Uncover - S5 E7 Sharmini Bonus: Potential Witnesses Emerge

Episode Date: September 9, 2019

Two new sources come forward with statements on Sharmini Anandavel’s murder. One claims he has carried the image of Sharmini with Stanley Tippett for twenty years. The other says that a photograph of Tippett published in fall 2019 brought back a memory — a jog near where her body was found.

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This is a CBC Podcast. Hello. Hi. Hi, Joe? Yes. Hello? Hi. Hi, Joe? Yes. How are you? I'm not bad. A little tired. Long day, you know. I was really intrigued to get your email today. Thank you for reaching out.

So why don't we just start at the beginning. You believe you saw her that day, so June 12th, 1999? Sharmini left home that morning to go to work. We have not been able will keep her. Whatever we will keep. Please release my daughter if somebody abducted her to keep in some other place. Please release my daughter. Please, I beg you. The narrative that was developing was that she left home in the morning to go to a job at North York Rec, but her friends were saying, no, no.

She was going to work as an undercover drug operative for Stanley Tippett. I'm prepared to assume Stanley is telling the truth, and I think everyone should. I wasn't charged. You know, I have nothing to do with Sharmini. I'm Michelle Shepard, and this is an update to our series, Uncover Sharmini. If you haven't heard the series yet, you can go back and listen to all six parts

as we investigate the unsolved murder of 15-year-old Sharmini Anandavale. Sharmini's killing was the first big homicide I covered back in 1999 when I was a young crime reporter at the Toronto Star. I never forgot Sharmini or her family. And I never forgot the suspect in the case either, Stanley Tippett. Tippett was later convicted of three crimes, for criminally harassing two women and the sexual assault of a 12-year-old girl. He's in jail now, indefinitely, as a dangerous offender. We started this podcast hoping we'd find something new,

something that would lead us to Sharmini's killer. We spent a lot of time going through the evidence in her case, including examining allegations against Tippett and looking into his convictions. And we talked extensively with Matt Crone, a retired Toronto homicide detective. He spent years trying to build a case against Tippett. Sharmini's death still haunts him.

I think when I retired, I found myself apologizing to the Nandeville family that we never solved this. We never resolved this issue for them. family that we never solved this. We never resolved this issue for them. So I think they deserve resolution for this, which they haven't had, which nobody's given them. So that would probably mean more to me than anything more you could do to Stanley Tippett. But the evidence was circumstantial. There was nothing concrete to tie Tippett to Sharmini on the day she disappeared. Crone brought his case to prosecutors anyway, but there wasn't enough for charges. After our podcast launched, two people contacted me.

Joe Becker was the first. I was really intrigued to get your email today. Thank you for reaching out. intrigued to get your email today. Thank you for reaching out. Yeah, well, the story on the news last night galvanized me and pushed me into action on this. Okay, so why don't we start at the beginning. You believe you saw her that day, so June 12th, 1999? I was driving down James Street.

Okay. And I stopped at the light at Lawrence. That's the first car. So I stopped at the red light and a bunch of people started walking across the road towards, you know, my vehicle, right? They were crossing the road.

And just to be clear, we're going back now to 20 years ago. This is what you saw that day. I was just looking at the people crossing in front of me, you know. And I saw Sharmini, who I recognized immediately when I saw her picture on the news reports later. on the news reports later, I saw a man walking across the road, you know, right, not towards me,

but right in front of me. Right. And I was looking at the guy a bit because he caught my eye. He looked kind of weird. But I noticed the most that his eyes were like really too far apart and kind of down on the corners a bit. Does that make any sense?

I was wondering, how can just killing time in my head waiting for the late change, how come they're two together? He looks like he should have maybe a care worker or something taking him for a walk. And then when I looked at her, I said, well, she's much too young. She can't be a care worker or something, taking him for a walk. And then when I looked at her, I said, well, she's much too young, she can't be a caretaker. And then the light changed, and I drove away. Do you remember anything else about him? Or maybe her, what she was wearing, or anything?

If I can say anything, I think she was wearing a white top. It could have been like a knit top. And him, he just looked normal except for his facial features. Right. I know I'm asking you to remember something 20 years ago. Yeah. I want to impress upon you, Michelle, but

I know that I saw her that day at that time. And I've known her for the past 20 years. Joe says he's certain he saw Sharmini and Tippett that day. Tippett has a condition that's known as

Treacher Collins syndrome, which affects the bone development in his face, so he's quite distinctive. And that was always a big hole in the case that police had against Tippett. As far as we know, no one has ever come forward to say that they saw them together the day Sharmini went missing. Now, Joe did see news reports about Sharmini in 1999, in the days after her disappearance. He says he recognized her right away as the girl he saw crossing the street that Saturday in June. But he didn't call police. No, I didn't call the police. I was at a different place in my life at that time. And the only thing I could think of, it's like I can't get involved with whatever this is.

Joe's life was just complicated back then. Essentially, the way he described it to me is that he says he didn't have it in him to get involved in a major police investigation. He was recently married and deeply involved with a former girlfriend who had multiple sclerosis and not much longer to live. He was on his way to visit that friend at the hospital the day he believes he saw Tippett and Charmini. And that's where I was going at the time. So the thing was with the whole situation with my wife and this girl who I was very devoted to, I just was stretched pretty thin and I couldn't think I would allow anything else to come into my life because my time was taken up 100%.

Just as a reminder, Sharmini went missing on Saturday, June 12, 1999. She left her apartment on Don Mills Road around 9 a.m., on her way to a job that didn't exist. Police believe that that offer of a fake job was a way for someone to lure her out of the apartment. Matt Crone, the retired homicide detective, believes the person who offered that job was Tippett. And the job he offered was for some type of undercover police operation. The interesting thing was that he picked a job which in reality would have a certain amount of secrecy attached to it. So I'm going to give you this job as a police operative

where we are going to take you, give you all the equipment you need, a radio and pad and paper, binoculars, and we're going to put you in a place and you're going to look for drug dealing. And when you see it, you call me on your radio and I'll swoop in with my team and arrest the drug dealers. But because it is this, you know, secret police investigation, you can't talk to anybody about it and you can't even tell your parents about it. So there's a certain crooked genius to that. Sharmini did tell at least two friends that she was doing undercover work. And after she went missing, police found this bogus job application in her room for a place called the Metro Search Unit.

Tippett was an obvious suspect because he knew Sharmini and he had lived one floor below her family's apartment. And he did actually have a history of impersonating police officers. I interviewed Tippett extensively back in 1999, and again during six hours of jailhouse interviews for this podcast. He emphatically denies that he saw Charmini the day she disappeared or had any involvement in her death. He says that police, they just had tunnel vision, and they were targeting only him.

While Joe didn't contact police 20 years ago, he says he did tell some family and friends about what he saw, including his wife. Rose, do you remember him talking about this case in Chermini? Way back when, I'll say he mentioned it, because it's sort of an unusual thing for someone to say, and he brought it up last year, and he felt like he should have done something, you know,

get it off his chest, and I think Joe's kind of relieved that he's done that. But now, after 20 years, there are details missing. Joe says he saw Sharmini on a Saturday, and it was just before news broke of her disappearance. But he can no longer say with 100% certainty that it was Saturday, June 12th. Whenever I happened to be watching television and when this was broadcast. It happened then. Was it the next day or the next week? It was fairly quickly afterwards,

but I can't say exactly how many days or anything like that. He can no longer be sure of the exact time either, although he believes it was morning or early afternoon. He also vaguely recalls that she was wearing a white knit top, but her family told police she was wearing a blue top with white stripes. And Joe says he saw them at an intersection more than 20 kilometers from Sharmini's apartment or the park where her remains were found. The second person who got in touch was Charlie D'Souza.

He found me on Twitter and asked that I give him a call. Hello? Hi, Charlie, it's Michelle. Hi, Michelle, how are you? I'm good, how are you doing? Charlie told me he saw Sharmini and Tippett together in the East Dawn Parkland when he was jogging. That's the park where Sharmini's buried remains were found in October 1999,

four months after she went missing. Charlie is a 64-year-old Toronto Transit Commission employee. He worked as a ticket collector in Toronto's subway system and is now just a couple months away from retirement. Unlike Joe, Charlie hasn't spent years bothered by the fact that he didn't report what he saw to police. In fact, he says he didn't even know what he saw until now. He wrote it down in a letter that he read to me.

Okay, a photograph of Stanley Tepet was published in September 2019. 2019. I recognize him as the man I saw in the East Don River Park 20 years ago. He was talking to Sharmini. This incident locked in my brain and I could never remember it. I'm ready to take a lie detector test and any kind of test to tell you that I'm telling you the truth. Charlie says a newspaper report about our podcast and a picture of Tippett triggered this long-buried memory

of seeing them together in the park when he was jogging. Once the memory came back, he said it was vivid. I turned to my left. I saw him standing and Sharmini sitting on a boulder, a rock. He was standing five yards away from her. Now, when I heard this, I was thinking what you're likely thinking now. Really, come on. I can barely remember last month, let alone a tiny detail while jogging in 1999. But Charlie is so convinced. So we arranged to meet him in person and ask him to take us to the place where he believes he saw

Sharmini and Tippett. 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. We meet Charlie at the Leslie Street station where he works and walk outside along a very busy Bayview Avenue. He's walking pretty quickly. He still has the gait of a runner with just a slight limp from a sore knee. So we are going east right now, crossing the street. And this is the East Dawnlands Park. I always get the name wrong. It's the East Donlands Park. I always kept the name wrong.

It's the East Don Parkland. It's huge. A beautiful urban oasis north of Toronto with kilometres of trails following the Don River. Charlie used to jog here sometimes during his lunch break. 15 to 20 minutes. I ran about 15 minutes that day. 15 to 20 minutes.

I felt fresh. It was hot. I know it was hot. Maybe I'm from India. That's why. I ran about 15 minutes that day. 15 to 20 minutes. I felt fresh. It was hot. I know it was hot. Maybe I'm from India. That's why I'm used to it. Charlie says he knows the exact spot where he saw them. That he can distinctly remember the boulder Sharmini was sitting on. He's taken us to an area that's actually not far from where her remains were buried.

Charlie sees the boulder he recognizes and stops. This is the place where she sat down and, God, I wish I could do something. I won't lie to you. I'm sorry, are you okay? Yeah, I'm okay. That feeling came to me again, right? And if I had known, I would have put up a tough fight. At that time, I would have given him a tough fight, no matter what.

If I only knew that, okay, her life is in danger or something. I could have done something. I could have helped her. I would have. I could have. I should have. But that's too late to say all that. She's gone now. Charlie knows people are unlikely to believe him and he says he's not worried about that, about his reputation. He just really wanted to get this off his chest

and he hopes he can help. He contacted police and they did record a video statement at Toronto Police Headquarters. I was curious to know if this was common, to recall something so seemingly insignificant so many years later. So I reached out to Morgan Behrens. She's an assistant psychology professor at the University of Toronto.

And she founded what's called the Memory and Perception Lab, which researches just what it is in the brain that enables us to think and remember. It's kind of a very specific question that I have for this podcast we've been working on, and we looked into a cold case from 20 years ago. I walk her quickly through what Charlie told us. He believes that's what he saw, but is that possible? I mean, nothing is impossible. There are lots of memories that are lurking, and we won vivid detail 20 years ago and the face of the individual who was with the victim. Morgan asked me how Charlie's memory was triggered and I told her it was from seeing a picture of Tippett in the newspaper, which identified him as a suspect in Sharmini's homicide. So I could absolutely imagine a scenario by which he saw this image

and maybe hearing about the story he could cue the memory of having gone in the park. So that memory is activated and then he moved it with the image of this, the picture of the man. I also tell her that Tippett's appearance is distinctive due to his treat-your-collin syndrome and people tend to remember seeing him.

If they were together, maybe they looked like an unlikely pair. That's what Joe Becker said made him take such a close look. That would change things a bit. And again, I'm not saying that it's not possible that he did recall this memory or that he did see what he says that he said. I'm just saying that it's a more likely explanation that his memory was reconstructed with the information that was right in front of him, seeing the image of the suspect. And then with the best of intentions, integrated that into what he recalled, which was a vivid memory for seeing the suspect as a victim. Morgan says that's how our memories work sometimes.

They get sort of updated. So what you remember may not be exactly how it was, especially after 20 years. You think that's what you saw, and maybe you did. But it's impossible to know for sure. I have no reason to believe that he does not have this memory. I just think that it is unlikely that that memory is a perfect depiction of what he says it is that would stand up in court. So let's go back to Joe Becker, who says he saw Sharmini and Tippett at the intersection. Joe contacted Toronto's Homicide Squad the same night he reached out to me.

We had been talking for a while before they did call him back and asked that he come to police headquarters. So he did, arriving at 11 a.m. on a weekday to give his statement. I called to see how it went, and he says he was brushed off. The detective who met him said he wasn't ready to take the statement, or he didn't know the case file very well. Joe, to put it politely, was not pleased. He lives in King City, about an hour outside of Toronto, and came into town specifically for this interview.

So, I reached out to Detective Sergeant Stacey Gallant, head of the cold case unit. He sent an email disputing Joe's account, saying his detective was fully prepared, but Joe was in, quote, no state to talk to Joe. Now, he was really mad. He vehemently denies the implication. He told me he doesn't even drink. Hey, sir. Hi, how are you?

Matt Cron, I'm seeing you. Yes. We decided to go see Joe in person. And Matt, he wanted to come, too. He was disappointed that Joe was brushed off when he tried to give his statement to police. You got quite the buzz cut. Yeah, I got sick of the

Santa Claus jokes. Do you have a table we could set up? Yeah. We set it up in here. Joe, could you spell your last name for me? B-E-C-K-E-R. I just want to kind of go over why we're here today and what we hope to achieve. And as a result of the podcast from the CBC on the Charmaine and Andeville case,

you reached out to Michelle with some information. And then in an effort to contact the police, you had some frustration with that. to contact the police. You had some frustration with that. So as a result of that, what we thought we would do is we'd undertake an interview now just to sort of get your information, get an accurate record of your information. But I want you to, and I know Michelle's probably already explained this, but I'm retired. I have no official connection with the case. I have a big unofficial connection with the case. And what I'd like to do with the fruits of today's interview is send that to the police. So if we put it in a format that they're familiar with, that might be more helpful. So you're all good with that? Sure.

Matt asked Joe a series of questions. Where he thinks he saw Sharmini and Tippett, what they were wearing, what was going on in his life at the time. And do you recall what had taken you down to Jane and Lawrence? I was down there on a regular basis. Joe's answers were pretty much exactly what he had previously told me. I'm just curious from Matt, like, what's your next step if you were talking to your colleagues about this and putting Joe on the stand? Well, the difficulty is the timing of it.

Based on the passage of time, it's difficult to make it any better than it is. And you seem like a credible guy. And if I was a defense lawyer, I wouldn't have a lot of questions for you. I would just put on a memory expert and say, walk us through this. Because Joe is not certain of the exact date when he believes he saw them, his testimony would carry less weight. Tippett did not deny knowing Sharmini. Like if you were to say, I didn't know her, I'd never seen her before,

I'd go, well, wait a minute, we have a witness who saw them together. Then it becomes much more significant. And don't get me wrong, I really appreciate you talking to me today and telling us this. It's just that the probative value of your evidence is diminished just with the time.

Can we just quickly address what happened at police headquarters in terms of the he said, he said of what happened, and Joe remains kind of upset about that. Did you find out? I don't blame him. I can't, I wasn't offered any explanation, and I don't know what to say to you about that

other than offer you my apologies that you shouldn't have been treated that way. When Joe and Charlie reached out, we were optimistic. If our investigation prompted two possible witnesses to come forward, well, that's one of the reasons why we did this podcast. To uncover the truth. But dissecting their testimony really brings home the reality of how hard it is to investigate historic cases.

We asked Tippett if he would speak with us again. He declined. Police tell us now that they're reviewing this new information to see if it impacts the case, determining if it's credible and if it would stand up in court. Is there enough to ask prosecutors to take another look? We'll continue to follow up. And if you want to reach us, please write to uncover at cbc.ca. This episode of Uncover Sharmini was written and produced by myself, Michelle Shepard, and Alina Ghosh. Our audio producer was Evan Kelly.

Transcripts by Kelsey Cueva. The senior producer of CBC Podcasts is Tanya Springer. And the executive producer is Arif Noorani. Thanks to our lawyer, Farid Muttalib,

Kathleen Goldhar, and Chris Oak. And thank you for listening. If you enjoyed our series, stay tuned for the next season of Uncover, coming February 5th. Uncover Satanic Panic follows a disturbing phenomenon

that was sweeping North America in the 80s and 90s. Satanic cults were torturing children, forcing them to take part in gruesome rituals, and then covering it all up. Hundreds were charged and scores convicted. The allegations were horrifying, but the truth was almost as disturbing. It wasn't really happening.

And now, nearly 30 years later, the people touched by it all are still picking up the pieces. Uncover Satanic Panic unravels what really happened, and if we've learned from it at all are still picking up the pieces. Uncover Satanic Panic unravels what really happened, and if we've learned from it at all. Listen to the series trailer in this podcast feed in the coming days. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.