Dark Poutine - True Crime and Dark History

Episode 160 - Elena Tchoudakova was a beautiful, outgoing and vibrant 23-year-old Russian woman attending Interior Design at Toronto’s Ryerson University. In January of 1995 Elena was discovered in her apartment, she’d been brutally beaten to death and left in her bathub. There were a number of suspects with means and motive but only one with opportunity. Co-host: Carol BrowneSources:[The Russian...

Episode 159: In the early 1980s near the small town of Rulo, Nebraska a white-supremacist cult leader named Michael Wayne Ryan and his band of followers took over a local farm essentially stealing it from the property owner. They burglarized nearby businesses and residences to fund their survival after the upcoming battle of Armageddon prophesied in the Books of Revelations. Ryan, a proponent the...

Episode 158 - Twenty-three-year-old nurse and former beauty queen, Alexandra Wiwrachuk, thought the warm spring night in 1962 would be perfect for a walk down by the river before her midnight shift at Saskatoon’s City Hospital. Alexandra did not show up for work that night, and it was not until thirteen days later that children stumbled upon her broken body in a shallow grave. Someone had savagely...

Episode 157 - From the late 1920s until after the Second World War, Lila and William Young ran the Ideal Maternity Home and Sanitarium for Unwed Mothers at East Chester, Nova Scotia. The pair have been referred to as ‘baby farmers’ who sold healthy newborns to wealthy couples with the means to pay and left the less viable to die of starvation. Estimates are that more than 100 and as many as 400 to...

Episode 156 - In 2006, Thomas George Svekla, 38, a man who’d been in and out of trouble since 16, became the focus of a murder investigation lead by the Project KARE task force. Svekla was a suspect in as many as twelve murders. He was only ever charged with two slayings, that of Theresa Innes and Rachel Quinney, but was designated a dangerous offender for his long history of violent offences. Co-...

Episode 155: The holidays can be a notoriously hard time for people who either miss loved ones or have a hard time being around them so much. For those reasons, we take a break from all the murder and mayhem and try to bring you a little holiday cheer with a bit of a dark edge. This year, for our fourth Christmas, themed episode, we learn about the global depictions of Santa Claus, some dark Chris...

Episode 154 - Twenty-three year old Gordon Adrian Kralt had been the caretaker for a Bible camp on Vancouver Island when he went missing on Halloween in 1970. Gordon was found two weeks later, he had been brutally slain. Tracking down Gordie’s killer uncovered a career psychopath who was believed to have killed before. Co-host: Carol BrowneWritten by: Josina De BreeSources:Regina v. Stewart, 1972...

Episode 153 - Between 2002 and 2005, Charles Eli Kembo, a refugee from Malawi, murdered four people, his business partner, Arden Samuel, his stepdaughter, Rita Yeung, his girlfriend, Sui Yin Ma, and his wife, Margaret Kembo, whose body has never been found. He set up elaborate schemes to steal their identities, set up false bank accounts, insurance claims, and run up credit in his victims’ names. ...

Episode 152: In November of 1992, a twenty-four-year-old woman came forward to Kipling, Saskatchewan RCMP, accusing a respected local doctor, John Schneeberger, of sexual assault. After years of ridicule from other Kipling residents who refused to believe her claims, the young woman finally found some justice. When the truth saw the light, it uncovered one of the strangest and most devious crimina...

Episode 151 - On January at 10:30 p.m., a 911 operator took a call from a seemingly distraught sixteen-year-old girl. When Peel Police arrived at the Mississauga, Ontario home two teenage girls, Sandra, 16, and Beth, 15, led them upstairs to the bathroom where their mother, Linda Andersen, 43, lie face down, deceased in the tub. For almost a year the police believed Linda's death was a tragic acci...

Episode 150: Beginning at 7:19 pm Atlantic Daylight Time, on the evening of October 4, 1967, an airline pilot reported seeing an unidentified flying object heading east over Southern Quebec. About 30 minutes later, calls began coming into local authorities reporting strange lights in the sky over the Atlantic Ocean along Nova Scotia’s South Shore. The multiple sightings continued until 11:20 pm th...

Episode 149: William Avery (Billy) Bishop was born in Owen Sound, Ontario, on February 8, 1894. When the First World War broke out, as with many young men of his day, Billy was off to Europe to do his part. By the end of the war, Bishop claimed he had survived more than 170 air battles and said he had shot down seventy-two German aircraft. This number left Bishop only three behind René Fonck of Fr...

Episode 147: Canada has a long history of folks who have attempted to communicate with the dead - a practice is known as Spiritualism. Some of these have claimed that they can connect directly with those on the other side. Here we will give a bit of history, tell some of their stories and give a how-to primer for entertainment purposes only. We do not recommend, dear listeners, that you make attem...

Ride along with 25 year veteran Crime Reporter Nancy Hixt, from Global News, on her award winning podcast Crime Beat as she takes you through some of Canada’s most high-profile criminal cases. Real People, Real Crimes, Real Journalism. Each episode takes you deep inside cases she has worked to give you detail you didn't hear on the news. Season 3 is available NOW - LISTEN​ Crime Beat is the 2020 w...

Episode 146: On June 13th 1901, Ada Mills Redpath and her son Jocelyn Clifford Redpath were killed in their mansion in on Sherbrooke Street in Montreal. Ada had been shot to the back of the head. Clifford has a gunshot wound to his the temple. The police were not called. A coroner’s inquest the next day declared the deaths a murder-suicide. Ada and Clifford were buried June 15th without any furthe...

Episode 145: This episode contains disturbing and graphic details of the 2015 murder of Chinese millionaire, Gang Yuan, in West Vancouver at the hands of his soft-spoken cousin Li Zhao. The crime’s unthinkable and twisted aftermath is horrendous. Sources:Pre-Trial Voire DireR. v Zhao, 2020 BCSC 1322 (CanLII), BC v. Child 3, 2019 BCCA 171 (CanLII), Mother 1 v Solus Trust , 2019 BCSC 200 (CanLII), 9...

Episode 144: On the evening of December 27, 2005, in my home province of Nova Scotia, Jason McCrae, husband of a beloved educator, artist, sister and mother named Paula Anne Gallant, reported her missing. Paula failed to return to her home in Timberlea after a shopping trip to nearby Halifax. The next day, Paula’s body was found locked in the trunk of her car in the parking lot of the school where...

Episode 143: On the island paradise Bermuda in the early morning hours of July 3, 1996, a group of friends were riding in a car headed toward Ferry Reach Park, on the northeastern edge of the island. The vehicle’s occupants were startled when the car’s headlights illuminated a form lying in the middle of the dark and isolated road. They pulled the car over and got out to investigate. The group pre...

Episode 142: On a chilly, cloudy winter night in early 2005 at a gas station in Maple Ridge, British Columbia, a 24-year-old gas station attendant named Grant de Patie was brutally slain by a callous young man over just $12 and 30 cents worth of gas. Sources:R. v. Pratt, 2006 BCSC 1198 (CanLII), R. v. Pratt, 2007 BCCA 206 (CanLII), https://www.mapleridgenews.com/news/driver-from-2005-vehicle-dragg...

Episode 141 - In late June 1993, police were called to a possible stabbing at a residence in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. In one of the bedrooms, Kenneth John Ladubec, 46, lay dead in a massive pool of blood. His killer was Jacob Leroy Andrew Green, 16, the son of Kenneth's live-in girlfriend. Green was tried as a young offender and found guilty of manslaughter. After Jake's release, all seemed relati...

Episode 140: On July 22, 2018, at around 10:00 pm, calls flooded Toronto's 911 call centre. There was a man on Danforth shooting at people in the streets and in the restaurants and cafes in Greektown. After the 16-minute rampage, 13 people were wounded, 10-year-old Julianna Kozis and 18-year-old Reese Fallon had been killed and the gunman had completed suicide. Even after two intensive investigati...

Episode 139: On September 27, 2017, when Dianna Mah-Jones failed to show up for her shift without calling in sick, her co-workers were concerned. Neither Dianna nor her husband, Richard Jones, was answering the phone. One of Dianna's colleagues went to the couple's home in Vancouver's Marpole neighbourhood and discovered what appeared to be a bloody crime scene. Dianna and Richard lay dead inside...

Episode 138 - On the afternoon of May 10, 1973, a stranger entered the CIBC branch on Main St in the small town of Kenora, Ontario. The man, claiming he had a bomb, demanded all the money in the bank. (Photo credit: Don Dutton, Toronto Star)Sources:CJRL Covers the Kenora Bank Robbery 10 May 1973Devil's Gap by Joe Ralkohttps://unidentified.wikia.org/wiki/Paul_Higginshttps://www.services.rcmp-grc.gc...

Episode 137 - At 9:30 a.m. on Friday, June 19, 1914, the worst coal mining disaster in Canadian history occurred at Hillcrest, Alberta, in the Crowsnest Pass region of western Canada. Episode written by Josina de BreeSources:Anderson, Frank. “Hillcrest Mine Disaster” (Triumph and Tragedy in the Crowsnest Pass. Diana Wilson, Heritage House Publishing, Surrey, BC, 2005)www.crowsnest.bc.cawww.crowsne...

Episode 136 - In July of 1998, Keith Scott Black went missing. He was a respected Taekwondo instructor who had three schools near Kelowna., B.C., where he taught with his wife, Rhonda Petra Black. Rhonda was saying Keith had abandoned her, but Keith's sister Sandy and the cops knew there was more to the story. After five long years the story came to a conclusion as the true story emerged as did Ke...