have to go to the police board and get a license from them that she is old enough to dance. Oh, that's interesting. So the police give the license? Yeah. I see. That's interesting. Yeah, the police still do it in Niagara Falls. We asked police and other officials in Niagara and Hamilton if Cheryl was a licensed exotic dancer, but no records could be found. It has been suggested by police that dancers have been known to freelance at venues without such a license.

Sir, I got no idea. I got no idea. I even had two detectives come from Hamilton to interview me. There's nothing there. She disappeared. I don't know, did she find anything? No. She just disappeared. Where is she? Is she still a free man? No, she never showed up. She never danced in my club. Never. Did she ever, did you ever see her? Like has she ever been there ever? No. No. Okay. And did any of the other girls know her? Do you know? Or was there any? No, the girls that they were working in my club, no. Really? No, because we were talking after, you know,

after the camera left and the police, like, like, you know know for a week he was a he was a hot truck yeah yeah yeah you had the radio stations calling you know police coming almost every day so apparently Michael LaVoy the guy who dropped her off he he came to some of the clubs and showed her picture you don't recall him doing that not to Michael. Okay. That's interesting. But Mike Manolovich told police when he was interviewed on January 5th,

1998, around dinner time, that Michael Lavoie had just been at the Concord Hotel 45 minutes prior to police arriving. Lavoie had been showing a picture of Cheryl and himself. Nobody at the Concord, including Manolovich, recognized Cheryl from the picture when police showed it,

but they did recognize Lavoie because they said he had just been there. And did you work at the club yourself at the time? Were you always on site and things? Yeah, yeah, no, no, I was there 24 hours. Police say that a woman named Laura, working at another Niagara Falls strip club, did recognize Cheryl when police showed her picture. Laura claimed to have seen Cheryl at the Mints Club

six months before. Was Cheryl stripping at the Mints Club six months before she disappeared? If I can find Laura, I'll ask her. Was Cheryl stripping at the mince club six months before she disappeared? If I can find Laura I'll ask her. Back to Manolovic and we've moved into the shade of a tree on his front lawn. Kind of a sad story, eh? It is a sad story.

What do you want to do? Something is fishing because was it on a Hamilton TV station that they just got engagement? That's right. For a new year. You remembered properly. So that New Year's Eve, he asked her to marry him, and she said yes. There was a big show on the TV. And what alley was he talking about, do you think? Was there some side part?

There was my driveway. There was a concrete wall. And there was my driveway to go in the parking lot. And that might be the alley he's talking about, you think? I have no idea what he's talking about. Okay, that's great. Thanks very much, sir. Okay. Take care. Yep, have a good day.

No problem. See you later, man. From what Mr. Manolovic says, can it be surmised that Cheryl never entered the Concord Hotel? Even if she didn't go inside or dance there, it still does not mean Michael Lavoie didn't drop her off in the alley beside it. I want to get a picture in my head of this Concord Hotel, what Manolovich says is now a country western bar. Odette and I are finished with the Facebook posts and the embryonic plans forming to see Gwen and Michelle for now, and we decide to head down to the falls to see the old Concord.

So we're turning onto Ferry Street, and we're just heading up the hill, and it's coming up on the right and what I'll do is I'll just turn into this alley that's here this must be the alleged alley that Michael Lavoie was referring to I suspect that like how would he know about this well I suspect that he has been there before or or maybe he did drop her there I mean like this big texas place right here that used to be the concord hotel right here on the on the right oh this one yeah right here okay and this is the alley right here that we're turning into oh this is the little alley okay one-way entrance yep this is the little alley right here and there's no doorways

and then there's a parking spot back here and there's an entrance to the bar right there. But this is the back parking lot for the Concord Hotel. We drive down the alley, which is actually a one-way street formed by a freestanding concrete wall on the left side, and the building that used to be the Concord on the right. And we enter the back parking lot of a place that's now called the Big Texas. It's a bar and grill. According to advertising, there's a mechanical bull inside, but no more exotic dancing. And there's no dancing or nothing anymore? There's no stripping in there that I can tell. But this used to be the Concord right here. We're sitting in the back parking lot. So that's the

alley right there straight ahead. I'm assuming the alley, that's the only thing that can resemble an alley here. Right, right. It's quite an open space. Yeah, because that's what he told me. He dropped her off in the alleyway and I thought it was dark and everything else, but I could see it's not. No, it's not dark. It's not like, you know, at night it would be dark, but it's not like an

alley that goes into nothing. It comes into a big open space in the back here. Right, yeah. There's no doorway in the alley, so she would have, let's just play this story out, she would have come to the back, gone into the back there. Yeah. And his story was that he didn't look back to see if she even went in. Right? That's right. And he said he was late, you know, he had to go and pick up his girls. But the owner of the Concord at the time,

we interviewed, he said she never showed up. He didn't even know her. She'd never danced there. I'm sorry. I just want to find her. I'm sorry. I just want to find her. You know, it tears my heart out, obviously, God. Oh, my God. Did he bring her here or didn't he though?

Like I don't, like I got feeling says that she was never here, but of course I don't know and nobody does, but we can ask Michael. We can ask Michael. Yeah. Yeah. Michael Lavoie has always said he had nothing to do with Cheryl's disappearance and says he did drop her off. As Odette and I ponder the scene, I notice a shiny black imported sedan to my left, driver inside with the engine running. And just beyond, a man in a heated discussion with a young blonde woman in high heels and a miniskirt. I don't think Odette has noticed.

You know, sometimes I feel like I'm about 100 years old, you know, like it's... What do you mean? It's just, it's taking the best of me, you know? To bring a child into this world. See her grow up again for a while, for someone to take her life. Yes, I do want to talk to him. Ask him questions. I'm going to mark it down, you know, a question I want to talk to him. With Gwen. Gwen?

Gwen. Yeah. I'll write down a question I want to ask her. I want to meet his pet also. And she would talk to me. Michelle and Michael? We'll think about it. Let's get out of here, though.

Yeah. There's no point in staring at this building anymore. This alleyway. Oh, man. Sorry. We drive away, and in my rearview mirror, the discussion suddenly breaks up between the man and the blonde woman. She runs to a sort of caged fire escape

that leads up to the second floor of the former Concord Hotel. There's a steel door with a key code lock on it where she presses some numbers and enters, then runs up the metal steps and disappears inside on the second floor. The man returns to the sedan and leaves the lot swiftly. I think I'll come back to get a look inside the big Texas.

So let's go home. I think you've had enough for the day, eh? Yeah, I'll buy you a coffee. I'm supposed to buy you the coffee. No, it's okay. Okay, well, there's got to be a coffee shop around here somewhere. Oh, I've got me crying too. Do you want a donut with that?

Do you want a donut? I think you want a donut. I think you want the donut. No, you. I want the donut. That's the excuse. David wanted the donut. I had to stop and get one.

Right? Oh my God. Sure, I'll have a donut with that. And then you can get one too, right? Yes. Yeah. Every place visited, every person spoken to, every document read can reveal something new, verify something heard, give way to an overwhelming feeling that we're on the cusp of something related to a solution. Frustrations in those Sammy Valeri moments when we can't move forward right away, those tattooed feelings we cannot yet understand, and nightmares of endlessly echoing stairwells that descend into the dark.

The human mind can revel in the chaos, but there has to be hope. And I think we've gotten at least that so far, on top of the donuts. Later, as I go over the posts and comments made on Facebook, I notice a name that keeps coming up. A person whom I've discovered was involved romantically with Michael Lavoie around the time Cheryl disappeared. A woman by the name of Sheila Darbison. You have been listening to Episode 4, Intimation.

Visit cbc.ca slash sks to see a 360 video of the alleyway beside the former Concord Hotel. 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. Our theme music is by Bob Wiseman, with vocals by Mary Margaret O'Hara and Jess Reimer. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.