The Decibel - The Decibel presents: In Her Defence

Episode Date: October 12, 2023

In Her Defence, a new podcast series from The Globe and Mail, tells the story of Helen Nasland, in her words for the first time. Through a series of jailhouse interviews with The Globe’s Jana G. Pruden, Naslund speaks about the domestic violence she suffered and what led to a fateful night – that led to the murder of her husband. Naslund’s story and harsh sentencing captured the attention and outrage of tens of thousands of Canadians, asking what is fair punishment when a victim becomes the accused. This series dives into her fight for freedom and how the justice and legal systems deal with women who kill their abusers.If you’re experiencing intimate partner violence, you can find resources and your nearest shelterat sheltersafe.ca.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

Hi, it's Meenaka, and today we're bringing you the first episode of In Her Defense, a new podcast from The Globe and Mail. It's reported and hosted by Jana Pruden, who you've heard before on The Decibel. In Her Defense is an eight-part series about Helen Naslund, an Alberta woman sentenced to 18 years in prison for killing her husband, Miles. But as you'll hear from Jana's interviews with Helen in prison and with friends and family, Miles abused Helen for decades. The long sentence she got had people across Canada outraged, and a group of lawyers came together to try to set Helen free. Here's a bit of what you'll hear in the series.

I wouldn't even want to try and go back and count the number of times that I've had a gun to my head. And to actually hear that click, and I'll never forget that, that sound. I didn't know what had happened, but he wasn't missing. Because he wouldn't have done that. There's no control in walking away. What did you think about that?

What, that he was dead? That she had shot him? Good job, Ma. Want a drink? Let's go get drunk. You have given me zero, no indication that being a physically abused person or a battered wife is the issue here. Zero. Alan, what we're really interested in is who shot Miles.

Yes, and that responsibility belongs to one person. And who's that person, Alan? We know more of the truth, and Alan didn't kill anybody. She covered for somebody else. At my age, a first-degree murder charge was a distance. You can find In Her Defense wherever you get your podcasts, or click on the link in our show notes. Now, here's episode one.

Wes Naslund was sleeping when he got a phone call from the farm. It was September 2011, the Monday of the Labor Day long weekend. His brother Daryl was on the phone at first, but Daryl couldn't seem to get the words out. So their younger brother Neil got on the line. He goes, I think we don't know where the father is. He went to cut hay this morning, and his gun is gone, and his wallet's here, and the car's gone. We don't know where he is. Miles talked about killing himself a lot. But Wes knew his family.

And he knew his father. He wasn't buying it. And then when did you realize that there was more to the story than that? Probably about the time I hung up the phone. As a reporter, I've seen how quickly something horrible can happen. How lives can change forever in an instant. A car veers from its lane. A spark catches.

But in some cases, you can see a tragedy coming far in the distance. For years, even decades, people are moving toward it, and yet no one seems to know how to change course or stop it. I've written a version of this story far too many times. An abusive man, his violence escalating. Sometimes one person dies, usually his wife or girlfriend. Sometimes a lot of people do. Children, relatives, neighbors, police.

This is what seems to have been happening with Miles Naslin and his family. Everyone on the farm knew for a long time that something bad would happen. It was just a matter of who it would happen to and how bad it was going to be. Did you ever think or worry that he was going to kill your mother? Lots of times. I always wondered who he was going to kill, if anybody. Even when I was young, I had a pretty open thought to things. I don't remember thinking, worried about, oh, he's going to kill mom. Could be anyone in the house.

Could be himself. The family reported Miles missing. But I'm going to tell you right now, he wasn't missing. He was dead. And his wife, Helen, would eventually go to prison for killing him. This is Helen's story. I have to warn you that this story is about violence and death, and it's not always easy to listen to.

There's descriptions of attempted suicide, of abuse of people and animals. But it's also a story of survival, of the way people can come together to help each other when systems fail. I'm Janna Pruden. I'm a reporter at The Globe and Mail, and I've been covering court and crime on the prairies for about 25 years. I first heard about Helen's case on the local news the day she was sentenced.

She got 18 years in prison for killing Miles, a man who had violently abused her for three decades. Honestly, I couldn't stop thinking about it. And I wasn't the only one. People across the country were outraged. It seemed so unfair that she was going to prison after enduring a lifetime of abuse. I had covered so many other cases where men got far less time for killing women who had never hurt them at all. I wanted to know why Helen paid so high a price. We haven't given up so far A home on the farm We haven't given up so far

In the beautiful world, in the beautiful the beautiful beautiful world I wanted to understand exactly what happened on the Naslund farm. That night and the days and months

and years that came before it. And I wanted to think about what could have been different. This is In Her Defense, a podcast from the newsroom of The Globe and Mail. You're listening to episode one, The Ticking Time Bomb. I'm going to go to bed. All right, so we're in Holden. Holden looks a lot like Lundar, the town that I started reporting in. You know, we're just pulling into the one street in town. I went to Holden for the first time in the spring with my colleague Amber Bracken. Holden Street.

Lots of big fluffy clouds in the sky. Probably exactly what you would think about small town Alberta, I think. Thrift store. It's open. Country kitchen restaurant. Looks cute. Definitely looks like a little western. Some of these buildings have a classic old west look. And there we are at the end of town. So that was Holden. Holden has a population of about 350 people. It's just over an hour outside Edmonton, where I live. It's a farming community, a place where everybody knows everybody else.

It's also the closest town to the Naslin Farm, and the closest bar. Here's the Holden Hotel on the left. We were there to meet Lawrence Wepler and Patricia Hogue, who own the Holden Hotel and Patty's Place, the restaurant and bar inside. The bar is plain, just a room with some tables and chairs and a loudly buzzing beer fridge. Uh-oh.

There's also a painting of a beer stein with the silhouette of a cowboy riding a bucking bronco inside. It's pretty much a two-person show, so Patty made sure we had coffee, and we talked in between customers in the restaurant and people stopping in to buy beer. Lawrence and Patty bought the hotel in 2002 and met Miles and Helen Naslin right away. Within a week or so of being here, we met them and they started coming in. The four of us hit it off. Even though the two couples got along well, Lawrence and Patty could see that something

was going on. And other people in town could see it too. Well, you certainly knew there was something going on with the boys. I mean, the way they acted. I mean, Wes was the oldest one. And like I said, if Wes was in the bar and Miles walked through that door, he was gone. He was gone so fast. He was just... And Neil, too. Neil and Miles, they fought steady.

They fought all the time. They wouldn't get together at all if it was like throwing gasoline on a fire. They just stayed apart. One night there was three guys come in from a neighboring community. One got right into me. You still hanging around with that son of a bitch? What are you talking about? That fucking Naslin, you still hanging around with him?

Well, why wouldn't I? He's an asshole, he treats Helen like shit, he beats on her, and oh man, what he told, it was bad. He knew Helen were not here. He really tore into me and told me all about, oh, he's such a jerk and so on and so forth. And if her and the kids don't do what they're told, he holds a gun to their head. He had a handgun.

That's what this man told you that day? Yes, yes. Lawrence saw Miles' control over Helen firsthand when they went to the farm for dinner one day. This was the first I'd really seen anything. I walked into that building and he's sitting there in a recliner and I walked in and I said uh thought you were working on the equipment. Yeah how's it going up there Helen? Her and the youngest one were up there working on the combine. Oh yeah, I need another drink. And she was expected to jump down and mix it for him.

Right now. There were occasions after that she'd come in and you could see there was bruising around the eyes and so on and so forth. But in public, I mean he was a perfect gentleman. Behind closed doors, look out. Maybe you've known a family like the Naslans. There's stories that go around, things you notice about the people who live in your town. But even if you know something is going on,

and this can be true in a small town or in a big city, a workplace, it's hard to know what to do. What if you say something and people get mad at you? What if you somehow make it worse? I mean, we knew there was problems there, but what do you do about it? I mean she couldn't even do anything about it. I mean bits and pieces we heard, she wouldn't even try to run away because he knew he'd

hunt her down and then there'd be big trouble. I mean he would beat her so bad. I mean she knew that and we knew that. So things were never reported. That was the bad part. It was never reported to the police. But, you know, many, many, many people knew what was going on, but nothing was said. She did it all. Like, honestly, they would not survive without Helen. Corleen LeClaire worked at the Holden Hotel. She and her husband were neighbours of the Naslans,

and for a time, friends. He would normally be getting up about that time at 10 o'clock and he'd sit in his little lazy boy chair and she'd grab him his water because normally he'd been drinking or doing something overnight or he doesn't get up in the morning. And I know there's the one time I remember uh that she was uh she changed the oil in the tractors and the combine and the trucks and all that and he uh I says how come she's doing that and he says well just in case I'm not here one day that I don't know.

So 10 o'clock's pretty late for a farmer to wake up. She used to pack her kids up and she had they had a hundred and some chickens and cows calving and she'd pack the kids up either slay them out or carry them outside while she did chores or check things while he's still in bed and stuff. He was just lazy. Do you remember what you thought about that at the time? I just thought he was a useless thing. Seriously. Corleen and her husband used to go over for coffee every day in the early years. They were the closest neighbors,

and their kids were around the same age. Corleen liked Helen a lot, but at some point she stopped going over to visit. There was a while that I quit going to them because I didn't really like the way the kids were being brought up, because I'd offered to take the kids to baseball and stuff like that, and he would never let them do that kind of stuff and the kids were getting bad and so I didn't want my son associated with that then my daughter was a little younger and stuff so and she wasn't going to associate with that so there was a few years that I never even had much to do with them because of it but their kids like would kick each other and they're like very abusive

to each other like down here kill each other on the way to the buses you could see sometimes if we happen to drive by or even when they're little like but probably came because they seen what was going on I guess and thought it was all right and did you in that time did you have any concerns about, like, so you saw Seema's lazy? I've never seen him hit her or anything like that, seriously. But I just thought he was extremely lazy. Why does she have to do everything all the time, right? Did you ever see him or get a sense of him being, like, you know, kind of sharp with her or, like, swearing at her? swearing at her yeah he's always hollering

stuff like that definitely you could hear it from my house some days right you could hear the yelling yeah oh yeah i'm not sure if it was the kids sometimes or but yeah you could know you could hear the yelling from i was half a mile just across the bush and did you ever I mean you've already described yourself as someone who kind of I did I stick to myself I'm not really an outspoken person honestly that this is making me very uncomfortable yeah so so you did you ever think and I went through a lot of stuff myself so it was I should have left my husband 20 years ago before so I stayed for the kids and stuff you had your own things happening happening. Okay. So how many kids in your family? There was eight. Eight. Okay. And where is Helen in that order? She's the baby. The baby. Okay. And where are you in that order? Just older than Helen.

Okay. The second baby. Sure. The two afterthoughts. Right. Or the two that shouldn't have happened. This is Sharon Heslop, Helen's sister. She also had some opinions about Miles and the way he treated his wife and kids. He was a braggart. He'd seen it all, done it all, knew it all. And yet I always thought he was just a lazy piece of crap like he again you know he was friendly enough he could be a friendly nice guy and and

I'm quite sure there was lots of neighbors and people that thought he was the best guy in the world he'd help anybody but that isn't what he was the best guy in the world. He'd help anybody. But that isn't what he was like at home, I don't think. He was no threat to me so I, if he said something I didn't like I just told him, I told him off. And it never went any farther than that. But you know thinking back I'm not sure how much Helen paid for that. But, you know, thinking back, I'm not sure how much Helen paid for that. And she's never said, right? But I'm going to bet there was some retaliation at times. And what did you see in Helen at that point how was she in those years very down like a um

so she never really laughed she didn't she didn't talk much. It was like she only talked when she was asked a question. Miles, like, thought he could tell me what to do also. And I remember once telling him, I just left 16 years of somebody telling me what to do, and he wasn't telling me I'd do what I wanted to do. And Helen, I think, and I don't know why I didn't see it, but I honestly didn't. Very submissiveness but again

she was in that situation and I don't know I didn't even pick up on it and openly I he never did anything to Helen when I was there, which, again, they don't. What was it like for you to leave your relationship? Well, I had been planning.

I'm not going to say we left blindly so had something set up and then the one day he went off in a rage in the afternoon to town and I phoned a friend and she brought one of her kids and a truck and I had a truck and and we loaded our literally our clothes and the cat and the birds and the fish, and we left. And we stayed with a friend.

We basically hid with a friend for a couple weeks until the place I had rented was available, and we hid. He didn't know. He knew where I worked. He knew where the kids went to school, but there was restraining orders and he wasn't allowed in the school. So it was a scary time too,

but we had people that helped us. When you left your relationship, did you worry about what happened? Were you afraid of him? Yes, that's why he didn't know where I lived, where we lived. And even at the court hearings and such, he would be detained in the courthouse by an RCMP so that I had a 10, 15-minute head start leaving town.

That must have been really terrifying. Again, I had an incredible lawyer and good people around us. And so we were lucky. So I understand how Helen, I don't know if she had the friendships maybe that I did. Or the network of people. Even after escaping her own bad marriage, Sharon didn't see the full extent of what was going on with Helen and Miles, but or something, you just have to say. But I know that you can't help somebody that doesn't want to. They have to do it first.

But I honestly, I don't think she thought she would be safe, would ever be safe. Having known him even, you know, in the way that you did and seeing his personality and knowing Helen, do you think she could have gotten away and been safe? No. I don't think he would ever stop looking for her or trying to drag her back or choke the life out of her. Like I had a few months after the girls and I left, one of the little girls that went to school with my girls, her mom was choked to death by the ex-husband in front of the little girl. We don't always talk about it, but domestic violence is common. Domestic violence incidents make up a quarter of all violent crimes reported to police in Canada. And in 80% of the cases involving

intimate partners, the victims are women and girls. Women in rural areas, and specifically women in the Prairie Provinces, are at increased risk of both violence and homicide by their partners. The threat against Indigenous women and girls is even higher. Up until the day Miles Naslund was reported missing, no one in his house ever called the police. The vast majority of domestic violence never gets reported. That means you know someone who is living or has lived with domestic violence. Maybe that person is you. Let's go back to Holden, back to the bar. Picture Miles with a meshback trucker hat

and a snap button western shirt walking through the door. What did he look like? Well-dressed, always. He was a big fella. Well, he was about 5'10", but heavy set. Always very talkative, very outgoing. Miles's drink was rum and Diet Pepsi. In the years before he disappeared, he was at the bar every weekend. It was nothing for Lawrence and Patty to see him toss back 10 or 12 drinks, then take a bottle home.

For the most part, he got along okay with people at the bar, except for one night. There are a few versions of how it all started. After hearing about Miles's temper, it's hard for me to imagine him approaching that situation with a cool head. But here's how Lawrence saw it. In my opinion, the way he handled it was good. Miles had a brand new pickup truck. He parked it over beside the neighboring office, so it would be on the street. And this crazy young bugger here in town came into the parking lot and it was gravel and he did three spin arounds with the car and sprayed the new truck with rocks. Well it would piss me off too. And Miles didn't hit him he didn't do a

damn thing he just backed him up against the wall and he said, look what the hell's the matter with you, you stood the new truck out there, why did you do that? But there was people that didn't like Miles, and that's why he did it. But that's where we stopped, right there, nothing more to say, and the kid left. And I don't know if it was the weekend after that, Miles walked out the door at quitting time and we were closing the bar down. And I heard a ruckus outside and we ran out. And there was a half a dozen guys out there with irons and everything out just beating the Supreme out of Miles. They really beat him up bad.

I might have both. You got a rock in the head. That's Patty Hogue, Lawrence's wife and the Patty of Patty's Place. Yeah, well, I got a split head open. Didn't say a word to me. Well, what's to say? So you run out to help. Like, when you walk out the door, what do you see? Just around the corner of the building, Miles was down on the ground,

and they were just wailing on him, kicking and beating on them with irons. And I jumped in. I took two of the guys out, Darrell grabbed a couple of guys, got them out of there. In the meantime, I got hit with a tire iron, split my head open. But we broke it up. And didn't tell Patty about it? No, I was busy doing the show in the liquor store. And then I come out and I said, where the hell is everybody? To the girl that was working with me. And she said, all the cops are coming. There's a big fight outside.

I said, where the hell is Lawrence? It was just, it was. Yeah, that's scary. Well, I was all prearranged. I mean, they felt Miles needed to be taught a lesson. Miles got a serious head injury that night. It seemed to make him even worse. By the summer of 2011, Lawrence and Patty could sense things were reaching a breaking point.

The last days, shall we say, uh, Miles was pretty severe diabetic. He wasn't feeling good he went to the doctor, did a thorough examination, the doctor was going to put him on insulin. Then he noticed marks on his face, skin cancer. So he unloaded all this on him in one day. And what we heard, and we heard this from Helen, he got out of the doctor's office, he was supposed to go pick up the insulin and then go back and they'd show him how to administer it. And he never did go, to our knowledge. But Helen was at work, and he phoned her at work, and he was just screaming.

Like he blamed her for everything. Even before that, Miles and Helen were barely holding it together. Helen was working a day job in town to help pay the bills, then working well into the night trying to bring in the crops. Harvest is the most stressful time on the farm. The time when all your work for the whole year pays off or comes to nothing. And for Miles and Helen, everything was on the line. Part of the part I missed too was bankruptcy.

It wasn't her fault. It was his stupidity. Anyway, he screamed and yelled at her on the phone and he said, you're all going to pay when I get home. And that was the night that it happened. And he was drunk, furious. What happened at home, I don't know. But that's the night it ended. I remember the first domestic homicide I ever covered.

I was just a couple of years into my career, working at a small paper in the city of Medicine Hat. It was January 2001. The victim's name was Candy Bonet. She was a mother of three, found dead at an old drive-in by a trucker who pulled over to eat. She was naked, wrapped in garbage bags. Candy had left her husband Rocky just over a year earlier. He showed up at her house with a backpack full of rope, duct tape, a razor, and a blindfold. He went into her bedroom where she was sleeping, tied her up, and eventually strangled her to death in the bathtub. I learned covering another domestic homicide that it takes at least two minutes of continuous choking to kill someone. In that case, the prosecutor let the jury sit in the quiet for two minutes to show how long that really is.

That was just five seconds. I've covered so many domestic homicides since then, far too many to count. But Helen's story is different. She survived domestic violence, and then she went to prison. I wondered what other endings there could have been to her story, other ways she could have escaped the abuse. What does justice look like when the victim becomes the accused? How does a woman like Helen ever get free? I wrote to Helen in prison and asked whether she would talk to me.

A year and a half later, she was ready. This has been the first episode of In Her Defense, a podcast from The Globe and Mail. Episode two is available right now. Coming this season. I wouldn't even want to try and go back and count the number of times that I've had a gun to my head. And to actually hear that click, I'll never forget that, that sound. I didn't know what had happened, but he wasn't missing.

Because he wouldn't have done that. There's no control in walking away. What did you think about that? What, that he was dead? That she had shot him? Good job Ma! Want a drink? Let's go get drunk. You have given me zero, no indication that being a physically abused person battered wife is the issue here zero I know what we're really interested in has been who shot miles so that responsibility belongs to one person and who's that person hello we know more of the truth and Helen didn't kill anybody. She covered for somebody else.

At my age, a first-degree murder charge is a dissidence. In Her Defense is made by Kasia Mihailovic and me, Janna Pruden. Field recording by Amber Bracken. Our executive editor is Angela Pachenza. Special thanks to head of visual journalism, Matt Frainer, and head of editing, Ian Bokoff. Our theme song is The Fighter by Jen Grant. In Her Defense is recorded at McEwen University by Sheena Rossiter, Sasha Stanojevic, and Emily Rubaita. Sheena Rossiter and David Crosby mixed this episode.

Thanks to Rachel Levy-McLaughlin for mixing the trailer. We believe Helen's story is really important, and we want as many people as possible to hear it and think about the effects of domestic violence. Please subscribe to In Her Defense in your podcast app, help us by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts, or share the show with a friend. Seriously, text a link right now, have a listening party,

put it on threads, go on Blue Sky or whatever, go on TikTok. It really helps. You can email me at jpruden at globeandmail.com. To learn more about this podcast and intimate partner violence in Canada, go to tgam.ca slash inherdefense. That's defense with a C. You can also sign up for our newsletter there where I'll send you photos, exclusive behind-the-scenes content, and updates about this podcast.

Thanks to Karen Onn for setting all that up. If you're experiencing intimate partner violence and want to talk to someone, you can find resources and your nearest shelter at sheltersafe.ca. Support journalism like this by subscribing to The Globe and Mail. Our listeners get a special discount on new subscriptions at www.globemail.com slash podcast deal. You can find all these links in the show notes. Take care and thank you for

listening.