Uncover - S39 E1: The Gentle Giant | The Most Wanted Olympian

Episode Date: October 15, 2026

Shots ring out in a neighbourhood north-west of Toronto. A father is dead and a mother and daughter are in hospital, battling for their lives. When Toronto Star reporter Calvi Leon arrives on the scen...e days later, witnesses tell her what really happened. What she learns starts her down a path she could never have imagined and leads to one man: former Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding.How does a small town Canadian kid, who was once called a labrador puppy by his teammates, find himself on the FBI’s Most Wanted list?This podcast is a co-production of Uncover from CBC and Suspicion from the Toronto Star.

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 I've been staring at my offer letter for three days. The salary is exciting, but trying to understand terms like group matching and flexible spending, it feels like reading another language. Congrats on the job. That's huge. But yeah, entering a new workplace comes with a big learning curve. I just want to make sure I'm setting myself up right from day one. It feels like there's so much to figure out about how all of this works. We all feel a bit out of our depth when starting out.
Starting point is 00:00:29 When I made my last jump, I was totally trying to make sense of my new paycheck and my real-life expenses. Glad, it's not just me. It helps to know that everyone goes through this phase. For sure. Honestly, just bringing it up in the first place is half the battle. Landing the job is just the start of the journey. Want to hear how others are navigating the early careers? Check out Count Us In.
Starting point is 00:00:51 A web series where host Michelle Spina sits down with members of Gen Z to share real perspectives and experiences on money, and what comes next. Paid content with Desjardin. Now streaming on CBC Gem. This is a CBC podcast. Remind me, okay, so your first day of the star is when? September 2020 is when I started. And then two months later,
Starting point is 00:01:22 unbeknownst to you, you're about to get on to this huge case. I had no idea that it's going to be huge for a while. But yeah. When did the call come in first? So I actually remember this call pretty well because I'm not a morning person. This is Calvillian, a young new reporter at the Toronto Star, Canada's largest newspaper.
Starting point is 00:01:41 She had always dreamed of working there, and in 2023 she got her wish, hired as an intern, an intern who needed to prove herself. And I got a call around 8 a.m. from my editor, and she said, hey, there's been an incident in Caledon. one person's dead. We don't really know much, but I'll flip you the press release. Can you go out there and check it out? The entire property was cordoned off with police tape.
Starting point is 00:02:15 The first thing I'm looking for is who can I speak to? Like, how many other houses are nearby? Who can I go door knock? Who would have heard this? And truly, like, there were no options. At first, there's not much to go on other than what police are telling reporters. Shortly before midnight, on November 20th, 23,
Starting point is 00:02:33 there was a shooting at a home in Caledon, about an hour northwest of Toronto. One man was found dead at the scene, two women were taken to hospital. A search for court documents reveals that there was once an illegal trucking yard on the property, so that becomes the main media narrative.
Starting point is 00:02:49 But days later, when Kelvey gets a tip from a neighbor that the police tape has finally come down, she heads back to the crime scene. She's looking to see if anyone at the home will talk. Sometimes journalists call this a door knock, or the horrible term of pickup. It literally means you're going to knock on the door and hopefully pick up a photo of the victims.
Starting point is 00:03:12 It's the worst assignment. So I just park on the side. I start recording, and as I got out of my car, I realized that there's two men in the driveway. This is already going better than I thought, because people are at home. She walks up to the men,
Starting point is 00:03:29 her phone recording at her side. Hello. How are you? Go ahead, thanks. Sorry, I get closer. My name's Calvi. I work for the Toronto Star, and I was just hoping to chat with you guys. I know a lot has happened in the last week.
Starting point is 00:03:46 I don't know if you were involved, but I'm so sorry if you were during. If you want, I'll call you back because the actual owner is not here. Okay. Because he was renting and it was the dad, he was shop. So we are just with friends. The men ask Kelvi just to give them her card, but then they keep talking. And they tell her that their friend lived there, rented the place, but wasn't home at the time. It was just his sister and his parents who were visiting from India the night someone broke into the home and started shooting.
Starting point is 00:04:20 Just a regular family. The dad died immediately, and their friend's sister and mom were in critical condition. None of this is publicly known yet, and it's a very different story from the reports circulating about a criminal trucking operation gone bad. Oh, yeah, nobody knows this. Everyone thinks that, like, everyone's making all these assumptions and, like, rumors. We need media's help to bring out the truth. Calvey tells the men she'll keep in touch and rushes back to the newsroom to write her story,
Starting point is 00:04:52 raising the possibility this could be a case of mistaken identity. Soon after the story is published online, she receives news. The mother has died in hospital. So the headline was, this Indian couple were visiting their kids in a safe country. What could possibly explain their Canadian murder? That headline sort of summarizes what the story is, but also I come back to that question a lot. Jagtar Singh Sedu and Harbizan Kar Sadiu, both in their 50s, murdered. The couple's daughter, Jaspreet, remains in hospital unconscious fighting to survive.
Starting point is 00:05:31 doctors are able to remove 12 of the 13 bullets that struck her, just one lodged in her spine, was deemed too risky to take out. When she wakes, the full weight of what has happened hits her, and the memories of that night start flooding in. My father was shot in front of me. I heard my mother's last screams, and after that, it was complete silence. Only the noises of gunshots were there.
Starting point is 00:06:03 That's it. My mom was in another room. My father was in front of me. He died. I wasn't able to do anything. Myself, I called 911 as soon as I got my consciousness back. Whole family shot. This is what I was saying repeatedly.
Starting point is 00:06:31 Weeks pass, relatives and friends of the victims are desperate for answers. Calvi continues to investigate. we still don't know who actually killed them. They kind of kept coming back to that as well. They want to know who was in that house. Who was in the house? How did they get it wrong? So wrong.
Starting point is 00:06:48 Right. Like an execution style murders, multiple shots. For months, nothing seems to make sense, until her investigation turns to a man named Ryan Wedding. Good afternoon. Today, the Justice Department is proud to announce new developments in our ongoing investigation into Ryan James Wedding. That's Pam Bondi, the then U.S. Attorney General under the Trump administration.
Starting point is 00:07:19 Wedding is the former Olympian from Canada, who is now the leader of a transnational criminal enterprise. He's currently on the FBI's and has been top 10 most wanted list. He is currently the largest distributor of cocaine in Canada. Wedding collaborates closely with the Sinaloa cartel. He controls one of the most prolific and violent drug trafficking organizations in this world. She's behind the podium with the Department of Justice Seal on the front. This is a press conference in Washington, D.C. A row of men stand behind her, including the head of the FBI, Cash Patel.
Starting point is 00:08:05 And they're talking about a former Olympic snowboarder, a Canadian. Make no mistake about it. Ryan Wedding is a modern-day iteration of Pablo Escobar. He's a modern-day iteration of El Chapo Guzman. The State Department has raised the reward for Ryan Wedding from $10 million to $15 million. El Chapo, Pablo Escobar, the most notorious cartel heads, compared to a Canadian snow. A former Olympian now allegedly the head of a sprawling international drug ring. But as Calvie would discover, the fugitive Canadian is accused of crimes closer to home too.
Starting point is 00:08:52 The shooting deaths of the seduce. So I get the confirmation that it's in fact the same case that I had been looking into. And I'm thinking, what? Wait a second. So you're telling me that this former Olympic snowboarder ordered their killings. I'm Michelle Shepard, and from CBC Podcasts and the Toronto Star,
Starting point is 00:09:18 this is the most wanted Olympian. Episode 1, The Gentle Giant. Up next in the Starhunt is teammate Ryan Wedding from Quitlam, British Columbia, 20 years old, two-time World Junior Championship medalist in Parallel Giant Slalom. It's 2002, February 14th, Valentine's Day at the Salt Lake City Olympics.
Starting point is 00:10:00 Canadian snowboard competitor Ryan Wedding is in a tight red ski suit. Around his neck is a thick gold chain. As he prepares for his event, he stretches his arms to his sides, grabs onto the start gate, and he slides his board back and forth through the snow. It's go time, his Olympic debut. He takes a few breaths in and out, and he launches himself forward. Look at the big rig on this kid.
Starting point is 00:10:26 Ryan Wet dwarfs the other racers. Taking a very high, loopy line, keeping it on edge. Ryan Wedding, if anyone has the potential to hold a ton of speed into the flats, it's this man right here. The mountains and skiing surrounded Ryan Wedding since birth. He grew up in Thunder Bay, a working-class city in northern Ontario. His dad was a competitive skier in university, and his grandparents owned a small ski resort.
Starting point is 00:11:00 Nothing fancy. chocolate and hot dogs kind of place. Ryan was the eldest of three kids and the only boy. His grandfather had him on skis as soon as he could walk, taught him how to drive before his feet could touch the pedals. One friend of Ryan's from grade school remembers the wedding family is having a nice home. His dad drove a corvette. But Ryan never seemed flashy or like a spoiled kid with money.
Starting point is 00:11:24 He was definitely confident, but not showy. In 1993, when Ryan is around nine years old, the family moved across the country from Thunder Bay to B.C. His dad had to relocate for work. That's when Ryan switched from skiing to this up-and-coming sport known as snowboarding. Hello. Good.
Starting point is 00:11:53 Hi, I'm Kelby. Nice to meet you. This is a beautiful city hall. Yeah, it's pretty good. It's like it was felt, I guess, in the 80s or something. No, I guess 90s. I guess it was the 90s. I've come with Calvi to meet Alexa Liu in her office in Richmond,
Starting point is 00:12:07 a suburb of Vancouver. She's a city counselor. and looks TV-ready when we meet in a crisp purple suit, her hair and makeup perfect. So this is for our podcast. So it's for our podcast. I put on makeup for no reason. When Alexa was younger, she was a snowboarder,
Starting point is 00:12:26 a two-time Olympic competitor. And that's how she met Ryan Wedding. He was that gregarious guy, and you could see he was like that excitable puppy that if you didn't keep the leash tight, he was going to go chase the squirrel. He would have been 15 years old, 14, 15 years old and coming on a trip with us.
Starting point is 00:12:51 And, you know, I was well into my mid-20s, and many people on the team were quite a bit older, or around my age. And, you know, then we've got this young guy, Ryan Wedding, who's like this big Labrador puppy, right? Like, he's six foot four. with size 15 feet. One of Ryan's coaches
Starting point is 00:13:13 had taken to calling him the gentle giant. Here's one of the future stars of the Canadian racing team, Ryan Wedding. Ryan's style is really gunned and go. He is a big, tall guy. Alexa pulls out a picture
Starting point is 00:13:30 that she dug up from those days. What we're looking at here is a team picture from 2002 after the national championship. and we're standing with the whole team, the men's and the women's team. Brian Wedding's one of the people in the picture. I'm in the picture. So, yeah, a bunch of us.
Starting point is 00:13:49 Kind of a cool picture. There are 14 athletes in the photo, all of them grinning broadly in their ski jackets. They're holding a banner advertising the official sponsor of the snowboarding team. These chocolate milk drinks with flavors like Mr. Big and crispy crunch doesn't really scream healthy athletic beverages. But hey, the snowboarder. No boarders always have a kind of badass vibe. Ryan is in the second row. He's a thick neck and a shock of yellow feathered hair.
Starting point is 00:14:17 He's noticeably taller than everyone. Alexa remembers that Ryan's age difference, that he was so much younger than the rest of them, also made him stand out. He and I were together a reasonable amount. Like, you know, I remember being at dinner once in Europe and the guy who owned the hotel coming over and grabbing Ryan's hat
Starting point is 00:14:39 and taking it off his head, because, you know, in Europe, they really don't like it when you were a hat to the table. His parents were trying to do the best they could for him and sent him on a trip with us. And, you know, here he is, being this happy-go-lucky kid, you know, he was that bubbly guy and, you know, a bit sassy. Snowboarding was a new sport on the professional level. It wouldn't be added to the Olympics until 1998. And as Alexa notes, the guardrails for athletes weren't really there yet. The breadth of experiences on the team was quite wide.
Starting point is 00:15:15 And some of the coaches were my age, and they were there because they had technical skill, but not necessarily because they had ever taken any coaching courses. So they didn't really know how to coach. They didn't know how to coach kids because he was a teenager. Most of us didn't have young brothers that much younger, right? It also wasn't necessarily our job to babysit him or look after him. Of course, we kept him under our wing.
Starting point is 00:15:40 but we're adults. Some of us could rent cars, right? Like, that's a far cry from someone who doesn't even have their driver's license. And as I said, snowboarding has always had that kind of rebel edge. It was really unfortunate because there was already that culture that snowboarders were those pot smoking, like, loose cannon types, right?
Starting point is 00:16:05 Like, hanging out, having a good time, baggy pants, like everything else. You know, my girlfriend and I, we approach one of the banks and we said, hey, we'd love to be sponsored by you. They're like, we don't want to touch you with a 10-foot pull. You guys use drugs, basically. It's like, oh, great, awesome. Speaking of that unfortunate drug reputation,
Starting point is 00:16:31 how are you? How are you? Hi, buddy. Okay, bye. Hi, how you doing? Good. Nice to meet you. Are you on tape now?
Starting point is 00:16:40 I'm recording. You're being really loud. Too loud. Too loud. It's a pleasure. Thank you. If you're Canadian, and you can remember that first Olympic snowboarding event in 1998, you'll probably recall Ross Rebliatti. Ross Rebliatti was considered to be one of the world's best racers.
Starting point is 00:17:02 The Whistler BC native had saved the biggest run of his life for the Olympics. So Ross, if he can hold it together, he could be in there. Oh, it's time. Ross Rebliatti of Whistler, British Columbia takes over the league. Today, he lives in B.C., in Penticton, a gorgeous town of lakes and wineries and fruit orchards. You heard his dog. She's a massive cane corso who looks and sounds vicious, but is named Bella, and will curl up and fall asleep on my feet during our interview.
Starting point is 00:17:36 For people who are younger than us and maybe not remember you, give me a bit of your history. Sure. So my name is Ross Rebliatti, and I was a pro-snowboarder from the late 80s until the late 90s. And World Cup tour for a number of years. And then in 1998, I competed at the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, where I won the gold medal for Giant Slalom Snowball. And, yeah, tested positive for cannabis. And then, just as quickly as the medal was awarded, it was taken away.
Starting point is 00:18:17 Just 72 hours after Ross's gold medal run, the sweet taste of victory turned sour. My new traces of marijuana were found in Rebleatti's system. But after the story went viral in the days before that was a thing, and Ross's name became forever entwined with weed, his gold medal. was reinstated. For one thing, cannabis wasn't a banned substance, and Ross had always claimed his exposure was secondhand. Did that feel like vindication?
Starting point is 00:18:50 Like it definitely took away that awesome feeling of winning, because now, like, the whole stereotype and, you know, around cannabis was so heavy at the time. Yeah, and then the next day flew to... Los Angeles and did the tonight show with Jay Leno. Please welcome Ross for Bagliotti. Well, you've had quite a week. You think so?
Starting point is 00:19:19 Did you mind the jokes? You know, everybody was doing jokes about you. Yeah, I heard about you. I heard about you. I think I called you Ross, Nickel Bagliotti. Yeah, yeah, that was funny. Well, listen, well, good, I'm glad it worked out. Ross and Bagliotti, congratulations.
Starting point is 00:19:31 It was all so dramatic. Snowboarding was new to the Olympics. Canada won, then didn't, and then won again. Not to mention weed was still very much. much illegal in Canada at this time and hugely stigmatized. While all this was happening, Ryan Wedding was just coming up in the sport. Ryan around that time, he was probably 17 or 18. And I was like 10 years older than him.
Starting point is 00:19:55 At the end of my career, and he was the new guy. And I'm like, thank God I already won. I don't have to worry about Ryan, you know? Like, this guy's on fire. He looked like Superman, over six feet tall, fully jacked. And all the best equipment. You know, his family was all around him, coming to the races, and I could see like he was supported.
Starting point is 00:20:16 Everyone was impressed with Ryan and his ability and thought that he was definitely going to be the next, you know, the next good guy on tour. The 2002 Olympic Winter Games on CBC, brought to you by Tim Hortons. Tim Hortons wishes our athletes every success. Salt Lake City, Utah. This is where Ryan Wedding had his one and only,
Starting point is 00:20:53 only Olympic run. Ryan Wedding, if anyone has the potential to hold a ton of speed into the flats, it's this man right here. He starts strong, but then falters on a turn, hitting one of the gates. This costs him seconds, vital seconds. The time. Six-one, 16th place for the 20-year-old. His first, well, he won't be moving on to the finals.
Starting point is 00:21:23 The whole race is less than a minute. After years of preparing, Ryan's Olympic dream lasted just 38 seconds. I mean, as results at Salt Lake City, they weren't, like, surprising to anybody. Like, the best guy doesn't always have a good day. But at the same time, he's still qualified to be at the Olympics. Like, that shows that he's good. Well, we've had a great couple weeks of training. I was really stoked coming into the event.
Starting point is 00:21:55 I mean, I'm stoked just to be here. The whole thing's so exciting. I never imagined it would be this incredible. It's too bad. Things didn't go the way I wanted today. I rode it pretty well. I think maybe just a little bit too tentative. Didn't let it run quite enough.
Starting point is 00:22:09 In this CBC clip, one of the only times he was interviewed as an athlete, Wedding sounds like he's taking his disappointing run well. But Alexa, she remembers that no matter how team members did, Olympic athletes often struggled once it was over. Well, sometimes I think the challenge was, is your goal is to go to the Olympics. So now you hit that goal and now you're like, well, now I've done what I wanted to do. And that's the other challenge too, is like, okay, so what, now what? What's your next goal?
Starting point is 00:22:44 Because you have to change who you are. You're not an athlete anymore. You're something else. You have to change. You know, you don't wake up at night wondering how you're going to be faster. So you have to change gears and figure something else out. and it's a tough transition and everyone goes through it
Starting point is 00:23:01 and they go through it differently. Alexa ran into Ryan in town a few years after his Olympic run and she noticed physically he had changed and she worried for him. You could tell he was starting to get into more trouble. He put on a lot of weight
Starting point is 00:23:19 in muscle, right? So like, you know, he got some big tattoos on him that you're like, oh, it's put him an aggressive tattoo there, my friend. Ross agrees, coming down from the high of an Olympic career, it makes sense you'd seek that rush elsewhere. You know, we were pro-snowboarders on tour, traveling the world.
Starting point is 00:23:44 You know, it was a lot of good times, and, you know, it was all about adrenaline and risk-taking risks and doing everything. And I think there's a certain part of the population that would be. just rather like do that and you know live that exciting crazy lifestyle where you're looking over your shoulder all the time one risk-taking lifestyle popular in british columbia at the time was growing weed and there was some serious money to be made some estimates put it at a six billion dollar industry i wasn't growing myself i was helping my friends who were growing so i was like trimming, taking care of the plants, that sort of thing. I was high profile.
Starting point is 00:24:35 I was scared to even trim, let alone have my own grow up and buy and sell weed on the black market. Like that was completely out of the question for me. Just I was high profile. And I couldn't go through another thing that happened at the Olympics. I understood I went through that and I didn't want that to happen again. And I didn't want to be involved in the black market. Ross didn't want in. But others did.
Starting point is 00:25:00 There was money to be made. Ross does the math. So the amount of money that they're getting for one pound is three grand. So if you did, you know, let's say you had, you know, a thousand plants. And let's say you got, say, 700 pounds times 3,000. That's $2.1 million every three months. Whoa. So times four.
Starting point is 00:25:30 So you're making that much money a year. And that's $8,400,000. And that's just a made-up quick number. The temptation would be so enormous, of course. That temptation seemed to be too much for Ryan Wedding. So cocaine was coming up from South America or Central America, wherever Peru or Colombia, wherever it comes from. And, you know, the Canadian growers were basically trading
Starting point is 00:26:01 cannabis for cocaine to bring into Canada. That's probably pretty close to what was going on. By 2006, four years after his Olympic debut and a month after his 25th birthday, Ryan Wedding was back in the news. And this time, it had nothing to do with snowboarding. I just tallied up my cost for this semester. And between tuition, campus fees,
Starting point is 00:26:40 and a very expensive textbook I've barely opened. My budget is stretched thin. Yeah, it's a lot to juggle at once. Right? It feels like everyone else somehow got a manual on how to navigate student life and figure out their finances, and I missed the memo. Trust me, nobody got a manual. When I started school last year, I felt the exact same way. Everyone's just figuring it out as they go. Honestly, just knowing other people are asking the same questions makes me feel a whole lot better. You're definitely not the only one trying to make sense of it, but all Navigating school and your finances comes with a lot of big questions. If you're figuring out your next steps, check out Count Us In.
Starting point is 00:27:21 A web series where host Michelle Spina sits down with members of Gen Z to share real perspectives and experiences on money, life, and what comes next. Paid content with Desjardin. Now streaming on CBC Gem. It isn't for everyone. You need grit to climb this high this often. You've got to be an underdog that all. Always over delivers.
Starting point is 00:27:52 You've got to be 6,500 hospital staff, 1,000 doctors, all doing so much with so little. You've got to be Scarborough. Defined by our uphill battle and always striving towards new heights. And you can help us keep climbing. Donate at lovescarbro.cairbo.ca. After the Olympics and retirement from professional snowboarding, wedding works as a bouncer at a couple of BC nightclubs. It's been reported that around this time, Wedding had a lot of money that was flowing in and out.
Starting point is 00:28:27 You know, he had a luxury condo in Vancouver. He was driving fancy cars, and he was spending lots of money on real estate. So he would have been interacting with some people he met at these nightclubs where he was working. And we know that in the early 2000s, clubs in Vancouver were quite rowdy, but they were also sometimes violent. He also went to university for a couple years to study business, but dropped out. and decided to apply those skills elsewhere. At the time, B.C. Bud was the largest cash crop in the province, and wedding wanted in. His friend and old teammate had the perfect spot, a property in the suburb of Maple Ridge, just east of Vancouver.
Starting point is 00:29:12 I'm going this way, right? You are. Yeah, it'll throw you back onto Scott Road, I think, and then let you go on to Highway 17. Although, they did just do this earlier if I was the surface. Oh, fun. Manisha Martens is a journalist who back in the mid-2000s worked as a local reporter in Maple Ridge, British Columbia. She was the town reporter at the time. Everyone knew her, and she pretty much knew everything that was going on.
Starting point is 00:29:40 When was the last time you were at the property? I drive through it, but I've not gone into the back road since I left, right? Yeah, yeah. So it's been a long time. It's been a while since I've been back into the boonies of Pitt Meadows. I met her with Calvi, and the three of us drove out to Maple Ridge to take her back to her old beat. So right now we are... We're in rural Maple Ridge.
Starting point is 00:30:09 It's heading out towards this marshy area and farm area in Pitt Meadows, Maple Ridge. And it's also the site of many, many illegal growups in the past. including the one that Ryan Wedding was involved in. We drive by a sprawling property, but it's hard to see much except the fence surrounding it and a lot of greenery. Back in 2006, Wedding's name was mentioned in connection with this property.
Starting point is 00:30:43 The RCMP ended up raiding it as a massive grow-up. Calvi tries to find a place to pull over on the rural road. We just let this car pass and then I'll be a little Uey. You've gotten a huge head. and I think that's why police use thermal imaging because you can't see what's going on in there. And this also makes it very hard, if you notice, it's very hard to do surveillance in these areas.
Starting point is 00:31:10 You can't park, you will notice a car parked around here. You know, like if you had an unmarked car, it's spotted, easily spotted. Maple Ridge wasn't just no one back then for its grow-ups. It was also biker territory. It's home to the Haney Hells Angels chapter. They collected taxes from every grow-up in town. And there were a lot before legalization.
Starting point is 00:31:41 Maple Ridge, it's suburbia. Suburbia in B.C. was a hotbed for illegal marijuana activity. The Hells Angels Clubhouse is five kilometers away, less than a 10-minute drive from the grow-up associated with wedding. there's almost no chance a grow-up could operate here without having at least the blessing or some sort of tax paid. Yes, yeah. Not a grow-up this size. Not a grow-up that's not very far from the Haney Chapters Clubhouse.
Starting point is 00:32:16 I think it would be safe to assume that there was knowledge of it how much they knew. Of course, we will never know. But clearly they got a cut off. The bus was a very large bus, like over 8,000 plants, 10 million in marijuana seized, the street value of 10 million, guns were seized. The chava grow up that large with guns and product that you're putting on the streets.
Starting point is 00:32:50 You smell it? It's still a grow-off. I can smell weed. It's a fucking grow-op. It may be a fucking grow-op. Many of those are legal now, although regulated, but in 2006, they were not. And while the RCMP's bust was the biggest Maple Ridge
Starting point is 00:33:09 had ever seen at that time, there were no charges laid. Ryan Wedding and others named in the search warrants and court documents were never arrested. Most grow-ops that got busted during that time, there were rarely charged. is laid. Is it just because the courts were overwhelmed or?
Starting point is 00:33:30 Courts were overwhelmed and at the end of the day it was very hard to prove a lot of the time who actually was growing the marijuana, right? So in this case I think Ryan probably had a rental contract or something. Like there was cover in some way to not connect them to the property. That was the case in most grow-ups that were busted. owners would just faint ignorance. I didn't know this was happening in my property. Wedding was still a free man.
Starting point is 00:34:05 It could have all ended there, but it didn't. Today we're unsealing a new indictment, charging wedding with two additional counts of witness tampering and intimidation, murder, money laundering, and drug trafficking. In late November 2025, almost 20 years since the raid on the grow-up, the U.S. Attorney General announces new charges against this former snowboarder.
Starting point is 00:34:34 Ryan Wedding, now one of the FBI's most wanted. President Trump gave us one mission, Make America safe again. And we will not sit idly by and let these drug dealers continue to do business, run roughshot on our neighborhoods, and put the American people and are Canadian people in harm's way. Drugs, weapons, murders,
Starting point is 00:35:03 narco-terrorists in the South, and an Olympian, a Canadian fugitive from the North. It's a perfect Trump administration story. And the hunt begins. You do not get to be a drug kingpin and evade the law. He will not evade justice. He will not evade justice.
Starting point is 00:35:23 our capture, he will not evade arrest, and he will not evade prosecution. This season, on the Most Wanted Olympian. The minute that you become that big, then you are in the spotlight, and sooner or later, they're going to come after you. And when that happens,
Starting point is 00:35:48 there's no more, you're going to get away. Key witness in Ryan Wedding case no longer going to testify a trial because he was assassinated in Columbia. WTF, what the hell did we just learn? As I'm going to hand it over, to him, poking out is just stacks and stacks of cash.
Starting point is 00:36:06 Regardless of what my son was, he did not deserve to die. He is a victim. Make no mistakes. Carthal is here. And trust me, they are watching. This podcast is a co-production between CBC podcasts and the Toronto Star. Our series was written and produced by Phelan Johnson, Calvi Leon, and me, Michelle Shepard. At CBC, Emily Connell is our coordinating producer.
Starting point is 00:36:45 Our senior producer is Andrew Friesen, mixing and sound design by Evan Kelly. Executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. Tanya Springer is the senior manager and RF Narani is the director of CBC podcasts. Special thanks to Talia Ritchie. Additional audio from CBC Sports and NBC. For the Toronto star, Calvie Leon led our reporting. Our producer is Julia Delerentis Johnston. Team editors are Sean Padden and Ed Tubb.
Starting point is 00:37:14 Keith Pinell is Deputy Managing Editor. J.P. Foso is our executive producer. And special thanks to executive editor Grant Ellis and editor-in-chief Nicole McIntyre. Tune in next week for an all-new episode of the Most Wanted Olympian. Or you can listen to the full series now by subscribing to CBC True Crime Premium on Apple Podcasts or by subscribing to the CBC True Crime channel on YouTube.
Starting point is 00:37:41 Links in the description.

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