Suspicion - S5 E1: The Gentle Giant | The Most Wanted Olympian

Episode Date: October 15, 2026

Shots ring out in a neighbourhood north-west of Toronto. A father is dead and a mother and daughter are in hospital, battling for their lives. When Toronto Star reporter Calvi Leon arrives on the scene days later, witnesses tell her what really happened. What she learns starts her down a path she could never have imagined and leads to one man: former Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding. How does a small town Canadian kid, who was once called a labrador puppy by his teammates, find himself on the FBI's Most Wanted list? This podcast is a co-production of Suspicion from the Toronto Star and Uncover from CBC. All episodes are now available to subscribers.

Remind me, okay, so your first day at the star is when? September 2020, 3 is when I started. And then two months later, and benounce to you, you're about to get on to this huge case. I had no idea it's going to be huge for a while. But yeah. What did the call come in first? So I actually remember this call pretty well because I'm not a morning person. This is Calvillian, a young new reporter at the Toronto Star, Canada's largest newspaper.

She had always dreamed of working there. and in 2023 she got her wish, hired as an intern, an intern who needed to prove herself. And I got a call around 8 a.m. from my editor, and she said, hey, there's been an incident in Caledon. One person's dead. We don't really know much, but I'll flip you the press release. Can you go out there and check it out?

The entire property was cordoned off with police tape. The first thing I'm looking for is who can I speak to? Like, how many other houses are nearby? Who can I go door knock? Who would have heard this? And truly, like, there were no options. At first, there's not much to go on other than what police are telling reporters.

Shortly before midnight, on November 20th, 20, 23, there was a shooting at a home in Caledon, about an hour northwest of Toronto. One man was found out at the scene. Two women were taken to hospital. A search for court documents reveals that there was once an illegal trucking yard on the property, so that becomes the main media narrative. But days later, when Kelvey gets a tip from a neighbor that the police tape has finally come down,

she heads back to the crime scene. She's looking to see if anyone at the home will talk. Sometimes journalists call this a door knock, or the horrible term of pickup. It literally means you're going to knock on the door and hopefully pick up a photo of the victim. It's the worst assignment. So I just park on the side. I start recording, and as I got out of my car, I realized that there's two men in the driveway.

This is already going better than I thought, because people are at home. She walks up to the men, her phone recording at her side. Hello. Hello, how are you? Go ahead, thanks. Sorry, I get closer. My name's Calvi.

I work for the Toronto Star, and I was just hoping to chat with you guys. I know a lot has happened in the last week. I don't know if you were involved, but I'm so sorry if you were. If you want, I'll call you back because the actual owner is not here. Okay. Because he was renting and it was the dad, he got shop. So we are just with friends.

The men ask Kelvi just to give them her card. But then they keep talking. And they tell her that their friend lived there, rented the place, but wasn't home at the time. It was just his sister and his parents who were visiting from India the night someone broke into the home and started shooting. Just a regular family. The dad died immediately and their friend's sister and mom were in critical condition. None of this is publicly known yet, and it's a very different story from the reports circulating about a criminal trucking operation gone bad. Oh yeah, nobody knows this.

Everyone thinks that everyone's making all these assumptions and like rumors. media's help to bring out the truth. Calvey tells the men she'll keep in touch and rushes back to the newsroom to write her story, raising the possibility this could be a case of mistaken identity. Soon after the story is published online, she receives news. The mother has died in hospital.

So the headline was, this Indian couple were visiting their kids in a safe country. What could possibly explain their Canadian murder? That headline sort of summarizes what the story is. but also I come back to that question a lot. Jagtar Singh Sedu and Harbizan Kar Sadiou, both in their 50s, murdered. The couple's daughter, Jess Breet, remains in hospital unconscious fighting to survive. Doctors are able to remove 12 of the 13 bullets that struck her,

just one, lodged in her spine, was deemed too risky to take out. When she wakes, the full weight of what has happened hits her. and the memories of that night start flooding in. My father was shot in front of me. I heard my mother's last screams, and after that, it was complete silence. Only the noises of gunshots were there. My mom was in another room.

My father was in front of me. He died. I wasn't able to do anything. Myself, I called 911 as soon as I got my consciousness. us back. Whole family shot. This is what I was saying repeatedly.

Weeks pass, relatives and friends of the victims are desperate for answers. Calvi continues to investigate. We still don't know who actually killed them. They kind of kept coming back

to that as well. They want to know who was in that house. Who was in the house? How did they get it wrong? So wrong. Right. Like an execution-style murders multiple shots.

For months, nothing seems to make sense, until her investigation turns to a man named Ryan Wedding. Good afternoon. Today, the Justice Department is proud to announce new developments in our ongoing investigation into Ryan James Wedding. That's Pam Bondi, the then-U.S. Attorney General under the Trump administration. Wedding is the former Olympian from Canada, who is now the last leader of a transnational criminal enterprise. He's currently on the FBI's and has been top 10

most wanted list. He is currently the largest distributor of cocaine in Canada. Wedding collaborates closely with the Sinaloa cartel. He controls one of the most prolific and violent drug trafficking organizations in this world. She's behind the podium with the Department of Justice Seal on the front. This is a press conference in Washington, D.C. A row of men stand behind her, including the head of the FBI, Cash Patel. And they're talking about a former Olympic snowboarder, a Canadian. Make no mistake about it.

Ryan Wedding is a modern-day iteration of Pablo Escobar. He's a modern-day iteration of El Chapo Guzman. The State Department has raised the reward for Ryan wedding from $10 million to $15 million. El Chapo, Pablo Escobar, the most notorious cartel heads, compared to a Canadian snowboarder? A former Olympian now allegedly the head of a sprawling international drug ring. But as Calvi would discover, the fugitive Canadian is accused of crimes closer to home too, the shooting deaths of the seduce.

So I get the confirmation that it's in fact the same case that I had been looking into. And I'm thinking, what? Wait a second. So you're telling me that this former Olympic snowboarder ordered their killings. I'm Michelle Shepard, and from CBC Podcasts and the Toronto Star, this is the most wanted Olympian. Episode one, The Gentle Giant. Up next, in the start hat is teammate. Ryan Wedding from Quiliputland, British Columbia, 20 years old,

two-time World Junior Championship medalist in Parallel, Giant Slalom. It's 2002, February 14th, Valentine's Day at the Salt Lake City Olympics. Canadian snowboard competitor Ryan Wedding is in a tight red ski suit. Around his neck is a thick gold chain. As he prepares for his event, he stretches his arms to his sides, grabs onto the start gate, and he slides his board back and forth.

through the snow. It's go time, his Olympic debut. He takes a few breaths in and out, and he launches himself forward. Look at the big rig on this kid. Ryan dwarfs the other racers, taking a very high loopy line, keeping it on edge. Ryan Wedding, if anyone has the potential to hold a ton of speed into the flats. It's this man right here. The mountains and skiing surrounded Ryan Wedding since birth. He grew up in Thunder Bay, a working-class city in northern Ontario. His dad was a competitive skier in university, and his grandparents owned a small ski resort. Nothing fancy, a hot chocolate and hot dogs kind of place.

Ryan was the eldest of three kids and the only boy. His grandfather had him on skis as soon as he could walk, taught him how to drive before his feet could touch the pedals. One friend of Ryan's from grade school remembers the wedding family is having a nice home. His dad drove a corvette. But Ryan never seemed flashy or like a spoiled kid with money. He was definitely confident, but not showy. In 1993, when Ryan is around nine years old,

the family moved across the country from Thunder Bay to B.C. His dad had to relocate for work. That's when Ryan switched from skiing to this up-and-coming sport known as snowboarding. Hello. Hi. How are you? Good. Hi, I'm Kelby.

Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. This is a beautiful sport. City Hall. Yeah, it's pretty good. It's like it was felt, I guess, in the 80s or something. No, I guess 90s. I guess it was the 90s. I've come with Calvi to meet Alexa Lou in her office

in Richmond, a suburb of Vancouver. She's a city counselor and looks TV ready when we meet in a crisp purple suit, her hair and makeup perfect. So this is for our podcast. It's for our podcast. I put on makeup for no reason.

When Alexa was younger, she was a snowboarder, a two-time Olympic competitor. And that's how she met Ryan Wedding. He was that gregarious guy, and you could see he was like that excitable puppy that if you didn't keep the leash tight, he was going to go chase the squirrel.

He would have been 15 years old, 14, 15 years old, and coming on a trip with us. And, you know, I was well into my mid-20s, and many people on the team were quite a bit older, or around my age. And then we've got this young guy, Ryan Wedding, who's like this big Labrador puppy, right? Like he's 6'4, with size 15 feet. One of Ryan's coaches had taken to calling him the gentle giant.

Here's one of the future stars of the Canadian racing team, Ryan Wedding. Ryan Style is really gunned and go. He is a big, tall guy. Alexa pulls out a picture that she dug up from those days. What we're looking at here is a team picture from 2002 after the national championships. And we're standing with the whole team, the men's and the women's team.

Brian Wedding's one of the people in the picture. I'm in the picture. So, yeah, a bunch of us. Kind of a cool picture. There are 14 athletes in the photo, all of them grinning broadly in their ski jacket. They're holding a banner advertising the official sponsor of the snowboarding team. These chocolate milk drinks with flavors like Mr. Big and crispy crunch doesn't really scream healthy, athletic beverages.

But hey, the snowboarders always have a kind of badass vibe. Ryan is in the second row. He's a thick neck and a shock of yellow feathered hair. He's noticeably taller than everyone. Alexa remembers that Ryan's age difference, that he was so much younger than the rest of them. also made him stand out. He and I were together a reasonable amount. I remember being at dinner once in Europe

and the guy who owned the hotel coming over and grabbing Ryan's hat and taking it off his head because, you know, in Europe, they really don't like it when you were a hat to the table. His parents were trying to do the best they could for him and sent him on a trip with us.

And, you know, here he is, being this happy-go-lucky kid, you know. He was that bubbly guy and, you know, a bit sassy. Snowboarding was a new sport on the professional level. It wouldn't be added to the Olympics until 1998. And as Alexa notes, the guardrails for athletes weren't really there yet.

The breadth of experiences on the team was quite wide. And some of the coaches were my age and they were there because they had technical skill, but not necessarily because they had ever taken any coaching courses. So they didn't really know how to coach. They didn't know how to coach kids because he was a teenager. Most of us didn't have young brothers

that much younger, right? It also wasn't necessarily our job to babysit him or look after him. Of course, we kept them under our wing, but we're adults. Like, some of us could rent cars, right? Like, it's a far cry from someone who doesn't even have their driver's license. And as I said, snowboarding has always had that kind of rebel edge. It was really unfortunate because there was already that culture that snowboarders were those pot smoking, like loose cannon types, right?

Like hanging out, having a good time, baggy pants, like everything else. And, you know, my girlfriend and I, we approached one of the banks and we said, hey, you know, we'd love to be sponsored by you. They're like, we don't want to touch you with a 10-foot pole. You guys are, you know, you guys use drugs, basically. It's like, oh, great. Awesome. Speaking of that unfortunate drug reputation, How are you? Good, how are you?

Hi, how are you doing? Good. Good to be here. Nice to meet you. Are you on tape, man? I'm recording. You're being really loud. Too loud.

Too loud. Too loud. It's a pleasure. Thank you. If you're Canadian, and you can remember that first Olympic snow, no-boarding event in 1998, you'll probably recall Ross Rebliatti. Ross Rebliatti was considered to be one of the world's best racers.

The Whistler BC native had saved the biggest run of his life for the Olympic. So, Ross, if he can hold it together, he could be in there. Oh, it's time. Ross Rebliatti of Whistler British Columbia takes over the league. Today, he lives in B.C. in Penticton, a gorgeous town of lakes and wineries in fruit orchards. You heard his dog. She's a massive cane corso who looks and sounds vicious, but is named Bella, and will curl up and fall asleep on my feet during our interview. For people who are younger than us, and maybe not remember you, give me a bit of your history.

Sure. So my name's Ross Rebliatti, and I was a pro snowboarder from the late 80s until the late 90s and a World Cup tour for a number of years. And then in 1998, I competed at the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, where I won the gold medal for giant slalom snowboarding. And, yeah, tested positive for cannabis. And then, just as quickly as the medal was awarded, it was taken away. Just 72 hours after Ross's gold medal run, the sweet taste of Victor. But after the story turned sour. My new traces of marijuana were found in Rebleatti's system.

But after the story went viral in the days before that was a thing, and Ross's name became forever entwined with weed, his gold medal was reinstated. For one thing, cannabis wasn't a banned substance, and Ross had always claimed his exposure was secondhand. Did that feel like vindication? Like, it definitely took away that awesome feeling of winning Because now, like, the whole stereotype And, you know, around cannabis was so heavy at the time

Yeah, and then the next day flew to Los Angeles And did the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Please welcome Ross for Bagliotti. Well, you've had quite a week. You think so? Did you mind the jokes? You know, everybody was doing jokes about you. Yeah, I heard about you.

I heard about you. I got you, Ross, Nickel Bagliotti. Yeah, yeah, that was funny. Well, listen, well, good, I'm glad it worked out. Ross Bagliotti, congratulations. It was all so dramatic. Snowboarding was new to the Olympics. Canada won, then didn't, and then won again.

Not to mention weed was still very much illegal in Canada at this time, and hugely stigmatized. While all this was happening, Ryan Wedding was just coming up in the sport. Ryan around that time, he was probably 17. or 18 and I was like 10 years older than him. At the end of my career and he was the new guy. And I'm like, thank God I already won and I don't have to worry about Ryan, you know? Like this guy's on fire.

He looked like Superman, over six feet tall, fully jacked, and all the best equipment. You know, his family was all around him coming to the races and I could see like he was supported. Everyone was impressed with Ryan and his ability and thought that he was definitely going to be the next. you know, the next good guy on tour. The 2002 Olympic Winter Games on CBC. Brought to you by Tim Hortons. Tim Hortons wishes our athletes every success. Salt Lake City, Utah.

This is where Ryan Wedding had his one and only Olympic run. Ryan Wedding, if anyone has the potential to hold a ton of speed into the flats. It's this man right here. He starts strong, but then falters. on a turn hitting one of the gates. This costs him seconds, vital seconds. The time for 6-1, 16th place for the 20-year-old.

His first, well, he won't be moving on to the finals. The whole race is less than a minute. After years of preparing, Ryan's Olympic dream lasted just 38 seconds. I mean, as results at Salt Lake City, weren't like surprising to anybody like the best guy doesn't always have a good day but at the same time he's still qualified to be at the Olympics like that shows that he's good well we've had a great couple weeks of training I was really

stoked coming into the event I mean I'm so just to be here the whole thing so exciting I never imagined it would be this incredible it's too bad things didn't go the way I wanted today I wrote it pretty well I think maybe just a little bit too tentative didn't let it run quite enough In this CBC clip, one of the only times he was interviewed as an athlete, wedding sounds like he's taking his disappointing run well. But Alexa, she remembers that no matter how team members did, Olympic athletes often struggled once it was over.

Well, sometimes I think the challenge was, is your goal is to go to the Olympics. So now you hit that goal and now you're like, well, now I've done what I wanted to do. And that's the other challenge too, is like, okay, so what? Now what? What's your next goal? Because you have to change who you are. You're not an athlete anymore. You're something else. You have to change. You know, you don't wake up at night wondering how you're going to be faster. So you have to change gears and figure something else out. And it's a tough transition. And everyone goes through it and they go through it differently. Alexa ran into Ryan in town a few years after his Olympic run and she noticed physically he had changed.

And she worried for him. You could tell he was starting to get into more trouble. He put on a lot of weight in muscle, right? So, like, you know, he got some big tattoos on him that you're like, oh, it's a bit of an aggressive tattoo there, my friend. Ross agrees. Coming down from the high of an Olympic career, it makes sense you'd seek that rush elsewhere.

You know, we were pro-snowboarders on tour, traveling the world. you know, it was a lot of good times and, you know, it was all about adrenaline and risk taking risks and doing everything. And I think there's a certain part of the population that would just rather, like, do that. And, you know, live that exciting, crazy lifestyle where you're looking over your shoulder all the time.

One risk-taking lifestyle, popular in British Columbia at the time was growing weed. And there was some serious money to be made. Some estimates put it at a $6 billion industry. I wasn't growing myself. I was helping my friends who were growing. So I was like trimming, taking care of the plants, that sort of thing. I was high profile. I was scared to even trim, let alone have my own grow up and buy and sell weed on the black market. Like that was completely out of the question for me. Just I was high profile. And I couldn't go through another thing that happened at the Olympics. I understood I went through that and I didn't want that to happen again.

And I didn't want to be involved in the black market. Ross didn't want in. But others did. There was money to be made. Ross does the math. So the amount of money that they're getting for one pound is three grand. So if you did, you know, let's say you had, you know, a thousand plants. And let's say you got.

say 700 pounds times 3,000. That's $2.1 million every three months. Whoa. So times four. So you're making that much money a year. And that's $8,400,000. And that's just a made-up quick number. The temptation would be so enormous, of course.

That temptation seemed to be too much. for Ryan Wedding. So cocaine was coming up from South America or Central America, wherever it, you know, Peru or Colombia, wherever it comes from. And, you know, the Canadian growers were basically trading cannabis for cocaine to bring into Canada. That's probably pretty close to what was going on. By 2006, four years after his Olympic debut and a month after his 25th birthday,

Ryan Wedding was back in the new. news. And this time, it had nothing to do with snowboarding. After the Olympics and retirement from professional snowboarding, Wedding works as a bouncer at a couple of BC nightclubs. It's been reported that around this time, Wedding had a lot of money that was flowing in and out. You know, he had a luxury condo in Vancouver. He was driving fancy cars and he was spending lots of money on real estate. So he would have been interacting with some people he met at these nightclubs where he was working. And we know that in the early 2000s, clubs in Vancouver were quite rowdy,

but they were also sometimes violent. He also went to university for a couple years to study business, but dropped out and decided to apply those skills elsewhere. At the time, BC Budd was the largest cash crop in the province, and wedding wanted in. His friend and old teammate had the perfect spot, a property in the suburb of Maple Ridge, just east of Vancouver. I'm going this way, right?

You are. Yeah, it'll throw you back onto Scott Road, I think, and then let you go on to Highway 17. Although I did just do this earlier, right? Was it your phone? Oh, fun. Manisha Martens is a journalist who, back in the mid-2000s, worked as a local reporter in Maple Ridge, British Columbia.

She was the town reporter at the time. Everyone knew her, and she pretty much knew everything that was going on. When was the last time you were? In Mayfurt, I drive through it, but I've not gone into the back road since I, like, left, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's been a long time. It's been a while since I've been back into the boonies of Pitt Meadows.

I met her with Calvi, and the three of us drove out to Maple Ridge to take her back to her old beat. So, right now we are... We're in, like, rural Maple Ridge. It's heading out towards... this marshy area and farm area in pit meadows Maple Ridge. And it's also the site of many, many illegal growups in the past, including the one that Ryan Wedding was involved in. We drive by a sprawling property,

but it's hard to see much except the fence surrounding it and a lot of greenery. Back in 2006, Wedding's name was mentioned in connection with this property. The RCMP ended up raising. as a massive grow-up. Calvi tries to find a place to pull over on the rural road. We just let this car pass and then I'll do a little Ui. You've got a huge head, and I think that's why police use thermal imaging because you can't see what's going on in there.

And this also makes it very hard, if you notice, it's very hard to do surveillance in these areas. You can't park, you will notice a car parked around here, you know? You know, like if you had an unmarked car, it's spotted, easily spotted. Maple Ridge wasn't just known back then for its growups. It was also biker territory. It's home to the Haney Health Angels chapter. They collected taxes from every grow up in town.

And there were a lot before legalization. Maple Ridge, it's suburbia. Suburbia in B.C. was a hotbed for, illegal marijuana activity. The Hells Angels Clubhouse is five kilometers away, less than a 10-minute drive from the grow-up associated with wedding. There's almost no chance a grow-up could operate here without having at least the blessing or some

sort of tax paid. Yes, yeah. Not a grow-up this size. Not a grow-up that's not very far from the Haney Chapter's clubhouse. I think it would be safe to assume that there was knowledge of it. How much they knew, of course, we will never know. But clearly, they got a cut off of it. The bus was a very large bus, like over 8,000 plants, 10 million in marijuana seized, a street value of 10 million,

guns were seized. The chava grow up that large. with guns and product that you're putting on the streets. You smell it? Yeah. It's still a grow-off. I could smell weed. It's a fucking grow-off.

It may be a fucking grow-op. Many of those are legal now, although regulated. But in 2006, they were not. And while the RCMP's bust was the biggest Maple Ridge had ever seen at that time, there were no charges laid. Ryan Wedding and others named in the search warrant. and court documents were never arrested. Most grow-ups that got busted during that time,

there were rarely charges laid. Is it just because the courts were overwhelmed? Courts were overwhelmed, and at the end of the day, it was very hard to prove a lot of the time who actually was growing, the marijuana, right? So in this case, I think Ryan probably had a rental contract or something.

Like there was cover in some way to not connect them to the property. That was the case in most grow-ups that were busted. The owners would just faint ignorance. I didn't know this was happening in my property. Wedding was still a free man. It could have all ended there, but it didn't. Today we're unsealing a new indictment, charging wedding with two additional counts

of witness tampering, An intimidation, murder, money laundering, and drug trafficking. In late November 2025, almost 20 years since the raid on the grow-up, the U.S. Attorney General announces new charges against this former snowboarder. Ryan Wedding, now one of the FBI's most wanted. President Trump gave us one mission, Make America safe again. And we will not sit idly by and let us.

these drug dealers continue to do business, run roughshot on our neighborhoods, and put the American people and our Canadian people in harm's way. Drugs, weapons, murders, narco terrorists in the South, and an Olympian, a Canadian fugitive from the North. It's a perfect Trump administration story. And the hunt begins. You do not get to be a drug kingpin. and evade the law.

He will not evade justice. He will not evade our capture. He will not evade arrest and he will not evade prosecution. This season on the Most Wanted Olympian. The minute that you become that big, then you are in the spotlight. And sooner or later, they're going to come after you.

And when that happens, there is no more you're going to get away. Key witness in Ryan Wedding case no longer going to testify a trial because he was assassinated in Columbia. WTF, what the hell did we just learn? As I'm going to hand it over to him, poking out is just stacks and stacks of cash. Regardless of what my son was, he did not deserve to die.

He is a victim. Make no mistakes. Cartel is here. And trust me, they are watching. This podcast is a co-production between CBC Podcasts and the Toronto Star. Our series was written and produced by Phelan Johnson, Calvie Leon, and me, Michelle Shepard. At CBC, Emily Connell is our coordinating producer. Our senior producer is Andrew Friesen, mixing and sound design by Evan Kelly.

Executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. Tanya Springer is the senior manager, and RF Narani is the director of CBC podcasts. Special thanks to Talia Ritchie. Additional audio from CBC Sports and NBC. For the Toronto Star, Calvi Leon led our reporting. Our producer is Julia Delarentis Johnston. Team editors are Sean Paddenin and Ed Tubb.

Keith Pinell is Deputy Managing Editor. J.P. Foso is our executive producer. And special thanks to executive editor Grant Ellis and editor-in-chief Nicole McIntyre.