Uncover - S4 "The Cat Lady Case" E5: Find Bones

Episode Date: July 11, 2019

The Cat Lady Case, Episode 5 - Information arises about where the missing seniors may be. Zander goes on a search and gets a surprise call.

Hey there, I'm David Common. If you're like me, there are things you love about living in the GTA and things that drive you absolutely crazy. Every day on This Is Toronto, we connect you to what matters most about life in the GTA, the news you gotta know, and the conversations your friends will be talking about. Whether you listen on a run through your neighbourhood, or while sitting in the parking lot that is the 401, check out This Is Toronto, wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. I just can't understand how they could have got away with it for this long.

When four of the land's retirement home residents disappeared between 1998 and 1999, police suspected murder. But without hard evidence, their case eventually stalled. I mean, the fact that they have to bold that suggests that there's a lot less evidence than they need to really produce a strong case for a murder case. This is an entirely circumstantial case. Then, a judge unsealed Detective Ehrenberg's entire investigation, and I started hearing from people who were ready to break their silence. I guess what I'm saying is I know what it's going to bring the heat on me.

I've carried it for 20 years. Now, with a cadaver dog team, I'm pursuing questions that have hung like a fog over this case for 20 years. pursuing questions that have hung like a fog over this case for 20 years. I'm Xander Sherman. This is Uncover the Cat Lady Case. It was awful, awful foggy, because I always got up at 5 in the morning, okay? Because I was a hunter. I hunt, you know, 7 in the morning, there was two shots. Bang!

Bang! There was two shots. In the fall of 1998, lumberjack Bob Earle says he heard gunshots and witnessed a fire and a group of shadowy figures dumping something on a neighboring property. 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? Because it's very, very foggy, like white. And then there was two shots.

We're pulled over at the side of the road, just down from where Bob used to live, and where he says all of this unfolded. I saw them loading, because you see you can sit on the on my deck there you see out there plain as the house was right standard so it's saw them loaded and then saw them come over here and the same truck dumped. And then what happens? Do you go to the police? No because the dumping didn't mean nothing. Everybody dumped here. Bob could only see outlines through the fog across the lake. But he got a better look when the truck pulled into the dump site across the road.

Well, sort of tall, long, skinny, black hair, not a little curly, not a little wavy. He saw the two or three men he'd seen from the land property. And, he says, he can still remember the vehicle they were driving. It was a one-ton with like a wooden side on it. And it had no muffler and no exhaust on it. And it was blue, like a dark blue. And I'm pretty sure it was Chev. Bob believes one of the men was Uncle Ron Allen.

There was just Ron Allen here on this load and then up there was the uncle was in the right-hand side. Bob says it was a little less than a year later that he realized this information might be important. He was at the police station spending the night in the drunk tank. Told the police officers, right? And they basically said, Earl, you're just a drunk. Sleep it off.

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. They said, it might take you 20 years. Oh, well, we'll figure it out before 20 years. And I said, well, all right. And here we are. years. And I said, well, all right. And here we are. After Bob saw the Fifth Estate documentary that identifies Ron Allen as a murder suspect, he says he went back to the OPP. I told him everything, what I just told you. The socks, the socks same. But Bob says the cops

told him to change his story. He wanted me to keep leaving out the fact that of the police calling me a drunk. He said, well, don't talk about that. I said, no, I'm going to talk about it. You know, he said, just leave that out. Just kept saying, leave that out. And I kept bringing it in because to me, it's why should it be left out? Bob isn't able to remember the officer's full name, so this is hard to corroborate. So far, I've been unable to confirm what, if anything, the OPP has done with Bob's information.

But they have confirmed that Bob did make statements on these two occasions. I'll need to follow up with them on this. The OPP didn't respond to my initial request for an interview, but using Aaron Burke's ITOs, Al Marshall describes similar events to Bob. That there were gunshots and a fire. But the ITOs don't mention any dumping, and as far as I know, the property has never been searched. I'll need to ask the OPP about this, too. This former dumping site by Bob's old place is just a five-minute drive around the lake from the Lanz property,

where Bob says he saw the men loading up their vehicle. Do you want to show me where they dumped? This gate wasn't here. The gate wasn't here, if the gate wasn't here, this is more sloped here now. As Bob and I walk through the property, he shows me what to look for when I come back with a cadaver dog. What I would do is I would start out there on the natural ground, and then come in, because your natural ground is a different color of ground than your disturbed soil. So then you would know and then hear what you'd be looking for because they picked up the old shed. So you'd be getting the burnt tuba for or whatever and then you know you're getting close, you know.

Follow me on that center here. I'm just going to cross the road here and then go over the fence. After my interview with Bob, I get in touch with Susan Reed of Georgian Bay Volunteer Search and Rescue. I've got two certified dogs. One's a live find, certified through the OPP. Zappa is my human remains detection dog. He's certified through North... In November 2018, exactly 20 years after Joan went missing, I meet Susan and her team out front of Bob's old house. So what we would need to do is grid the area. Right.

And we want to work perpendicular to the wind. And he'll work off lead. We do need to stay together as a group. Winter has come unexpectedly early, and just like the day Detective Ehrenberg searched the land property, we're walking through a layer of freshly fallen snow. Oh, it's so weird, eh? Stepping out in fresh snow, and your depth perception is all out of whack. At the old dump site, we hop a metal fence that cordons off this area from the road. I'm not quite as flexible as I used to be. Oh dear, okay.

Susan's colleague Barb Freer has joined us, as has my associate producer, Graham McDonald. Closest to us here or up top? Closest. Oh, as in right here? Yeah. Okay. We arrive at the first place Bob showed me, a clearing inside the property, about 30 feet from the road. road. All right, well, how about if I work the base here and then see if we can get in behind and come around and just do that full circle? Does that make sense? And you tell me if we've

missed an area that you want to check. That sounds good to me. Here, bud. With just three words, Susan instructs Zappa to look for human remains, possibly Joan's body. As Zappa searches, Susan describes what we're looking and listening for. So we're working with the wind, so the wind is coming toward us. He is already in work mode. How does he know when he's in work mode? Because a minute ago he was just, he looked like any other dog. So you heard me give him his command. His command is to find bones.

And his caller tells him that he it's work time and this time. So the collar, the equipment is what tells him what job he's doing right now. Something I'm curious about is, like, for people who don't know how this works, they see a dog and they see it running through the woods sniffing. And they think, how is a dog going to find remains after 20 years? Yeah, for sure. We work them on bones right from the get-go. We imprint them on various body parts.

We start them with the easiest, which is placenta. It gives off a huge amount of odor. Susan tells me she's gone to a body farm. A university-affiliated site that trains teams like Susan and Zappa to identify all types of sores. When all is said and done, as we all start to decompose, we all smell alike. Susan muses about the nature of death. To me or the dog, I'm not sure.

That's the common factor in all of us. When we die, we all smell the same. Anybody? when we die, we all smell the same. Hey buddy. We make our way through the old dumping grounds. Zappa approaches a group of rocks where his body language changes. Susan says this is a fairly common reaction and doesn't necessarily mean anything. You seem to be interested in that area.

Yeah, well, rocks sometimes, you know, you can certainly get some animals that are in there, but that's a common spot where people are going to put body parts if they wanted to hide them, put them into rubble, put rocks on top of them. So he's used to working a lot of the rubble piles, and he's very thorough with them. So I think he covered all that pretty nicely. So we can move on from here if you'd like. We head toward the second location Bob showed me.

So odor flows like water. Something could be higher up. And it's going to cascade down just the way water would flow and put itself in there. Do you think then it's worth going up? For sure, yeah, that's where I would like to send him. We start climbing the side of the property, a mountain of earth overlooking Bob's old house.

But Zappa isn't following us. Should we keep moving then? Yeah, I just want to give him this opportunity to finish what he's checking. Finally, Zappa moves on. We keep climbing toward the plateau. Whoa! Here, buddy. Go, Jake. Here.

Go, go, go. Here. Where'd you go? Zappa. Where'd you go? Go, Jake. Go, Jake. Good boy.

Can you go higher? Here, bud. Zappa seems to be getting restless and I'm starting to have doubts about what we're doing. Does it mean anything when he chomps at you like that? Is he asking for a treat? He wants his ball at this point. He's gone, okay, I've worked. Oh, okay. It's playtime. Now I want my reward. That's his paycheck. So let's just see if he likes that spot anymore. Suddenly, Zappa seems to perk up. Get in there.

He circles back repeatedly to the same spot, clearly showing interest. Susan enters the coordinates on her GPS. At the very least, I would come back to it. Perhaps when the weather changes, it could get a bit of a thaw. So can you tell me more about that? Like about identifying an area of interest, and then what you would do differently when you came me more about that? Like about identifying an area of interest and then what you would do differently when you came back to this spot? Well, I wouldn't do anything differently.

I would just have him check it again. But you saw how interested he was in this. He spent a significant amount of time here. But like I said, it doesn't necessarily mean that there could be source here. When you say source, you mean bones? Correct. Susan thinks Zappa may have found something near a small group of trees. Yeah, so you could see he was a little bit more animated in that area,

wanted to stay within that area. He was digging, so he's trying to expose odor by kicking up all the debris, as opposed to all the other areas that he just skimmed past. Zappa has only demonstrated the first of many signals. I ask Susan what a full response looks like. Usually it's a down. If he can touch it, he will touch it with his nose and he'll do a bark alert. Sometimes his bark is just clacking of the jaw. But it's a pretty significant change in body language. But even if there is something beneath our feet, Zappa might not be able to identify it. You know, we're talking 20 years, right?

So how much debris has fallen on top of that? If the remains are covered in any kind of material, it needs to be porous enough that the odor is going to be able to escape. So that's why ice is really going to impede what his nose is capable of doing. I would definitely like to come back to it. like to come back to it. Feeling a renewed sense of hope, I take Susan to the third location Bob showed me. It's farther up the road, but still within view of Bob's yard. That's where Bob says he was standing when the dark blue truck pulled into the place.

As we walk, Susan tells me that even if Bob saw Joan's body being dumped, her remains could be scattered throughout the property or into the woods behind it. So, even if a body is placed right at our feet, as it decomposes and draws the critters to it, pieces are going to end up everywhere. So even if someone from the house was able to see something going on here, it doesn't mean that we just contain this one area. It means we do have to broaden it out a bit. We searched the third location, but Zappa doesn't seem interested.

So it's just a small group of trees Bob pointed to that could be significant. I won't know for sure until we come back and search the property again. But it's upsetting to think that Joan Lawrence's body may have been dumped here. Discarded, as if she were a piece of trash. 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. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, it's a nice area. Bob Earl isn't the only person who's come forward with tips about potential burial locations.

Ruben Payet grew up on Manitoulin Island. He says being raised in an enclosed community taught him to be watchful. You grow up on an island and you know everybody and you're aware of everything that goes on around you. A lot of people forget to keep an eye on things. What do you hope might happen in this case? I hope they friggin' come forward. I really do.

Because I wouldn't want my parents to have gone through that, or my grandparents to have gone through that. People need to be put to rest where they belong. And it's sad that people think so little of the elderly. This makes me think of conversations I've had with defense attorney Jay Herbert. How there were so few support systems in place to help people in situations like Jones. Retirement homes were unregulated. We still hear stories of the elderly being recruited from homeless shelters.

With no family looking out for her, Joan was vulnerable, isolated. The entranceway was on the left here. We're in the woods half an hour north of the old dump site. Big building. Walking toward the site of the old Almaguen Highlands Information Center. Susan and Zappa are still with us from the first search. And then picnic areas and a nice area, really nice area. There's a nice playground for kids.

areas. A nice area, a really nice area. There's a nice playground for kids. Like a lot of Highway 11 commuters, Ruben used to pull off the road and into the rest stop, now demolished and overgrown with weeds. One day, he says he saw someone behaving strangely. So Ruben, before we go into the woods, can you just take me back to that day and just as much as you can remember, just kind of tell me what happened, what you saw? Well, I was already parked, and he had pulled in. He just looked drunk, but upset. You know, I'm a behavioral counselor, so I recognize when people are upset and stuff. And he was very upset, and he got out of his vehicle came around and went directly into the bush I thought it odd at the time and I thought maybe I'll just follow back and see what the heck's

going on what did he look like do you remember but he was about your height uh gray hair hair wavy or wavy or curly actually it wasn't until maybe two weeks later month later that I seen the program on TV and I recognized him from one of the photos and that's that was when I called the police and I said I recognize this guy from being here and I told them then that he was back in the bush kneeling in the clearing what did they say to you when you told them? didn't say a thing

they just seemed to brush it off but it was one of those you can't make the police do what they don't want to do. I make a note to ask the OPP about Ruben's information, if they ever looked into it. Ruben says he followed the person down an old trail that isn't there anymore. Yeah, into here. isn't there anymore. Yeah, into here. Now, when I came up to him,

I never approached him directly, because you never know. He was on his knees, and he was crying. And I asked him then if he was okay, and he turned and he was white as a ghost. Never said a word. What happened then? Then he left. He took off? Took off, yeah. Never said a word. What happened then?

Then he left. He took off? Took off, yeah. Never seen him again. He was never here again. Yeah, but I remember him crouched here and crying and very distraught. And I thought, wow, something's going on that's really upset him. I asked Ruben if he had any idea, in that moment,

why this man left so suddenly, climbing back into his truck and driving off. No, it was an odd area to just break down. But I did notice that the clearing had mounds. Like there was mounds and hollows and mounds and hollows. These topographical indentations are part of the reason we're here, and Ruben starts looking around, trying to see them again. Man, it's hard to know this time of the year. We've got to be close.

Pretty soon, it starts to feel like we're walking in circles. I'm thinking I'm going to go that way and come around, because this doesn't look right to me. We move to an area with fewer trees, a small clearing that looks like a deer bed. The hollows are here. Yeah, this is it. This is the spot. Feeling more confident about this location? This is better.

It looked like somebody had actually just scooped up, or something had just walked and smashed the ground down hard. But it just was odd because everything else was fairly uniform except for this area. Now that we think we're in the right spot, I make a quick decision. He's going to show you a photo here. On a cell phone, I show Ruben a photo of David, Walter, Paul, and Uncle Ron. It looks like it was taken in the early 1990s, a few years before Ruben would have encountered the man in the woods.

I'll just ask you if any of these people stand out to you as being the man that you saw in the woods that day. Before this moment, I haven't known for sure who Ruben would pick. That's him. That's the guy. He chooses Uncle Ron, one of the murder suspects. You sure about that? Positive.

Absolutely positive. Yeah. Yeah. That was sure about that? Positive. Absolutely positive. Yeah. Yeah. That was the guy that was here. Memory is notoriously unreliable, and it's hard to know if this account, or Bob Earls for that matter, would hold up in court.

But Rubin seems convinced, even going so far as to give an unprompted description of the man's vehicle. He was driving a bluish-gray Chevy pickup truck. And I know that that was him. A dark-colored Chevy pickup is similar to the vehicle Bob Earl described. similar to the vehicle Bob Earl described. In the ITOs, there's an inventory of all 22 vehicles owned by the Lans. This vehicle isn't on the list.

That could mean a number of things, including that Uncle Ron was driving a vehicle police don't know about. Or it could mean it wasn't Uncle Ron, and Ruben is misremembering. It's just so hard to say. Did he look like that back then as well? Back then? Very close. Yeah, yeah. Maybe a little older, but yeah, very close. Ruben says the Uncle Ron he saw looked a little older than he does in the photo,

which makes sense if the photo was taken earlier. Yeah. And a little drunk. Physically intoxicated? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. But that was him. Now, with this location pointed out to us by Ruben, I tell Susan to let Zappa off the leash. We stand and watch Zappa work his way through the woods. Eerie, isn't it? When you can just see it's just totally white for us. All the trees are coated in snow. And all you can hear is the jingle of the dog's collar. There's a dream or fog-like quality to our surroundings. There's a very strange light in here right now.

Those are hookbacks that he's doing. He keeps zoning in. See how he makes it shorter and shorter and shorter to get to the odor he's trying to get to? He has all the power, doesn't he? We all come to his screeching halt. After nearly an hour of searching, Zappa becomes interested in a large pine.

Susan explains what's going on. Well, you can see he's getting quite animated around this tree, so he's picking up some odor at the base of this tree or in this particular area. Susan calls Zappa away from the tree to see if he'll go back on his own. So let's just see if he hooks back to that tree again. So you can see he's just getting a little more animated. Heads pop into the trees. But again, depending on what the wind is doing in here, you can have something and the wind is just throwing the odor over here. Well, I've marked it with the GPS so we know which tree it is.

Because this used to be a public area, we want to make sure the odor Zappa's smelling isn't coming from anywhere else. Is there an outhouse anywhere around here? Anything that would have been in this area? It was out front, out by the road. There would be no one here. There would be no end here. With no other immediate explanations for Zappa's interest, our team is feeling encouraged by this location. He's not going to final response.

He's not going right to it and barking. A tree seems like a strange place for a cadaver dog to be interested. So he'll circle, circle when it's in a tree and he can't find it, much like I can't find him. I hear him. We leave the tree a second time to see if Zappa will go back once again. Go straight my way Susan so it would be your left. Just go straight. Yeah, so here's the tree. Walk by it.

No, he stopped at it. Which one? This one. Okay. Is that the same tree? Yep. So he did stop. Zappa goes back to the same tree,

showing interest for the third time. Again, Susan marks it on her GPS. Is that a miniature flag on the screen? It is, yeah. It's a waypoint so that we can go back to it if you want. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, so we are here. We're here at the large triangle. This is Highway 11 here. Yeah. This is the driveway into the property. Yeah. And there's's the flag right maybe a few hundred feet off the highway. Yep. Alright. Good job, buddy.

With the light starting to fade, I ask Susan to reflect on the day's two searches. Well, I definitely would like to return for whatever reason. I'm not saying that there's something there, but there's definitely him saying, I like this spot. So I would definitely like to bring him back.

How big of a barrier is the snow today? It's not so much the snow as it is the decay on top with the snow to seal the deal what would an ideal search day look like if we didn't have the snow definitely if we didn't have the snow and we could at least see the ground and he would be able to dig a little bit more you know we don't want the ground to get frozen that that's for sure. But it's like we're almost a week too late. So we'll have to come back to this location too, when there's less snow on the ground. Poor thing. She needs to be found. She needs to be found.

And in the meantime, I'm still looking for leads as to where the three missing men might have ended up. I'll talk to you as we're walking back, because I want to ask you a couple questions. Oh, sure. As our team walks back to our vehicles, I ask Ruben about Uncle Ron. Uncle Ron, is that the one that I pointed out? Yeah, I'd seen him around town when I'm in the cab business. So I drove cab here before I bought the company.

So yeah, I recognized him from there. What do you remember about him? Does anything stand out? A little arrogant. We've tried to get in touch with Uncle Ron before, but since 1998, he's kept a low profile. Documents state that during the Joan Lawrence investigation, he moved from place to place, staying clear of law enforcement. A few months ago, someone told me they'd seen a man matching his description at a

strip club in Windsor, Ontario. When I asked for more details, the person stopped responding. Can you tell me about the cat lady? And I ask Ruben about Joan. Only met her a couple of times. I picked her up driving home. She had a bunch of groceries, mostly cat food. Ruben knew about as much as anyone. What she bought at the A&P, where she lived, who her landlords were.

What do you make of that? A 77 year old woman living in a... Somebody should have been shot and it shouldn't have been her. You know, you don't do that to everybody. You just don't. about a month later as i'm going back over everyone's stories i call up ruben hey it's xander sherman with the cBC. I have some follow-up questions. I just had a follow-up question for you, Ruben. Sure. But Ruben has something else he wants to talk about. He tells me something strange. Okay, I just had an interview with the police, so I just gave them your phone number and contact. Sorry, you what? I just gave them your phone number and contact information. You gave it to the OPP?

Yes. Today? Today, yes. Ruben says he's just been interviewed by a detective who asked him to turn over communication. Can you tell me what happened or what you saw? No, I can't. No? No, he can't. No?

No, he asked me not to. He wants the emails that we sent back and forth, and unfortunately I don't have them anymore because I changed my phone. But he would like to, if you've got copies of those, he'd like to have those copies. The idea that police want my emails, especially ones that describe search locations, is surprising,

and I'm not sure what to make of it. I've spent years following the OPP's investigation. Are they now following mine? Coming up on Uncover. I don't know that I could trust you to talk. Out of the blue, I hear from the one person who can clear all this up. I'm just having a hard time trying to decide whether or not I want to talk to you because there is an integrity issue here.

You know, this is an investigation that I do have intimate knowledge of because I was the original lead. I know you can hear the reservation in my mind. There's so much about this investigation, what I would love to tell. 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 this series by Larch. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.