Someone Knows Something - S8 E6: The Price of Admission

Episode Date: October 23, 2023

New information comes to light about possible suspects in Angel’s murder. David receives an unexpected tip about a local ex-police officer.

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Watch both episodes now on cbc.ca slash Via Rail. Paid content with Via Rail Canada. This is a CBC Podcast. were done with sort of examining his timeline and things of that nature, and I'm aware that he had passed away a few years back, so I believe he has a brother as well. Jason Benecke is one of the only names I've asked about that Corporal Mike Simpson seems to give a discernible reaction to. So far, I have a pilot mountain neighbor of Benecke's saying he was troubled and perhaps involved in some break-ins,

and police saying he was a person of interest in Angel's case. The Beneke property was very close to where Angel was found. Did police ever rule him out as a person of interest? Okay, so investigation inconclusive, or just did you satisfy yourself that he was... Um, you know, he may come back up. We'll see. Unfortunately, he's deceased now, sadly. But like with everyone, certainly my approach is to, since I've started, I've tried to learn as much as I can about everything but the file.

But of course, you're reading other people's information. Yeah, yeah, yeah. From what I can find so far, Jason Benecke was a member of the Yukon's Little Salmon Carmack's First Nation and spent most of his life in the territory before moving to British Columbia sometime around 2015. At some point thereafter, as Simpson says, Jason Benecke passed away. So, were you able to determine how Jason passed? Do you know anything about his passing?

I don't know if I can speak to that. You've looked at the circumstances around Jason's... Yes. You know, I'm kind of trying to let what I'm doing lead me to where it goes, and if it comes back to him, perhaps, then it's a lot done, which is helpful for me. Jason Benecke did have a criminal record in British Columbia. According to court documents, there were a few stayed charges, but he was also found guilty of assault, uttering threats of death or bodily harm, and attempting to steal a vehicle, among other similar charges. And he served time, too, for offenses such as drug trafficking.

Jason Benecke would have been around 20 years old when Angel Carlec disappeared. I will reach out to any Benecke family members I might find to see if there might be any sort of connection between Jason and Angel. But Benecke isn't the only name that's emerged from the investigation, and as my time in Whitehorse draws to a close, Angel's case has started to move. I'm David Ridgen, and this is Someone Knows Something, Season 8, The Angel Carlic Case, Episode 6, The Price of Admission. The new card I just put in this audio recorder I have says I have 178 hours of recording left. I'll probably go through that before I'm done here.

I've already done so many hours of recording on this case. Just tip of the iceberg. So we're going to go all the way up and around. of recording on this case. Just tip of the iceberg. So we're going to go all the way up and around, so we're going to stay on this main one all the way up and around. Yeah, we can basically just meet this person outside. Do we know this person's name? This is what I have on Facebook.

Check, hello. Check, check, check, hello. Do we know this person's name? This is what I have on Facebook. Okay. Check, hello. Check, check, check, hello. Hello. Hello. Do you mind if we just meet in your backyard or something? Is that easier for you?

I think they're rolling out. Oh, we can just go somewhere less sunny outside. Lori and I are in one of Whitehorse's newer subdivisions. We're here to speak to Amber, who saw our call for tips on the SKS Facebook page months earlier and has agreed to share some information. My anxiety was a little high. Two strangers coming into the house? You're going to sit there? It's the whole situation, right?

Like, I've always held the whole case kind of close to my heart. And who would think that I would come up with information, right? And I don't know if the information's true, but I didn't sleep well the information is true but I didn't sleep well the night after I heard it and I made a point of the next time I was sitting with the person to bring the subject back up which made me very anxious as well amber props herself on the railing of her back deck where we have all

congregated she's nervous but wants to get it right and says she wants to share what she knows for Angel. These are the potential truth-telling moments that cases can fly from. So it was two years ago on Christmas that I had some friends over. Two friends on a winter's night in 2020. One man who we've agreed to name Jay to protect some of the people around him and another man named Wesley. They are all at Amber's place.

Jay, Amber says, begins to act out. And we had a few drinks and I think it got to the point where he kind of had a little act out, and he does. He's kind of got a temper, and he acted out. And so it had come up in that conversation that night that we were just talking about his temper, and that he said he got his temper from his dad. Then Amber says Jay continued to tell a story about his father also having a short temper and an argument the two men once had.

His dad said, you want to fuck with me, then you want me to do what I did to that angel car like girl to you. Something around those lines. And so after that was said, I felt, I just, you know, it was very uncomfortable. I didn't sleep well. It kind of, like, stuck in my head, and I was like, wow, like, I might have some really serious information towards this case, right?

Amber was shocked at the conversation she heard. Jay never came back to her place, but she did manage to make a recording of Wesley retelling the story about what Jay had said about his father. Amber sent it to police. It's only a 10-second recording, but I have it. I contacted the RCMP. Mike Simpson?

Yep, Michael Simpson. And I reported it to him. And I'm going to say that I don't feel like it was taken seriously. He was kind of, like, nonchalant about it. I don't know, I just didn't feel like it was taken seriously. It kind of upset me a bit, and at this point, nobody's ever contacted me again about it. All of this makes me want to talk to Wesley,

and then hopefully Jay, and ultimately Jay's father. Did the father actually do something to Angel? A little bit of digging shows me that Jay, his family, and his father all lived on Pilot Mountain at the time of Angel's disappearance, and quite close to where Angel was found. Amber says she will put me in contact with Wesley. I definitely want his account, but what Wesley allegedly heard Jay say could be nothing, an utterance fired off at the end of a short temper. But this is the first time in this case that someone allegedly connects themselves to Angel

and to her murder. Thank you guys so much for putting the time in for Angel. I really hope you find closure. Thank you. Much appreciated. Thanks so much. Take care. We'll be in touch. Thank you. Lori and I walk back to the car in silence. She's been mostly quiet the whole time. Then I see the emotion spread across her face.

You alright? He's just really good family friends of mine. Lori knows the man we're calling Jay. I don't know their dad. But I do know... And this is just... this is a lot. Well, we don't know if it's true, if anything about it is true. No, I know, it's just...

It's just that whole time, i didn't say anything because i was so like in shock up until this point all we know is what we've heard from a single source hardly anything more than conjecture but i know that it doesn't make this any easier on Lori, even though she doesn't know Jay's father, the man who allegedly made the utterance about having done something to Angel. Want to drive around a bit and just chat? Or like just blow off steam? Or what do you want to do, for a walk or something? I don't even know right now i'm like i just i literally feel nauseous i know i knew this would happen like like just finding out information i didn't really want to know

you know i knew that there would be little things here and there but this Like it like she said it could be horseshit and I could be getting worked up over just gossip, but yes, you could be Their mom I love like an aunt and it's like the family, you know, I grew up in that household. I have all the respect in the world for them. And then to have one of those names brought up, it's... Lori has been guiding me through the community of this case for much of my time here in Whitehorse, learning information alongside me and possessing her pain in real time. And it's taken a toll. I take Lori home. Okay. I'll talk to you later.

Okay, thanks very much. Text me if you want. Okay, I will. Fuck. will hello oh hi is this wesley yeah hey wesley it's dave bridgen thanks so much for doing this call amber has helped to connect me to Wesley, and I jump through the preliminaries until I can ask him what did his friend Jay say about his father? I guess he, like, went and moved down with his dad for, like, a year or something. But they got into an argument. I guess his dad's, like, a real piece of shit, whatever.

But I guess they got into an argument, and all he said was like, don't make me do to you what I did to Angel Carlic or something like that. And then he got all freaked out, and I was like, well, that's weird. His dad always seemed like a weird guy, too. A reminder that Wesley did not hear Jay's father say this and wasn't present at the time.

Wesley only heard the story from Jay. How did this conversation come up? Honestly, I can't remember. Like, we're pretty good friends and we just sit around and talk and bullshit and drink and whatever. Like, he was complaining about how big of a piece of shit his dad is. His dad moved away after they got divorced. Jay's father moved to a town outside the Yukon in a western province where I believe he still resides. Jay himself is unhoused and has proven difficult to find, but with Lori's help, I may be able to connect with Jay's sister. It has been suggested that any approach to the father should be undertaken with caution.

I'll try to talk to Jay's other family members before trying to contact the father. But first I want to speak with Corporal Simpson about this tip from Amber and the short video she recorded and sent to him. Did Simpson find anything out? So I had a tip come in where they said they spoke to you, and this person had a recording of somebody who was saying some names on the recording. Okay. I mentioned the names of the people involved. Right.

Yeah. I don't believe they ever gave us the recording. Because she showed me an email that had your email address on it. I never believe I received it, yeah. I tried to contact her a few times. Sure, I'd try her again. It was sort of the last. So it seems RCMP haven't looked into this yet.

But I will. And I have my other questions regarding Angel's file. Mark Porter, for example, Angel's boyfriend at the time of her disappearance. I think we have a very good timeline for him. So an alibi that works? He's been looked at and he's polygraphed as well. For me right now, I wouldn't say not a suspect. I also ask about the information I received from Vicki Durant, Angel's supervisor. Vicki told me that she was positive Angel's bike was locked up at the family hotel downtown after Angel went missing. Did you guys look into, did police look into the bicycle locked in front of that hotel?

They did. When they went to look, the bike was gone. Long story short, there was uncertainty if that was actually hers. They did look into that, and at the end of that sort of investigation, it was kind of concluded the bike actually wasn't hers. Oh. Did they go to the dump and get it? Because apparently the guy around the hotel said he threw it in the garbage. Yeah, I don't think they found the bike,

but I do believe the person whose bike it was, because she was borrowing it, said that he'd saw it and that wasn't hers. So that could be, I know that has been out there, that information. But from what I can gather when reading everything, I don't believe that was hers from what was done at the time. But was it Angel's bike, as Vicky is adamant that it was, and can we ever know now that this bike that was seen is irretrievably gone, thrown out apparently by someone at the hotel? But I have been able to track down another person who remembers seeing Angel's bike and remembers hearing something disturbing.

Hello? Hi, is this Francis? Yes. Hi Francis, it's David Ridgen here. Francis Stockman was married to Kevin Carleck at the time of Angel's disappearance. Kevin is a relative of Angel's. Frances and Kevin were in Whitehorse together in May 2007. So go ahead and tell me, what do you remember about seeing Angel around the time she disappeared back in May 2007?

We've seen her, Angel, with her grandma and her auntie and Alex and I don't know a bunch of other people at her auntie's house in Riverdale and then I we didn't see her I didn't see her ever again after that. A reminder that on the weekend after a grad party at Chadburn Lake Angel woke up at her auntie Darlene's place where there was to be a barbecue later but she left around midday to look for either a drink or a change of clothes police track Angel through sightings until around 9 p.m that night when she's last seen with two whiter looking men Francis says she saw Angel at some point at a dinner over the weekend. I'm not certain which dinner this might have been, but Frances said afterward she never saw Angel again. But, Frances says,

she thinks she may have heard her at the family hotel where they were staying in room 214 on the second floor. It's at the time of day when it's real quiet in the hotel and I heard a girl screaming like they're thrashing around about two doors down from us on the other side of the hall. Like when you first get grabbed and they're trying to throw you down that's what it sounded like and there was only one and there was a thump and a bang, and then that was all. Frances phones the front desk, and they tell her that no one is registered in the room she says she hears the scream come from. Frances goes into the hall after hearing it,

and says the scream came from a room parallel to hers on the left. But I didn't see nothing and they said nobody was in there. Frances says she didn't actually see Angel or anyone for that matter at the hotel following the sounds of yelling and thrashing. Do you think you could recognize the voice as being her voice? I tell you you, it haunted me for a long, long time that it might have been her. So there was something in it that made me feel that it might have been her. The next morning, Frances and her husband find out that Angel is missing. They return to Good Hope and two to three weeks later return to Whitehorse, pulling into the family hotel again. Frances notices what she says is Angel's bike,

chained up in the same spot Vicki told me she saw it. She was about two spaces in from the end by the door. There's a bike rack in front of the laundromat at that hotel. Yeah. Or there used to be, I don't know if there is now. And it was right there. And we went back, it was still right there, same place. If Angel was at the family hotel on the weekend she disappeared, then maybe a listener remembers seeing her there,

remembers her locking her bicycle. Angel would often visit friends there, I'm told. Tips like this are important. Oh, hey there! I'm Andrew Fung, and I want to tell you about my new series with Via Rail. Join me as I ride on from Toronto to Ottawa and London aboard Via Rail's new fleet of trains. My journey was a breeze. No traffic jams, just smooth sailing. The seats are super comfy, and with complimentary Wi-Fi, I can work and play with ease. Plus, with meals and snacks on board, I arrived refreshed and ready to explore. From a boat cruise in Ottawa to the Grand Theatre in London,

these cities are packed with amazing experiences. 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. At Desjardins, we speak business. We speak equipment modernization. We're fluent in data digitization and expansion into foreign markets.

And we can talk all day about streamlining manufacturing processes. Because at Desjardins Business, we speak the same language you do. Business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us and contact Desjardins today. We'd love to talk business. Coming up on my last day here. Just heading out in the early morning. It's raining.

Got an interview that came out of some action late day yesterday. I've not been able to find Jay, but I did find his sister, and she's willing to talk to me. Perhaps she can shed some light on her brother and her dad, who allegedly said he had done something to Angel. Along with her family, she lived out in the Pilot Mountain area at the time that Angel disappeared and was murdered. It's a very emotional case, very emotional interviews, difficult to find information without contaminating the case because everybody wants you to succeed and everybody's hoping you're focusing on exactly who did it.

But you don't know until you know. The truth isn't the truth until it's the truth. We meet next to the Yukon River. I start off asking about Pilot Mountain, where she was raised. So, I grew up there most of my life, and yeah, Pilot Mountain was

great. It was really nice to have a lot of area to play with, a lot of outdoorsy things. At the time, kind of grew up up and there were a lot of kids around the same age which was fantastic and you grew up there and went to school in whitehorse is that how it worked you'd bus in yeah yeah it's still i mean it's technically out of city limits but it's still part of whitehorse okay yeah um and the did, did growing up there, did you and your family know everybody in the area of Pilot Mountain? There's just a couple of roads. There's Boreal

Road that has a sort of other subdivision there. And then there's the Pilot Mountain area. Did you know everybody up there? I wouldn't say we knew everybody, but definitely more, more people growing up than now. Like it was different getting on the school bus and you get to meet, I don't even know how many people a school bus fits, but 30 other kids every day, get to know some of their families, get to know some of them as friends, and then yeah, go to school with them for 12, 13 years. Before I ease into talking about the tip I have heard about her father, I realize that this woman may have known Jason Benecke, the man who was one of the RCMP's people of interest in Angel's case.

And yeah, in terms of Jason, I mean, really my only memory is that they were neighbors and kids that were younger than me. She doesn't know much about Jason Benecke. I've reached out to three members of his family, but I have yet to hear back from any of them. I start to angle towards my second line of questioning, this woman's brother Jay and her father. Jay, I have heard from two sources,

was seen by RCMP on the day Angel's remains were found walking his dog in the area and told to go home by police. Perhaps he was there as a curious onlooker, but I'd like to know more. So in the aftermath, police came to question lots of of people and did they come and question your dad and your brother uh they did come to our property i don't know who at the time my brother was house sitting and they did talk to him and my parents were out of town and when they got back to town i don't actually know if they talked to them or not. So I had a tip about your dad yesterday.

A woman talked to me and said that it seems that there was an admission made of some sort regarding Angel's disappearance or murder. Do you see either your brother or your dad having any involvement in Angel's murder or disappearance? I don't see my brother having any involvement at all in Angel's disappearance. And I don't see my dad having any connection whatsoever to Angel. I don't see where there would be. They never would have come into contact with each other, you think?

Not that I'm aware of. And I know all of the houses were addressed or interviewed, however you want to talk that. So in terms of that... They were canvassed. Yeah, canvassed. That's a great word. But in terms of, like, being a suspect or interrogated? No. I'm hoping I'll be able to find and talk to her brother and father,

but I'd like to speak to others first, run through the investigative probabilities. I just wish I had more time in the Yukon. Like, truly never having heard of her until she, her body was found. Personally. never having heard of her until she, her body was found. Personally, it just doesn't, I don't, I don't see where the paths would cross. And also, you know, I, I just don't, I mean, it wouldn't be something I would believe without, without substantive proof. We talk a while longer and it's clear she's uncomfortable with the topic of her brother and father for obvious reasons. I think she's told me everything she's able to, and we say our goodbyes. I've found contact information for her father, but I want to balance learning

more about him before I dial the numbers. I drive down Whitehorse's two-mile hill one more time, surrounded by mountains. It's hard to leave, but my time here has come to an end. I'll continue my investigation from Toronto, but before I go, I have one more goodbye. Possibly the hardest one. Hello. Hello. Hello. How are you?

Good, how are you? I'm good. So it went okay. So I talked to the RCMP and they didn't really give me too much else extra. They didn't get that tip from the person we talked to though yesterday. He says he didn't, but I saw the email where she sent it to him, so I'm not sure why he wouldn't have gotten it. But anyway, he's got it now.

Yeah. I think I've done as much as I can right now. So in terms of getting everybody to talk and driving you nuts, I think you probably need a break from it as well. I do. And I'll break from it as well. I do. And I'll keep on it. Okay. That's a lot of information.

I'm going to keep on it and phone calls and talking to people as much as I possibly can and that kind of thing. Thanks for all your help. Invaluable help. Thank you for coming up and looking into our case. It just turned out a lot different than what I thought it would. It is better to know. We don't know what we don't know, right?

I knew I'd be walking into something I would have a heavy truth to. Thanks very much. Okay. You'll be okay? Yeah, I'll be okay. All right. Stronger than I look. You'll be fine.

Yeah. I'll be here. I'll be hands and feet here for you if you need them. Okay. All right. See you later, Lori. I'll be hands and feet here for you if you need them. Okay. All right. See you later, Lori. I'll see you. I hope I do see Lori and Alex again. They've both let me in to show me their angel, the community's angel.

She's someone very close to the surface in everyone I've met here, and I feel the deep sadness and anger. But I'm also sustained to some extent through a sense of hope, the singing, what we've found, and what I think can still be done. The groundwork's been laid. I drop by the mural of Angel and Wendy, I touch the paint and then drive out of town. But as I said, the investigation into Angel Carlec's disappearance and murder is far from over. So I have tried coming forward with this information that I have to the RCMP. And when the name was given, it was kind of like, are you sure you want to proceed with this?

We can't guarantee safety. And it's a pretty big risk to come forward with the information that I have. And yeah, so I just I worry about that. And I worry about my kids. And I know this person and I know this person is not safe and would probably not stop to find a solution to the information getting out. The person this source is talking about isn't Jason Benecke. It isn't Jay's father. It's new information on someone else. a former RCMP officer in Whitehorse.

And he straight up told me that he would put me under the ground like my little friend Angel, and nobody would know what happened to me either. To be continued... Thank you. You can hear next week's episode now by searching for the CBC Podcasts channel on YouTube. Or you can hear all seven episodes today by subscribing to the CBC True Crime Premium channel on Apple Podcasts, where you can binge the full season ad-free. Just click on the link in the show description. If you're looking for another series to listen to, check out The Village from CBC Podcasts. Find The Village on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts.

For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.