Uncover - S38 E4: My friend, the drug dealer | The Mile Zero Murders

Episode Date: August 24, 2026

Host Timothy Sawa is onto Tanner Murray. That same week, a dead body is found in the back of a pickup truck – Dawson Creek’s first suspicious murder in a year. Tim shifts his focus to the prime suspect of the latest murder, who is surprisingly frank about what might be behind the violence in Dawson Creek. 

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This is a CBC podcast. This episode contains coarse language and descriptions of violence. Please take care. Okay, let's go. By the time I traveled back to Dawson Creek in April of 2025, the total number of murders in the last four years had grown to more than a dozen. And there'd only been a single arrest. Confidence in the RCMP remained low,

and people in town were as desperate as ever for answers. So I decided to keep digging. Okay. Okay, so we're here. There was a truck, and it's the black door over there, where he was seen a couple days ago. So I'm just going to go up and turn around and we'll change faces and get ready. The top of my to-do list, tracked on the man whose name kept coming up, Tanner Murray. Just, yeah, just behind.

This is good, yeah, and pull up. Not too close. Yeah, right about there is good. Thank you. Tanner is well known to police for his involvement in the drug trade. But more importantly, people in Tanner suspicious about his connections to both Daryland Supernet and René's Supernant Didier before they disappeared. I was also told Tanner was one of the last people's seen with Robert Gerboff, who was found murdered on New Year's Eve in 2023.

According to my sources, Robert helped dispose of Daryland's body. I had so many questions for Tanner. Shortly after arriving in town, I find out Tanner is wanted by the police again. He has once again breached his release conditions. This time, he was living where he wasn't supposed to. One of my sources tells me Tanner is holed up at a local motel hiding. Tanner's room was around the back. My source said we would know the one because it's the only door painted black.

Producer Tiff Lamb and I try him there, and at the address we have for his girlfriend. Tim's shrugging. All right, two for two, nobody home. Tanner eludes us. We head to the motel again the next morning, but this time the door has been mysteriously repainted. It was the same beige as the rest of the rooms. All right, still no answer.

Mr. Todd, should we go around and see if we can talk to someone up front? Yeah, let's do that. How you doing? I'm okay, how are you? Good, good. Good. Good. But thank you for you.

My name's Timothy with CBC. Oh, hi. And we're just recording for a podcast right now. Oh. And I was looking for someone who was staying in room 125. Oh, yeah. No, he checked out. Yeah, he checked out.

You did, right? Yeah, yeah. And that was Tanner, right? Or some of his friends? Yeah, I believe so. I'm just filling in. So, yeah, I just know a girl came in every day and he'd. And then all of a sudden they were gone.

And they were gone. Okay. Do you know when they left? Yeah, yesterday or the day before. I was told it was during the night. Okay. But before morning, so. Oh, really?

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for your help. I appreciate him. No worries. It's nice to meet you, Timothy. I look forward to you listening to this. Okay.

Yes, have a good night. Okay, take care. Bye-bye. Tanner was there, interesting, but he's moved on. Yeah. He's moved on. We have so many questions for Tanner, Murray. But no answers today.

That's okay, because there's something new to dig into. On the same week we arrived, a new body was discovered in a truck outside of town. A murder that would lead me to a man who would change everything I thought I knew about Dawson Creek. We call it Dawson Crack. There is one group of dealers. We're all on the same team. But the problem that we have is we end up shooting at each other. It's fucked up.

You give a fetal alcohol down syndrome guy a gun and like you got Dawson Creek. I'm Timothy Sawa and from CBC's Uncover and the Fifth Estate, this is the Mile Zero murders. Episode 4, my friend, the drug dealer. I was determined to learn everything I could about the drug trade in Dawson Creek and any connections to the murder spree. So I went where any journalist would go to learn about crime in a small town. the local courthouse. The clerk handed me a black binder when I asked for public search warrants.

The documents inside read like a crime novel. Drugs and weapon seizures and dealers targeted by undercover operations. It turns out the RCMP had been very busy in Dawson Creek after all. They appeared to be laying the groundwork for something big. We begin tonight with a major drug and weapons bust the RCMP putting a big

dent in the peace region drug trade. 33 arrests were made involving 27 separate investigations. This happened about a month after our first Fifth Estate documentary aired. It was a big win for the Mounties. The bust was big news, and one of the people eventually charged, a local Coke dealer. His name was Aaron Linklater. You got to blow the other door. This side? On this side. How are you doing?

Good, how are you? My name's Timothy Sawa at the state, and we're just in town recording for a podcast. Oh. And talking about the crime in the community. Are you recording right now? We're recording for the podcast. Right at this very second. Yeah, yeah, we are. Stop recording for just a second.

Sure. Yeah, we can do it. We stopped recording. Aaron tells me he's at a rough week. More on that later. But I make my pitch anyway. He's an accused drug dealer, and we want to talk to him about the drug trade and Dawson Creek. He's hesitant at first, so we leave him to think about it. A few hours later, I get a text. Come on over for a chat. I'm actually on the interior of this situation because I'm 48 and I've learned about how society is working in this community. This town has the most

atrocious appetite for cocaine and heroin that I've ever fucking seen in my life. I've never been invited into an accused drug dealer's house for an interview. We arrive just as the sun is starting to set. He invites us to sit at his kitchen table, in his modest bungalow, tucked away on an unremarkable treeline street. His cat is friendly enough to sit on producer Tiff Lamb's lap, almost immediately after she set up the mics.

Aaron says he can sell two to three kilos of cocaine in one month in the peace region. Think about that. One gram is probably more than enough for a casual user on a night out. or so I'm told. That's 2 to 3,000 grams, $200 to $300,000 worth of cocaine every single month. But where does this voracious, voracious appetite for drugs? Where does it come from?

And why is it here? Bortem. Bortem is the primary reason for codependent problems. Aaron says he's definitely not the only drug dealer in town. And he's clearly starting to feel the rum and coke he's been drinking. There's a lot of dealers that are really, really jealous of me. I have three or four vehicles that I roll in and I switch. I do not care how you feel about it. My BMW does not care how you feel about it. I like Titchin windows. I like

nice ribs. Aaron has the swagger and bravado of a big city gangster, but he was born and raised right here in Dawson Creek. He has deep roots in the region. So why my hands are tattooed is because this is what I carry for children, my band, and my people. It's a fundamental thought, and it's the proof that I would carry security of First Nations Aboriginal. My grandfather was a farmer after the war. His grandfather, Don Linklater, was even the mayor of Dawson Creek for a year in 1953. Aaron remembers a time when Dawson was smaller and friendlier. It was farmers and elders and veterans.

So as we grew and developed and our education system started to grow, one of the things that changed about Dawson was it kind of became, it's a farm community, but it's also kind of like a retirement community, but it's also we tried to adapt it and say city. Aaron says Dawson Creek changed because of the growing resource industry in the region. He said some farmers don't even have to farm anymore because of new oil and gas revenue from their land. And as we've heard before,

resource extraction is brought in a lot of outsiders lately, mostly young men away from home for long periods, with time and money to burn. We have fentanyl. We have heroin is the new fentanyl. We have cocaine. We have weed. And when the drugs arrived, the violence followed.

We've heard the situation in Dawson, described in the news as a turf war. Police have used the term on occasion as well. But Aaron says the shootings and murders aren't between rival gangs. Because in Dawson, there's really only one gang. They call it a gang war, but it actually, the cops are so, they're naive because they like to say, oh, it's this side against that side. It's the same side shooting at each other.

It's the dumbest shit I've ever fucking seen in my life. It actually makes growing men look like stupid idiots for a lot of reasons. Aaron continued to drink throughout our chat that night. Do you, so you watch the sopranoes maybe? Sure. Okay, so they wear suits and ties, right? Yeah. They behave in public.

Yeah. Okay, that is a very social, respected gangsterism. Right. It's a very respected gangster because there's no violence and the propensity to behave as a person. And there's a code. Absolutely a code. I live by a code myself. What's your code? I iron my collars to my shirts.

I smell good. I dress well and I wear the nicest shoes that anyone's ever seen. Aaron is fixated on this television image of a gangster. Sell your drugs. Bring in cash, lots of cash, and keep your head down. That way, all of the gangsters win, just like Tony Soprano. But he says the criminals in Dawson Creek emulate a different TV show. We have like Sesame Street. We have fucking Kermit the Frog running around with a gun. We have a big bird telling people what to do.

We have fucking immature, fetal down syndrome, alcoholism, fucking children raised, given handguns, and they're shooting everything with a heartbeat. So you are older than these guys. A 48. Maybe a little wiser. Yeah. Why don't you teach them these things? I try to.

but all they want to do is go bang, bang, their eagles operate off their shit. I don't operate it off ego. I operate it off of intelligence. So if all of the disappearances and murders that have plagued this town are just a bunch of young people with guns doing dumb shit, why is it so hard for the RCMP to crack the cases? Because the RCMP don't have the actual facts to land charges. The merit to a conviction requires witnesses, bodies, and evidence.

Evidentiary support is the primary reason why you can land a conviction. If there's not enough evidence, you just have to keep letting it go until you have enough evidence. But you know what's so fucked up is everybody knows who killed these people. Do you? Yep. Well, just in the game, it's gossip. It passes around in a very unique way. We all know who did these things to people.

To be clear, Aaron wouldn't tell me who killed these people. If you ask the RCMP why these murders are unsolved, they'll tell you because people aren't telling them. People aren't cooperating, people aren't giving them information. Yeah, because they're fucking bias and they're dickheads. They think that people should just roll right into their fucking pockets and like, Aaron said he's convinced that people won't talk because the police don't treat people in town equally or fairly.

For example, if you have a criminal record, he says in their eyes, you're not worth their time. And I wonder if he's speaking from experience. I could tell the cop a bunch of shit just as gossip that would probably help them go a long way. But they abuse me. They don't actually help me. Do you think you want to talk to somebody who treats them?

like that. If you had a rapport with the public where cops actually can sit there and party with citizens or be people, they would get what they're looking for. And they need to build public relationships where they can talk to the criminals too. Because the minute they shun criminals, it gets harder for them to do their jobs. There's good cops and there's bad cops, but they're all fucking pigs. So how should the RCNP create that environment of trust and respect? What What should they do? They should drop their guard a little bit, take down the assault rifles just a pinch, take down the tasers just a bit, and start talking to people.

Shake hands. Don't arrest everybody. Maybe be a little soft when they should be hard. Take it back a notch to build a public rapport with people that don't like you. If you're kind, you might get kindness back even from a bad guy, work on the public relationship status. by taking it back a notch. You don't need an assault rifle to talk to somebody in a trailer park.

They're broke. They're struggling. I left that first interview with Aaron, my head spinning. It's not a rival gang war. It's not two sides shooting at each other. It's just kids with guns beefing. Could it really be as simple as that? I was also struck by his advice for the RCMP. And while I'm not sure the RCMP wants to take advice,

from a lifelong drug dealer, there is a certain logic to what he was saying. If you're decent to the bad guys, at least some of the time, they might help you. And bad guys, know things. Aaron and I would stay in touch. He'd call, he'd text,

he'd text a lot. He'd share his views on life. One day he randomly texted, kings rule kingdoms, Queens rule kings. And another day, you found the award winner me, LMAO.

And sometimes he was more sentimental. One day he wrote, I felt heard. No one usually wants to hear what I have to say. My family and friends started to refer to him as my friend, the drug dealer. But I still had so many more questions for him. I knew Aaron was a veteran of Dawson's drug scene, and that he had plenty of insight into the violence in his town.

But it turns out he may be closer to the violence than he was willing to led on. Because by this point, it was clear he was also the prime suspect in the town's latest murder. When building a business, you need tools that work as hard as you do. With Shopify.com, you can create a stunning site with no coding necessary, a seamless checkout process that gets customers to actually buy, and the support of our AI assistant, sidekick, who can help you troubleshoot along the way. All you need is the idea. Shopify handles the rest. Start your free trial at Shopify.com.

From ice raids in the U.S. to migrant boats off the shores of Europe, immigration has always been a hot button issue. But here in Canada, that conversation has always sounded a bit different. I'm Jamie Placont, host of the Daily News podcast, Frontburner, where recently we did a deep dive into how a bunch of Canadian politicians really changed their tune on the issue of immigration. And what that means as the country shrinks its population for the first time in history. You can find those episodes on the front burner feed wherever you get your podcasts.

Two months later, I came back to Dawson Creek with my fifth estate colleague, Mark Kelly, to continue our conversation with Aaron. We were working on our second TV documentary, and Aaron was going to be a significant character. Hi, Adam. Hi, is mine. This is Aaron. I'm Mark. Mark, nice to meet you. Actually, it's incredible for you. This time Aaron looked tired. He said he'd been up all night saving an ex-girlfriend who'd been kidnapped by another drug dealer in a nearby city.

He said he shot up the house as he drove away. Just another day in the peace region, according to Aaron. I know this is not your guys are normal cup of tea here, but I'm just going to loosen up and relax for a minute and just do what I do. By cup of tea, he means a few lines of cocaine snorted through a $5 bill. Between swigs of vodka straight from the bottle, Aaron takes us back to February 2nd, 2024. A night he says he'll never forget.

When some of that dumb violence he was talking about arrived at his own doorstep. I was in red deer seeing a stripper that I dated. And I was getting late. I was there seeing her dance on stage. So when I got home, 45 minutes after I was home, I had a knock at the door just RCMP! Open the fucking door! Five people that were most heavily armed I've ever seen in my life, mask-bloved. They came in and lacerated my face.

This car right here, the shotgun barrel. They pushed me down a flight of stairs. Didn't cry. I didn't mom. Didn't bitch-blown. I had an idea that, okay, I signed up, bro. You're not going to whine about it now. They had my daughter me, and they said, we're going to kill your daughter if you don't give us your drugs.

It definitely was not the RCMP. Aaron Linkleader's home was being invaded by five masked people armed to the teeth. I was on my head to knees. I grabbed their shotgun and pulled them towards me and said, fucking pull the trigger pussy. If you can't kill me now, you weren't coming here to kill me in the beginning. Grab two of their shotguns, come on. When are you guys going to pull a chair, you're a pussy, you're a pussy, and you're a pussy.

And while it would already be an unforgettable night, there was one moment in particular that's seared in Aaron's brain. There was a girl in a situation. He's laughing at me. I'll never forget her laugh. At this point, Aaron has been pushed down the stairs, hit in the face with a barrel of a shotgun, and held at gunpoint on his hands and knees. Why is he focused on someone laughing?

Would you, if it was your daughter, and all you can hear is a person laughing you over your shoulder? And you look over and it's this stupid-ass person who thinks that they just think they'll laugh at you for threatening to kill your daughter over a few ounces of drugs. Like, whoa. And they put this dude on speakerphone that said, if you don't give a guy the drugs, you're fucking dead.

We're going to kill your daughter if you don't give us what you got. Like, I don't have anything. Can't give you what they don't have, bro. Like, do you think that I would have all this shit with me? This is my family home. This is a bedroom to my children. That's not how it works. I couldn't get to the handgun I had.

I would have shot all five of them in my doorway. No one died that night. The armed group left without any drugs or money. And it seemed like that was the end of the whole violent affair. Until just over a year later. Emily Ogden's body was found on Monday. 24-year-old Emily Ogden is. the murder victim we referred to at the beginning of this episode, found in that truck outside of

town, just as we arrived back in Dawson Creek, a truck belonging to Aaron Linklater. Two people were taken into custody and questioned by investigators. They were both released without any charges. The mail is well known to police. Aaron was that male taken into custody. Here's what we know about Emily. She was connected to the drug trade through a familiar name, Tanner Murray, and the two were in a brief relationship. And at just 24, she already had a record for some pretty serious crimes, including robbery, impersonating an officer, breaking and entering, aggravated assault, and firearms offenses. And the woman who laughed at Aaron the night of his home invasion, the laugh he said he'll never

forget, he says that was Emily Ogden. So no wonder the police wanted to talk to Aaron about her death. And maybe no wonder he needed a little chemical courage to get through our interviews. Our first conversation with Aaron was just two days after the police questioned him. You said today you've had a rough week. Oh, fuck.

Tell me about your week. No. Thank you. It's that bad. A hard pass. Hard pass. It's that bad. Yeah, fucking right and well. Yeah. My truck was stolen. That's all I'm going to tell you. I got a good, I got a

My lawyer retainer, $64,000. That's where I'm at. Wow. I paid up. That's serious. That's gangster. That's gangster fucking lawyer. I got the best lawyers in Canada.

Sounds like you feel like you need it. Well, I don't think I actually need it because the charges have never come up yet. No. But I think I need to be prepared. Right. So the cops are going to throw some shit at me pretty soon. and I'm prepared for whatever the fucking challenge is. Like, Mount Everest is like this?

I'm like this. That's all Aaron would say about the murder of Emily Ogden in that first interview. But in our follow-up two months later, he offered a few more details about that night. My house was broken into and my truck was stolen. For the second or third time, my stuff was been broken into. I was with my friends.

I was drunk, came home. I had no idea what exactly the circumstances in order to it. I was blown away because I woke up really, really intoxicated still. Then I got taken into custody. I had no idea. I got all the details. He says he had nothing to do with Emily's murder, but that he remains the prime suspect.

The police searched his house for three days after Emily's body was found in his truck outside of town. Aaron says just about everyone in town believes he's a killer. Fuckin right, so they do, because I've been kicked out of three or four businesses now. I don't know it's had a chance against public opinion. He was the talk of the neighborhood when we came by. Well, a cop came around and was asking, you know, if we've seen anything and whatever for the other day,

and we're like, should we be concerned? Like, we have kids. This is Aaron's neighbor, a few doors down. Cop been in the back field 24 hours a day for, what, three days? and in front. So it was a constant watch. Yeah. But.

Huh. Okay. Still don't know. Yeah. But it's fucked up, though. As soon as all the cops leave, well, we swear the guy that lives there pulled up in a cab.

It's a little concerning. Yeah, when it's close to home like that. I know, especially when there's hazmat. They're looking hard for something. Yeah. Yeah. And hazmat would be drugs, right? It would be like fentanyl or something like that.

Could be, yeah. Did you say it's your 40th birthday today? 49th. It's the spring of 2025, a month after Emily's murder. Aaron Linklater calls me again. You got plans for your birthday tonight? Yeah, I kind of drank a ball as a Trinidad in Rome. It's a banana room.

That's a $150 a dollar dollar room with it. Yeah. I drank it on ice with a pinch of Pepsi and we earned some Boston pizza and I actually enjoyed my own company more than I probably enjoyed anybody else's. I think Aaron is lonely and he's looking for someone to talk to.

He's got something heavy weighing on his mind. I got a phone call and my daughter overdosed on fentanyl. My daughter's Ashley McLeoddust. She passed away. She was hot dosed with fentanyl and she died. I'm so sorry. It's terrible. I'm working on a funeral right now or the mother I'm being here or support here or.

Oh, I'm sorry. And as a drug dealer, does that have an impact on you? You got that right, it does. I'm the bad guy, right? I got a world conscience, so that's fucking hard for me. You don't sit there piss and long about why your life sucks. You say, I made a mistake. I wasn't a great parent.

I wasn't there for her when she needed me, maybe. I did some things wrong. I accept responsibility. But you don't sit there and make everybody feel the struggle you're in. That's big, man. That's a heavy heart. But that doesn't mean I'm going to sit there and vent about that to you. It's my birthday.

Yeah. I have her birthday tattooed on my finger because I'm a Carrie's Keene and First Nation. So what we carries our hands is what we show you who we are. Do you know what you do when people die? What? Celebrate life. It's clear Aaron has been drinking. He's slurring and jumping around from topic to topic.

And like this conversation, his life appears to be spiraling. As we talk, he drops bomb after bomb. And then the other day, the two constables came to the door and said, well, major crimes and deceptive. And, you know, these phone messages are, you can't disclose the case or whatever, but your life is in severe jeopardy. I just burst out a lot of them. If the RCMP receive a credible threat to someone's life during an investigation, they will usually inform that person. And it also sounds like the RCMP tried to offer some kind of help.

Kind of like a witness protection program. I was like, oh, yeah, I'm sure you RCNP are here to help me. You guys fucking always roll a red carpet for a burnout drug dealers. I'm sure you're going to help me. You know, I just said, actually, can you guys take your unit around the block and just park it over on the left corner over there? Because that's where the lineup fucking starts to kill me. And is Tanner Murray one of the people threatening you? Ah, yes.

And his brother. And his brother. Hi. Yeah. His half-brother is a man named Jesse Ray Stevens. His criminal record dates back even further than Tanner's, including a charge for attempted murder that was dropped when the witness refused to testify. What's Tanner's beef with you? As beef with me?

Yeah. Well, if I have to be honest with you, I actually kind of will be candid. He thinks I did something I didn't do. Everyone in Dawson believes Aaron killed Emily Ogden. She's connected to Tanner both personally and professionally. I told all these fucking one of these things like concerts, I just said, straight up, and I said, you know what? I said, you know where I live?

You know where the fuck I am? Here's my phone number. Hey, you fucking little slime bag got something to say, just call me out. I said, you know what? The difference between you and me is I ain't going to fucking hide. I'm going to stand a broad fucking. daylight, and I don't really care where you live, what you do for a living, I don't like care who you think you are.

I spoke and texted with Aaron countless times over several months. It's a curious relationship. I wouldn't call us friends, but certainly the more we talked, the closer we got. Some moments, like when I found out his daughter died, I felt sorry for him. While others, when he bragged about selling kilos of drugs, I was repulsed. And of course, he is the prime suspect in the latest murder in Dawson Creek. But there's something about him that's ultimately likable, or certainly credible. His unfiltered view on why things are the way they are in Dawson Creek,

it's one of the most honest and logical versions I've heard so far. And given he's smack in the middle of it all, even part of it all, he's in a position to know. For a journalist, hearing what's what from a source this close to it, It doesn't get much better than that. And on top of that, he told me something I had never heard before about Cole Hosak, the young man who went missing, passing through town on New Year's Eve, 2023. He's a mystery to me.

The only thing I heard was he mouthed off a bunch of people and told him that he's fucking somebody. Mouthed off a bunch of people? Was that enough to get him killed? Well, it gets you killed if you're doing with the people that are going to kill you. If you're not prepared to fight that, then don't go talking like that. That's next time on the Mile Zero Murders. You've been listening to the Mile Zero Murders from CBC's Uncover and the Fifth Estate. The show is reported and hosted by me, Timothy Sawa.

Our producer is TIF Lam. Additional reporting from Mark Kelly, Grant LaFleche, and Lisa Ellenwood at the Fifth State. Sound design by Graham McDonald. Emily Connell is our coordinating producer. Our senior producer is Jeff Turner. Additional audio from CTV, CJDC News. Alia Davidson is executive producer of the 5th Estate. Emmanuel Marchand is the senior producer.

Executive producers for CBC podcasts are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. Tanya Springer is the senior manager, and RF Mirani is the director of CBC podcasts. If you're looking to check out another series, I would recommend Dirtbag Climber. It's a compelling and important story. With so many twists and turns, it'll keep you guessing to the very end. Thanks for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca.com.