Suspicion - Why did Kevin Donovan investigate this case?

Episode Date: April 10, 2025

Kevin Donovan talks about why he decided to look at Chris Sheriffe's case. Hear from him, and catch up on the series so far, while getting a glimpse of the weeks ahead.  Subscribers get access to episodes one week early. 

Hi, it's Kevin Donovan, host of Murder on Mount Olive. Six episodes in, I thought I'd tell you why I chose this case. For the past 40 years, I've been writing newspaper stories. For an old-timer like me, podcasts offer a chance to give our work at the Toronto Star an even bigger audience. The thing is, you need the right subject. I like topics where we can make a difference. First, there was Death in a Small Town,

a story about a mother's quest for answers in her son's death. It never dawned on me that people would look at us. It didn't dawn on me for weeks. It dawned on me when they called me in and interrogated me. Then I figured, oh what maybe they were thinking. Then it was the billionaire murders probing the shockingly unsolved case and the police screw ups. The police failed to properly examine and assess the crimes

the Warberry and the Sherman are located in the basement of the pool. They failed to recognize the suspicious, instiged manner in which their bodies were situated. My stories have cost a lot of people their jobs. Cops, politicians, government types, lawyers, journalists, business leaders. A few people have gone to jail too.

The Chris Sheriff case is the first time I've tried to do the opposite, to see if someone was wrongfully imprisoned. The judge and jury, they never bought Chris' story. And that's it. There was no planning, there was no nothing. There was no him saying, hold on, I'm going to go shoot this person right here, and I'm going to come back to your car, and we're going to drive off, and I'm going to chop you here, and you're going to go here.

A story like this has a lot of twists and turns. The theory was that our deceased was just in the wrong place the wrong time wearing a red gold shirt. There's moments when I thought I was wasting my time and then something pulls me back. He was an excellent soccer player and a hardworking kid and a nice guy. Sometimes though, the system has tunnel vision with an accused.

Lawyer James Lockyer helped found Canada's Innocence Project. They are generally going to be low income, if not very low income. They are more likely to be members of the Visible One Army. I try to look for context outside the facts of the case. Author Keith Merrith, a retired high-ranking cop who is black, told me tales from both sides of the badge. Working as an undercover cop as a young man, he got pulled over by police officers who didn't know him

three times in one day. And what's the common denominator? My mahogany hue and that badass car. Right? So I say to you, how many people can tell you that they've been stopped within 40 minutes by three different officers while driving properly. In Murder on Mount Olive, I'm putting the Canadian justice system on trial.

Take the way confidential informants were used in this case. Dean Embry, a defense lawyer, said it was dangerous and wrong. The big pitfalls, they might be lying. And it's a real danger because they tend to be sort of unsavory witnesses, you know, people with their own involvement in the criminal justice system. I mean, any other witness who came and said, well, I came to give this evidence for money, the court would look at, you know, a scant. You'll hear from all of those voices in the next few weeks. But tomorrow, you'll hear what the police did to Chris Sheriff's dad.

And some very, very unsettling new information about Chris. Thanks for listening. If you have comments or information that might help me, please reach out at kdonovan at the star dot ca.