Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: It feels like foreshadowing from a movie. To have the
Speaker 2: last conversation ever between two sisters be a true farewell
Speaker 2: is heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the
Speaker 1: podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career,
Speaker 1: research for my many audio and book projects has taken
Speaker 1: me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down
Speaker 1: with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,
Speaker 1: and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true
Speaker 1: crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both
Speaker 1: good and and it's a deep dive into the unpublished
Speaker 1: details behind their stories. In the summer of nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: a family of nine was murdered in their home by
Speaker 1: a stranger in rural Canada. It was one of the
Speaker 1: worst random mass shootings in the country's history. There's a
Speaker 1: podcast that covers the whole story, called the Shell Lake Massacre.
Speaker 1: The host, Britney Cafe, grew up not far from Shell
Speaker 1: Lake and she has a very personal connection to the story.
Speaker 1: She's close to one of the survivors. Before we get
Speaker 1: into the story, let's just talk about how you found it.
Speaker 1: How you discovered it to begin with.
Speaker 2: So, I grew up in a small town in Saskatchewan
Speaker 2: called Leoville, tiny little community that is surrounded by other
Speaker 2: tiny little communities. And as I was growing up, there
Speaker 2: was almost this ghost story that we would hear about
Speaker 2: the Shell Lake massacre, which was an entire family that
Speaker 2: was murdered in their own home. It's really like the
Speaker 2: perfect fodder for a ghost story in a small rural community.
Speaker 2: And as I grew up, I was always kind of
Speaker 2: curious about this story. And then I got married to
Speaker 2: my husband, whose great aunt happens to be Kathy Hill,
Speaker 2: who is the sole surviving member of the Peterson family
Speaker 2: who were the victims of the Shelley Massacre.
Speaker 1: How do you approach somebody in your husband's family about
Speaker 1: not only just talking about this story, but talking about
Speaker 1: it on a podcast, Because from what I read, she
Speaker 1: had said, I am done. I don't want to talk
Speaker 1: to anybody else. It was like two thousand and two
Speaker 1: or something where she just said, that's it, I'm done
Speaker 1: talking about it. It is like an albatross around my neck.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows me based on this story, and I am
Speaker 1: so much more than just the terrible thing that happened
Speaker 1: to my family. And then you come in.
Speaker 2: It was an interesting phone call. I'll say that I
Speaker 2: had just turned to work. I work at a radio
Speaker 2: station in Saskatoon. I had just returned to work from
Speaker 2: maternity leave, and I had this idea that I wanted
Speaker 2: to tell the story of the Peterson family, not necessarily
Speaker 2: the story of the Shell Lake massacre, but the story
Speaker 2: of the family because through all of the books that
Speaker 2: I've read about this, the things that I've seen online,
Speaker 2: it tends to focus more on the way that they died,
Speaker 2: which was brutal and horrific, and there wasn't a lot
Speaker 2: of information about the type of people that they were
Speaker 2: and the kind of life that they lived. So my
Speaker 2: goal was to connect with people who actually knew the
Speaker 2: Peterson family and could speak to the quality of their
Speaker 2: character as well as shed some light on what exactly
Speaker 2: happened to this family.
Speaker 1: And this is I think something that I talked to
Speaker 1: all of my college students about, which is putting the
Speaker 1: victims first, which often we don't hear in true crime,
Speaker 1: and you know, certainly trying to illuminate their lives so
Speaker 1: that they are not relegated to being just victims or
Speaker 1: just survivors. And that was Kathy's big complaint, is that
Speaker 1: she was labeled as part of this family that was
Speaker 1: almost that infamous at that point in that time, and
Speaker 1: it was something that was weighing her down. Is the
Speaker 1: sense that I got.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think often in true crime coverage, whether
Speaker 2: it's podcasts or the media in general, the dignity of
Speaker 2: the victims is something that's often forgotten. We want to
Speaker 2: make it as salacious and as clickable as possible. And
Speaker 2: to me, especially with these people because they're so closely
Speaker 2: tied to people who I hold very close to my heart,
Speaker 2: the dignity of the victims was at the forefront of
Speaker 2: every decision I made. As I put this piece together,
Speaker 2: I would kind of weigh like, is this fact going
Speaker 2: to keep Jim peterson dignity intact? If not, it most
Speaker 2: likely doesn't need to be out there. There are certain
Speaker 2: things like the crime scene photos and stuff like that
Speaker 2: that I've been able to gain access to through accessing
Speaker 2: court records and case files from the police here in
Speaker 2: Canada that what good would putting them out there do.
Speaker 2: It's not going to add anything productive to the narrative.
Speaker 2: It's just going to cause people pain. So I don't
Speaker 2: see any value in adding that.
Speaker 1: It's interesting to have that kind of a debate about
Speaker 1: what to include. I have that with my books sometimes,
Speaker 1: particularly with diaries. In one of my books in American Sherlock,
Speaker 1: I had a case about a woman who may or
Speaker 1: may not have been murdered by her husband in the bathtub,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to clearly illustrate that, at least in
Speaker 1: this part of their lives, she was not documenting in
Speaker 1: her diary that this was a terrible man, that they
Speaker 1: were having any kind of marital troubles. And so I
Speaker 1: was pulling excerpts that were actually really sweet, like they
Speaker 1: were holding their kids hand together, and all of this
Speaker 1: stuff that did not feel like it was exploitative. And
Speaker 1: then I always have to double check and just think, Okay,
Speaker 1: I just want to make sure this woman is not
Speaker 1: someone who wanted her diary published in sixty thousand copies
Speaker 1: of books. But at the same time, does it prove
Speaker 1: something that's relevant to the story. And I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't do that, and it sounds like
Speaker 1: you did as a creator, you weighed all of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, even coming from such a small community, I
Speaker 2: knew as soon as people found out that I planned
Speaker 2: on doing a podcast about this story, people would start
Speaker 2: to talk. As soon as we made the announcement that
Speaker 2: the podcast was coming on social media. There were a
Speaker 2: lot of people in the community who were concerned about
Speaker 2: the intentions behind this and whether it would just dredge
Speaker 2: up really old, painful memories for everyone. So I made
Speaker 2: a conscious effort to really be sensitive to people's and interestingly,
Speaker 2: as I talked to the different people I was able
Speaker 2: to speak with, be it Kathy or a reporter who
Speaker 2: was one of the first people on the scene, the
Speaker 2: neighbors who lived right next door and were some of
Speaker 2: the first people to view the crime scene. It turned
Speaker 2: into almost this healing journey for everyone along the way
Speaker 2: to be able to tell their stories in the way
Speaker 2: that they wanted them to be told, and now to
Speaker 2: have it kind of immortalized their version of their own story,
Speaker 2: to have their actual voices on it has been such
Speaker 2: a powerful thing. One of the women that I spoke
Speaker 2: with is ninety four year old Marjorie Seminar, who was
Speaker 2: a next door neighbor to the Petersons and a good
Speaker 2: friend of one of the victims. And I've had a
Speaker 2: handful of her family members reach out since and just
Speaker 2: comment on what a gift it is to have Marjorie's
Speaker 2: own story, in her own words out there. So that's
Speaker 2: been a pretty remarkable part of this for me.
Speaker 1: And sometimes that would be my when people criticize true
Speaker 1: crime as purely entertainment and you're exploiting, you know, people's
Speaker 1: deaths and murders and there's nothing but sort of salacious
Speaker 1: entertainment to offer, and I just say, that is not true,
Speaker 1: and you're obviously not listening to the right true crime
Speaker 1: or reading it or consuming it. That is not true.
Speaker 1: And I think that this podcast is an illustration of that.
Speaker 1: I mean, we do get to talk about mental illness,
Speaker 1: which is really valuable. You get to talk about an
Speaker 1: area of the world I'm very unfamiliar with, and really
Speaker 1: I think that what I had read about also is
Speaker 1: just the way that these murders resonated not just through
Speaker 1: this family to Kathy Hill, but also throughout the community
Speaker 1: and the impact for people to be upset or cautious
Speaker 1: maybe is a better word for a podcast that is
Speaker 1: occurring almost sixty years after it happened. You would think
Speaker 1: that this would have been not something that anyone blinked about,
Speaker 1: but it just shows the impact on the community.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the story of the Shelleake Massacre is one that
Speaker 2: has echoed through the prairies of Saskatchewan for nearly a century.
Speaker 2: It's been almost sixty years. People have not forgotten, but
Speaker 2: in my opinion, we weren't remembering the right parts of
Speaker 2: this story. You know, Jim and Evelyn Peterson and their
Speaker 2: children were people. They were regular farmers who had a
Speaker 2: good life. They had no enemies in the community. They
Speaker 2: were loved by their daughter, who still to this day
Speaker 2: has such fond memories of them. And to be able
Speaker 2: to give her a platform to share those memories and
Speaker 2: something that her grandchildren and great grandchildren can go back
Speaker 2: and listen to someday felt like such a gift for
Speaker 2: me to be able to be a part of that.
Speaker 1: Well, we've had an awful lot of build up here
Speaker 1: about this story, so maybe we actually should get to
Speaker 1: the story. This is more built than I usually have
Speaker 1: on this show. We should get to the story. So
Speaker 1: This is nineteen sixty seven and in an area I
Speaker 1: have never ever been to. I adore Canada. This is
Speaker 1: not an area I've been to, though, So tell me
Speaker 1: a little bit what it was like. And in the
Speaker 1: sixties no less.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we're a bit further north in Saskatchewan than
Speaker 2: I am right now in Saskatoon. Very very rural area,
Speaker 2: tons of farms right now. The current population of Shell
Speaker 2: Lake is about one hundred and eighty nine people, so
Speaker 2: very small community. It would have been a little bit
Speaker 2: bigger back in the sixties, but not by a ton.
Speaker 2: So we go back and we get to know a
Speaker 2: little bit about the Peterson family. Jim Peterson was a veteran.
Speaker 2: He served in the Second World War and when he
Speaker 2: returned from the war, he married Evelyn. They got married
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty six and just a couple of years
Speaker 2: later they started their family. They ended up having ten
Speaker 2: children together, which very busy household of Kathy Hill was
Speaker 2: their oldest child. She was followed by Jean, a sister
Speaker 2: named Anne who unfortunately died in infancy, Mary, Dorothy, Pearl, William, Phillis,
Speaker 2: Colin and Larry. Quite a big family.
Speaker 1: Wow, And what is the age range when all of
Speaker 1: this terrible stuff happens in nineteen sixty seven, what are
Speaker 1: the ranges of the kids. Kathy's gone, right, she's married.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Kathy in nineteen sixty seven was nineteen
Speaker 2: years old and baby Larry was only one, so there
Speaker 2: was quite a vast range in the ages of their children.
Speaker 2: But they lived a good life. They were a happy family.
Speaker 2: They didn't have a ton of money, but Jim was
Speaker 2: a very hard worker, a reliable guy. If you needed something,
Speaker 2: he would be there for you to help you. He
Speaker 2: loved his kids. Evelyn was very mild mannered, very quiet.
Speaker 2: Kathy talks about how her mom was just kind of
Speaker 2: in the background of their family, but that's the way
Speaker 2: that Evelyn liked things. She would take quiet time in
Speaker 2: the morning to go milk the cows. Just a simple,
Speaker 2: happy life for the Petersons. They moved into a small
Speaker 2: white farmhouse right near the highway in the early sixties,
Speaker 2: so just a few years before the incident took place.
Speaker 2: Prior to that, they had lived in a bigger house,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't very warm in the winter, and in
Speaker 2: Saskatchewan it gets very cold here in the winter. They
Speaker 2: moved in the early sixties to this small white farmhouse
Speaker 2: by the highway that Jim had actually lived in as
Speaker 2: a child, and it was tiny. There were only two
Speaker 2: bedrooms in this house, no indoor bathroom, So a family
Speaker 2: of eleven living in a two bedroom house was pretty
Speaker 2: twite squeeze.
Speaker 1: And Evelyn was a homemaker. She obviously had only enough
Speaker 1: time to take care of the kids. It sounds like
Speaker 1: that's a handful. Yeah, that's right. So Evelyn was a homemaker.
Speaker 1: She stayed home, took care of the house, took care
Speaker 1: of the kids. And Jim was a farmer, so he'd
Speaker 1: be out working in the fields. They also had quite
Speaker 1: a few animals. They had horses, cows, they had a
Speaker 1: dog named Skippy. They just lived a good Saskatchewan farm life.
Speaker 1: That's the best way I can really sum it up.
Speaker 1: No crime. I can't even imagine a stolen cow every
Speaker 1: once in a while from a stranger. I mean, what
Speaker 1: happens with a town of less than two hundred people
Speaker 1: in the sixties.
Speaker 2: Not a lot. There was not a lot of crime
Speaker 2: going on at the time. There was no RCMP detachment,
Speaker 2: which that's our police in Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police,
Speaker 2: so There was no police detachment in Shell Lake. The
Speaker 2: nearest one would have been in spirit Wood, and they
Speaker 2: usually only had one person on duty at a time.
Speaker 2: It was a very small detachment. So that was Saskatchewan
Speaker 2: in the sixties. As we head later into nineteen sixty,
Speaker 2: we head to nineteen sixty seven, Kathy Hill got married.
Speaker 2: She married Lee Hill, who is my husband's great uncle.
Speaker 2: That's where my connection with Kathy comes in. Her sister Jean,
Speaker 2: was a bridesmaid at her wedding. Her mom helped her
Speaker 2: do her hair and get ready. Her dad wore his
Speaker 2: nicest suit. She tell the just a beautiful story about
Speaker 2: her wedding and her memories from that day. Two days later,
Speaker 2: her husband, Lee and her packed up their vehicle and
Speaker 2: got ready to head off to Chetwyn, British Columbia, which
Speaker 2: was about sixteen hour drive long haul. Kathy was moving
Speaker 2: away from home. Her husband had gotten a job and
Speaker 2: she was ready to leave. As they were packing up
Speaker 2: the vehicle and saying goodbye to her family, Kathy vividly
Speaker 2: recalls her sister Jean, who was seventeen at the time,
Speaker 2: saying goodbye to her, and Jean was crying and saying
Speaker 2: to Kathy that she thought she'd never see her again,
Speaker 2: and Kathy kind of reassured her, like, we'll see each
Speaker 2: other again. It's fine, Jeane. And that was the last
Speaker 2: time that the two sisters spoke.
Speaker 1: When you talked to Kathy about that, So Kathy the
Speaker 1: lone survivor of this, she's just simply out of the
Speaker 1: house at this point when you talk to Kathy about
Speaker 1: all of this, is that the moment that she remembers
Speaker 1: as the most before she finds out what happens, is
Speaker 1: the moment that is sort of the most heartbreaking or
Speaker 1: was there a conversation with her mom or an image that.
Speaker 2: Moment with Jeane definitely seems like it stands out to Kathy.
Speaker 2: A lot of things from that time are really a
Speaker 2: blur for her. It's hard to remember. It's almost like
Speaker 2: she's just pushed so much of this so far out
Speaker 2: of her mind. But that last conversation with Jeane, and
Speaker 2: almost looking back, it feels like foreshadowing from a movie,
Speaker 2: Like you couldn't write a line like that. To have
Speaker 2: the last conversation ever between two sisters be a true
Speaker 2: farewell is heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: Now, remind me, what is the space between when Kathy
Speaker 1: and Lee leave the farmhouse to when this happens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Kathy left on July ninth, nineteen sixty seven, and
Speaker 2: August fifteenth, nineteen sixty seven is when the murders took place.
Speaker 2: So a little over a month after she left home
Speaker 2: and started her new life as a newlywed, this took place.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about what happens on August fifteenth. And
Speaker 1: I guess just set the scene for me. Is it nighttime?
Speaker 1: When I say August? Is that warm? And my definition
Speaker 1: of warm is different than yours, I'm pretty sure? So
Speaker 1: what is the night like when this happens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's fairly warm in Saskatchewan at that time of year,
Speaker 2: at little bit of mist in the air perhaps, but
Speaker 2: in general, a pretty It would have been a pretty
Speaker 2: nice night. I'll actually take you to. Later on in
Speaker 2: the morning of August fifteenth, a neighbor named wil Drew
Speaker 2: Lang was set to come over that day to spend
Speaker 2: some time with Jim and help him get some work done.
Speaker 2: Jim and Wildrew had actually set up together. They had
Speaker 2: planned to empty out some feed bins because Jim wanted
Speaker 2: to sell some grain to send his daughter Jean to
Speaker 2: track and field camp in Dunder and he needed to
Speaker 2: earn some extra money. So at about eight in the
Speaker 2: morning on August fifteenth, nineteen sixty seven, Wildrew came to
Speaker 2: the Peterson farm and he noticed that Jim and the
Speaker 2: family wasn't awake yet. Nobody was awake. The farmyard and
Speaker 2: the house were quiet, and Wildrew assumed that they must
Speaker 2: have just slept in. So he decided to do his
Speaker 2: friend of favor and he started emptying the grain bins
Speaker 2: by himself. About an hour passed and Wildrew started to
Speaker 2: get very suspicious. The house was still completely silent, which
Speaker 2: for a family with that many children and that young
Speaker 2: of children, they're not going to be that quiet that
Speaker 2: late into the morning. So will Drew set down the
Speaker 2: shovel and started to approach the home. He noticed that
Speaker 2: the front door was slightly a jar. As he walked up,
Speaker 2: he called out for Jim a handful of times, and
Speaker 2: there was no response. So he made his way up
Speaker 2: the front steps of the home and pushed the door
Speaker 2: just slightly more a jar, just enough for him to
Speaker 2: step in. And as he stepped in, he noticed the
Speaker 2: body of Jim Peterson laying face down on his stomach,
Speaker 2: on the floor of the entryway to the home. He
Speaker 2: was covered in blood. There was a pool of blood
Speaker 2: beneath him, and there was like a smeared trail of
Speaker 2: blood on the linoleum in the kitchen. So will Drew
Speaker 2: immediately noticed that Jim wasn't moving. He was sure that
Speaker 2: his friend was dead, and he backed out of the
Speaker 2: home and jumped into Jim's station wagon and drove into
Speaker 2: Shell Lake to call the RCMP because there were no
Speaker 2: phones in the homes at the time, so he needed
Speaker 2: to leave and get the police to come.
Speaker 1: And he had no inclination right then whether he had
Speaker 1: been shot or stabbed or anything. He just saw blood
Speaker 1: and very smartly left, which is what the police would
Speaker 1: have told him to do. Anyway. What is the time
Speaker 1: span between when the RCMP shows up and when Wildrew
Speaker 1: had made that discovery.
Speaker 2: It was a pretty quick turnover. Will Drew sped back
Speaker 2: to Shell Lake called the RCMP in Spiritwood. It's only
Speaker 2: about a fifteen to twenty minute drive between Spiritwood and
Speaker 2: Shell Lake, so the RCMP made their way there fairly quickly.
Speaker 2: As soon as Wildrew made the call to the RCMP
Speaker 2: and Shell Lake, he headed back to the Peterson home
Speaker 2: just so he could kind of keep watch over the house.
Speaker 2: And as he was driving back, he noticed a friend
Speaker 2: and neighbor of the peters Since, mister Alvin Seminar out
Speaker 2: in his yard. They lived right down the highway from
Speaker 2: the Petersons. They were the next house. They were very
Speaker 2: close with the family. So wil Drew waved down Alvin
Speaker 2: and told him, like, there's something going on. I'm sure
Speaker 2: that Jim is laying dead in his entry way. I
Speaker 2: need you to come with me and help me because
Speaker 2: I don't know what to do. I was lucky enough
Speaker 2: to speak with Alvin's wife, missus Marjorie's Seminar, and I
Speaker 2: also spoke with his daughter Gail and his son Dennis,
Speaker 2: and all of them, all these years later, have such
Speaker 2: vivid memories of that entire day. Dennis was only ten
Speaker 2: years old at the time, and he was out with
Speaker 2: his dad when Wildrew stopped and waved them down, and
Speaker 2: he can remember his dad telling him to run and
Speaker 2: put Jim's horses in because the horses were out in
Speaker 2: the field. There were a bunch of things that were
Speaker 2: just a miss that day that the Seminars had noticed
Speaker 2: from the moment they woke up, really, so Dennis remembers
Speaker 2: running to put the horses back in and mister Siminar
Speaker 2: headed with Will Drew to the Peterson home to meet
Speaker 2: the police as they arrived.
Speaker 1: But as we know of right now, it's just Jim
Speaker 1: Peterson who's dead, and he's sort of in the entryway.
Speaker 1: But this is not a big house, and nobody else
Speaker 1: is making a sound. So I'm assuming that these two
Speaker 1: men are incredibly nervous about what they're about to get
Speaker 1: into because they realize that there are what nine more people?
Speaker 1: Is that how many more people are going to be
Speaker 1: in the house?
Speaker 2: Ultimately, Yeah, so there are nine other people in the house.
Speaker 2: Evelyn and the children are still, as far as they know,
Speaker 2: in the house. Nobody has stepped foot further than the
Speaker 2: entryway into the house. So all we know at this
Speaker 2: point is that Jim Peterson is dead, and that changes
Speaker 2: very quickly when Corporal Barry Richards with the Spirit with RCMP,
Speaker 2: arrives on the scene. I was able to obtain a
Speaker 2: copy of corpor Richards's statement from the RCMP case file,
Speaker 2: which was actually released to me shortly after the first
Speaker 2: episode of the podcast dropped. They released the entire case
Speaker 2: file to me, So through that I was able to
Speaker 2: see Corpor Richard's statement where he recounts exactly what it
Speaker 2: was like for him to go through that house.
Speaker 1: So the RCMP shows up and Wilfrid and Alvin were
Speaker 1: outside just kind of keeping watch. They had not gone
Speaker 1: back in. I'm assuming right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's correct. Will Drew and mister Siminar stayed outside.
Speaker 2: They did not go back in the house. They waited
Speaker 2: for Corpor Richards to show up, and he was the
Speaker 2: first one in the home. In his statement, he recounts
Speaker 2: how he walked in and noticed, yes, Jim Peterson is here.
Speaker 2: He's not moving, he's dead. He stepped over mister Peterson
Speaker 2: and turned into the living room of the home, where
Speaker 2: he immediately noticed eleven year old Dorothy on a cot
Speaker 2: in the living room. He walked closer and could tell
Speaker 2: that she was dead as well, So he turned to
Speaker 2: enter one of the bedrooms, which is where the rest
Speaker 2: of the Peterson children slept. In one bed, he saw
Speaker 2: seventeen year old Jean along with nine year old Pearl,
Speaker 2: and in the next bed he saw thirteen year old
Speaker 2: Mary with her brothers, five year old William and three
Speaker 2: year old call In as he was standing in the room,
Speaker 2: he didn't see movement. There were no sounds, and he
Speaker 2: thought everyone in here is dead. He stood looking around,
Speaker 2: and suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he
Speaker 2: saw the tiniest bit of movement next Jeane, and he
Speaker 2: noticed that there was a little girl laying face down
Speaker 2: on the mattress, trying not to move and not to
Speaker 2: make any noise. And it was four year old Phyllis.
Speaker 2: Phyllis was still alive and in the house, but at
Speaker 2: that time, Corpora Richards had not finished his search of
Speaker 2: the home. He didn't know if the person who had
Speaker 2: done this was still there. He didn't know where the
Speaker 2: mother and the baby were, so he left Phyllis and
Speaker 2: carried on with his search. He walked back through the
Speaker 2: living room, through the kitchen, and into Jim and Evelyn's bedroom.
Speaker 2: No one was there. There was only an open window.
Speaker 1: Wait, I was not expecting that, really, just an open window.
Speaker 1: So Evelyn and the baby are missing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the mother and the baby are not in the house.
Speaker 2: Corpor Richards made his way outside and told Will Drew
Speaker 2: and Alvin what he had found in the house. And
Speaker 2: he told them there's one little girl still alive in
Speaker 2: the house, and he asked these two burly farm men
Speaker 2: if one of them would come back in and help him,
Speaker 2: because he was obviously scared to go back in, and
Speaker 2: both of the men told him no, they couldn't do it,
Speaker 2: and they wouldn't do it because they were scared too. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So corpor Richards walked back into the house, back into
Speaker 2: the children's bedroom, and he recounts how so he tapped
Speaker 2: little Phyllis on the shoulder three or four times, and
Speaker 2: she very slowly raised herself up on her elbows and
Speaker 2: turned her head toward him. And when she made eye
Speaker 2: contact with him and realized that he was someone who
Speaker 2: was there to help her, not to hurt her, she asked,
Speaker 2: where are you going to.
Speaker 1: Take me now?
Speaker 2: And he didn't respond. He just pulled back the bloody covers,
Speaker 2: picked her up and carried her out of a house
Speaker 2: of horrors?
Speaker 1: Does he hand her Phyllis over to one of the
Speaker 1: men and then goes on a search to find the
Speaker 1: mother and the baby in this family?
Speaker 2: Yeah, he handed Phyllis over to Alvin Siminar, and thankfully
Speaker 2: Alvin's wife Marjorie was on her way over Dennis once
Speaker 2: he had finished chasing in the horses had gone over
Speaker 2: to the house and Alvin told him, you need to
Speaker 2: go get your mom. So Dennis ran back home and
Speaker 2: his mom made her way to the house, and by
Speaker 2: the time Marjorie arrived at the house, Phyllis was out
Speaker 2: and in Alvin's arms, covered in blood. So Corpora Richards
Speaker 2: instructed Marjorie, take this little girl and get her out
Speaker 2: of here. She can't be here. So Marjorie bundled up
Speaker 2: Phyllis and Marjorie still remembers how Phyllis was so soaked
Speaker 2: in blood that just from Marjorie taking her into her arms.
Speaker 2: Marjorie was soaked in blood, and she bundled her up,
Speaker 2: put her in her car, and brought her back to
Speaker 2: their house. You know, in this intense state of shock,
Speaker 2: she was trying to wrap her mind around everything that
Speaker 2: was going on. The only thing that she could think
Speaker 2: to do was wash the blood off of this little girl.
Speaker 2: So Marjorie sat Phyllis up on her kitchen counter and
Speaker 2: took a washclock to this little girl and cleaned the
Speaker 2: blood of her family members off of her. Marjorie's memory
Speaker 2: of this is so vivid and so distinct, which was
Speaker 2: so impactful for me to hear this ninety four year
Speaker 2: old woman recount the most horrific experience of her life,
Speaker 2: and it stayed with her so vividly.
Speaker 1: And she's checking for injuries, and there don't appear to
Speaker 1: be any injuries at all on the four year old
Speaker 1: on Phyllis.
Speaker 2: No Phyllis seems to be completely unharmed. So once Phyllis
Speaker 2: has gone with Marjorie, Corporal Richards he actually has to
Speaker 2: leave the home because again there's no phones, so he
Speaker 2: had to head to Shell Lake again to use the
Speaker 2: phone to call for backup. A mass murder of this
Speaker 2: magnitude had not happened in Canada, so he called for
Speaker 2: backup immediately, and because back then with the phone system
Speaker 2: there would be a phone operator, word had started to
Speaker 2: spread that something was going on at the Petersons and
Speaker 2: that it was very bad, and the rumor mill kind
Speaker 2: of started churning immediately. People in Shell Lake and in
Speaker 2: the surrounding areas started speculating right away that because Evelyn
Speaker 2: wasn't there, it must have been a murder suicide, or
Speaker 2: maybe a jilted lover of Kathy who had just gotten married,
Speaker 2: which was completely true and really hurtful to the entire family,
Speaker 2: And Marjorie said too. As soon as she heard those
Speaker 2: rumors that maybe it was Evelyn, she knew there was
Speaker 2: no chance. Evelyn was the most mild, loving mother and
Speaker 2: there was no way she could have done this. So
Speaker 2: as reinforcements began to arrive, they noticed something behind the house,
Speaker 2: and they found the bodies of Evelyn and baby Larry
Speaker 2: behind the house, just outside of that open window, near
Speaker 2: a rain barrel. It's assumed at that point that Evelyn
Speaker 2: had taken the baby, who was sleeping in a crib
Speaker 2: in her room, and climbed out the window with baby
Speaker 2: Larry and in an attempt to escape the house.
Speaker 1: When are they thinking this happened in the middle of
Speaker 1: the night, because all the kids were in bed and
Speaker 1: then Jim heard something and that's how he ended up
Speaker 1: near the front door, but everybody else stayed in bed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they assume it had only happened a few hours later.
Speaker 2: They right away police. I'm honestly, considering how long ago
Speaker 2: this crime happened. I'm very impressed with how the RCMP
Speaker 2: handled this case. They were incredibly thorough. They brought in
Speaker 2: as many different units as they could. They had forensics.
Speaker 2: In their dusting for fingerprints, they actually pulled up pieces
Speaker 2: of the linoleum that had pretty distinct bootprints in blood.
Speaker 2: They lifted the entire piece of linoleum in hopes that
Speaker 2: they would be able to find someone with a bootprint
Speaker 2: that matched. They went around the home looking for cartridges,
Speaker 2: which interestingly, they only found a handful of cartridges, so
Speaker 2: they could tell that whoever had done this had gone
Speaker 2: around the home picking up cartridges. Trying to cover their tracks.
Speaker 2: They brought in canine units to search the area. They
Speaker 2: did really everything in their power that they could at
Speaker 2: that time, but they were getting nowhere.
Speaker 1: If they don't recover a weapon. Are they looking at
Speaker 1: the cartridges and saying it's probably this type of gun.
Speaker 1: Could they get that far a rifle or shotgun or
Speaker 1: pistol or anything like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they could tell generally what type of gun it was.
Speaker 2: The issue was everyone in the area had guns at
Speaker 2: that time. This was not an uncommon thing for a
Speaker 2: farmer to have a rifle by the door, so it
Speaker 2: almost seemed like a wild goose chase of sorts. The
Speaker 2: police started questioning pretty much everyone in the area who
Speaker 2: had anything to do with Jim Peterson and eventually anyone
Speaker 2: in the area, even if they had nothing to do
Speaker 2: with Jim Peterson. My grandparents actually lived just over an
Speaker 2: hour away from Shell Lake, and my grandma and grandpa
Speaker 2: can remember getting a knock at their door and it
Speaker 2: was the RCMP asking to look around the yard, look
Speaker 2: at any guns that they had. It was a massive
Speaker 2: search that in those first few days after the crime
Speaker 2: really led them nowhere.
Speaker 1: Well, let's go back to Kathy real quick. She is gone.
Speaker 1: She's been gone for a little over a month with
Speaker 1: Lee and sixteen hours away. At what point between when
Speaker 1: Will Drew discovers them, our CMP shows up. Is Kathy
Speaker 1: then notified of everything that's happened. Is this before her
Speaker 1: mother and her little brother are discovered or is it after?
Speaker 2: So Kathy actually didn't have a phone in her new home,
Speaker 2: so no one was able to reach Kathy for nearly
Speaker 2: a day after the murders took place. Eventually, Lee, her
Speaker 2: husband's aunt, and his brother Ken arrived. Lee's aunt had
Speaker 2: a phone at her home, so she had gotten a
Speaker 2: call from someone in the area who told her what
Speaker 2: had happened, and they were tasked with going to Kathy
Speaker 2: with this news and telling her what had happened. Interestingly,
Speaker 2: there was some misinformation like a game of telephone and
Speaker 2: a few things get lost along the way. They had
Speaker 2: been told that Kathy's entire family had been killed, that
Speaker 2: there were no survivors. So after hearing this news and
Speaker 2: quickly packing up and getting in the car to head
Speaker 2: back home to Shell Lake, they turned on the radio
Speaker 2: and that is when Kathy found out that one child
Speaker 2: had survived the massacre.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: So listening to a radio broadcast that there had been
Speaker 2: a mass murder in Shell Lake, a manhunt is underway
Speaker 2: and one child has survived. But she didn't find out
Speaker 2: which child was the survivor until they were actually back
Speaker 2: in Shell Lake.
Speaker 1: Wow. And going back to the crime scene, is there
Speaker 1: a moment when I know the rumor mill had been
Speaker 1: churning for a little bit that maybe this was murder suicide?
Speaker 1: After Evelyn and the baby are discovered outside the window,
Speaker 1: is there a moment when our cmp speculates that maybe
Speaker 1: this is Jim and he is a family annihilator would
Speaker 1: be the term we would use. Is that ever on
Speaker 1: the table at all for them?
Speaker 2: No, it's not. Because they did such a thorough search
Speaker 2: and there was no weapon in the house. There was
Speaker 2: no weapon near them, which you know is a good thing.
Speaker 2: I suppose that all of their weapons had been put
Speaker 2: away and it wasn't cause for speculation. They didn't waste
Speaker 2: much time after they found Evelyn and Larry, speculating that
Speaker 2: someone within the home was responsible. They immediately concentrated their
Speaker 2: efforts on looking for someone else out there who could
Speaker 2: have done this.
Speaker 1: So this is a rifle, they determine, right, it's a rifle.
Speaker 1: Is this a rifle that would need to be loaded?
Speaker 1: I mean, how many shots did they know that this
Speaker 1: person could fire before having to stop and reload.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a rifle that would have needed to
Speaker 2: be reloaded. There were dozens of shots fired through the
Speaker 2: course of this, so they knew that the person at
Speaker 2: least reloaded this weapon once, which points to some type
Speaker 2: of intent, some type of maliciousness with this crime. But
Speaker 2: still they were really getting nowhere. So time continued to
Speaker 2: go on, and people would come in now and then
Speaker 2: to different detachments with tips, or they'd call in with
Speaker 2: a concern about some person in the community that they
Speaker 2: thought police should look into, and they did their due diligence.
Speaker 2: They followed up on all of these tips, but there
Speaker 2: was a lot to go through and days go on.
Speaker 2: Eventually we are at August nineteenth, nineteen sixty seven, which
Speaker 2: is the day of the funeral for the Peterson family.
Speaker 2: And to see photos and hear people describe this funeral,
Speaker 2: this is an event that is something that is like
Speaker 2: emblazoned into the memory of everyone who was there to
Speaker 2: see this massive grave, one massive grave with timbers stretched
Speaker 2: across and eight coffins neatly lined up in a There
Speaker 2: were eight because it was decided that baby Larry should
Speaker 2: be buried in the arms of his mom Evelyn, just
Speaker 2: like they had died. So these eight caskets lined up,
Speaker 2: and over fifteen hundred people attended the service, which you
Speaker 2: think the population is less than two hundred people, So
Speaker 2: to have that many people come from across the province
Speaker 2: to mourn this family and the killer still hasn't been
Speaker 2: arrested is horrific.
Speaker 1: Now I know that this funeral is pivotal. It's a
Speaker 1: pivotal moment for a couple of different reasons. But let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the impact. From when does
Speaker 1: the funeral, how long after the murders, how long does
Speaker 1: that take place.
Speaker 2: The murders occurred on August fifteenth and the funeral was
Speaker 2: August nineteenth.
Speaker 1: In this time period, what is our CMP What are
Speaker 1: they advising people in this area to do. Is it
Speaker 1: arm themselves, which we know they were probably doing that anyway,
Speaker 1: making sure your doors are locked, don't go out at night,
Speaker 1: or is there any guidance for people who have never
Speaker 1: experienced anything more than maybe a theft here and there
Speaker 1: and that's it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's basically exactly what they wanted them to do.
Speaker 2: Lock your doors. This was a time in these rural communities.
Speaker 2: If someone pulled up, you assumed that they needed help
Speaker 2: from you. Your door was open. People were very welcoming.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like it is today. So RCMP did warn people,
Speaker 2: you know, keep your door locked. There are so many
Speaker 2: stories of men who would sleep with a gun right
Speaker 2: next to the bed because just in case someone came,
Speaker 2: they wanted to be able to protect their family. The
Speaker 2: seminars actually told me a story about how after this
Speaker 2: had happened, they were sitting in their home. Their entire
Speaker 2: family gathered around the table, and they came up with
Speaker 2: a plan of what they would do if somebody came
Speaker 2: into their house. What should the kids do? What would
Speaker 2: Alvin and Marjorie do? And to think of having something
Speaker 2: sit so close to home that I would have to
Speaker 2: sit around the table with my children and come up
Speaker 2: with a plan of how to escape a mass murderer
Speaker 2: is horrific.
Speaker 1: Now, let's talk about speculation, because we do have four
Speaker 1: days of speculation here. What are the locals thinking now
Speaker 1: that a murder suicide appears to be off the table
Speaker 1: because of the lack of a weapon. Are they thinking
Speaker 1: either this has to be a local because it's such
Speaker 1: a remote area, or are they thinking, no way, is
Speaker 1: this a local. Nobody's crazy enough to do this. This
Speaker 1: definitely has to be from one of the bigger cities
Speaker 1: of a thousand people rather than two hundred people.
Speaker 2: The general sense that I got was just it was
Speaker 2: like mass confusion. Everyone was scared and they didn't understand
Speaker 2: first of all, how this could happen at all, and secondly,
Speaker 2: how it could happen to the Petersons. They were such
Speaker 2: a well liked family in the area. Jim truly had
Speaker 2: no enemies, which police quickly learned as they were interviewing
Speaker 2: people looking for any reason that someone could possibly have
Speaker 2: a grudge against him or a member of his family.
Speaker 2: There was nothing that made sense, so based on my
Speaker 2: conversations with everyone, it was just confusion and terror filling
Speaker 2: the community for those days.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you some basic police questions. Anything taken.
Speaker 2: There were a couple of wallets taken, but the Petersons, again,
Speaker 2: they weren't a wealthy family. They didn't have a lot
Speaker 2: to take, So nothing of substantial value taken from the home.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't appear like anyone in the home had
Speaker 1: been sexually assaulted or assaulted in any way.
Speaker 2: No, not at all. They were all shot to death.
Speaker 2: That's the only sign of any violence was the gun shots.
Speaker 1: So Jim didn't have any signs of defensive wounds. It
Speaker 1: didn't seem like he fought back. Was he just ambushed
Speaker 1: as soon as he went to the front door area.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jim did have some defensive wounds, but not anything
Speaker 2: that would have attributed to his death. Essentially, it looked
Speaker 2: like he did fight back. Is that because of the
Speaker 2: smears on the linoleum as well, they could tell that
Speaker 2: there was a bit of a scuffle. But Jim had
Speaker 2: been shot multiple times and that's what led to his death, So.
Speaker 1: It sounds like Jim was the first one to die,
Speaker 1: and then what the eleven year old Dorothy on the
Speaker 1: cot because it was right off the living room.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what's assumed is that Jim, followed by Dorothy,
Speaker 2: the rest of the children, and Evelyn and Larry somewhere
Speaker 2: in the mix as well.
Speaker 1: She heard the shots, probably maybe from the other children,
Speaker 1: and you know, was the last one. So okay, now
Speaker 1: we're at the funeral with this terrible scene that you've
Speaker 1: painted of this massive grave and all of the coffins
Speaker 1: being lowered into it and the populace coming out that
Speaker 1: is like twenty five thousand times bigger than the population
Speaker 1: of the town. Then what changes, because something does happen
Speaker 1: in this time four days after these horrible murders take place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. So just a few hours after the funeral,
Speaker 2: Kathy goes back to her mother and father in law's home.
Speaker 2: She has her four year old sister Phyllis with her,
Speaker 2: and there's a knock at the door and it's the
Speaker 2: police coming to inform Kathy that they have made an arrest.
Speaker 2: About ten minutes before the funeral began, the lead inspector,
Speaker 2: Brian Sawyer got a phone call from the kind of
Speaker 2: de facto headquarters that they had set up in the
Speaker 2: Shelleake Community Hall. He got a phone call letting him
Speaker 2: know that they had found a gun that matched the
Speaker 2: cartridges that had been shot and boots that matched the
Speaker 2: bootprint that they had lifted from the linoleum thanks to
Speaker 2: a tip from a man in Lease. He had gone
Speaker 2: to the RCMP and said, I have this neighbor who
Speaker 2: has a son who just got out of the mental
Speaker 2: institution a few weeks ago. He really likes hunting, he
Speaker 2: really likes guns. I think you should look into him him.
Speaker 2: So they did, and ten minutes before the funeral, they
Speaker 2: found out that Victor Ernest Hoffman seemingly is the person
Speaker 2: who killed the Peterson family.
Speaker 1: I mean, not to state the obvious, but couldn't you
Speaker 1: throw a rock and hit a guy in Canada even
Speaker 1: today that wears boots and has a rifle and you know,
Speaker 1: likes to hunt. And the mental institution part is neither
Speaker 1: here nor there, I think, But is that really all
Speaker 1: they had to go on?
Speaker 2: That's all they had to go on. So they arrested Victor.
Speaker 2: It was during the funeral that they actually had gone
Speaker 2: and arrested him, and shortly after being brought into custody,
Speaker 2: Victor gave a full confession and detailed exactly what took
Speaker 2: place inside of that house.
Speaker 1: I mean, I had said that's shaddy evidence, but he confesses.
Speaker 1: Of course, we know there are false confessions here, but
Speaker 1: let's assume that this is all real. Victor's telling us
Speaker 1: the truth. It's a real confession. Do we want to
Speaker 1: now talk about Victor and how he ended up in
Speaker 1: a mental institution to begin with?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, Victor Ernest Hoffman was only twenty one years
Speaker 2: old in nineteen sixty seven. He is a person who
Speaker 2: had struggled with his mental health for years, for practically
Speaker 2: his entire life. He was only six years old when
Speaker 2: he claims that he started experiencing severe hallucinations. He would
Speaker 2: see what he believed to be the devil, this huge
Speaker 2: black figure that would tell him to do things. Victor
Speaker 2: also claimed that by the time he was ten, he
Speaker 2: started experiencing urges to kill almost daily.
Speaker 1: And he talks to his parents about all of this.
Speaker 1: Is that right or how does this come out when
Speaker 1: he's this age?
Speaker 2: Yeah, he hid it when he was younger. He had
Speaker 2: some issues in school some issues with his behavior, but
Speaker 2: he managed to hide these urges quite well, shockingly well
Speaker 2: for a child of that age. As Victor entered his
Speaker 2: late teens and his early twenties, things really started to escalate.
Speaker 2: His hallucinations became much more severe, and he started talking
Speaker 2: a ton about religion, which wasn't something that their family
Speaker 2: usually talked about. He would claim that he was getting
Speaker 2: messages from God, that he was seeing the devil more
Speaker 2: and more, that he would get in fights with angels.
Speaker 2: Things just continued to escalate. There was an incident on
Speaker 2: the family farm where Victor attempted to run his brother
Speaker 2: over with one of the farm trucks, barely missed his brother,
Speaker 2: and kind of the incident that really set things in
Speaker 2: motion for the family was his mom, Stella. Victor's mom, Stella,
Speaker 2: was in the kitchen one day preparing a meal and
Speaker 2: she heard rifle shots outside, so she ran out and
Speaker 2: she found Victor in a field looking up at the
Speaker 2: sky firing his rifle. So she ran to war him,
Speaker 2: and he looked toward her and said, Mom, I shot
Speaker 2: the devil. And that was kind of the point that
Speaker 2: Stella really realized there's something seriously, seriously wrong here. She
Speaker 2: got the gun away from Victor, and he kind of
Speaker 2: went into a frenzy and got in his vehicle and
Speaker 2: drove away. The family hid all of the guns on
Speaker 2: the property as quickly as they could, because they didn't
Speaker 2: know what he would do if he came back and
Speaker 2: got his hands on another weapon. Victor did come back,
Speaker 2: and when he did, he told his parents that he
Speaker 2: thought he needed to speak to a pastor. And his
Speaker 2: parents they did the very best they could with the
Speaker 2: information that they had. We have to remember that this
Speaker 2: was nearly sixty years ago. We didn't know as much
Speaker 2: as we know about schizophrenia now. They didn't know the
Speaker 2: signs to watch out for or how to get him help.
Speaker 2: So this pastor comes and speaks with Victor. There's no
Speaker 2: record of what exactly was said during that conversation, but
Speaker 2: as soon soon as they finished speaking, the pastor went
Speaker 2: to Victor's parents and said, your son is incredibly sick
Speaker 2: and you need to get him to a doctor. He
Speaker 2: needs help right now. So the very next day, Robert
Speaker 2: and Stella Hoffman brought their son Victor to the Saskatchewan
Speaker 2: Hospital in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, and he was admitted and
Speaker 2: diagnosed with schizophrenia shortly after. So that was May of
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty seven that he was admitted.
Speaker 1: Now, is this a hospital that you know of that
Speaker 1: has a good reputation? Do they know what they're doing
Speaker 1: for the time period for nineteen sixty seven?
Speaker 2: Going through Victor's records at the time in nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 2: there were different medications available for schizophrenia, but it seems
Speaker 2: that they weren't really used in this case. There's record
Speaker 2: of Victor receiving tranquilizers, electroconvulsive therapy, talk therapy, occupational therapy,
Speaker 2: but there was no medication that really improved would have
Speaker 2: been proved his mental state truly that was being used,
Speaker 2: which is a cause for concern.
Speaker 1: So how long does he spend in this mental institution
Speaker 1: before he's ultimately released and how do they decide when
Speaker 1: he is able to be released based on sort of
Speaker 1: these violent tendencies that he had shown before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so during his talk therapy at the beginning of
Speaker 2: his admission to the hospital, Victor would insist that the
Speaker 2: things that he was seeing were real, that they were happening,
Speaker 2: that this was going on, and the doctors would kind
Speaker 2: of just tell him like it's in your mind of Victor,
Speaker 2: this isn't real, this isn't happening, and he would argue
Speaker 2: back and forth with them, and later on Victor confessed
Speaker 2: that he realized that if he didn't stop talking about
Speaker 2: the delusions, they were never going to let him out
Speaker 2: of the hospital. So Victor stopped telling the doctors what
Speaker 2: he was seeing and feeling and experiencing, but the delusions
Speaker 2: continued all the same. When Victor was first admitted, his
Speaker 2: parents were told, your son is very sick. He's going
Speaker 2: to need to be in the hospital at least a year,
Speaker 2: at least a year for us to get this under control.
Speaker 2: But about two months after he had been admitted, Robert
Speaker 2: and Stella got a letter from the hospital saying that
Speaker 2: Victor was fine and they could come and pick him up,
Speaker 2: and when was that. So he was admitted May twenty ninth,
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty seven, and on July twenty sixth, nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 2: Robert Hoffman returned to the Saskatchewan Hospital and picked up
Speaker 2: his son Victor. Robert asked to speak to the doctor
Speaker 2: when he got there to pick up Victor, but he
Speaker 2: was told that the doctor wasn't available and that he
Speaker 2: could just take Victor home. So Victor Hoffman left the
Speaker 2: Saskatchewan hospital with just a prescription for tranquilizers in his
Speaker 2: back pocket, a bit less than three weeks before the murders.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's fast forward to the nineteenth, which is
Speaker 1: the funeral, and he's arrested ten minutes before the start
Speaker 1: of the funeral based on what I consider to be
Speaker 1: kind of shoddy information, but it sounds like they were
Speaker 1: spot on, because Victor, you say, confessed, and what does
Speaker 1: he say, happen just straight away? What compelled all of this?
Speaker 1: What started this?
Speaker 2: So Victor's account of the story is that very early
Speaker 2: in the morning on August fifteenth, he woke up and
Speaker 2: he hadn't been feeling right since he came back from
Speaker 2: the mental hospital. Things still weren't right in his mind,
Speaker 2: but he woke up that morning very early, went out
Speaker 2: to the garage to tinker around a little bit. He
Speaker 2: remembered seeing their farm dog and thinking that he should
Speaker 2: kill it, but resisting the urge, and instead he loaded
Speaker 2: his rifle and filled up the car with gas and
Speaker 2: got in and went for a drive very early in
Speaker 2: the morning. He said he had no plan as to
Speaker 2: where he would go. He just knew he needed to
Speaker 2: get in the car and drive. And Victor recounted getting
Speaker 2: closer and closer to Shell Lake and feeling this urge
Speaker 2: to kill, getting stronger and stronger, until finally he turned
Speaker 2: off into the Peterson's yard. He had never been to
Speaker 2: Shell Lake before, he had never met the Peterson family,
Speaker 2: he'd never seen their home. He had no connection whatsoever
Speaker 2: with this family or this area of the province. But
Speaker 2: he turned into the Peterson yard. He opened two gates
Speaker 2: to let himself in, and the murder began.
Speaker 1: Does he give any details that are not something we've
Speaker 1: already discussed about what happened? Does he talk about the
Speaker 1: confrontation with Jim.
Speaker 2: Victor recounts every single detail of the murder. So from
Speaker 2: Victor's point of view, he says that he he got
Speaker 2: out of the vehicle with his gun in hand, and
Speaker 2: he could hear Jim Peterson in the house. It was
Speaker 2: very early in the morning, by the way, by this time,
Speaker 2: it was about between five and six in the morning,
Speaker 2: so Jim and Evelyn would have still been in bed
Speaker 2: or just starting their day. So Victor pulled up to
Speaker 2: the home and he could hear Jim Peterson in the house,
Speaker 2: kind of saying who is it? And Victor approached the house,
Speaker 2: not making a sound, not saying a word, and let
Speaker 2: himself into the home. By that time, Jim had made
Speaker 2: it to the front entrance and was prepared to confront
Speaker 2: whoever it was barging into his house, and he saw
Speaker 2: Victor pointing a gun at him, and Jim kind of
Speaker 2: stepped back and raised his hands and said, don't shoot,
Speaker 2: and Victor shot him. There was a struggle, and Victor
Speaker 2: shot Jim multiple times before finally Jim fell to the
Speaker 2: ground and Victor realized that his rifle was empty, so
Speaker 2: Victor left the house went back out to his vehicle.
Speaker 2: He could have gotten in his vehicle and just left
Speaker 2: at that point, but he chose to reload his weapon
Speaker 2: and walk back into the home where he killed Jim Peterson.
Speaker 2: He shot Jim again, killing him, and then he continued
Speaker 2: into the house. He recounted how he turned into the
Speaker 2: living room and shot eleven year old Dorothy as she
Speaker 2: lay on a cot in the living room, and he
Speaker 2: then walked in to the bedroom where the children had
Speaker 2: been sleeping and began shooting in there. He recounts horrific
Speaker 2: details that I won't get into about how they died.
Speaker 2: He recounted everything, and as he was killing the children,
Speaker 2: he heard the window in the other bedroom, so Victor
Speaker 2: walked out of the house, went around the back and
Speaker 2: shot Evelyn Peterson as she tried to flee with her
Speaker 2: one year old baby. At that time, Victor didn't shoot
Speaker 2: Larry because he said he just didn't see the need
Speaker 2: to shoot the baby. So he went back into the
Speaker 2: home and continued killing the children. It's awful, horrific, And
Speaker 2: after Victor had finished in the house, he went back outside,
Speaker 2: and he said that his logic was that he didn't
Speaker 2: want to leave the baby to starve because he didn't
Speaker 2: know how long it would be before someone found the bodies,
Speaker 2: so he went out and shot one year old Larry.
Speaker 1: Do you think he saw Phyllis the four year old
Speaker 1: kind of buried underneath her, you know, siblings on either side,
Speaker 1: and chose to leave her Because I've read kind of
Speaker 1: differing accounts of that that he had seen her and
Speaker 1: he thought she was like an angel and decided not
Speaker 1: to kill her. But then maybe he hadn't. What do
Speaker 1: you think?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Victor gave differing accounts. He said that at one
Speaker 2: point that she was hiding under the blanket and she
Speaker 2: hadn't seen his face, so he didn't feel the need
Speaker 2: to kill her, But that then kind of negates his
Speaker 2: reason for killing Larry. Why would you leave one child
Speaker 2: without the other. He also said that he thought she
Speaker 2: was an angel and he didn't need to kill her.
Speaker 2: I don't believe that Victor ever saw Phyllis, whether she
Speaker 2: was hiding in the bed with her sisters or in
Speaker 2: her mom's room. I have no clue what happened. Nobody knows,
Speaker 2: but I do not believe that Victor knew he had
Speaker 2: left a survivor in that home. In the police case file,
Speaker 2: there is statements from the officers who interviewed Victor for
Speaker 2: the first time, and they say that when they told
Speaker 2: him that there were two girls in the family, Kathy
Speaker 2: and Phyllis, who were still alive, that he looked shocked.
Speaker 2: So I don't believe he intentionally left Phyllis alive.
Speaker 1: I have to say I'm surprised that he was able
Speaker 1: to shoot Jim however many times, then go out to
Speaker 1: his car and get more ammunition to reload, and that
Speaker 1: the initial shots didn't wake up at least some of
Speaker 1: the kids, but they were all found in bed right
Speaker 1: except for Evelyn and Larry out the window.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I actually spoke with Kathy about this, and she
Speaker 2: has had conversations with Phyllis about Phyllis's memories of that time,
Speaker 2: and Phyllis remembered her dad telling everyone stay where you are,
Speaker 2: oh okay, And Jim was such a trusted figure to
Speaker 2: this family. They believed that their dad would be able
Speaker 2: to protect them and that they needed to just stay
Speaker 2: where they were to be safe. It's just horrific, Like,
Speaker 2: you don't know what you're going to do in that instance,
Speaker 2: obviously until you're faced with it, and the children just
Speaker 2: didn't run.
Speaker 1: I will say I don't almost never ask this question.
Speaker 1: But did the killer, who is Victor, say how he
Speaker 1: felt afterward? Did this quell whatever horrible feeling had been
Speaker 1: bubbling up from him about the devil or whatever? Or
Speaker 1: did it do anything to stop that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? In Victor's confession, he actually says that after he
Speaker 2: killed them, he wanted to kill himself, that he felt
Speaker 2: very bad and he wanted to shoot himself, but he
Speaker 2: had watched this family die and he had seen how
Speaker 2: horrific their deaths had been and that's why he didn't
Speaker 2: do it, because he didn't know where he could shoot himself,
Speaker 2: that it wouldn't hurt, and that he wouldn't die a
Speaker 2: horrific death like they had.
Speaker 1: It's just so weird to think about this because it
Speaker 1: seems like he's been diagnosed with a mental illness that
Speaker 1: seems like a level of callousness as well as you know,
Speaker 1: you hear family annihilators say they kill everybody because they
Speaker 1: don't want the family, the children to live with the
Speaker 1: shame of what has happened. You hear that kind of justification,
Speaker 1: But I feel like I don't hear it intermingled with
Speaker 1: like something like schizophrenia, like that type of a mental
Speaker 1: illness that's sort of rationale. What's your feeling about that.
Speaker 2: There is so much speculation in the community to this
Speaker 2: day about whether Victor Hoffman truly was mentally ill, just
Speaker 2: because of so many of the details surrounding this crime.
Speaker 2: Even given that after murdering the family, he went back
Speaker 2: through the house and he took the blankets off of
Speaker 2: the children and shook them out so he could pick
Speaker 2: up the cartridge casings.
Speaker 1: He's covering it up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he laid them out on the sewing machine and
Speaker 2: counted them out just to try and ensure he got
Speaker 2: them all and that there seems to be rationality behind
Speaker 2: so many of the decisions that he'd made, which has
Speaker 2: been very hard for people to reconcile how things ended
Speaker 2: up with the verdict in court.
Speaker 1: So what ultimately ends up happening with this case with Victor?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Victor ends up going to trial. That's the
Speaker 2: first time and the last time that Kathy saw him
Speaker 2: in person was in a courtroom for the initial hearing.
Speaker 2: Kathy went because she wanted to see what this person
Speaker 2: looked like and who they were, and what kind of
Speaker 2: person could possibly commit such a heinous act. And Kathy
Speaker 2: still remembers seeing Victor and being almost underwhelmed by his appearance.
Speaker 2: He had been built up so much with all of
Speaker 2: the anticipation of seeing this monster who had murdered your
Speaker 2: entire family, and he's just a man. So that was
Speaker 2: the first and last time that Kathy saw him. She
Speaker 2: packed up and went back to BC, taking Phyllis with her.
Speaker 2: Kathy and her husband Lee ended up raising Phyllis as
Speaker 2: their own. So Kathy was back in BC and the
Speaker 2: trial went on. Throughout the court proceedings. Marjorie Seminar, who
Speaker 2: was neighbor to the Peterson family, was at every hearing.
Speaker 2: She showed up for the Petersons every day that she
Speaker 2: possibly could. And one of Marjorie's strongest memories from the
Speaker 2: trial was the moment where she really realized how close
Speaker 2: her own family came to being the victims of this crime.
Speaker 2: As Victor was recounting what had happened, Marjorie heard him
Speaker 2: describe how he had been driving towards Shell Lake and
Speaker 2: the urge to kill was getting stronger, and he said
Speaker 2: he tried to stop at this house, and he described
Speaker 2: the house perfectly with the TV antenna, and then he
Speaker 2: described how he was going too fast and missed the turn,
Speaker 2: so he took the next approach. So Victor had tried
Speaker 2: to stop at the Seminar home, but he had just
Speaker 2: missed the approach and took the next road, and that's
Speaker 2: how the Petersons ended up falling victim to his massacre.
Speaker 2: As the court went on, Victor eventually was found not
Speaker 2: guilty by reason of insanity by the jury, which, as
Speaker 2: I said, still to this day, is quite a controversial
Speaker 2: finding among people in the community. Neither Kathy or Marjorie
Speaker 2: really speculated on whether they believed Victor was insane or not.
Speaker 2: I think because this is a crime that was just
Speaker 2: so close to them, it's really painful to speculate on
Speaker 2: whether someone got away with it or not. Kathy especially
Speaker 2: really focuses on Victor's family, which I find amazing. She
Speaker 2: has so much empathy in her heart for the Hoffman
Speaker 2: family and everything that they did to try and get
Speaker 2: help for their son. They did the very best that
Speaker 2: they could, and they were essentially ostracized from the community
Speaker 2: after this crime had taken place because people thought if
Speaker 2: he was the sick, how could you not have known.
Speaker 2: I find it honestly remarkable how much grace Kathy gives
Speaker 2: the Hoffman family and the true level of forgiveness that
Speaker 2: she has for them, given what her own family has
Speaker 2: gone through, she still has that empathy in her heart
Speaker 2: to wish things could have turned out differently for the
Speaker 2: Hoffman family as well.
Speaker 1: So I'm assuming that Kathy and Lee did a fantastic
Speaker 1: job raising Phyllis and everybody is healthy and happy at
Speaker 1: this point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, at this point, things are good. Kathy and Lee
Speaker 2: are back in BC. They have their first a little
Speaker 2: boy that they named William, after Kathy's five year old
Speaker 2: brother who had been killed. And then when Kathy's pregnant
Speaker 2: with her second child, they actually move back home so
Speaker 2: they start farming. They take over Lee's parents farm and
Speaker 2: start a life in the Shell Lake area, which was
Speaker 2: very painful for Kathy. It was very hard for her
Speaker 2: to come back, but she knew that she wanted to
Speaker 2: be back home and around her people, her family. As
Speaker 2: time went on, things stayed hard for Kathy. People would
Speaker 2: continue to speculate and talk about things that happened. People
Speaker 2: felt comfortable almost like going up to her and bringing
Speaker 2: it up in conversation, which was incredibly awkward. It's really
Speaker 2: hard to move on with your life when people are
Speaker 2: constantly asking you how you feel about the most horrific
Speaker 2: thing that's ever happened to you. And a big part
Speaker 2: of you know, things feeling like they were lingering is
Speaker 2: that the Peterson Home all that time was still standing.
Speaker 2: The house where these murders had occurred hadn't been torn
Speaker 2: down or anything. It stayed standing until their early nineties.
Speaker 2: People would go up to the home, they would break in.
Speaker 2: People would take pieces of linoleum pieces of the walls,
Speaker 2: almost as a little memento. And it was really painful
Speaker 2: for both Kathy and Phyllis to have people desecrating their
Speaker 2: childhood home. Constantly. Kathy would get calls every time someone
Speaker 2: had broken in because they were trespassing on her property,
Speaker 2: and it was incredibly, incredibly painful for her. Thankfully, I
Speaker 2: guess we can say. In the early nineteen nineties, the
Speaker 2: house did burn to the ground. Kathy got a phone
Speaker 2: call from the fire department when it was on fire,
Speaker 2: asking her what they should do, and she said, just
Speaker 2: let it burn, let it go.
Speaker 1: How did that happen? We don't officially know what ultimately
Speaker 1: happens to Victor Hoffman. He goes to a mental institution.
Speaker 2: I'm assuming yeah, that's right. After Victor was found not
Speaker 2: guilty due to criminal insanity, he was sent to Penitanguishine
Speaker 2: in Ontario, Canada. It was a hospital for the criminally insane,
Speaker 2: and he stayed there for quite a few years. He
Speaker 2: in the early nineties, actually, Kathy and her family found
Speaker 2: out that he had been having such good behavior that
Speaker 2: he had been granted day passes to leave the facility,
Speaker 2: which was a very difficult thing for both Kathy and
Speaker 2: phyllis to try to navigate.
Speaker 1: Because he would have been in his what fifties when
Speaker 1: that happened. I was trying to do quick math, so
Speaker 1: still a viable threat obviously.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. But thankfully Victor never harmed anyone else.
Speaker 2: He passed away due to cancer in two thousand and four,
Speaker 2: and that that's where the story of Victor Hoffmann and ends.
Speaker 1: Did you manage to get a hold of anyone in
Speaker 1: Victor's family or did you try?
Speaker 2: No? I didn't. I tried, but I wasn't able to
Speaker 2: and I think it's completely understandable. I can't imagine, you know,
Speaker 2: to hear Kathy explain how hard it's been for her
Speaker 2: to try to move on and almost rebuild an entire
Speaker 2: life when something horrible has happened, I feel like it's
Speaker 2: just as if not more, difficult to rebuild when someone
Speaker 2: in your family is responsible for that act. I can't
Speaker 2: imagine the pain. So I wasn't able to speak with
Speaker 2: their family, But I, like Kathy, I have so much
Speaker 2: respect and empathy for that family. Yeah, they did everything
Speaker 2: that they possibly could have done.
Speaker 1: So what ended up ultimately happening to Phyllis.
Speaker 2: So Phyllis lived a good life. She grew up right
Speaker 2: alongside Kathy's children, participated in sports, she fell in love,
Speaker 2: she became a mom. But unfortunately, Phyllis passed away on
Speaker 2: May fourteenth, twenty nineteen, after a really brave battle with cancer.
Speaker 2: And Phyllis actually is not buried in the Shell Lake
Speaker 2: Cemetery where the rest of her family is, because she
Speaker 2: knew that to have the soul survivor of the massacre
Speaker 2: brought to that grave would kind of turn it into
Speaker 2: even more of a tourist attraction than it already is,
Speaker 2: and she didn't want that for her family or for herself.
Speaker 2: So Phyllis chose to be buried in an undisclosed location
Speaker 2: that I've been to, and it's beautiful and peaceful and
Speaker 2: really encapsulates all the things that Phyllis wanted and deserved
Speaker 2: in her life.
Speaker 1: I really read closely some of the stuff that Cathy
Speaker 1: was saying, and of course listening to your podcast, and
Speaker 1: you know, I hear from survivors all the time via
Speaker 1: email or social media posts to my shows, who always
Speaker 1: have such incredible end site. And one thing she said
Speaker 1: that I had not heard before was that people when
Speaker 1: they find out who she is and what happened to
Speaker 1: her family, they are either so stunned or dumbstruck that
Speaker 1: they walk away like they don't even want to talk
Speaker 1: to her. They don't know what to say, do I
Speaker 1: acknowledge it or not? Or they talk to her and
Speaker 1: ask probing, inappropriate questions. And it doesn't sound like there's
Speaker 1: a lot in between. And that must just be a
Speaker 1: really difficult experience to live through for almost sixty years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's almost like you're constantly walking on unstable ground right,
Speaker 2: not sure where the next conversation will take you. And
Speaker 2: that's I was incredibly nervous to approach Auntie Kathy about
Speaker 2: the notion of speaking to me about this because I
Speaker 2: know the profound impact that this has had on her
Speaker 2: life and how difficult it is for her to talk
Speaker 2: about it. So I'm just so incredibly grateful that she
Speaker 2: is willing to open up and share this story with me,
Speaker 2: because I think this podcast isn't the story of Victor
Speaker 2: Hoffman and what he did. This is the story of
Speaker 2: the Peterson family, and this is a way for me
Speaker 2: and everyone else who heard a ghost story about them
Speaker 2: to realize that they were real people you know. The
Speaker 2: Petersons aren't ghosts. They were here, and they were loved,
Speaker 2: and they mattered, and I'm just so grateful to be
Speaker 2: able to have shared their story.
Speaker 1: If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
Speaker 1: audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That
Speaker 1: Is Wicked and American Sherlok and Don't Forget. There are
Speaker 1: twelve seasons of my historical true crime podcast, Tenfold More
Speaker 1: Wicked right here in this podcast feed, scroll back and
Speaker 1: give them a listen if you haven't all read. This
Speaker 1: has been an exactly right production. Our senior producer is
Speaker 1: Alexis a Morosi. Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. This
Speaker 1: episode was mixed by John Bradley. Curtis heath is our composer.
Speaker 1: Artwork by Nick Toga. Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen
Speaker 1: Kilgarriff and Danielle Kramer. Follow Wicked Words on Instagram at
Speaker 1: tenfold More Wicked and on Facebook at Wicked Words Pod