True Crime Campfire - Mad Science: The Murder of Paul Maasland

Episode Date: January 29, 2021

Michel de Montaigne once wrote that obsession is the wellspring of genius and madness. If today’s story isn’t a flawless example of that, then I don’t think there’s ever been one. It’s almost a cliché that genius is often tinged with something dark. Geniuses do tend to be obsessive people, and surely by now we true crime fans have seen what obsession can do to human morality. It can squash it like a bug, more or less. In the story we’re about to tell you, obsessive genius crashes head-on into naïve idealism, and eleven years later, the people who witnessed it are still picking the shrapnel out of their hair.Sources:https://torontolife.com/city/todd-howley-the-killer-inside-muskoka/https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/algae-at-centre-of-mysterious-crime/article29578436/ID’s “A Lie to Die For,” episode “Killer Inventor”Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail] a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. Michel de Montaigne once wrote that obsession is the wellspring of genius and madness. If today's story isn't a flawless example of that, then I don't think there's ever been one. It's almost a cliche that genius is often tinged with something dark. Geniuses do tend to be obsessive people, and surely by now, we true crime fans have seen what obsession can do to human morality. It can squash it like a bug, more or less. In the story we're about to tell you, obsessive genius crashes head on into and naive idealism, and 11 years later, the people who witnessed it are still picking the

shrapnel out of their hair. This is Mad Science, the murder of Paul Masland. So, campers, we're in Bracebridge, Ontario, Canada. gorgeous place about two hours from Toronto, known for waterfalls and sparkling lakes. It's a place where people go to escape the city and relax, enjoy the water in the trees, but on August 30th, 2010, the people of Bracebridge got a nasty shock. An off-duty firefighter was easing his fishing boat into the water of one of those beautiful lakes when he spotted what he thought was a pile of trash on the shore. Curious, he went back onto shore and headed over to poke through the pile.

There were a couple of big rubber totes, a couple pairs of large, latex gloves, some rope, and two garbage bags. When the fireman poked at the trash bags, he uncovered something pale and hairy. It only took him a second to realize he was looking at a human knee. Holy shit. I can only imagine what a punch in the gut, a sight like that would be, like in a beautiful setting like that in broad, sunny daylight. But the guy was a firefighter. He'd seen some gnarly stuff before, so he shook it off and called it in.

RCMP and forensic texts race to the scene, of course, and the lead CSI had the presence of mine to notice some rain clouds in the distance, and she quickly had the techs put up a big tent to protect any potential evidence from the weather. Already they could see some shoe prints and tire impressions in the sand near the body, some tiny bits of what looked like metal and plastic, and a little chip of wood stuck to the victim's belly. A watch was found in the water a few feet away from the shore. All that stuff had to be collected and preserved. Dental records soon revealed that the body on the shore was Paul Masland, the happily married 56-year-old CEO of a company called Verdant. Maslin lived about two hours away in Oakville. The lake where they found his body was close to a vacation cottage owned by his wife's family, a place where she spent a lot of time. This was an awful loss for the people who loved Paul Masland. He'd lived all over the world, he was a brilliant guy.

He once went up against the world-famous chess grandmaster Boris Spaskey, and he lasted for like, 33 moves, which is the thing most of us couldn't do if our lives defended on it. Like, I could probably hold out for like maybe 20 minutes in a game of checkers, but I'm going to be honest with you, even that might be pushing my limits. I would lose in two moves flat. And he wasn't just smart. He was also warm-hearted and generous and fun to be around. He liked a game of pool and a few whiskeys after work, and for like 30 years he'd been

having them at the same bar, a place called Jingles that sounds a lot like cheers. Don't you love a place like that? Like you walk in. The bartender already knows what you want. Has it all ready for you. Everybody knows you. You know, all your bar buds are there. You know, where everybody knows your name, that kind of place.

But those places are the bomb. Like I had one of those myself years and years ago in my misspent youth. So, yeah, it kind of made me happy reading about Jingles. Jingles was Paul's place. He even met his wife there in the 80s. They had a happy marriage, even if it was a little non-traditional. They lived apart for a lot. of the time. Paul at his apartment in Oakville and his wife in hers in London, not London, England,

London, Ontario, and then her family's cottage out in Bracebridge. But they loved each other a lot. They had chosen not to have kids. They had boxer dogs instead, who are the goodest boys with like the sweetest faces ever and I love them. Not that you asked, but I just felt it needed to be said. I have very strong feelings about doggos and boxer dogs in particular. One of their Boxers won best in Breed at Westminster, too. So obviously a very good boy. So all in all, Paul Masland was a much beloved guy. He's easygoing, sweet nature, the kind of person with a reputation for integrity. He'd worked for years as a computer programmer, then founded his own software firm. Eventually, it took off like mad, made millions of dollars, and by the early 2000s,

he was able to sell it and get into Angel investing. In case you're not familiar with the term, campers, an angel investor buys promising companies and injects capital into projects that couldn't get off the ground otherwise. It's kind of like the opposite of a hostile takeover. This was right up Paul Maslin Street. He was a lifelong sci-fi fan, meaning he's definitely one of Whitney's and my people. And he loved the notion that technology could make the world better. He was an idealist, in a sense, but he wasn't just a dreamer. He started to verdant financial partners as a means of making innovation happen, supporting inventors and scientists to do work that could make life better for people all over the world. It had a bit of

a grandiose name, but it, but really it was more or less just Paul in his own office running the company, plus a small handful of colleagues. And he was always on the lookout for new projects. And in early 2010, his friend and CFO Tom Wallace turned him onto a really exciting one. There was this inventor, he said, Todd Howley, who discovered a new strain of algae that ate up carbon dioxide like cookie monster with a box of thin mince. Howley was sure he could come up with a system that could take two pounds of CO2 out of the atmosphere per hour. He just needed the money to make it happen. And if he could, I mean, this could be huge. This was planet saving stuff. It's blue Maslin's mind.

When Tom offered to set up a meeting with Todd Howley at the lab, Paul jumped at it. But let's put a pin in that for a minute and get some background on Todd Howley. At first glance, Howley was a pretty impressive guy. Tall, dark and handsome, he looks a little bit like Henry Rollins' more put-together brother. He really does. Like, they could easily be related, those two. Howley was happily married to his beautiful wife, Gina, a pharmaceutical researcher, and they had two great kids and lived in a lovely house in an upper middle class Oakville neighborhood. So basically, bougie suburban life with all the fixings.

Exactly. And Howley was a smart guy. No doubt about that. He'd worked for almost 20 years at a company called Matsura, selling and then installing the kind of computerized tools companies used to cut metal. He was exceptional at it, but he was also a massive pain in the ass to work with. See, Todd Howley was one of those people who must think he's constantly surrounded by idiots because nobody could ever do anything up to his standards. Oh, gross.

And people were always questioning his obvious genius, the pathetic peons. It was so frustrating. Oh, how dare. You know, people like that just kill me. It's like they're constantly clashing with everybody else, and yet they never stopped to consider that, you know, the common denominator here, maybe it's you. Yeah. Right? Like, it might be you.

I think it might be you. Basically, campers, our boy Todd didn't play well with others. He was the kind of guy who talked at you, not to you, and he didn't bother even pretending to listen to anybody who disagreed with him. Those people were just wrong, and dumb, and not worth his time. Yeah, he sounds like a pleasure, right? And as his time at Massura progressed, Howley became harder and harder to deal with. He was arrogant, overbearing, condescending, and he could be volatile, too. He was relentlessly ambitious.

He wanted attention, he wanted fame, and he wanted money, and he didn't think he was getting there fast enough. So, after 17 years at Matsura, Halle decided to leave and forge his own path. It didn't go well. At Matsura, he'd worked with a lot of energy companies, and that was his major interest now. He started several businesses along those lines, one that manufactured turbine blades, one that engineered ethanol and hydrogen generators, but they all eventually tanked. Howley always thought big, as befit the kind of true genius slash visionary slash future Nobel laureate he thought he was, he wanted to own power plants worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He was full of beans and buck and enthusiasm for the work itself, but the thing he hated was being at the mercy of

investors. And one by one, his businesses went tits up. And in his mind, it was all the investors' fault. Always. Because obviously, it couldn't possibly have anything to do with him. How absurd, right? Howley grew more and more resentful with every failure. In an attempt to attract new investors, he typed up a CV that was more a list of grievances

against his previous investors than an actual curriculum vitae. As reporter Michael Lista writes in his Toronto Life article about this case, it eventually just morphed into a, quote, 30-page manifesto. Well, I mean, you can see what a genius the guy is, right? Because what could be more attractive to future investors than a rambling, probably spittle-flect manifesto about how much he hates the previous one? I'm really, you know, shocked that the guy wasn't already richer than Elon Musk by this time. well played my man kids little tip always bring your manifesto to job interviews and on dates

otherwise you just might as well stay home yeah dates are especially crucial for dissemination of deranged diatribes manifesto with your pesto is what I always say that is solid manifesto with your pesto you got to make sure everybody knows who you hate and how they've wronged you That's very important. That should be the first thing that you talk to any potential mate about, obviously. To be fair, half of our friendship is agreeing on who we hate, and it's entirely murderers. Fair enough. So I'm sure you'll be stunned to hear that this tactic didn't exactly get the butts in the seats,

and Howley started to slide into some real serious financial trouble. He was up to his eyebrows in debt. But then, just as his dreams of wealth and acclaim, were swimming their final laps around the drain, he made a discovery that changed everything. Pond scum. No, that's not my affectionate nickname for him. I prefer Todd Fowley. I'm talking about algae.

Specifically, a strain of algae that's amazingly efficient at removing carbon dioxide from the air. He spent months and months running tests in his lab, and at the end of those experiments, howley believed he could engineer an efficient, inexpensive system of algae bioreactors that could be installed into smokestacks and turn CO2 into fuel. Dang, right? In a time of genuinely scary climate change, that's the kind of thing that could not only make an inventor

rich and famous beyond his wildest dreams, it's the kind of thing that could change the world. But, of course, he'd need investor money to make it happen. So, confident, as always, Hallie sent out a flurry of his manifesto-slash-c-s along with a cover letter explaining his proposal. When it landed on Verdant CFO Tom Wallace's desk, he was baffled by it initially and kind of horrified. Like, what the hell was this guy thinking, ranting and raving about all his former investors?

And then being like, so anyway, want to invest with me? Like, here's why I hate this guy. Here's why this guy's a piece of shit. Oh, this guy's a freaking nightmare. So, when do we start? You're going to sign up now? Like what? Like, oh, baby, do you want to be next on my manifesto?

Would you like to be used and abused and trashed all over town also? But the thing was, the project itself was really intriguing. And despite what a fucking weirdo Todd Howley obviously was, Tom knew his partner, Paul Masland, would be all over this project. Like, it's right up his alley. And if anybody could deal with a specimen like Howley, he figured it was Paul. Because he had a way with people. When he chose to work with somebody, he believed in them.

And they could feel it, you know? It gave them confidence. It made them want to do right by him. And Paul was so easygoing that it was hard to imagine anybody ever, like, railing against him like Howley was doing with these other people. He figured Paul would want to at least hear about this proposal, so he showed him the letter. And we know the rest. Masland was over the moon about the idea. And in some ways, he and Todd Howley were a great match. Sure.

They were both brilliant. both interested in technology and what it could do for the world. There was at least one major difference, though. Paul Maslin wasn't focused on wealth or fame. He was focused on innovation and discovery. In that, he and Todd Howley were as different as Ponscum and Perrier. Yeah, Maslin was excited at the thought of taking carbon emissions out of the air and doing something concrete about climate change.

And he was hoping that the revenue they generated, might give him start-up money to pursue another project he was interested in, which was 3D printing transplant organs. So that's what Maslin was focused on. Meanwhile, Howley was daydreaming about what kind of tucks he'd wear at the Nobel Prize ceremony and what kind of giant house he'd buy with all that cash. Another major difference between them was that with Maslin, integrity was a natural way of being. If he gave you his word on something, you could trust that it was going to happen. And Paul expected the same from other. people. This may have made him a little too trusting. Give him a handshake and look him in the eye,

and he'd trust that you were going to deliver whatever it was that you were promising. Paul believed in people. And right from the start, he believed in Todd Howley. So they struck up an agreement. Verdant would acquire the three companies owned by Todd Howley, and they'd bring Howley in as Verdent's new chief technical officer. Masland would pay him $200,000 over the next three years, plus a $120,000 salary. Dang. He'd also get 360,000 shares of Verdant stock.

There were only two rules, and they were ironclad. One, Howley had to prove that the technology worked. Duh. This meant bringing in an independent, unbiased auditor to oversee testing. And two, he couldn't sell his idea to anybody else without Maslin's permission. Also, duh. Yeah, both the rules were no-brainers. And it should have been easy to stick to them.

That's the infuriating thing about this case. Yeah. It could have gone so well for everybody involved. Howley and Maslin's partnership could have been a huge success story. They could have saved the world. I know. It's so frustrating. But, of course, we can't have nice things because somebody's always got to go and be a dumbass. Every damn time.

So obviously, Todd Howley was thrilled to have found a brand new investor to use and abuse, but he was also going into this project in a shit ton of debt. So almost before the ink was dry on his contract with Masland, he asked him if he could borrow some money. He needed $30,000, he said. For expenses. Maslund handed over a check without a second thought, and they agreed it was a loan in that Howley would need to repay within a set time frame. Less than a week later, Howley was back.

This time, asking for another $5,000. Debt's, you know. He couldn't get started properly until he'd made some of those creditors whole. Once again, Paul Maslin wrote out of his money. check. And these loans set off CFO Tom Wallace's alarm bells a little bit. He said to Maslin, hey, I don't think we ought to be loaning him all this money. Like, we don't even know if this thing is going to work. But it went in one year and out the other. Paul was just too pumped up about the new project to listen. He was all in. And if this is what Todd Howley needed to go all in with

him, so be it. He felt sure he'd get paid back. But Tom was getting nervous. He'd been to Howley's house by now, and he was confused. If Howley was dead broke, how do he afford this nice place? Tons of pricey new renovations. It smacked of bad judgment at best, and something shady going on at worst. And I'm sure this is going to shock you, but the loan request didn't stop there. Before long, Paul Masland had loaned Howley $105,000. Ooh, yikes, yeah. But as generous as Paul was, he wasn't naive and he wanted to get paid back. So he drew up in agreement with Howley. that basically said, if Howley didn't repay him by a certain date, Maslin would have the right to seize Howley's assets.

Money, property, soul, firstborn child, whatever it took to pay him back in full with interest. As much as Howley loathed being at the mercy of investors, he was now, financially speaking, Paul Maslin's bitch. Verdant was planning to issue a press release to announce that they had acquired Halle's companies. This was standard stuff, nothing that should have surprised him, but when Paul Maslin mentioned that he was about to issue the release, Todd Howley seemed rattled. He fired off an email saying he didn't really want his name out there. Hmm.

Why not, Todd? Well, unbeknownst to Paul Masland or anybody else at Verdant, our boy Todd was in the process of selling his algae reactor technology to about a dozen other investors. A dozen other investors all at once, and not one of them knew anything about any of the others, and he'd promised every single one of them exclusive rights to the technology. And he was really hedging his bets.

The investors he was courting ranged from a small company in Ohio to a huge German corporation that was about to go public on the stock exchange. Can you all believe this set of brass nuts on this dude? Like, he might not have integrity and he might not have business sense, but he sure his shit has audacity, doesn't he? As far as cons go, this isn't even a good one. For all his, you know, self-proported genius, taking his business around like a debutante has to be the dumbest possible thing he could have done.

It would have been sneakier to take out a bunch of billboards advertising his technology outside of Maslin's window. So, Howley freaking out about his name being used in the press release should have been a humongous flashing red flag. But again, Maslin was madly in love with this project. And he let it slide, as we so often do with red flags. And if you ask me, this right here is a huge predictor. of the violence that's going to come later because somebody with that kind of personality profile, arrogant, deceptive, self-serving, reckless, grandiose

seems really likely to be capable of pretty much anything if he feels cornered, even if he put himself in the corner with his own silly actions. So as we told you a minute or two ago, one of the rules of the agreement was that Verdant would bring in an independent auditor to monitor testing of Halley's new technology. This came in the form of engineer Michael Gainer. This guy did not fuck around.

He was meticulous, careful, and really good at his job, and he wasn't going to cut Todd Howley one micrometer of slack. He was a little bit skeptical of the project from day one, and he was determined to hold it to a high standard before he was going to sign off on it. And unsurprisingly, Todd Howley hated him on site. It was like a dog when a new dog comes into the territory, like he owns a feck and place.

Like, how dare, how dare this plebe come into my lab and ask me questions about my work? But, nevertheless, the work chugged along, and before long, it was time to officially test Howley's hypothesis. So this was the main event that Michael Gainer was there for. Basically, the test went like this. You put the algae into the bioreactors, you pump CO2 and sunlight into them, and the hypothesis is that the algae will grow at a certain rate. so a certain amount of it will be produced. When the results came back, everybody was gobsmacked. The system had only produced about 10% of what they'd expected it to.

Oof, right? Howley's tech had fallen flatter than a slice of Canadian bacon. Yacht. Because it's a Canadian case. Yeah, I'm a comedian. But Paul Maslin wasn't ready to give up on Todd Howley or their shared dream. He said, come on. Be patient.

Let's do another test. So they agreed. And a few weeks later, on June 29th, Howley went back into his lab for round two. This time, the results were even more jaw-dropping. The second test had produced more algae than expected. And not just a little bit more. 300% more.

Oh, okay. Seems legit, right? Sure, sure, sure. It was amazing. Howley's system had exceeded expectations beyond anybody's wireless dreams, and Michael Gainer was not having it. He said to Paul Maslin, look, man, either this guy doesn't have the faintest clue what the hell he's doing, or he's falsifying his data. Either way, we've got a problem. Tom Wallace agreed. As Whitney says, red flags were busting out all over. But yet again, yet again,

again, Maslin tried to calm everybody's tities. He said, don't you think you're overreacting a little? He said he still believed in Howley's system and he wanted to do another test. Just one more. Come on, guys. It was a testament to how much people respected Maslin that the other two agreed to this, but they did. That afternoon, Maslin called Howley up and said, okay, Todd, we've got to do a third test. Be really meticulous. this time. I'm sure he expected Howley to be happy, but to his surprise, he seemed flustered. Oh, sure. Just let me see what equipment I can scrounge up. Massland was confused. Like, what do you mean? Don't you have the bioreactors? Howley said, oh, of course I have them. Of course, I do. I just had to wash them. I just had to wash them.

really thoroughly between tests, so they're not available at this precise moment. That's all. What Maslund didn't know was that Howley, probably thinking he might have to cut and run after Gaynor's reaction to the second test, had already shipped the bioreactors to his investor in Ohio. I swear to God, this guy. He'd also begun drawing a 5,000 dollar a month's salary from them, by the way. Oh, wow. And now here was Masland, an actual angel on top of being an angel investor, wanting to do a third test, and Howley's equipment wasn't even in the country.

Not only that, but if they did do a third test and the results weren't favorable, Verdant would have to issue one of those pesky press releases Howley was so allergic to. And that would mean that his other investors might find. out that they'd been played. So as you can see, campers, Howley had gotten himself into quite the little pickle. He'd broken his contract with Paul Maslin

and Verdant. He owed Maslund $105,000. If Maslin found out he'd shipped those bioreactors to Ohio, he'd be fucked. Plus, Massland was legally authorized to take his house or his cars or anything else he wanted

if he couldn't repeat that loan. Which, of course, he couldn't. Ooh. Todd was screwed. Scareude. So, you know, when bad things happen to bad people, right? So what's the logical, rational thing to do in this situation, folks? Come clean and throw yourself on Paul Maslin's mercy?

I mean, he was a good dude. He was kind, reasonable. Chances are he wouldn't have chosen to burn down Todd's world. But, of course, if you're Todd Howley, great genius, TM, you just don't see things that. way. A great genius, TM, doesn't have to take responsibility for his own fuckery. Sure. He answers to a different set of rules, a set where his screw-ups aren't even screw-ups. They're adaptations. A future Nobel laureate should not be bound by the limitations of ordinary men. He deserves a certain latitude. It's the least the world owes him for his great

contributions to society. I mean, he was about to save the planet, after all. But he couldn't do it if Paul Maslin got in his way. To Todd Howley, the path soon became crystal clear. He had to kill Paul Masland. There was no other choice. Hmm. Not long after hanging up with Masland, he googled the phrases, nail gun. Nailgun modified and nail gun massacre. Later, he called Maslin back to say he'd be ready for that third test in a few weeks. He said they'd do it together, just the two of them. They agreed to run the test on the morning of Sunday, August 29th. Just come to the lab, Howley said. Over the next few weeks, Todd Howley put his research skills toward planning for murder.

He did a lot of Googling, from his own computer, bless his heart, because remember, he's a true genius. He figured out the best route to and from Bracebridge, where he knew Maslin's wife had a cottage, and finally, on the morning of Sunday, August 29th, he was ready. For Paul Masland, it was an ordinary morning. He was planning to meet his mom and one of her friends for lunch after the test. So, content warning for violence for the next minute or so, campers,

so skip that if you don't want to hear how this poor guy was killed. At 10 a.m., when Maslin walked into the lab, Todd Howley was waiting for him, and he didn't waste any time. He pounced on his angel investor as soon as he got through the door, beating him viciously with what prosecutors think was either a wooden bat, a tire iron, or a crowbar. They never found the weapon, so we can't. be 100% sure. He brought the weapon down again and again on Maslin's skull, causing five horrendous head wounds and a web of skull fractures. He broke a dozen of his partner's ribs. He broke his

shoulders. He bruised him all over his legs and back. He broke his jaw fully in half. And he also broke Maslin's hyoid bone, which some of you will know as a bone in the neck that typically fractures during manual strangulation. Todd Howley beat Paul Maslin with the fury that even the most experienced investigators would wonder at later. Almost no part of his body was intact.

And this is heartbreaking. The only parts of his body that weren't brutalized were his arms and hands, meaning Maslin had no defensive wounds. He hadn't even had a chance to protect himself from this man that he had tried

so hard to support. It was overkill. Was Howley taking out his frustrations at all those prior investors who'd screwed him over, at least in his own mind? I think there's a good chance he was. Even after all this, Maslin wasn't dead. He was unconscious, but he was still alive, whether Hallie realized it or not. He left him lying in his own blood on the floor of the lab and went outside to the parking lot.

Security footage shows him driving Maslin's car around the side of the building and parking it behind the building next door, presumably, to hide it from the street. security footage campers Again, we got a genius over here Apparently he thought the cameras were fake Like those decoy ones you can get To make potential burglars think that you're covered But nope, they were real You know, I don't know if I would have bet my freedom on that

If I were you taught old boy, but whatever Anywho, when he got back to the lab This cold-blooded bastard went through Paul Maslin's pockets To fish out his phone While he's still alive and like bleeding to death and then he hopped into his own car and made the drive up to Bracebridge where Paul's wife's family cottage was.

While he was in Bracebridge, Howley used his victim's phone to call his own cell to make it look as though Paul was calling him from Bracebridge. He must have done some googling about cell towers and pings and whatnot. Trying to make it look like Maslin was murdered in Bracebridge was part of a plan so toweringly dumb that you are not even going to believe it and we'll get to it in a minute and it's going to knock you on your ass.

When Todd got back to the lab, When Todd got back to the lab, poor Masland was dead. God only knows whether he suffered during that time. Oh, God. I hope he was completely unconscious and didn't have to feel any pain. Howley didn't worry about any of that. He sat down at his laptop with Maslin's body on the floor next to him and checked his email. Good grief. He had one from his Ohio investor, and it seemed like an urgent one. They said, I need you to call me immediately. Howley wrote back, Okay, no problem. Call me when you get a chance.

Then he called his wife and had what seemed to be a perfectly normal conversation. All this, while his victim lay at his feet, dead in a pool of his own blood. There was a lot of blood, as you can imagine. So the next part of Howley's plan was to clean up the murder scene. Howley's lab was located in a big warehouse complex. Over the next hour or so, the security cameras from the building next door captured him scurrying back and forth with heavy-looking plastic garbage bags.

He was wearing latex gloves. Later, prosecutors were to reveal that the bags had contained Paul Maslin's glasses and wallet and Howley's bloody clothes. One of them probably held the murder weapon, too, but that one was never found. Later that afternoon, Todd made a little Home Depot. run like you do. He bought something small at the self-checkout just so he could get some cash back. Then he used the cash to buy a length of nylon rope. Oh, we just think we're so clever, don't we, Todd? Using cash to buy the rope that would later be found on Maslin's body. But dude, you still used your damn card at the same Home Depot, like two minutes before. Your

dumb ass is still on their security cameras. I just cannot with this guy. Like, the a great genius, right? Good Lord, he could have been in the dipshit's grab bag if it wasn't such a long story. Oh, superior genius, Todd Howley. How did they ever catch ye for your brilliance knows no bounds? I hope

that Snickers from Home Depot was worth at, you absolute flapjack. Back at the lab, Todd tied the nylon rope around Maslin's body and dragged it along the floor. Unbeknownst to him, as he dragged the body, it picked up all kinds of tiny little metal and

plastic bits from around the lab, and a wood chip that the investigators would later find stuck to Maslin's belly. Soon after, the security cameras outside caught the creepy sight of water gushing out onto the asphalt from underneath Howley's lab door. He was in there hosing down the floor. I'm sure the camera images were probably in black and white, but no doubt the water was tinged with pink. Oh, God. Every now and then, the cameras show Howley poking his head out the door to see if anybody was around, but it was a Sunday. Nobody was there but him. I'm sure this is going to shock you, campers. Hose or no hose, he did a crappy job cleaning up. So crappy. He missed all kinds of blood spatter all over his lab equipment in his shoes. Even more

incredible, he missed a shoe print in blood. the great genius was leaving investigators a treasure trove of evidence and what came next is really a testament to what a consenseless asshole this guy is I think

he left Maslin's body in the lab which is bizarre to me like I'd be terrified to do that what if somebody realized they left their briefcase and like just came in or there might be a fire and the fire department could come

like who knows anything could happen I'd be terrified to do it but anyway he left the body there went home to his wife and kids, and apparently he spent a totally normal evening with them. He tucked his kids into bed, hung out with his wife. Just unreal. I guess he was just all tuckered out from his big day out. He needed some R&R after all that. He accomplished his goal. Now it was Miller time.

But the next morning, he was back at it. He backed Maslin's car up to the loading dock in the back of the warehouse and heaved the body into it. He waited until dark to drive Maslin's car up to Bracebridge and dump it at the lake shore. After that, he dumped the car in a parking lot. In the next morning, the off-duty firefighter found the body, and the investigation began. Paul Maslin's family and friends were immediately confused about where his body had been. Paul hated the lakeshore. Too hot, too touristy, too many bugs, he didn't like being at the cottage and he didn't spend much time there. So why the hell would he be there now? He hadn't said a word about it to his wife. Yeah, or to his mom and her friend,

who he was supposed to be meeting for lunch today, he was killed. Yeah, it was weird, but it started to get a little clearer when a few days after the body was discovered, Bracebridge police received an anonymous letter. You know, I cannot describe to you the joy I feel when you say, the words anonymous letter, Katie, because when I hear those words in a true crime case, I know we are about to see some serious ham-fisted, somebody's seen way too many damn movies bullshittery. And chances are it's going to get him caught, and I'm going to laugh, and laugh and laugh. So the letter began, I am writing you to inform you of my inadvertent involvement in the death of Paul. Great. Mistakenly calling him Paul Stanton, which was his wife's last name,

the anonymous writer then launched into a convoluted story about how the murder had come about and what it had to do with him. He said the killers were a pair of women who were angry at him for promising to back their boxer dog breeding business and then reneging on the parmas. The women had lured Paul to Bracebridge offering to go skinny dipping and then get into a little three-way something something. And then after that, the ladies asked him yet again,

will you provide financial backing for the dog kennel? and if he didn't, they said they'd call his wife and tell her all about their little menagerie. And they said Paul had flown into a rage and still naked had attacked them. So they hit him with the mallet and then panicked and just left him passed out on the lakeshore. And when they came back later to check on him, he was dead.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I mean, seems legit to me. You know, when you've gone to all the trouble of skinny dipping with a guy and then double mint twinning him and everything and he still refuses to fund your boxer dog concern? Like, what else could you do but murder him? No options. Oh, and the murder weapon was his, the letter writer said. That's how he'd inadvertently become

entangled in the whole mess. He wrote, the reason that I am telling you this information is that the mallet can be traced back to me. Paul is a pervert and his death is his own fault for attacking the girls. Good. Now, there were a few interesting things about this letter besides just how obviously bat-shit crazy it was. The writer mentioned several things that hadn't been made public. For example, that trash bags had been found at the scene and that Maslin had been beaten to death. These were details that only the killer or somebody intimately involved with them would know. And there was something else that caught their attention too, the motive. Paul Maslund, even in this letter, had been murdered over an investment deal.

Now, why did that catch the eye of the Bracebridge detectives? Well, because it hadn't taken long after the discovery of Maslin's body for people to start saying the name Todd Howley. Tom Wallace, verdant CFO, and Maslin's longtime friend had been one of them. He knew that Paul had been scheduled to meet with Halley on the morning of the 29th, the day he went missing. And Wallace filled the detectives in on all the drama with the two algae tests and the fact that Howley owed Maslund a bunch of money. So by the time this mysterious letter arrived at the police station,

the investigators were already starting to take a close look at our boy Todd. They were starting to look at stuff like phone records, for example, and emails, and security footage. Womp, womp, womp. And by September 5th, they'd hauled him in for his first interrogation. Now, Todd sat there and denied any responsibility for the murder and then scurried back to his lab and immediately googled the phrase blood removal from carpet. My dude, you have got to stop Googling stuff, especially on your own flip-up. flippity-flaping computer. You are supposed to be smart, sir. Todd Howley, boy, genius, extraordinary, slayer of investors, lever of evidence, writer of letters. Though for the record,

I have Googled that. And if any FBI agents are listening, it was for research for this show. I have not murdered anyone. And if you had, you wouldn't have flippen googled it. So it's actually proof that you didn't murder anybody that you've been Googled. in that stuff because you are not Todd Howley. Reverse psychology, Whitney. I love it. That's true. So the next day, the detectives came around for friendly little chat and just a quick, cheeky little DNA sample. Hand it over. Hallie refused to give it to him, though. He said, call my attorney, and then he asked him to leave. And no sooner were they out the door than he

googled how to fool a DNA test. Oh, my God. It hurts. It hurts so bad. he's good with algae he is good we gotta give him that if i have an algae problem i am calling him so the investigators kept digging and a couple weeks later they called in the big guns specifically they brought in a guy who a lot of you true crime officiados will have heard of jim smith it's smith with a why the incredible fancy yeah the incredible and terrible and terrible who'd managed to wrestle a confession out of Colonel Russell Williams, Canada's even creepier version of BTK. Yeah, and if you haven't watched that interrogation, you should.

You can find it on YouTube. It's absolutely amazing. Like, the guy just plays Williams like a cheap accordion. It's a real pleasure to watch. Oh, I watch it like once a month. It's delightful. It's a masterful interrogation. So they hauled Howley in for a second interrogation.

And Smith was like, you're probably going to be arrested soon, okay? So you'll probably want to talk to your wife about it, get your affairs in order. But our boy, Todd, didn't budge. He just sat there like a stuffed frog, still denying any involvement. But at the end of the interview, he walked out of the door to the police station, and he bolted. Leaving his wife and kids behind, he crossed the border into the States and disappeared. Can you even imagine what his wife and kids must have gone through? I mean, I'm not super thrilled with the fact that his wife apparently, like, knew where he was during this time and didn't turn him in.

But, like, you have to acknowledge the extreme stress that she and her kids must have been going through. And Todd, of course, he couldn't give a shit. Nope. What mattered to him, as always, was himself. Oh, I hate this guy. Disgusting. Yeah, our boy, Todd, was always laser-focused on his own self-interest, and he was as determined as ever to get his miracle algae up and running so he could get rich. and famous and I don't know, become some kind of algae-based Spider-Man villain and take over the

world, I presume. We already have a green goblin dude, okay? Dr. Smog. I can see it, actually. Dr. Dioxide. Dr. Dioxide. That's better. What, like, what did he think was going to happen at this point?

Like, you're wanted for murder, man. Even if you succeed at this, how are you going to reap the benefits? It's like you're just going to stay on the lamb forever, all that algae money rolling in. I guess that was his plan. Get the algae project going, scoop up a bunch of money, grab the wife and kids, you know, time permitting if he felt like it. And head for some place with no extradition treaty with Canada. And actually, now that I say it out loud, that's not a bad plan. No, but no, what he really wanted Whitney was for the Canadian government to be like, oh no, Todd.

We understand that you did what you had to do to that stinky investor, eh? Your genius is so valuable and not at all pedestrian in any way. Please come back. We pinky promise not to charge you. And then they say a boot a couple times. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. Call him bud.

Yeah. And then the algae would combine with his DNA to give him water control powers or whatever. That was the plane. He totally is a Spider-Man villain. Like, you nailed it with that. He so is. It is un-kenny. So amazingly, once he was across the border, he headed for his Ohio investor.

The guy was totally unaware that Howley was the prime suspect in a murder in Canada. He was just excited to get started on the project. So they did. His Ohio investor, a small company called Midge Energy, set Howley up in a hotel, and they began testing the algae bioreactors. And before long, I will be here. damned if they didn't get the darn things working. Howley was over the moon. He was a genius.

His technology did work. He'd done it. He'd shown everybody. Fuck it, Canada. You know, he might have been narcissistic and deluded enough to think that once he perfected his technology, everybody would forget all about Paul Maslin's murder. Maybe he thought he'd redeem himself and the whole world would lift him up on their shoulder as like a star quarterback and parade him around. Yeah, I think that's very possible, actually, that that is what he thought. A murder wrap isn't going to go away, though, no matter how much CO2 you can take out of the

atmosphere per hour. While Howley was busy with his algae-making and child abandonment projects in Ohio, the investigators were still at it back in Canada. They searched his computer and found, surprise, surprise, the anonymous letter about the skinny dipping and the threesome and the boxer kennel and the wooden mallet, they also found all Howley's recent Google searches. Again, just well played, my man, just so good. Crown prosecutors got busy constructing a timeline of the murder from Howley's invitation to Maslin to run the third algae test with him alone on August 29th to the phone call from

Maslin's phone in Bracebridge, to the visit to Home Depot and beyond. They put together all that compelling security footage of Howley running around with latex gloves and garbage bags, driving Maslin's car all over the place, and at one point loading something heavy-looking into the back. It was more than enough to get a conviction. If they could just find the bastard and boomering his ass back to Canada, that is. And on the afternoon of May 10, 2011, as Howley was heading back to his hotel after a long day watching his algae reactors suck carbon dioxide out of the air around a power plant, the FBI came a knocking. They'd apparently known where he was for a while now. They'd even put a GPS tracker on his car. And now, eight months after Hallie first went on the run, they were ready for the habeas gravis.

In his hotel room, they found remnants of Halley's life on the run. Four cell phones, a passport, driver's license, birth certificate, a laptop computer where he'd been searching for jobs in the Caribbean, $1,500 cash. And they also found evidence that he and his wife had been communicating since he fled. One of the agents snapped a picture of him in the parking lot of his hotel the day they nabbed him and he had this annoying, shit-eating grin on his face. Like, he looks like the cat who ate the canary. So he was clearly very pleased with himself, arrest or no.

Well, he'd proven his genius, hadn't he? Right. A couple months later, they extradited Todd back to Canada and he went on trial for Maslin's murder. And I love this. His defense was basically that he couldn't be the killer because the killer was such a massive dipshit. I swear to God, that was his defense. His lawyer argued basically that somebody as brilliant as Todd Howley just could not possibly have been this bad at getting away with murder. Just couldn't possibly have left this mountain of evidence. A footprint in the victim's

blood, metal and plastic shavings that match shavings on the floor of the lab, all that security footage, that absurd letter found on his computer, it must have been a frame-up or something. Right? I mean, this guy's a genius. Too smart to commit murder is up there with my favorite criminal defenses. Along with affluenza, it has to be the worst way to frame your client. Yeah, my client seems like an asshole, but you are all way too poor or dumb to understand what he's actually like. It really is pretty condescending to the jury, actually. So, as you can imagine, that argument went over like a lead balloon, and the jury found him guilty, and it didn't take him long.

Howley was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years, which is a pretty brutal sentence for a Canadian court. He still, of course, maintains his innocence because, you know, guys like him always do. And I wish I could give you the 4-1-1 on what's going on with his algae technology, because it sounds like something we could all really use, but I couldn't find out. If anybody happens to know, let us know, too. I'm curious, because it would really be a shame if it went to waste just because its inventor is such a shit-heel, you know?

ideally it seems like Paul Maslin's family could reap the benefits because I mean he was the investor right he put a lot of money into it but then again so was that Ohio company so maybe it's in litigation I don't know I mean it's been about 11 years right or 10 years since Howley got arrested so I wish I knew but I don't but hopefully we'll still be able to use that because it did actually work but as we have seen genius is an interesting thing you can be real real smart with algae Real, real dumb with murder. So that was a wild one, right, campers? You know we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And we want to send a shout out to a few of our newest patrons. Thank you so much to Suzanne, Debbie, Claire, and Summer. We appreciate you all to the moon and back.

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