Dark Roast: Caffeine Casefiles Podcast

On July 30, 1985, eight-year-old Nicole Morin said goodbye to her mother, walked toward the elevator of her Etobicoke apartment building, and vanished without a trace. Nicole was on her way to meet a friend in the lobby for a swim. Her friend was waiting. Her mother saw her leave. But somewhere between the twentieth floor and the ground floor, Nicole disappeared. The investigation that followed wa...

On October 13, 1970, seventeen-year-old Helen Claire Frost told her sister Sandy she was going for a walk. She left their Prince George apartment around 8:20 p.m. and was never seen again. Helen had been through a difficult year. Just five months earlier, she had given birth to a baby girl at a home for unwed mothers—a daughter she was pressured to give up for adoption. Her boyfriend had broken up...

Welcome Back Casefilers! Grab your hot coffee and favourite flannel for this week’s episode! In January 1953, a groundskeeper clearing brush near Beaver Lake in Vancouver’s Stanley Park made a grisly discovery: the skeletal remains of two young children, covered with a woman’s fur coat. The children had been bludgeoned with a hatchet and left in the woods, their bodies arranged side by side with t...

Welcome Back Casefilers! Today I’m kicking off with one of Nova’s Scotia’s haunting unsolved mysteries! Spooky season ( for some of us) has started ! The air is getting crisper, the leaves are changing and suddenly it’s time for leggings and flannel over tank tops and shorts. So grab your favourite hot cup of caffeine, get comfy and let’s dive in…. In September 1992, twenty-year-old Kenley Matheso...

☕EPISODE 26 : THE HUNTING OF RASHEEM CARTER “Mom, there’s three truckloads of white men trying to kill me.” Those were the last words 25-year-old Rasheem Carter spoke to his mother before he disappeared. He was a father. A welder. A chef. A son. He went to the police for help. He was turned away. One month later, his partial remains were found scattered in the woods - head severed, teeth missing....

In this special deep-dive episode, we journey into one of the darkest chapters of American history—the era of emancipation—and uncover the true crime stories that history books often forget. We begin with John Reed , a free Black man in 1820s Pennsylvania who fought for his life when kidnappers broke into his home in the dead of night. The handcuffs and rope found on his attackers told the story—b...

For more than a century, it stood on the shores of Lake Simcoe—a place families were told would provide care, compassion, and protection for society’s most vulnerable. Instead, the Huronia Regional Centre became a place of silence, suffering, and systemic abuse that remained hidden for generations. In this episode of Dark Roast Caffeine Casefiles , we travel to Orillia, Ontario, to uncover the dev...

An 84-year-old mother vanishes. Her daughter is a TV icon. And online sleuths may be making it worse. 🎥🔍 This is the short version. Tap the links for the full story. 🎥 Watch The Search for Nancy Guthrie (Netflix): https://www.netflix.com/title/81954321 * 🎙️ Listen to Serialously with Annie Elise – search “Nancy Guthrie” or “Savannah Guthrie mother” in your podcast app * 📰 Online sleuths compli...

Welcome back, Caffeine Casefilers. June 30, 2002. A 21‑year‑old Tla‑o‑qui‑aht woman named Lisa Marie Young left a house party in Nanaimo, British Columbia, with a man she’d just met—a man driving a distinctive burgundy red Jaguar. She sent her friend a text: “My phone is not working.” Then she vanished. The man in the Jaguar was identified as Christopher William Adair. He was questioned by police,...

A father of four. Murdered on Canada Day. His daughter found him. 💔🇨🇦 This is the short version. Tap the links for the full story. * 📰 Trial begins (CTV News): https://www.ctvnews.ca/saskatoon/prince-albert/article/trial-of-man-accused-of-killing-prince-albert-father-begins/ * 📰 Victim identified as ‘always funny’ father of four (CTV News): https://saskatoon.ctvnews.ca/prince-albert-homicide-vi...

A 28-year-old tow truck driver. Three teenage hitmen. A $7,500 contract killing. The towing industry’s dark underworld exposed. 🚛🔫💔 This is the short version. Tap the links for the full story. Links to the story: * 📰 Teen pleads guilty (CBC News): https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/teen-recruited-to-shoot-gta-tow-truck-driver-pleads-guilty-to-murder-9.7238849 * 📰 Hired gun confession (Tor...

Welcome back, Caffeine Casefilers. Between March and May 2022, four Indigenous women disappeared from the streets of Winnipeg. Their bodies were found—some of them, anyway—in garbage bins, dumped at landfills, treated like refuse by a killer who believed their lives didn’t matter. Jeremy Skibicki was a white supremacist who targeted Indigenous women at homeless shelters. He drugged them, assaulted...

A #VanLife dream turned into a nightmare. Gabby Petito’s story gripped the world—but the Netflix documentary only tells part of it. For the full picture, tap the links below. * 🎥 Watch American Murder: Gabby Petito on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81766093 * 🎙️ Listen to Serialously with Annie Elise - Episode 248: * (search “Episode 248: Why Did Netflix LEAVE THIS OUT About Gabby Petito”...

A 100-mph crash. Two dead. One survivor. Accident or murder? The Crash on Netflix will leave you questioning everything. This is the short version—tap the links for the full deep dive. * 🎥 Watch The Crash on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81941710 * 🎙️ Podcast deep dive - RedHanded (episode on Mackenzie Shirilla): Search “RedHanded Mackenzie Shirilla” in your podcast app * 🎙️ Podcast deep...

☕️ A NEW BREW – SHORT TRUE CRIME STORIES YOU CAN SIP. 🎬 Today I’m talking about Netflix’s Maternal Instinct — but facts were left out. 😳 Taylor Parker faked pregnancies for YEARS before the murder — not just once. She committed welfare fraud. She ran prison schemes to dodge medical bills. Even her mom’s reason for staying quiet? The documentary didn’t tell the whole story. For the FULL deep div...

Welcome back, Caffeine Casefilers. I’m your host, Cait. You pour the coffee. I pour the truth. She was sixteen years old. A high school baseball player. A peer counsellor. She had just landed her first job at a restaurant. On June 11, 1994, Ramona Wilson kissed her mother goodbye, walked out the door to go to a dance a few towns over — and vanished. Ten months later, her body melted out of the spr...

Welcome back, Caffeine Casefilers. As Canadians Know - June is Indigenous History Month. A time to honor the original stewards of this land and their rich heritage. But as true crime storytellers, we have a responsibility to acknowledge that this history includes a painful legacy of systemic failure. So this June, we’re dedicating our episodes to the truth: that every Indigenous life is a story wo...

Welcome Back Caffeine Casefilers! This is Part 2 of this series takes a deeper look into the tragic death of two-year-old Vienna Rose Irwin. In this episode, we cover the findings from the coroner’s report, and the details from the civil lawsuit filed by her family. If you missed the previous Episode, go back and listen Episode 6: The Sweetest Little Girl Key Details: * A two-year-old girl who was...

Welcome Back Caffeine Casefilers! Grab your favourite choice of Caffeine, and buckle in… This week I’m talking about a family Dynasty that was the law in their county for 87 years - Until a murder investigation reveals the cracks and the truth crumbles the whole empire. The Rise and Fall of Murdaugh Country. June 7, 2021. A dirt road in rural South Carolina. A father calls 911 with a frantic, sobb...

Welcome Back Caffeine Casefilers! In this weeks episode, I’m talking about the Unsolved Murder of Karen Woodcock - A Mother of 7 - who went missing, found dead by the roadside only 2 kilometers away from her home, whose murder is still unsolved to this day. It was Canada Day, 1973. Families across Peterborough, Ontario, were lighting barbecues and watching fireworks. But somewhere out on the quiet...

Episode 16 Welcome Back Caffeine Casefilers! In this weeks episode I talk about the mysterious disappearance of Jaclyn “ Jackie” Ferland Smith - Who walked out of her house in August 2021, never to return and yet to be found. Grab your favourite choice of Caffeine and sip slowly Pura Vida. It’s a phrase that promises a pure life, a slower pace, and a slice of paradise. For Canadian expats Jaclyn “...

Welcome back Caffeine Casefilers! Grab a mug, fill it with something dark and unforgiving, and let’s get started. In the summer of 1981, a shadow fell over British Columbia. Eleven children vanished. The man responsible was Clifford Olson—a compulsive liar, chronic criminal, and psychopath who would become one of Canada’s most notorious serial killers. But when police finally caught him, they didn...

Welcome back Caffeine Casefilers Grab a mug, fill it with something dark and unforgiving, and let’s travel to British Columbia Robert Pickton was a quiet, unassuming pig farmer who hid in plain sight. While throwing raucous parties at his “Piggy Palace” and cruising the streets of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, he was committing the worst serial killings in Canadian history. In this episode, we ex...

Welcome back Caffeine Casefilers. Grab a mug, fill it with something dark and unforgiving, and let’s get started. Between 2007 and 2016, residents of long-term care homes in Ontario, Canada, were dying. Nothing unusual there—elderly people with complex medical conditions pass away every day. But eight of those deaths were something else entirely. They were murders, committed by the one person ever...

Welcome Back Caffeine Casefilers! In this weeks episode I talk about the strange case of Ken Parks and how his sleeping disorder led him to killing and the attempted killing of his Mother and Father in-law In the early morning hours of May 24, 1987, 23-year-old Ken Parks drove 20 kilometers from Pickering to Scarborough, let himself into his in-laws’ home with a spare key, and brutally attacked th...