Uncover - S4 "The Cat Lady Case" E1: Silhouettes

Episode Date: July 15, 2019

The Cat Lady Case, Episode 1 - A witness remembers gunshots and a mysterious fire around the same time an elderly woman goes missing.

I'm David Ridgen, host of the award-winning podcast Someone Knows Something. Each season I investigate a different unsolved case, from a mysterious bomb hidden in a flashlight to two teenagers killed by the KKK. The New York Times calls SKS a consistently rigorous intelligent gem, and Esquire named the series one of the best true crime podcasts of 2021. Find Someone Knows Something wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Awful, awful foggy.

Because I always get up at five in the morning, okay? Because I was a hunter. I hunt, you know, seven in the morning, there was two shots. But when I looked in the binoculars, it was like two silhouettes and then I couldn't see from over the other way but it looked like another silhouette, okay? It was very, very foggy, like white. But anyway, and then there was two shots.

And then a couple hours later, that's when the shed, down below by the water, they were burning the shed. In November 1998, a 77-year-old woman went missing from Muskoka, Ontario. Her name was Joan Lawrence, but everyone called her the Cat Lady. I think that's why I'm proving myself that what I am talking about is truthful. You know? Because I'm not a bullshitter. I've never been a bullshitter in my life. And I'm scared to talk. I'm scared to talk right now.

You guys see that. And I'm scared I know what's going to happen. This is Bob Earl, a twitchy lumberjack with bloodshot eyes. We're sitting in my car on the side of a muddy lake west of Huntsville. Through the windshield is an old dumping site where he says the silhouettes disposed of something. A couple hours later, there's a shed that was burning down by the water. And then it burnt, and then they started cleaning it up with tobacco. And this is why they dumped one load here, and one load up around the corner, and then I think one load out the road.

Bob used to live beside the dump site, across the lake from where John went missing. beside the dump site, across the lake from where John went missing. He says he watched this whole scene play out. Gunshots, fire, backhoe. And then what happens? Do you go to the police? Bob says a little less than a year later, he was arrested for being drunk in public, and tried to tell them then. And they basically said, Earl, you're just a drunk, sleeping off. I said, I'm drunk, but I'm not a drunk. You know, like I know what I do. I have eight or nine employees. I keep

paychecks going every Friday to them. So that's, I'm not a drunk. So the next morning they went to ask me, I said, Hey, I'm just a drunk. I said, you guys will figure it out. I said, it might take you 20 years. Oh, well, we'll figure it out before 20 years. I said, well, all right. And here we are. I'm Xander Sherman. This is Uncover the Cat Lady Case. There's a story I like to tell about Muskoka.

It's about a guy who goes into the woods and never comes out. Police suspect suicide, but can't find his body. Thirty years later, some hunters come across a pile of bones and an old rope. And the spot where they find him is just a few feet from his house. He was right there the whole time, but that's Muskoka for you. The woods will swallow you. Muskoka is Canada's cottage country, a Hamptons of the North,

one of National Geographic's top ten places to visit in the summer. As I'm working on this podcast, Hallmark comes to film a movie here. You look amazing. That lipstick color is perfect. Another reminder that to the outside world, this place is greeting card perfect. One hot chocolate coming up. Oh, with whipped cream. You got it. But I live in Muskoka. I was born here. And I see the other side. The side where people live in poverty, commit crimes. The side I started investigating in 2014, when I first heard about this story.

In 2017, I brought my research to CBC's The Fifth Estate, which made a documentary. Now I'm using new tips and information to take the story even further. Starting with the cat lady. She was a visibly homeless woman who lived in Huntsville, Muskoka's largest town, and the only town in the area to have both a men's and a women's shelter. She was in the background of people's lives for 20 years. A blur on the side of the road. A face you passed on the street.

a face you passed on the street. Yeah, just she had a very distinctive silhouette and very recognizable when you'd see her walking into town with a skirt and usually carrying bags and a scarf. And her hair was a nice shade of brown. She always wore it in a page boy. She looked a lot older, I think, for her age, like weathered. She always wore a scarf. In the summer, it was the rayon type kerchief. And in the winter, it was kind of a woolen one

that she wore tied. Unkept, dirty. She just looked like somebody that lived on the street. Sometimes people called her the bag lady because she always had bags from the A&P. I said, I noticed you've got quite a bit of cat food in your bag. And she said, yes, I have a few cats. And I lost track of how many there were, but there was never a lot of groceries. It was mostly cat food in her bags.

She'd carry them two at a time, walk ahead a little, put them down, go back for the rest. I felt bad. I felt like I needed to do something. I just couldn't go by and watch her with all those groceries and hitchhiking. I casually said, Joan, do you have any family? And she immediately looked at me and she says, do you have any siblings? Just wouldn't answer me. And I said, do you have any children? No answer. No one knew where Joan had come from, and a lot of people couldn't remember a time she hadn't been there. It was like she had always belonged to the landscape,

this little old lady standing by the side of the road. There was just, you know, never anything. If you asked her anything personal, she would shut down on you she would change the subject immediately she wouldn't answer my questions for years the cat lady lived in a derelict house with no heat or running water after it burned down in 1994 she drifted between boarding houses and the Salvation Army. In the Hallmark version of Huntsville, where everyone's young, pretty, and rich, she was remarkable just for being different. She didn't seem to be an unhappy person. You know, most people, they chew about something,

if it's not the weather or whatever but she never did not about anything but the thing is because she had all her faculties like if if she had a seemed delayed or something I could have went to the police and advocated on her behalf but it was her right to live how she wanted even though I disagreed with how she was living because I didn't feel it was safe for her. But she seemed like a smart woman. She had made her choices, and we talked about them on a regular basis. In the year leading up to her disappearance, the cat lady seemed to be living west of Huntsville, near an old paper factory. She asked people who gave her rides to drop her off before they actually saw where.

Then she just wasn't around anymore. I think, like everybody else in town, it was a concern as to how could something like this happen in small-town Ontario. Being a small town, I guess that's not how we think. I never thought that. I always knew something had happened to her, to just vanish like that. As small towns go, there was a rumble about it.

Oh, I heard that maybe, you know, she was gone to Parry Sound or she moved away or she's dead she died or there was a murder On November 25, 1998, a 28-year-old detective named Aaron Burke was assigned to locate Joan. Aaron had joined the Ontario Provincial Police, the OPP, six years earlier, quickly rising to the rank of a plainclothes investigator.

Erin wouldn't talk to me for this podcast, but I have her ITOs, or Informations to Obtain, along with other police documents. ITOs are what police use to get search warrants. They contain allegations, not facts that have been proven in court. Most ITOs have names, dates, details. They're like diaries. This is how Aaron starts. We've asked someone else to read them for us. On Wednesday, November 25th,

Sandra Gordon from Probation and Parole Services and Margaret Pidgeon from Adult Protective Services attended the residence of a male person by the name of Alan Al Marshall. Marshall is on probation, and Gordon is his probation officer. Gordon and Pidgeon attended his residence to check on his well-being. check on his well-being. During their visit, Marshall informed them that an elderly woman by the name of Joan Lawrence lived on the property as well, and that he was concerned because he had not seen her for at least three weeks, which was highly unusual. This guy, Al Marshall, was a 57-year-old former limo driver. In 1997, he moved from Toronto to Muskoka and lived on the same property as Joan. To picture this property, imagine 50 football fields covered in trees. The driveway cuts down the middle and over a bump of railroad track.

On either side are piles of junk, abandoned vehicles, old hot water heaters. There are also cabins and outbuildings. Al Marshall lives in a cabin by the road, and Joan lives in another by the lake. Joan passes him on her way down the driveway and back again. She stops and says hi and brings him caramel bars from town. So Al tells his probation officer he hasn't seen Joan in a while. The probation officer reports her missing. Now this detective, Erin Berg, is looking into things.

I posted her photograph at the Bracebridge detachment and requested that observation be kept for Joan. I also contacted all of the motels in Bracebridge and Gravenhurst in an effort to try and locate Joan. One of the first things Erin did was call all the motels in Bracebridge and Gravenhurst in an effort to try and locate Joan. One of the first things Erin did was call all the motels in the area. Maybe Joan had moved off the property, just got tired of living there, and that's why Al hadn't seen her. But no one at any of the motels matched Joan's description. Then Erin writes that she got in touch with the clerk at a Huntsville law firm. I think she knew to do this because her boss's wife was Al Marshall's probation officer.

So Joan must have mentioned to Al that she was seeing this law clerk. Then Al tells his PO, the PO tells her husband, and the PO's husband tells Aaron. Just one of those small town things. and the PO's husband tells Aaron. Just one of those small town things. Anyway, Aaron says the law clerk told her that, yes, the cat lady used to come in here all the time. She was helping her out with something. Helping her out with what Aaron wanted to know. Then the clerk apparently dropped this bomb, the first real piece of the puzzle. She told Aaron that she was helping Joan file a report to take to the OPP, that Joan was anxiously stopping by every couple of days to quote, see how the paperwork was coming. The last time this law clerk said she saw Joan, she told her the paperwork was finally ready and she could come in and pick it up. The clerk hadn't seen her since.

Hey. Hi, Xander. Nice to see you. Nice to see you too. You're looking very... Yes, it's pajama day at work. Come on in. Okay. This is Linda Charbonneau. On this particular day, we're meeting at my house, and she's wearing a flannel onesie. How are you? I like to think of it as a metaphor for how unpretentious, how straight up Linda is. There's nothing superficial about her. Linda works at a daycare now, but in 1998 she was the deli manager at the A&P. That was how she met Joan. I used to make coffee for customers.

We used to have free coffee. So, of course, I'm out on the floor, and so she just came up to the coffee pot, and I, you know, said good morning, and we just chatted. Linda likes cats, too, and at first that was how they bonded. You know, me noticing the canned cat food in her cart, and we talked about her cats. But as Linda got to know Joan better, she began to see another side. Everyone called her the cat lady.

And I guess when someone mentioned cat lady, of course it's like, who's the cat lady? But it didn't take long for me, once I got to know her, that I didn't refer to her as a cat lady. I referred to her as Joan. You described her eyes as being kind. Yes, yes, yes. She did have kind eyes, yes. Because when I would talk to her, I would look into her eyes.

What did you see? Some days I would see desperation. She told me about her living arrangements. So when we had conversations about that, her eyes were just like, she was just living on the edge. The place Joan was living, the place she didn't want anyone to see, was a small garden shed. I've been thinking about this shed and the best way to describe it. And I'm just going to say it's exactly what it sounds like. It's just a shed. There's no electricity, running

water, no bathroom. It's not even insulated. And when Joan was renting it, because, oh yeah, she was renting it, the only heat source was a portable heater that was plugged into an extension cord. According to Linda, by the fall of 1998, even that was gone. There was no heat, or the heater was broken, and the landlord didn't fix it, and she was freezing to death. She said, I'm freezing to death. She goes, I'm freezing to death. Linda says she kept an eye on Joan at the A&P. Not just at the coffee stand, but around the store.

Then, one day... I saw Joan approach this man up by the front caches at the front of the store. He had this cowboy hat on, kind of a skinny guy, kind of creepy looking to me. He had his hand out, and she was putting bills, money into his hand, just counting it out. And I just remember her just keep handing it and piling it and handing it and handing it. And I knew it was a large amount of money from the fact that she just kept dishing it out and dishing it out. And I saw after she finished putting the last dollar or whatever amount of money it was in his hand, he just looked at it, looked at her, put it in his pocket, walked right away from her, walked out the door. And she just stood there, kind of slumped in a way like,

I don't know how to describe it, just like feeling of defeat again, I think. I mean, he could have drove her home, but he just left her standing there. He got what he wanted, and that was it. Joan's rent was $600 a month. I've known this detail for a while now, but I still take every opportunity to tell people.

$600 in 1998. That's almost $900 today. Everyone I tell this to says it's deplorable, which, of course it is, but I'm looking for something more. Like, who would take advantage of someone like that? What kind of a person would allow someone to live in an 8x10 shed, much less charge them rent? Some people ask where Joan came up with the money. Between her pension and her old age security, she got about $900 a month. That left her about $300 to spend on her cats,

which everyone said she would feed before feeding herself. In fact, Joan got her own food from the food bank. So any extra money coming in was important, life-changing even. And in 1998, that was her income tax check. She was in the store, and of course I said hi, and we were talking a bit, In 1998, that was her income tax check. She was in the store, and of course I said hi, and we were talking a bit, and she asked me a question. She goes, Linda, did you get your income tax back yet?

And I said, oh yeah, Joan, I got that months ago. I said, why? She goes, I haven't gotten mine. And I went, really? Well, you should have got it. She goes, yeah, I don't't know I didn't get it and I said well you should look into that you know and she was kind of saying that she might have thought that her landlord cashed it or whatever and I said well that's you know that's not right I said you you better look into that so she said you know I'm gonna look into that I said, you better look into that. So she said, you know, I'm going to look into that. I said, okay, good. I was waiting for her to come back and tell me what happened with her money

because she was waiting for that money and depending on that money. And that's the last time. That's our last conversation. And you never saw her again? No. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell.

I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with Season 3 of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. Detective Erin Burke believed she had just learned something big. Joan was about to report the theft of her income tax check. Just as that was sinking in, Erin got another call.

It was from Al Marshall, the tenant who first noticed Joan was missing. Erin generally wrote Lawrence for Joan Lawrence, notice Joan was missing. Aaron generally wrote Lawrence for Joan Lawrence, but we'll be using Joan when reading from Aaron's ITOs. And in some spots, for clarity, we've changed the wording of Aaron's statements slightly. In this part, Aaron describes an individual who was concerned because he observed someone operating a backhoe. For 20 years, Al Marshall has been a crucial but problematic part of the police investigation into Jones' disappearance. He died a few years ago, and I don't know anyone else who saw or heard what he did,

which could be one of the reasons no charges have ever been laid. Then, just as I started working on this podcast, I heard from lumberjack Bob Earle. Now, I didn't call Teresa because I hate her, okay? Teresa is Bob's ex, in case you were wondering. This is something he does. Talks as if you've known him for years. It's best if she stays on that side of the town than I stay on this side of town. You know, because she did a lot of...

If she would have been honest with her dad, my dad wouldn't have had a hole in his leg, you know. It was a court order to go get my equipment. Like a lot of people, I first heard about Bob Ear Earl in a 2005 Toronto Life story called The Other Muskoka. The story is about a shootout between Bob's family and his in-laws. It was a big deal, and in Muskoka it made Bob famous, or maybe infamous. I can't really tell. I can't really tell. Just like Al Marshall, Bob says he heard gunshots and witnessed a backhoe being operated around the time of Joan's disappearance. Al says he heard about a fire,

but Bob claims he actually saw it. That the silhouettes burned a shed, which, according to the ITOs, may have been a previous shed John was living in. But there's one thing Bob says he saw that Al never reported. Someone dumping something on a nearby property, a spot locals treated like an unofficial dumping grounds. And I think I hold that key. Do you want to show me where they dumped? Bob and I are out of my car now, walking through the old dump site across the road from his former house.

This gate wasn't here. The gate wasn't here. A couple of hours after seeing the fire, Bob says he was working in the yard when the truck pulled up right across from him. Bob says the people driving the truck were using their own property as a kind of landfill, but chose this spot to get rid of whatever they had burned. Got all the land there to dump. Why did they dump over here? I'll be coming back to the dump site later.

For now, I ask Bob why he's telling me any of this. I mean, after the Toronto Life article, after allegedly being ignored by the cops, why trust me? Why trust anyone? You know, I know I went missing, and my brother, much as we don't have, we've never said we love each other, or my my brothers or the whole family, but we do.

We protect each other, right? So I know if I went missing and my brother 10 years later, somebody told him something, I'm sure he'd go his power to put closure to it, right? I think that's what I'm doing, is I want, you know, I want, there's a brother or sister out there or a family member that wants closure to this and then if it is, if it does come out and my facts are right, well I'm sure it's the authorities to punish the people that did it.

And I think I hold that key. I guess what I'm saying is I know what it's going to bring the heat on me, and sometimes it's best just to look the other way, but then I'm the guy that's got to carry it, and that's what I've done. I've carried it for 20 years. By the fall of 1998, Joan was getting desperate. She feared for her safety and told the social worker to call 911 if anything happened. As Linda remembers, Joan seemed especially concerned

about her landlord. She told me that the landlord did offer that, you know, she could come in and take a bath and use the toilet, which I'm thinking to myself, like, she didn't have a toilet, she didn't have running water, she didn't have, you know, a bath, a shower or anything. So I immediately said, well, Joan, like, why don't you go in there and use the toilet and have a shower and stuff? You know, because her hygiene was not very good, so just, like, it was kind of like saying,

why don't you use the shower and go in there? She goes, no. She goes, I'd never go in there. And I went, why? Like I was puzzled. I didn't understand. And she goes, no, I'd never go in there. She goes, you just never know what he's going to do.

You just never know what he's going to do. Joan had always rejected people's offers of help, but now she turned to them, sought them out even. This is a retired OPP officer who used to give her rides. One day when I picked her up, I had to stop at my parents' place, which was kind of on the run into town. We had a barn in the backyard there where we used to keep our horses at my parents' place. She wanted to know if she could rent that and live there. I said, well, no, because there's no heat, there's no plumbing, there's no electricity. Everyone said no to Joan.

They didn't know where to put her, didn't know what to do with her cats. Joan refused to put them in a shelter or give them up for adoption. With no one else to turn to, she asked her friend Linda if she could come and stay with her. And then when she did, you know, when she did reach out to ask me for help, which was probably extremely hard for her to do, and that she had trusted me enough to even ask me, for her to do and that she had trusted me enough to even ask me and then when I refused her then that must have like that probably was made her feel like like like I have nobody I just I don't know I feel bad sorry Joan seven weeks after Joan went missing, Detective Erin Burke got enough evidence together for a search warrant. At dawn on December 17th, she and a convoy of police vehicles descended the long driveway of Joan's last known address.

Well, I remember, you know, driving in there. This is someone who was there that day. She's asked not to be identified for fear of retribution. I remember the big gate. It's almost like at first you think rich people live in here because it's a big private-looking estate kind of thing, you know? And then I remember the long driveway up to where the house was, and along the driveway on the left,

all these abandoned vehicles. Oh, I mean, horrific. It was all like, you know, oh my gosh, I mean, this is disgusting. That was my feeling, and certainly, you know, the feeling I got that anybody would leave a person to live in those kind of conditions. that anybody would leave a person to live in in those kind of conditions. And I never saw, but I did hear that, you know, they had found some dead cats around the shed.

Police searched the property, combed the woods, dug up the earth, eventually dredged the lake. They didn't find Joan's body, but to everyone who knew her, they had found all the evidence they needed. If the cat lady's cats were dead, so was she. Oh God, I'm just, like, just, she didn't do anything wrong. Just, she loved her cats. I mean, what's wrong with that? I can't, I can't believe this. It's terrible. Poor Joel. There's one thing I haven't told Linda yet. I know who Detective Aaron Burke believed killed the cats.

Police found some of the cats when they went and searched the property, and they found bullet fragments in the cats. One of the weapons that's missing, that we can see that's missing in these documents is a rifle. Okay. Who knows what else that rifle might have been used for. Oh God. Coming up on Uncover. I mean, stepping on the cat and taunting her is different from getting a gun and just, like, because she had over 30 cats. Like no authorities ever came to ever ask any questions about them. It'd be like an execution.

Maybe it was a lynx that you heard or something like that. She says, no, I think it sounded like a human being. Oh, God. I mean, if he could do that to her cats. He has no regard for life. No wonder she was terrified of him. Uncover the Cat Lady Case is hosted, written, and reported by me, Xander Sherman. The podcast is produced by Graham MacDonald and Mika Anderson,

who is also our audio producer. Special thanks to the Fifth Estate's Lisa Mayer and Timothy Sawa for additional research and reporting. Thank you. And the voice of Aaron Burke is Lauren Donnelly.