Uncover - S5 "Sharmini" E4: Behind Bars

Episode Date: September 13, 2019

Sharmini, episode 4 - Michelle talks to Stanley Tippett for the first time in twenty years. Face to face. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/uncover/uncover-season-5-sharmini-transcripts-listen-1.5277530

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World Report wherever you get your podcasts. Start your day with us. This is a CBC Podcast. Should we, let's leave, let's leave all the equipment we didn't specify. So I'm going to leave my phone, laptop, maybe in the trunk. Yeah, I put my phone in there. Do you want me to?

Oh yeah, if you can put my phone in there. Um, I'm just going to put my laptop under your seat so it's out of sight. It'd be kind of ironic to have your car broken into at a prison, but. Okay. Uh, I'll see if this works. into at a prison but... Hi, how are you? I'm okay, yourself? Good. Do you want me to put stuff on the belt? Sure. Okay.

I'm here to see you. Stay in the tippet. Oh, okay. You know that name? Oh yeah. Charmini left home that morning to go to a brand new job. We have not been able to find that job she was going to. He was very manipulative, he was very deceptive And he thought that he could be charming And could just convince us that we were wrong

Another bizarre twist today at the Peterborough Courthouse That's where 32-year-old Stanley Tippett made his first court appearance Accused of abducting and sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl I guess the question is, do you believe him? I'm prepared to assume Stanley is telling the truth, and I think everyone should. Never, ever have I met a man like Stanley Kippen. I'm Michelle Shepard and this is Uncover. Charmini.

Chapter 4. Behind Bars. I've been to a number of prisons over the years for interviews, and most of the time you have to spend weeks, sometimes even months, going back and forth with officials to negotiate access. I was even part of a two-year court challenge against Corrections Canada because they denied me access to an inmate who wanted to tell his story. So, let's just say, it's usually not easy to get inside. But this time, it was.

They're expecting you guys in BNC. You're doing a podcast. Does that sound right? That sounds right. Really easy, actually. And everybody was incredibly helpful. Good morning. Work for the institution, Bossier. Oh, hi, I'm trying to reach Sandra O'Reilly, please. Just a moment, I'll try to answer your call.

Thanks. So we just had to work out a few logistics. AWS office, Sandra speaking. Oh, hi, Sandra, it's Michelle Shepard. Of course, Stanley Tippett had to agree to the interview. So I sent off a request. Stanley Tippett was only a suspect in Sharmini's murder. He was questioned, but he was never charged.

Tippett is in prison, though. After Sharmini's death, he was convicted of three offenses, including the sexual assault of a 12-year-old girl. He's been declared a dangerous offender. He can apply for parole, but in all likelihood, he's never getting out. Okay, so I'm actually going to record this in case we use it for broadcast at some point. Okay. To my surprise, just days after I sent my request to interview Tippett,

I get an email from his mom, Susan Anderson. But thanks for reaching out to me. I was actually surprised to get your email because I don't actually think we met years ago when I was writing about your son. But I was curious how you knew I was trying to talk to him. My son gave me your name. Okay. Yeah, Stanley had given me your name,

so he told me to try to reach out to you. Right. Okay, so what was it that you wanted to talk about? Well, the thing is, Stanley had been convicted of... I feel like he didn't do it. Our connection isn't great, and Susan, like her son, has Treacher Collins, so her speech is affected. Sure, I can speak up a little too. Susan wants to talk about what she says is Tippett's wrongful conviction.

She didn't believe her son at first. But now she says there's evidence to prove he did not kidnap and sexually assault that 12-year-old girl in Peterborough. Right. Tell me just a little bit about him. Like, tell me what Stanley was like as a kid and in the years since. Right. know and he was always a good worker like you know right and had a good heart like you know and he loved his little brother you know did you have any problems with him growing up um well there's like i didn't really have any problem with the blight um How did he react?

Right. Their lives were chaotic. There was violence, alcohol abuse, and poverty. More than one member of the family has had run-ins with the law. I think he moved to Oshawa about two weeks before Sharmini disappeared and that case started. What was that like? I know it's 20 years ago, but what do you remember? Why do you say that? But I don't know.

Why do you say that? So I asked him straight out. I said, do you have anything to do with it? This part is a little hard to make out. What Susan is saying here is that she asked her son directly, did you have anything to do with Sharmini's disappearance? I said, why would the girl's mom think that you were taking her for a job interview? Why would Sharmini's mom think you were taking her to a job? What do you think? I mean, that was, as I said, 20 years ago,

I know it was a long time ago, but what do you think today? Um, like today, I still don't know, like, I kind of wish I did know. You still have a little bit of doubt, you wonder. Yeah, well, you know, I want to believe my son's innocent, but it's kind of hard to picture, you know? We've done all we can to find out about Tippett. Now, we have to talk to him directly. So we're just waiting for him to come in, and they've put us in the visitors area. 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.

Hi. Hi. How are you? I'm okay. I'm okay. Do you remember me? Yes. 20 years ago. Yes'm okay. Do you remember me? Yes. 20 years ago.

Yes. Let me introduce you to everybody. This is Alina. Hi. This is Stanley. This is Kathleen. Hi. To our surprise, Tippett just saunters into the visiting area.

He's alone, no guards, no shackles, no handcuffs. He looks almost shy, and he's soft-spoken. There is nothing menacing about him in the way he talks, walks or presents himself. So you know we're doing a podcast. Can I just speak with you for one second? With me? Sure. Tippett pulls me away from the others and speaks in a low voice. Our microphone doesn't pick up much but Tippett is basically setting down his ground rules. He tells me he won't talk about Sharmini.

He won't even say her name. He calls it the Don Mills incident. He only wants to talk about what he says is his wrongful conviction. The Peterborough sexual assault of the 12-year-old girl. His third conviction, and the most serious one. Why don't we just sit down and talk? Okay. And we can talk about everything that you just mentioned.

Okay. And if I get into some area that you don't want to talk about, or as you say your lawyers have told you not to, then you just don't answer. Does that work? Is that okay? Yeah. Okay.

Okay. Do you want to just explain the equipment a little bit? Just so you're aware of what it is? Yeah, well, it's that it was really important to basically to let the public know, like I want the public to know about what's going on in the justice system. They really believed that I was the suspect. I was the one who, you know, was responsible. So they were focusing on me, only me.

And I just, I felt like I was just, you know, I wasn't being treated at all, fairly. Before coming here, we talked a lot about how to approach Tibbett, what to ask him, and how. His psychiatric profile describes him as a sensation seeker, an impulsive individual with a personality disorder. He's duplicitous, in other words, a chronic liar, and he's a narcissist. In his years as a homicide detective, Matt Crone has also thought a lot about how to question people.

If you did have that chance to sit down with him, what would be one of the first things you said? Part of my frustration is, this guy just doesn't operate on the same level as you and me, and I don't think that there's anything that you could offer him or anything that you could do that would get to the truth of this. I just don't think there's a shred of shame or humanity in him. And I say that without a grain of malicious acrimus. That's my calculated assessment of who he is. We had three hours.

And really, we just wanted Tippett to keep talking. Just tell me a little bit about yourself and your childhood. I grew up with a single parent, my mom, you know, in government housing. I grew up with two brothers, one younger and one older, and I had a, you know, somewhat difficult childhood, mostly because of my facial deformities and my disability. I was ridiculed a lot and judged because of the way I look and because I was different. There were times that, you know, I got bullied a lot at school and at home. I was in special education for the hearing impaired and for the deaf. Do you think that sometimes people, aside from the bullying,

which must have been difficult, do you think sometimes people underestimated you too? Well, I would say that I'm fairly intelligent. I feel that I do have good social skills. I've done some stupid things in my life and I'm not proud of it. But overall, when people look at me, I, you know, if you look at the things that I've done in my past, I don't, that doesn't make me a bad person. If you really look at the whole picture. Okay, well, let's just look at a little bit of that.

I have timelines and questions written out, along with articles and photos in a series of file folders. But I don't look at them, not for the first couple of hours. I worry if I challenge him, he'll just walk out. Do you ever get targeted because of either the treachery or violence? I get targeted all the time, every day. So, yeah, I've been assaulted numerous times, segregated from other inmates because due to the nature of the charges, no one wants to know that this person did something to children and especially when it

comes to children the less the more vulnerable ones that can't defend themselves so you know so it's partly you're you've been targeted because of the convictions that you've had as well mostly yes but a lot of it too it's a combination because of the way I look. They judge me. They judge me. They look at me and they say, you know, look at him, that creep, you know, he's guilty. Just, you know, just look the head on him. And they make comments like that. And unfortunately, a lot of people jump on that bandwagon and just continue. A lot of people jump on that bandwagon and just continue.

It's not hard to believe that Tippett has been targeted in prison. The abuse he has endured because of his treacher Collins would undoubtedly continue here. Plus, there's a hierarchy among inmates, and those accused of sexually assaulting children are the most despised. But it becomes clear that Tippett regards himself as a victim in all aspects of his life. Now, the harassment in Collingwood, it was in Collingwood where I... This was the case involving his neighbour. He pleaded guilty to criminal harassment.

I wouldn't say it was harassment, what I did. criminal harassment. I wouldn't say it was harassment, what I did. That was a situation where the woman, the complainant in that case, she made allegations. Well, let me explain how it came about. This is Tippett's version of what went down in Collingwood. It was his neighbor who first came to him and his wife. She came over, introduced herself. She wanted to borrow a typewriter and needed help with some documents about the custody of her son. And as I was putting my kids to bed, she told my wife, she disclosed to my wife that she had a problem and that she inherited this problem from her mother. She said that she had a

problem going after married men. So she had a problem and was pursuing you? She just said in general to my wife that she had a problem pursuing married men. She couldn't help herself. She couldn't help herself because that's what her mother did and she said. He says the neighbor was actually the one watching him and his wife. Every day she was watching me come and go.

As me and my wife were going out, she was going to the door, and I didn't know what she was doing, but it seemed like she was keeping track of when I was coming, when I was going. And later on, I found out that she was keeping a law and saying that I was stalking her. So this is the first time I'm hearing all these details.

But help me understand it. I mean, that scenario you just laid out sounds like she was criminally harassing you, but the person who was convicted was you. We move on to the details of his second criminal harassment case. This is the one that sounds so eerily like the circumstances of Sharmini's disappearance. By now, he has left Collingwood and moved to Peterborough. Now, when I went to the job fair, see, I had gone around prior to that.

I had gone around to different places. The YMCA, but the YMCA wasn't hiring. I went to a couple of the fast food joints. The only one that was, that only seemed like it was maybe, you know, hopeful was Walmart. So I attended the job fair. I got there. It's here he meets his next victim. She started telling me that she hopes to get the job. And she was telling me about, you know, she was an immigrant and that, you know, like she was telling me that she had just got married

and that she had a job and that she had quit. And, you know, at the time I felt that, like, I felt a little bit jealous because I didn't really feel that she was worthy of getting the job. Like you were in competition because you wanted the same job. I felt that I had to try to eliminate her from, you know, like I felt that I wanted to get her to, you know, go elsewhere. Even though this is a job fair where presumably there's dozens and dozens of people? I felt that, you know, I hadn't had a job for a long time. Sure, no, you were probably desperate to work.

No, you were probably desperate to work. So I was. I was. And I felt that if I can eliminate this competition, then I may have a better chance. Why her, though? There would be so many people. Well, I was discouraged. What bothered me was that she told me that she had just had a job and that she had quit. I felt that, you know, I deserved a job more than him.

So I told her that the YMCA was hiring, and I told her that I knew the manager. But Tippett knew the YMCA wasn't hiring, and he didn't know the manager. So at some point, somebody finds out that you're bullshitting her. She does become suspicious, especially after she runs into Tippett, supposedly by coincidence, at the local Taco Bell.

She's there, applying for another job, and suddenly, Tippett is behind her. One morning, I was on my way to Taco Bell. And sure enough, she was there. Peterborough is like a weird small town, isn't it? Well, Taco Bell was a place that I go frequently with my family. that I go frequently with my family. And I remember seeing her there,

and she was applying for a job, and I certainly didn't want her to get a job there because I didn't want her to meet my family. But you seem to have this weird dislike for her. I mean, you barely know her. I didn't have a dislike. I just didn't want... You know, I had lied to her, and I certainly didn't want my family, like my wife. I didn't want to be, you know...

I didn't want to have to face the fact that I had lied to this person. You know, she was under the impression that I must have followed her there. Had you followed her there? Pardon? Had you followed her there? No, she was under the impression that I must have followed her there. Had you followed her there? Pardon? Had you followed her there? No, no, not at all. He says he didn't follow her, and the meeting was a coincidence. According to court records, Tippett got mad

and insisted she fill out a fake YMCA application, an application he had brought with him. And the harassment didn't stop there. Each time he saw her, Tippett offered her a ride. She always said no. He also showed up at her home at least three times, once leaving a birthday card signed Jason. There's also this.

Tippett told the young woman that her duties would include work on behalf of police. Eventually, the woman calls the YMCA. They tell her no one by the name of Jason works there, and they're not hiring. And then they call the cops. Police charge Tippett with criminal harassment. Did they take your car at that time too? Yes, yes. They seized my vehicle, and they searched my home, my residence, yeah. What did they find in your vehicle? Well, they took it out of proportion.

I had items in my vehicle. I had basically stuff that I had cleaned my vehicle with. I had the common stuff. I had some rope. I had a hammer that was a little hammer that I had underneath the driver's seat. I had some duct tape and I had some pylons and stuff. Now, the police were looking at those items that I had in my vehicle as suspicious, as something that you use for kidnapping. Stanley, I have to say, I look at that as suspicious. I have a car and I don't have any of those things in my car.

But I had pylons that I use for when my son played soccer. But you can understand how that would seem suspicious. Well, I think the problem is if you look at something and you look at something that, oh, well, that could be used. Yes, people could use a lot of things for different purposes and I had these TVs on the back of the seats for the kids to watch TV and they were strapped down with cable ties. So they were looking at, oh, well, the cable ties could have been used to restrain someone. I move on to the last case,

the sexual assault of the 12-year-old, the one he picked up late one night in Peterborough after finding her and a friend drunk on the street. He claims he dropped one friend off and then was carjacked by two men. They were the ones who sexually assaulted her, he says. Unlike the other charges, Tippett didn't plead guilty to this crime. He insists he was wrongfully convicted, that he's being punished for just trying to be a good Samaritan.

With your prior convictions, why would you pick up two inebriated girls, knowing how that could look? I asked myself that. I asked myself that every day. But I can only be, you know, like the only thing that I regret it. I do regret it. But you have to understand the situation. You have to be there to understand what it was like. It was after midnight. I made the mistake of stopping to help someone who I thought was in need of help. But there's a common thread to these cases. You really see yourself as the victim.

To me, it's just that there's situations in life that sometimes you make decisions and you don't know after you make the decision how it's going to turn out. Yes, I was duped. Yes, there were situations that I made bad judgments. And I made decisions that I should have thought more carefully about what I was doing. I regret a lot of things that I did that night when I was helping the two girls. Like, I keep constantly saying, well, I shouldn't have, you know, I should have called the police. I feel that, you know, I should have done that. The first thing I should have done, I should have done that. I felt that I was doing what any, you know, citizen should do. I was brought up that way, you know, I was brought up with the values

that if you see someone in need of help, you should stop for help, you know. you see someone in need of help, you should stop for help, you know? How would you feel if they reopened the Sharmini case at some point? As I mentioned, I, you know, I don't want to, I'm not interested in making comments or giving any further comments about that because I don't have any information to add to that the information that I provided to you and to the police that's the same information that I'm standing by today standing by is an off awkward choice of words you know that's my position you know that's what I mean. Position's not much better.

I don't have any other information to offer. Those three hours, they fly by, and I'm only just scratching the surface. We want to look further into Tippett's claim of innocence. And despite his reluctance, he needs to talk about Sharmini. That's next time on Uncover, Sharmini. My intentions of being here today is to talk about my wrongful conviction. I believe that it's important that people know about the DNA evidence.

That supports my innocence. Uncover Sharmini is written and produced by myself, Michelle Shepard, and Kathleen Goldhar. Our associate producer is Alina Ghosh. Our audio producer is Mitchell Stewart. Our digital producer is Judy Z. Gu. Our audio producer is Mitchell Stewart. Our digital producer is Judy Ziyi Gu. Chris Oak is our story editor. Our video producer is Evan Agard. Transcripts by Rasha Shahada, Varad Mehta, and Carol Park. Our senior producer of CBC Podcasts is Tanya Springer. And the executive producer is Arif Noorani.

Uncover is a CBC podcast. Another show we think you might like is Someone Knows Something, a true crime investigative podcast. In season five, host David Ridgen travels to Thompson, Manitoba to investigate the unsolved 1986 murder of Carrie Brown. Subscribe to SKS wherever you get Uncovered.