The Current - The search for Christine Harron, in Someone Knows Something.

Episode Date: November 13, 2024

Christine Harron was 15 when she disappeared from Hanover, Ont., in 1993. Her mother Mary Ann has struggled to find answers ever since, and has now teamed up with investigative filmmaker David Ridgen to find answers in the new season of CBC podcast Someone Knows Something.

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with Season 3 of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current Podcast. On May 18th, 1993, Christine Herron spent the morning with her mother, skipping school, watching television at their home in Hanover, Ontario. It was a week after her 15th birthday. And then the truant officer from her school called. Christine argued with her mom, then left for school around 1 p.m., and she never came home.

When she didn't show home, I started phoning her friends and my family just to see if maybe she went to one of her friends' house after school or something. And nobody had seen her or heard from her, so then the family and I, we started going out and looking for her, looking in parks and in the area just to see if she was someplace else and just hadn't come home yet. That's Christine's mother, Marianne. She phoned the police that night, but they told her it was too soon to do anything.

What we actually got from the Hanover police chief himself was that his daughter runs away a lot, takes off for days, so mine probably did the same thing. Mary Ann stayed up all night waiting for her daughter and worrying, but Christine was gone. It was a cold case for years until the investigative filmmaker David Ridgen started looking into it. And thanks to his work, Christine's killer is now behind bars. But there are still many unanswered questions. David Ridgen is host, writer, and producer of the CBC podcast Someone Knows Something. Season 9 is the Christine Herron case. David joins us now. David, good morning.

Good morning, Matt. Your involvement with this story started, as I mentioned, you were a documentary filmmaker and you were looking at doing a documentary about this for The National. And you said that there was something about this case that spoke to you. What was it that spoke to you about Christine's case? Well, I've been doing this since 2004. As you say, I'm a documentary filmmaker. And I was developing some television documentaries for CBC back in the late 2000s about unsolved disappearances and murders. And I recall Chrissy's case. Chrissy, as her mom calls her.

I attended a memorial service for her in Hanover at the Lutheran Church just to do some initial research. And something about the service, her photo was up there at the front. I hadn't met Marianne yet or anybody really, uh, some police were at the front. Something about how people spoke about her. And I remember saying something to the associate producer I was with there at the time. And I said, I, Christy was someone I wish we had been able to meet. And that was something that I felt strongly.

And I remember feeling that kind of heat of frustration about her case that maybe I could help. You also say, I mean, in the opening episode of season nine, that there were tears on your face for somebody that you'd never met. Yeah, it's a feeling that just comes over me and sometimes I get choked up and can't speak at those moments. And at that time, there were some tears I do recall. So go back to August of 2004. What happened after this case? I mentioned it was a cold case. It was cold for over 11 years. So in August 2004, at a party with family members,

a man aged 35 at the time, near the end of the evening, after some drinks and some kind of upset, apparently, with his family, started telling people that he had killed Christine Herron. And he picked up the phone and dialed 911. Then he hung up, but the police responded anyway, based on the 911 hangup, which they do in Ontario. And then this man confesses to the police officer that turns up and says, I killed Chrissy and says, I can show you where I left her, where I buried her. And at the time, 11 years earlier, when Chrissy disappeared,

the guy would have been 24 years old and his name was Anthony Edward Ringel. And he had worked at the local Canadian Tire, but was unemployed in May, 1993. When I met him, he was living between locations, including a family member's house and a local trailer park. What do we know about what may have happened? I mean, I want to ask about what happened with the case, given the fact that he called police, but what do we know about what may have happened that day in 1993? Well, we know what we know based on what Anthony told police. So after he was arrested in 2004, he was taken to the police station and interviewed extensively over many hours. And after that, he's jailed and goes through the stages of what would have been a murder trial in 2006.

And everything that he told police was in documents that had been sitting around doing nothing until I had found them in the archives. But this trial that was allegedly going to happen in 2006, the judge throws out the case because basically police errors. The case is stayed for a year. Ringel's freed. Nothing new happens. And it just ends. Anthony still lived in the area at the time. Nobody did anything. No reporter talked to him. No police action could be seen to be happening. And this is 2006. So you add three more years and I come on the scene in 2009. And eventually I meet with Chrissy's mother, Marianne.

Tell me how you met with Marianne. Well, it was a series of phone calls. And then I met Marianne where she currently lives. And we spoke about the case. And we decided, I think, on the basis of trying to find out more, trying to find out what happened, exploring together these dark places that we would go forward and do that. And it's been 15 years that we've been working together. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs.

And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. Marianne's on the line with us now. Marianne, good morning to you. Good morning. It's been over 30 years since Chrissy disappeared. How are you doing? I'm not so good. Um, every day is a challenge for me.

I have really bad nightmares every night to do with her, where I'm trying to reach her and save her, and I can't. So I have post-traumatic stress disorder. So it is a challenge. Every day is like the same day being lived over and over and over. That's really hard. Yes. I'm sorry. really hard. Yes. I'm sorry. Tell me a little bit about what she was like. Chrissy, oh, she was so easy to love. She wasn't one to go to parties or things like that. She was more of a loner. She had a few close friends. She loved being

around children. Hated going to school, though. She just detested going to school. Very, very smart, though. She wanted to be homeschooled, and that was something I was going to look into for her. But, yeah, she was just a beautiful child. She got along with everyone. Which is why, I mean, you mentioned not wanting to go to school. That's why she was home with you that morning on the 18th of May. Yes. She wasn't feeling well, so I was sitting on the couch, and she had her head in my lap, and I was going to allow her to stay home, but the Truant officer had called and threatened to charge

me if she didn't go to school. So I made her go that day, that afternoon. What has it been like? I mean, you talked about how difficult it is and the nightmares that you're living through. What has it been like all these years looking for answers? It's been difficult. It's been a fight. Right from day one, you know, it was a fight to try to get the OPP to come in

and take over the case. And back then it wasn't allowed. So it was years of fighting before I could get them to come in. And it seemed that every time there was somebody different handling the case, they made so many mistakes that everything got thrown out. So it was the town police that made mistakes. It was the OPP that worked out of the Walkerton area. They made all their mistakes. And then finally, another group of OPP officers came on from the cold cases. But it's been a fight the whole time just to try to get some justice for her.

Given that, what was it like to have David come into the scene when he did, in the wake of that case falling apart and you still looking for answers? What was that like to have David there? Well, at first it was a little uneasy because the OPP had warned me about talking to him. They point blank said, do not talk to him. What were they concerned about? I don't know. They said if I started talking to him, that maybe the case would get thrown out again. And they didn't want that, but you know but they weren't doing anything. So I thought I'll speak with David, see what he's about, what he wants

to do, give him a chance. David, what do you make of that? That the OPP would warn Marianne against talking to you? I think it's regular training for police. It sort of goes back to what must be the 1930s. It's kind of antiquated. I do understand that police don't want information, hold back, or whatever going out there. Marianne didn't know any hold back. She didn't know any information to talk about, mainly, except for what happened the day Chrissy disappeared.

But I understand police not wanting to talk to media. I'm a long form worker. I don't go away. I don't grab information and put it on the news that night kind of thing. But sometimes police have been bitten in the past. But also, I think there's obviously some reasons why police would not want media attention on this case, which the podcast shows. Yeah. Why was it important for you to have her as part of, of this story to have Marianne there? Uh, well, I always work with family members, uh, on my cases, uh, because I think it's proof against exploitation since the family members want to work with me off the top

and have approached me, or at least they've agreed to go through the, what I call the SKS process with me. I'm out there. People can listen or watch my films and know who I am and what kinds of things we could get up to. So SKS was designed as a self healing program, as much of a, as much as a true crime one, I would say. And it's my belief. And I've seen the proof that facilitating these kinds of journeys into darkness of cases, so that family members can confront details and maybe even meet some of the people that may have always thought might know something can lead to a kind of self healing kind of like an exorcism i guess someone did call me the antichrist the other day for working on the abortion doctor shooting season i'll tell you matt so maybe i'm at least an exorcist

but anyway directly being involved in cases means that family members have the opportunity to be agents in uncovering the truth they need. It's not a perfect process and it can take time. I worked for, as I said, for 15 years, uh, on the Christine Heron case so far, it's not over yet. Uh, but I can see some change in those I've worked with, uh, some, a lot of change. Uh, we all experienced change. We all experience trauma. We all experience sudden loss even, but we don't all experience it where we don't have answers as to why. And we may not even have the remains of the person or know where they are.

So victims' family members in these cases suffer a kind of guilt that never really goes away. Why wasn't I there to help my daughter? Why did I let my son go play in the park? I shouldn't have argued with him the last day before he disappeared or I shouldn't have let her go to school, as in Marianne's case. And victims' family members reorganized their lives around trying to solve not only the case, but themselves. And I think the SKS process, someone knows something process, gives them a big self-healing boost along the way. How closely were you working with Marianne in this case? We worked very closely together, I would say. Many times I was in the field, Marianne was either

there with me or nearby. And as new things were learned, we would convene and assess on the best course of action. And I would share as much as I possibly could with Marianne about what I was getting from the courts and the police, hundreds, thousands of pages of documents about what was actually going on in this case throughout the 2000s. Marianne, how has being involved in this with David, how has that helped you? Oh, it's helped a lot. He's given me information that I would not have known from anywhere else. Working with David, like my family

says, he's part of our family. We work that close together and we consider him that, but he has helped me tremendously. He says you were really brave over the course of this process, and I want to play an example of that. Have a listen to this. This is from the early days of his investigation. So Marianne, tell me what we're doing this morning. This morning we're going to see if Anthony Ringo will speak to me. Just try to get some answers out of him if he actually did something to Christine or why he confessed if he didn't. Why did you want to do that, Marianne? Why did you want to go and confront the man who's accused of killing your daughter?

Well, I wanted answers. That simple, you know? Why would he do it to her? You know, where did he leave her? Where can we find her body so at least she can have a decent burial? That's what was on my mind. I needed answers.

And any time I would see him on the street, I would try to get to him to try to get answers. I was never afraid of him. You would see him on the street? Yes. I'd see him walking and I would try even running towards him, but he'd run away from me. That's a pretty brave thing to do. I didn't realize it at the time. I just wasn't afraid. I wanted answers where she was. Did he ever agree to talk to you? No, he will not. He will not, not even in the past, but even now he won't agree to talk to you. No, he won't talk to me. David, you did manage to speak with him, right? I did speak to him.

Yeah, I spoke directly to him in his trailer at the trailer park. It was a long conversation and he opened up and it was definitely revealing, I would say, the conversation. And over the course of that conversation, a lot comes out. What was it that eventually led to his conviction? So from 2009 to 2012, Marianne and I gathered a ton of information about Chrissy's case, the court drama, where the cases stayed. I speak to Ringel, as we talked about, and lots of others all on camera, because I'm shooting this for a documentary for television. And all of that goes into a 20-minute TV doc made for CBC. It goes to air in spring of 2012. Then shortly after that documentary goes to air, police start an undercover operation on Anthony Ringel in the same trailer park where I met him. And the podcast tells this whole story too, and then picks up where the TV show left off

and tells the rest of the tale of how it all happened. And the work Marianne and I did is literally used by police so they can again arrest Anthony Ringel in February, 2013, except this time when he's arrested, the trial goes forward in 2016 and Anthony Ringel is convicted and is now serving a life sentence here in Ontario in a federal pen for second degree murder of Christine Herron. I think it's pretty amazing and I don't self aggrandize a lot. I don't like to talk that way, but I'm proud that the work did its job. What are you most proud of? I mean, you're welcome to, to, to blow your own horn here. What are you most proud of?

Just that the fact that spending so much time, uh, has helped Marianne to learn the truth about what happened. Some of her questions at least were answered, not all of them. I'm happy that in some way the work was directly used by police. It just means that the work I am doing is meaningful and has in the past, but in this case, it's fairly dramatic. What about for you, Marianne? I mean, in the podcast you say

that there's no such thing as closure. And I wonder what that word means to you given what you, Marianne. I mean, in the podcast, you say that there's no such thing as closure. And I wonder what that word means to you, given what you have gone through. Well, there is no closure. That is a word that I actually hate, because you're only hearing his side of the story. So you don't know whether he's exaggerated, whether he's telling the truth, you know. So yeah, I don't like that. I don't have closure. I don't have my answers as to what happened that day. But without David's help, he would not be behind bars because they weren't doing their job until he did the documentaries. What does that word mean to you, David? I mean, it's a word that people run away from often

because it doesn't mean, to some people, it doesn't mean anything at all. And yet it's a word that's often used in narratives like this. Yeah, it's a good question. Closure is a media expression, I believe. It's meant to imply that there's a beginning, middle, and end to every story.

And that when we find out who did something, it's the end. And it isn't. Closure's bullshit. And most, if not all, of the victims' family members I have known and worked with have said something like Marianne just did. We find out the truth, we find a perpetrator, the gavel falls, but the loss is still there. We don't know where Chrissy is yet. All the questions are not answered yet, if they can ever be.

Sometimes it can be cold comfort to hear that closure is an ephemeral concept. But in fact, I think it's a healthy part of surviving to recognize that it is. And that's what it's all about. Surviving these cases, surviving, growing, trying to self-heal, having an agency to continually strive for being satisfied with yourself and being happy. So what are the things you're still searching for in this? Well, I've been trying to get Anthony to speak to Marianne and that's going to continue. That's a process that is going to continue reaching out to him, his lawyer, and through the institutions.

We're also still searching for Chrissy and and there's an attempt or attempts made, and we're going to continue that search as well. And anything else Marianne wants to do, I'm there. Why is it important for you that he speaks to her? Because Marianne has the questions, and I think direct access, direct confrontation with those kinds of people are important for victims' family members,

and I think it's important that Marianne gets that chance. And Marianne, if you had that chance, what are the questions that you would ask this man? I'd want to know why he did it. Why, how, where he left her. Like, there's a million questions going through my brain that I want answers to from him, and only he can give them to me.

So it's difficult, and I don't understand why he's afraid to talk to me. I don't understand that he's already in jail. Nothing more can happen to him, so why not give me the truth? If he did that, if he spoke to you, what do you think those answers would give you? Just a little more knowledge of that day. Like, I can't believe everything he says because, you know, it's just his version, you know, what really happened, you know? So, it's tough, but I want answers to everything. I've waited so long for them. The police won't give me my answers that I need.

They won't tell me anything. I've asked them to reveal all of the undercover tapes and everything of Ringle, and they won't even do that. I've been fighting for that for years now. You've been fighting for this alongside David for a long time, and I wonder what his persistence and his, I don't want to say obsession, but in some ways it is with this story, what that says to you. That someone cares.

Someone cares enough to help me find the answers I need. Like I say, David is family to me and to the rest of my family. You know, what he has done for us is remarkable. David, in that first episode, and this goes back to what we said at the very beginning, you say that there's something about this story that keeps pulling you back. And I just finally, I mean, having worked on a number of these, this is season nine, but having worked on a number of these sorts of stories, what it's like for you to hear from Marianne that this is work, but you're also now family. family. Thanks, Marianne, for including me in your family with the Chihuahuas. To me, Chrissy just seemed forgotten, like all the cases that I've worked on, actually forgotten or let down by

everyone but her family. And I just wanted to make sure that didn't continue. And that's sort of the thing that helps to drive me and the feeling that there is something that can help. me and the feeling that there is something that can help. And although answers may not come, we have a lot of the information and some of the information I didn't share with Marianne and Marianne knows that some of it was very difficult information in these videos, the undercover operation, we talked about it. And someday that information may be passed on whenever Marianne is ready for that. David, thank you very much for this. Thank you.

And Marianne, it's good to talk to you. Thank you very much and take care of yourself. You're welcome. Thank you. David Ridgen is the host, writer, and producer of Someone Knows Something, the Christine Herron case from CBC Podcasts. Marianne is Christine Herron's mother. The first two episodes of that podcast are available now wherever you listen to podcasts, and you can find episode one on The Current's

podcast feed. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.