Dark Poutine - True Crime and Dark History

Episode 246: John Ruffolo, 36, an employee of Brinks Canada at Butler Crescent location in Saanichton, British Columbia, was due to start a night shift at 10:30 PM on October 19, 2003. He was an ATM technician and an armoured car driver. When John didn’t show up, the rest of the armoured car crew waited 30 minutes before calling John’s home. A woman answered the phone, telling John’s co-worker, Ja...

Episode 245: Between 1926 and 1928, a sinister darkness was afoot on a small chicken ranch in Wineville, California. When he was only 19, Gordon Stewart Northcott, a Canadian, had abducted, raped, tortured and murdered at least three and as many as 20 others. His victims were predominantly prepubescent boys. He sexually assaulted and released numerous others. When a portion of the truth came out,...

Episode 244: On the morning of the 8th of July 1917, thirty-nine-year-old Tom Thomson, a renowned Canadian painter and skilled outdoorsman, set off well-supplied for a day-long fishing excursion in his canoe on Canoe Lake in Algonquin Provincial Park in Whitney, Ontario. A canoe, later identified as Thomson’s, was found floating upside down in the lake later on the same day. When Tom did not retur...

Episode 243: Eighty years ago, on August 19, 1942, in Operation Jubilee began as the Allies attacked the French port of Dieppe on the English Channel Coast. Of the more than 6100 troops involved, five thousand were soldiers of the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division and a thousand British, many commandos, with a handful of others including Americans. The hope was to gain a foothold in Europe, breaching...

Episode 242: On March 3, 2005, a contingent of RCMP constables, attended the property of James Michael Roszko, 46 in Rochfort Bridge, near Mayerthorpe, Alberta. The members were there to serve a search warrant for stolen property and a marijuana-growing operation on the farm, discovered the day before. Roszko, knowing the police would be arriving soon, armed himself with the help of a couple frien...

Episode 241: On March 3, 2005, a contingent of RCMP constables attended the property of James Michael Roszko, 46, in Rochfort Bridge, near Mayerthorpe, Alberta. The members were there to serve a search warrant for stolen property and a marijuana-growing operation on the farm, discovered the day before. Roszko, knowing the police would be arriving soon, armed himself with the help of a couple of fr...

Episode 240: Canada has had a long and embarrassing history of race relations, starting with the indigenous peoples who’d lived here for thousands of years prior to the arrival of European colonizers.  Our nation has also facilitated the mass internment of people perceived as threats to our national security during war time. As World War I raged in Europe, internment camps were set up to house Ukr...

The episode you're about to hear is a sample of the "Driven By Her" series from the Ongoing History of New Music presented by Porsche Canada. On this 5 episode series host Alan Cross explores the amazing contributions some of the most talented women on the planet have made to Modern Music. From Women who made the 90's rock to guitar heroes to the stories of some of the most talented songwriters an...

In our last episode we heard of the murder of eleven-year-old Kathryn-Mary Herbert in Abbotsford, B.C. The 1975 murder went unsolved for nearly 40 years.  Less than a year after Kathryn-Mary was killed, another girl from Abbotsford, Theresa Hildebrandt, 15, also went missing. Her body turned up in 1980, she’d been murdered. Two years after that and more than 200 kilometres from Abbotsford, another...

Episode 238: In Abbotsford, B.C., on the evening of September 24, 1975, Kathryn-Mary Herbert, age 11, was abducted while on her way home from a friend’s home. Last seen The girl’s body was discovered almost two months later on the Matsqui Indian Reserve north of Abbotsford. Investigators determined that she was likely murdered on the day she’d disappeared. In May 1976, Theresa Hildebrandt, 15, van...

Episode 237: On a fall evening in 1991, police discovered the bodies of Alfred Critchley, 75, and Virginia Critchley, 73, in the Chatham, Ontario residence they shared with their son and his family. The couple had been brutally stabbed. Alfred was unconscious but alive and Virginia was barely alive. Virginia died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital and Alfred died later in the hospital hav...

Episode 236: In our last episode, we heard about the murder of 61-year-old retiree, and beloved mother, grandmother and recent great-grandmother, Diana Russell. On February 22, 2002, after her car was found abandoned, in out-of-the way Boston Bar, her family became concerned. Diana was not answering her phone and no one knew where she was. She was later found by police in the basement of Kelowna ,...

Episode 235: On February 22, 2002, a vehicle was found in the ditch off the Trans-Canada highway near Boston Bar, B.C. The car was registered to 61-year-old mother, grandmother and recent great-grandmother, Diana Russell, who was nowhere around the car. RCMP obtained a key to Diana’s Kelowna townhouse and went inside finding the woman partially clothed body underneath some mattresses and furniture...

Episode 234: On March 26, 1997, police found the bodies of 39 members of a religious UFO cult known as Heaven’s Gate in an 830 square-metre (9,000 square foot) home in Rancho Santa Fe, California, a San Diego suburb. All, including the group’s leader, Marshall Applewhite Jr., had died in a ritualistic act of mass suicide. The headline on the cult’s website, which remains online today, stated, “Hal...

Episode 233: During the harsh winter of 1941, as World War II raged elsewhere, closer to home, a tragedy occurred on the remote, ice-covered island archipelago in Hudson Bay called the Belcher Islands. After witnessing a dramatic meteor shower, a tribal group of Inuit people believed the world was ending. Inspired by a copy of the New Testament Bible translated into Inuit syllabics by Anglican mis...

Epidsode 232: The strongest earthquake ever recorded in eastern Canada, measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale, occurred at 5:02pm Newfoundland time on the 18 of November in 1929. It was felt as far west as Ottawa and as far south as New York City. The quake, centred around 250 km south of Newfoundland along the southern edge of the Grand Banks caused a massive sub-ocean landslide. Two and a half hour...

Episode 231: Gerald Vincent Bull was a smart cookie from North Bay, Ontario. He graduated from the University of Toronto at 20, got a master’s degree at age 21, and at 22 earned a Ph. D. in aeronautical engineering from the University of Toronto’s newly created Institute of Aerodynamics. Magazines touted him the ‘boy rocket scientist’. Nations sought him for his innovative ideas regarding long ran...

Episode 230: Over a period of 22 months, between January 1969 and January 1971, 3 women in Southwestern Ontario were brutally murdered in 3 different towns. These women’s names were Isobella “Belva” Russell, Edith Authier, and Jane Wooley. Police solved the case of the third victim, Belva Russell, a matter of weeks after the crime. The perpetrator, Gerald Thomas Archer was convicted and imprisoned...

Episode 229: In our last episode we learned about the life and first two murders of British serial murderer Dennis Andrew Nilsen. He was arrested after police discovered human remains he’d flushed down the toilet at 23 Cranley Gardens in Muswell Hill, a Suburb of North London. In this episode we’ll learn about Nilsen’s next twelve murders, what happened after his arrest and the aftermath of his cr...

Episode 228: In our last episode we learned about the final killing and capture of British serial murderer Dennis Andrew Nilsen after police discovered human remains he’d flushed down the toilet at 23 Cranley Gardens in Muswell Hill, a Suburb of North London, England. After his capture, the enigmatic Muswell Hill Murderer, or Kindly Killer, as he would come to be called, was more than happy to dis...

Episode 227: On the 8th of February, 1983, complaints about the plumbing at 23 Cranley Gardens in Muswell Hill, a suburb in London, England led to the discovery of human remains. The remains were traced to the flat of a tenant in the home named Dennis Andrew Nilsen, 37, a civil servant, former police officer and veteran of the British military. In Nilsen’s home police found grisly evidence of many...

On a hot, sunny Saturday afternoon on the 15th of August 1914, in a house near Spring Green, Wisconsin one of the worst mass killings in the state’s history occurred when 7 people were axed to death, immolated, and the house they were in burnt down. It was a case that on its own would have made headlines - but it wasn’t just any house that was burnt - it was the world-famous architectural treasure...

Episode 225: In our last episode we learned that in Saskatoon, on the morning of January 31, 1969, a 12-year-old girl on the way to school stumbled upon the body of Gail Miller, a 20-year-old nurse’s aide, lying in the snow in an alley. Gail had been raped, murdered and discarded in the snow by her killer. As there had been a number of sexual assaults in the city, police were under enormous pressu...

Episode 224: In Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, on the morning of January 31, 1969, a 12-year-old girl on the way to school stumbled upon the body of Gail Miller, a 20-year-old nurse’s aide, lying in the snow in an alley. Gail had been raped, murdered and discarded in the snow by her killer. As there had been a number of sexual assaults in the city, police were under enormous pressure to solve the murder...

Episode 223: On Friday, February 20, 1976, while on vacation in Florida OPP Corporal Donald R. Irwin, 39, a father of three from Kitchener, Ontario, went on a ride along with his good friend Florida State Trooper, Philip Black, also 39-years-old. Irwin was in civilian clothing and unarmed. At around 7:15 a.m. they checked an old Camaro parked in a rest area on I-95, north of Pompano Beach, Florida...