Uncover - S4 "The Cat Lady Case" E2: The Man in the Cowboy Hat

Episode Date: July 14, 2019

The Cat Lady Case, Episode 2 - A suspicious-looking man is seen interacting with the so-called “Cat Lady” shortly before her disappearance.

They called it a school, but what kind of school has a graveyard? He says, you know what, I can't wait to get out of this hellhole. And that was the last time we heard from him. The kind of school that was meant to kill the Indian in the child. I have never seen such abject fear as what I saw in that child. And I have never seen such abject evil as what was in that man. I'm Duncan McHugh, and this is Cuper Island. Available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is a CBC Podcast. 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 1998, 77-year-old Joan Lawrence went missing from Muskoka, Ontario. Witnesses spoke of gunshots, a fire, the theft of Joan's income tax check, and a suspicious interaction. I saw Joan approach this man up by the front caches. He had this cowboy hat on, kind of a skinny guy, kind of creepy looking to me. And she was putting bills, like money, into his hand.

I just remember her just keep handing it and piling it and handing it and handing it. A missing persons investigator was assigned to the case. But after just three weeks, Detective Ehrenberg believed it was murder. I believe that Joan's death occurred to prevent her from reporting frauds, thefts, mistreatment, and neglect that she was enduring. prevent her from reporting frauds, thefts, mistreatment, and neglect that she was enduring. But when police searched Joan's last known address, the only clues to the cat lady's fate were her many beloved pets. They'd been shot dead.

Oh my god. No wonder she was terrified of him. I'm Xander Sherman. This is Uncover the Cat Lady Case. A few years ago, I was in a town north of Huntsville. Off the main street was a small gift shop called Circling Hawks. I had just walked in the door when something caught my eye. A stand of whimsical signs meant to remind homeowners to look on the bright side. One read, remember, as far as anyone knows, we are a nice, normal family.

The sign could have been written for the lands. There was Aine and Shirley, for the lands. There was Aine and Shirley, and their children, David and Walter, Paul and Catherine. This is Paul and his wife at a recent concert. He played piano, and that's her on the violin. The venue was a church, and guests included family and fellow parishioners. At the end of the concert, Letitia Lann addressed the audience. You know what? It's like in life. You can't always have things perfectly on this earth, because we know, we know inside that we're not perfect now, but we're longing for someday when we will be perfect, right? As Christians, the land strived to be kind, selfless, and charitable

toward others, especially those in need. That's how most people in Huntsville knew them, anyway. Huntsville is a small place. You knew everybody in school. And you knew pretty well all the families around town because it was a lot closer knit community than what it is now. So just having grown up there, you know, you get to know a lot of the people around town and over time, you know, you run into different people and that's how I got to know who the Lans were. So you lived next door to Walter Land in Berks Falls? We always called him Wally, but he was always friendly.

I'd kind of known through others that he was, you know, definitely a Christian and all that kind of stuff. The Lands went to church and played softball on the local team. Walter pitching, Paul on shortstop, and Catherine and David cheering from the bleachers. Very nice. Super nice. Nothing out of the ordinary, for sure. Like, she looked after her kid and came to baseball. Life seemed preordained for the Lans. David was going to college in Toronto.

Walter and Paul ran their own contracting business. And Catherine was treasurer of the Muskoka Christian School. She always seemed helpful, you know, friendly, compliant. I never had an argument with her or had an altercation with her. The few times that I did have interaction with Walter always came across as polite, friendly. Things started to change around 1994. That's when the four siblings opened a series of Christian retirement homes. As clients, they took in people with

limited resources. People with no immediate families. People like the Cat Lady. Detective Erin Burke was looking into Joan's disappearance. According to her Informations to Obtain, or ITOs, she looked up the ownership of the property Joan had been living on. Three names came up. David, Walter, and Paul Lann. I was hesitant at first, and I was very cautious. I was hesitant at first, and I was very cautious, and I made sure that there were people that knew where I was and where I was going.

This is Ron House, a real estate appraiser and the former mayor of Huntsville. Ron visited the property when it suddenly came up for sale shortly after the cat lady went missing. What were your impressions of Walter? Does anything stand out to you about him? He was doing a sales job, I mean, that's for sure. He was trying to promote the property, but he was also trying to promote at the time that they had nothing to do with any disappearance of the cat lady because he knew I was pretty well connected around town. He

wanted me to be aware that they had treated her well in his opinion and that she just left and they had no idea where she went. I wasn't afraid of Walter, but I was very cautious with him because I knew him slightly through the community, enough to say hello and wave to him on the street or whatever, but there was just something about his demeanor that made me cautious. And let's put it this way, I was glad to leave the property. Despite their outward appearance and presence in the community, the lands were not all they seemed to be.

In the 1980s, Catherine went to jail for possession, extortion, and theft. It will later come out that she's defrauding the Muskoka Christian School of tens of thousands of dollars. Walter and David were both convicted of breaking and entering, and Walter was convicted of impersonating a police officer. Though no one's ever been charged in relation to Joan's disappearance, and the OPP says the investigation is ongoing, people didn't put it past the Lans to somehow be involved. What was your reaction when you heard that Joan had gone missing? The same as everybody's in the community. Well, what did they do to her? Or where did they

put her, you know? Where was she? In fact, the Lans were so notorious to Huntsville law enforcement that a retired OPP officer, Al Kronk, told me he used to pull them over on sight. You see them driving around down that area, so when I was on patrol, I stopped the car because I knew they were always a little, never knew what they were up to. So I'd see them drive around, I'd stop, and they had a blue Volvo at the time, and it was kind of stuck out, so. You would stop them because you assumed that there was something going on? Yeah.

Detective Aaron Burke learned how each member of the family had been involved with Joan. Catherine had allegedly picked her up off the street. David had access to her money through a joint bank account and charged her $600 a month to rent an 8x10 shed. David and Walter told conflicting stories about her disappearance, and Paul called himself Joan's accountant. But who were these people, and how had they gone from being beloved church members to shadowy figures in a murder case? Come on in. Hey, Laura.

I'm vacuuming dog hair, so leave your boots on. To answer some of these questions, I'm meeting Laura Beekham, a small sinewy woman with three huge dogs. Come on, let's go, Dave. Laura owns a raw pet food business, but her hobby is genealogy. She also gave Joan a ride once and became interested in the story because of Joan's disappearance. Her office computer has two monitors. Stretching across both screens is an enormous family tree. There are dozens of faces in profile, silhouettes that Laura has filled in.

So this is Ein, and then when we go to Erik, his father, his father was born in Tartu, Estonia, in 1908. Erik was the land's grandfather. He had a son named Ayn. In 1971, Ayn died unexpectedly when he was 33. What do we know about the death of Ayn Land? Oh, he died in a well collapse on the property. There was a well that they were digging, and he was down in the well and it collapsed. According to Ayn's obituary, he was digging a well on the family property, the same property Joan lived on,

almost three decades later. He had dug 27 feet down when the top of the well collapsed. The obituary ends with an intriguing detail. The victim's brother-in-law, Ronald Allen, who had been down the well with him, and the victim's 14-year-old boys cleared away 10 feet of sand before recovering the body. Mr. Land was pronounced dead on arrival to Huntsville Hospital. Ronald Allen was known as Uncle Ron. He was Shirley's brother, Ayn's brother-in-law.

And he's another silhouette in the Land family tree. He had this cowboy hat on, kind of a skinny guy, kind of creepy looking to me. By the time Detective Aaron Burke apparently heard about Uncle Ron, she guessed he was in his 40s, although he looked older. He wore jeans and a blue jacket and hid his graying hair beneath a cowboy hat. had. Aaron describes learning more about Ron through Al Marshall, the former limo driver and other tenant on the property. He told her the land's uncle was Joan's ride into town, and that he lived in the farmhouse next to the shed. According to Linda, Joan said Uncle Ron offered to let her use the bathroom and shower, but Joan said no.

She told me that the landlord did offer that, you know, she could come in and take a bath and use the toilet. So I immediately said, well, Joan, like, why don't you go in there and use the toilet and have a shower and stuff? She goes, no, I'd never go in there. She goes, you just never know what he's going to do. On November 30th, 1998, Al came into the Huntsville detachment to tell Aaron even more. It was the first time the informant and detective met face-to-face, and Aaron heard about the conditions on the property firsthand. Until that meeting, Aaron's knowledge of the lands came largely from another detective, a colleague named Rob Matthews. So far, I haven't been able to convince Rob to sit down with me either.

But in an email about the case, he said, Considering it is not solved, there is a limited amount of information that I am prepared to reveal. It is a very compelling story and I understand why you are interested. I would like nothing more than to share the entire story in detail. Before signing off, he added, quote, In 1998, Rob was an officer with the Huntsville OPP. He had joined the force around the same time as Aaron, and by the time of Jones' disappearance, he was a plainclothes investigator who worked murder, sexual assault, and other major crimes.

In the ITOs, Rob hears about the Lance through a 911 call. The caller was a social worker who said he had a client, a guy named Joseph Paken. Paken was a homeless man from Toronto. He moved to Muskoka in January 1998 and lived on the same property as Joan, except in a cabin. There was no running water, and the social worker told police that Paken was eating Kraft dinner three times a day. Erin learned more about this prior contact with the Lans when she started looking into John's disappearance. This is what Rob Matthews told her. Again, Erin wouldn't talk to me for this podcast, but I have her ITOs, which amount to a play-by-play of her investigation.

Another male was placed in the cabin with him. However, this mail could not take the conditions, and he hitchhiked out of that location. He is a recovering alcoholic. However, he was given bottles of rye to drink. He had been receiving $930 per month. However, during the time that he stayed there, he never once saw his checks or any of his money. Paykin, it seems, went back to Toronto to live in a homeless shelter.

The manager of the shelter, Boris Rozalak, spoke to the media, describing the land property as It was a desolate, meager existence that was very soul-destroying. existence that was very soul-destroying. In Ontario, police can attend a property if there's a life safety concern, and they're accompanied by the fire department. So Detective Rob Matthews got the fire chief and drove down the land's driveway. There was a garden shed located to the rear of this residence. Detective Matthews observed that it was approximately 8 feet by 10 feet in size. That was how Joan was first discovered, two months before her disappearance.

An elderly woman came out from the shed and identified herself verbally as Joan Lawrence and invited them in. The fire chief knew who the cat lady was. When I talked to him, he told me I had to understand something. Joan had lived in bad conditions before. A shack. A trailer. But this was different. This is how Aaron Burke described the encounter. They could not enter the shed due to the strong odor of urine. The shed did not have toilet facilities, no running water, no electricity, and was not insulated. There were approximately 30 cats in the shed, and the floor was covered in newspapers littered

with cat urine and feces. Joan was walking around the shed in her bare feet. Upon finding her in the shed, police contacted the health inspector. But when authorities returned to the property two days later, they were told someone had come and picked her up, that she was now living in a small town east of Muskoka. That's what Rob told Erin after she was assigned to the case. Then Erin got her own source, Al Marshall. He advised me of the following information. That when Detective Matthews was at the property the second time,

Joan was still living there but had been taken off the property by being taken for a drive. Erin says Al told her that Joan had been relocated after the first police visit, moved from the shed into a 1972 Volkswagen van. She was still living in this van when police came back the second time. Just before their arrival, Uncle Ron took her for a drive, shielding her from the authorities. Al told Erin that after Joan went missing, the Lans had cleaned out the shed, burned her clothing,

and made it look like she was gone. There was one more thing. Marshall states that Alan told him that he shot all of Joan's cats. According to the ITOs, police found the van Joan was living in when they searched the property that December. It had been cleaned out, erased of any trace of Joan, and what might have happened to her. They also found a receipt for an unregistered firearm, a rifle purchased by Ron Helen. But it had been purchased recently, excluding it as the murder weapon.

That meant there was another firearm, one that was used to kill the Katz and possibly Joan. As far as we know, it's never been found. And the OPP won't answer questions about physical evidence related to the case. In the event that Joan's remains are located in the future, and if it is determined that she died by means of a gunshot wound, any ammunition that may be located in her body could then be compared to the ammunition fragments located in the deceased cats. 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 three 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.

So there was no body, no murder weapon, no hard physical evidence. But Detective Ehrenberg kept working the case, and a couple of weeks after the search, she talked to a woman named Denise Kelly. That's Denise with a Y. I have some information here about a Denise Kelly who was interviewed by police, but they spell it D-E-N-I-S-E.

I'm guessing that's just a mistake on their part? Okay. So you were interviewed by police? Yes. Denise is a peer mentor at Muskoka Parry Sound Sexual Assault Services. She used to live down the road from Joan. How many times do you think you gave her rides in total? Over a couple year period, I mean

50, 100. It was a lot. Denise says that Joan gradually began to confide in her. The reason she was going to town is because she had a post office box in Huntsville because she was scared of her mail coming to her house. And I says, okay, why are you worried about your mail coming to your house? She was afraid that the people at the house would take her checks and cash them and keep them. She also mentioned that she was scared to live in the house, that she wouldn't live in there. It was scary. It was not safe. So all in all, I mean, she made it very clear to me that she was scared of the owners, that she had to hide her money because they would take it on her. And that's why she had to sneak to town and stuff to get her check.

Not long after talking to Denise, Detective Aaron Burke heard from Linda Charbonneau. Charbonneau is the deli manager at the A&P grocery store. She came to know Joan Lawrence from seeing her at the free coffee stand right next to the deli. Linda also told Aaron that Joan was worried about her landlords. She mentioned Uncle Ron by name and then told her this story, which Erin bolded in the ITO. She told me one time that her landlord was stepping on one of her cats and was taunting her, like going, like, what are you going to do? What are you going to do? And when she told me that story, like she was horrified. She was begging and pleading with him to stop and saying,

please stop, please stop. She told me herself, that's what she said. And he actually enjoyed seeing her, you know, be in a state of panic and pain and upset about her cat. Now that Linda's brought him up, I want to tell her more about Ron Allen. Without knowing how exactly, I tell her that I have more information. I can show you if you want.

What are you going to show me? I'll just show you that page where it says... Oh God. Until recently, Uncle Ron's name was a closely guarded secret. Until recently, Uncle Ron's name was a closely guarded secret. He may have been mentioned in news stories at the time, but his name was blacked out of police documents, considered evidence in an ongoing murder investigation. Though police followed him for years, Ron Allen's whereabouts are currently unknown. I've only seen one photo of him.

It popped up on someone's Facebook page a couple of years ago and was quickly deleted. I show Linda L. Marshall's statement where he describes what Uncle Ron said he'd done to the cats. So where does it say there? In a videotaped statement obtained from Al Marshall on the 30th of November 1998, Marshall stated that Allen told him that he shot all of Lauren's cats. Okay. According to Aaron's ITOs, Ron even confessed to using his own.22 caliber hunting rifle to shoot the cats.

Makes me sick to think about it. Like, wow. I mean, stepping on the cat and taunting her is different from getting a gun and just, like, because she had over 30 cats. Oh, God. No wonder she was terrified of him oh i mean if he could do that to her cats he has no regard for life Oh my God, and I can't understand why he told. He told, like, yeah, I shot her cats. Like, was it, like, who does that? At researcher Laura Beacom's house, I look at the same information on a computer screen. Once again, these allegations have never been tested in a court.

Mr. Allen was, he had shot the cats. It was his gun, the original gun, and then he went and got another one. So was he the killer? Erin Burke wondered the same thing. By the spring of 1999, she considered Uncle Ron and his nephew, David Lan, first-degree murder suspects. I believe that Joan's death occurred to prevent her from reporting frauds, thefts, mistreatment, and neglect that she was enduring at the hands of the Lans. According to the ITOs, David Lan had a joint bank account with Joan and tried to withdraw money weeks after her disappearance. I believe that Joan was in the process of proving

that David Lan had forged her 1997 income tax check. The reason I believe that David Land was responsible was because he was her landlord and had regular contact with Joan. Al Marshall observed Walter Land operating the backhoe after dark, shortly after the time he last observed Joan. Alan and the Land brothers have not provided

sufficient information to me that would assist me in believing that she simply moved away. I believe that her body may have been buried on the property due to the fact that the Lands do have a backhoe on the property. Confirming the importance of what lumberjack Bob Earle told me, Aaron added, Al Marshall also stated that he heard gunshots around the same time that he observed the backhoe, and that he was informed by Ron Allen that he shot Jones' cats. With no hard evidence, Aaron kept interviewing people. Maybe someone had seen or heard something that could break the case. maybe someone had seen or heard something that could break the case.

In January 1999, three months after Joan's disappearance, Aaron attended one of the Lannes' retirement homes. The Lannes had three residences, the Lannes family property where Joan went missing, a second home called Cedar Pines Christian Retirement Lodge, and Fern Glen Manor. According to police documents, Erin was interviewing residents at Fern Glen Manor when she came across Eric. Eric was the Land's grandfather and the original owner of the property where his son died in a well. I show Laura one of the documents I have, quoting from Detective Aaron Burke's investigation. During the interview with Eric Lann, he kept mentioning his son,

Ayn. He stated that his son, Ayn, was killed, and that it was not an accident. He stated that Ayn was hit on the neck with a shovel, and he kept stating Ron Allen's name. Hmm, that's interesting. Eric died in 2003, and I don't know where Uncle Ron is, so I can't ask the two people who might be able to solve this mystery. And there's no indication in any of the documents about what Uncle Ron's alleged motive might have been, if even there was a murder. But police seem to have taken the allegation seriously.

Erin even tracked down the officers who had gone to the property in 1971. They told her that the body had been removed when they arrived, and no post-mortem was ever conducted. Ultimately, the police and the coroner's office concluded that the incident was accidental in nature. So it's all kind of hearsay. But it's interesting. It is very interesting. It is. Hmm. Oh, there's more?

You don't have to read the whole thing if you don't want to. Back at my place, I show Linda Charbonneau her original interview with Aaron. Scrap Ron was kind of rough looking, unclean clothes and skinny. Not good with hygiene off and wore a cowboy hat. Everything she's telling me is exactly what she said back then. If the case ever goes to court, Linda will make an amazing witness. And some of the information that you gave Erin, she uses in her conclusion or her summary of this search warrant.

And it becomes part of the reason that police are able to search the property looking for her remains. Really? Wow. I had no idea that what I told them was that important. no idea that what I told them was that important. So when Joan asked her to come and stay with her, Linda didn't respond the way she would now. So I feel bad about that. I feel upset that I didn't probe her enough. I didn't ask enough questions. Like she didn't say, oh come over and have a cup of tea one time, you know.

So I never went to her home. Like, I didn't care enough, I guess, in the sense that I, because I didn't ask enough questions, I didn't want to pry. But how can you turn a blind eye when someone is, you could see how unkept they were and that she needed help. I didn't help her as much as I could have and I feel bad about that. This decision has obviously weighed on Linda. If she had said yes to Joan, things might be different, a lot different. Linda must know that, but I can't make myself ask her. So instead, I tell Linda about another woman in the ITOs, a social worker who used to give Joan

rides. This woman convinced Joan to leave the property. I couldn't track her down for this story, but I like to imagine she'd found Joan the perfect place, a place she could keep all her cats. That's the only way I can see Joan agreeing to go. But on moving day, Joan refused to leave the property, wouldn't even open the shed door. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Well, it's nice to know that there was somebody else

that was willing to take her. well, it's nice to know that there was somebody else that was willing to take her. And the fact that this lady was probably banging, saying, it's me, it's me. The fact that Joan didn't want to get out of bed, that's like big red flags for me to say, like, depression. Like, her health must have been failing, like, with not the proper food and the proper living conditions. And geez, God, that's too bad. I didn't know that.

Even though Linda didn't give Joan a place to stay, she looked out for her in other ways. And when Joan went missing, Linda was one of the first people to come forward. So they were asking for the public's help. And that's when I went and talked to Officer Burke and just told her everything I knew. Because I wanted her found. I wanted to know where she was.

There were other people who tried to come forward too. Like no authorities ever came to ever ask any questions about him. Chris Joyner says police never interviewed him about his neighbor, Walter Lamb. Like I always thought that, you know, being a neighbor of his and all this strange stuff going on, and, you know, why would nobody have ever come by the neighbourhood and just asked even the question like you just did? What kind of neighbour was he?

Did you ever see, you know, anything suspicious or, you know, that kind of stuff. We had a big farm. We had 165 acres at the time. Laura Beacom says her mother heard a scream around the time of Joan's disappearance. And it backed onto Asp and Road where Night Ox is. So that farm connected to Harvey Hughes's, and then there was a bit of bush, and then Aspen and Road. And I said, well, what do you mean you heard screaming? And this is right around that time.

And I said, well, did you not know that the cat lady disappeared? They can't find her. And she says, no, I didn not know that the cat lady disappeared? They can't find her. And she says, no, I didn't know that. And I said, well, what do you mean you heard, like maybe it was a lynx that you heard or something like that? She says, no, I think it sounded like a human being. And I'm like, well, did you call the OPP? So she did.

And she called the OPP, and nobody came out. As the months wore on, police continued to follow the lands. They watched them, listened in on their conversations. No one said or did anything that led to a charge, and the lands have always maintained their innocence, saying they had nothing to do with Jones' disappearance. Then, according to the ITOs, Aaron was conducting another routine interview. This one was at Fern Glen Manor, one of the land's retirement homes.

Ralph Grant was a 72-year-old man known as Duke or Doogie. was a 72-year-old man known as Duke or Doogie. Ralph didn't know anything about Joan's disappearance, and not long after Aaron's interview, police shut Fern Glen down. The remaining tenants were moved to the private residence of an employee down the road. In November 2000, two years after Joan went missing, Erin Burke went back to conduct an interview with the employee. She was asked if she knew where Ralph Grant was living,

to which she replied that she thought Detective Constable Matthews had relocated him. I advised her that Grant was not moved by the police and that they thought he was living with her, to which she said no. So now Ralph Grant was missing, missing in the middle of the Cat Lady case. And pretty soon, Aaron realized something else. They weren't the only ones. Coming up on Uncover.

He says, my father's here and he's lost his PIN number. I gave John the PIN number and that's the last I heard of him. Allison contacted my Huntsville police officer. I was told that he's been missing for quite a while, and he had been staying at this nursing home.

But their investigation is stalled, stonewalled by a conspiracy of silence. They were all weak, vulnerable, sick and alone. 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. Our executive producer is Arif Noorani, and the senior producer of CBC Podcasts is Tanya Springer. Original music for the series by Larch and Sarah Spring. And the voice of Aaron Burke is Lauren Donnelly.