Speaker 1: Hi is Sea Fishman from Orbit Media and what we
Speaker 1: think of as our true crime Clubhouse. One of the
Speaker 1: things we like to do with the Clubhouse is to
Speaker 1: introduce you to podcasts that we think you'll like podcast
Speaker 1: besides those we produce which we know you love. This week,
Speaker 1: we're sharing the first episode of Someone Knows Something from
Speaker 1: the CBC for listeners who aren't familiar with the show.
Speaker 1: Someone Knows Something is an investigative true crime series by
Speaker 1: an award winning documentarian named David Ridgein What Happens Is
Speaker 1: each season, David investigates another unsolved case. So this season,
Speaker 1: which is season nine, he jumps into the case of
Speaker 1: Christine Herron. Christine was a book loving teenager from Hanover, Ontario.
Speaker 1: She leaves for school in the spring of nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: three and has never seen again. A suspect confesses to
Speaker 1: killing her, but the case falls apart and no one
Speaker 1: is punished. Then David teams with Christine's mother and they
Speaker 1: investigate the case, at one point coming face to face
Speaker 1: with the man who claims he killed Chrissy. You can
Speaker 1: find all episodes if Someone Knows Something wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. Okay, here comes episode one enjoy. Let us
Speaker 1: know what you think at info at Orbitmedia dot FM.
Speaker 2: I'm out another river, this one flowing through a southwestern
Speaker 2: Ontario town on a clear but darkening springtime evening. I
Speaker 2: recorded these nature sounds well over a decade ago for
Speaker 2: a TV documentary using the same microphone I now use
Speaker 2: for the podcast. This thing always seems to be standing
Speaker 2: between me and the unknown, somehow oddly comforting, just.
Speaker 3: Crouching at the riverside. Here a park and Hanover, Ontario.
Speaker 3: This is the Sagiin river, which the mouth of the
Speaker 3: Sagi actually empties out into the Lake Huron. It's about
Speaker 3: sixty kilometers downstream. I think the river's flowing clear, but
Speaker 3: there's lots of debris kind of pushed against the shoreline.
Speaker 3: There's obviously a pretty high floodplain here. There's an old gazebo,
Speaker 3: a swing set, there's an old gate.
Speaker 2: I remember focusing on the sounds these things made. Here,
Speaker 2: chains on a swing, muddy logs at the high water mark,
Speaker 2: brushy grasses along the path, and that metal gate. I
Speaker 2: wonder if these objects or the sounds they made, ever
Speaker 2: held any actual comfort for anyone.
Speaker 3: At one time, this park was Christine Herron's favorite place
Speaker 3: in the whole world. I have been told if i'd
Speaker 3: been here before May eighteenth, nineteen ninety three, I might
Speaker 3: have seen her down here catching frogs or fishing. And
Speaker 3: nobody here today, just this path next to the river.
Speaker 2: The sounds I recorded here don't reveal any secrets, but
Speaker 2: I feel pulled back to places like this again and again,
Speaker 2: pulled back into long term investigations, their grief and the hope.
Speaker 2: Even after some questions have been answered, there's always more
Speaker 2: and more difficult ones. Over thirty years ago, just one
Speaker 2: week after her fifteenth birthday, Heron disappeared, and her full
Speaker 2: story has yet to be told. I'm David Ridgin, and
Speaker 2: this is someone Knows Something, Season nine, The Christine Herron Case,
Speaker 2: Episode one, Chrissy. I first learned about Christine in the
Speaker 2: late two thousands as I was scanning through some of
Speaker 2: the many unsolved cases out of Ontario. I was preparing
Speaker 2: to make a documentary series for CBC Television's news program
Speaker 2: The National. I sorted Chrissy's case into a much smaller pile,
Speaker 2: a shortlist of sorts, cases that for some reason spoke
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 4: We gathered here this morning for a celebration of life
Speaker 4: A Life of Christine Error.
Speaker 2: I'd learned that a memorial service was being held at
Speaker 2: a church seventeen years after Christine disappeared, So I traveled
Speaker 2: west to Hanover in the springtime of twenty ten.
Speaker 4: Let us bring loving God, look with mercy on those
Speaker 4: who mourn for Christine, who has died by the violence
Speaker 4: of our fallen world. Be with us as we struggle
Speaker 4: with the mysteries of life and death.
Speaker 2: Framed photos of Christine in curly dark hair and glasses
Speaker 2: sit on a small table at the front of the church,
Speaker 2: next to the minister. There are others sad people whom
Speaker 2: I assume are her family standing close by, including the
Speaker 2: woman that I know is her mother, Mary Anne.
Speaker 5: Described by her mom as midical loader. Christine didn't have
Speaker 5: a lot of close friends in our culture. Her loner
Speaker 5: mentality meant that she was viewed as being different. She
Speaker 5: wasn't someone who has hung.
Speaker 4: Up on appearances or who is doing with whom.
Speaker 2: This minister's words, his impressions of Christine filled me with
Speaker 2: a chill of sadness. Tears suddenly rolled down my face
Speaker 2: for this young person I'd never met, and right there
Speaker 2: I decide that I'm going to do this case.
Speaker 6: This is the last place Christie had lived.
Speaker 2: I would take several more months of information gathering before
Speaker 2: I contacted Chrissy's mother, Mary Anne.
Speaker 7: That front window was the living room, and that's where
Speaker 7: her and I had spent the morning together watching television,
Speaker 7: with her laying her head on my lap.
Speaker 2: I've got mary Anne framed up in my documentary camera
Speaker 2: on a cool, windy day, Pale skinned in glasses, with
Speaker 2: meticulous makeup and shorter hair. Mary Anne stands in front
Speaker 2: of the small brick to story she'd been renting back
Speaker 2: in the spring of nineteen ninety three at the time
Speaker 2: Chrissy disappeared. Mary Anne gestures to where she says. Chrissy
Speaker 2: walked away from home that.
Speaker 7: Day and then she left to go to school. She
Speaker 7: walked down the other side of the street and around
Speaker 7: the corner, and that was the last I've seen of her.
Speaker 2: Mary Anne says. She watched from an upstairs window as
Speaker 2: Chrissy turned the corner on the way. Mary Anne thought
Speaker 2: to Grade nine classes at John Diefenbaker High School, not
Speaker 2: that far away. It was sometime between one thirty and
Speaker 2: two pm. Chrissy had not felt well that morning so
Speaker 2: stayed home. She'd been known to skip classes and didn't
Speaker 2: want to go to school that afternoon either. She and
Speaker 2: her mom had argued about it, and mary Anne suggested
Speaker 2: that perhaps Chrissy should get a job instead. Chrissy walked
Speaker 2: down out, saying see you later, and slammed the door.
Speaker 2: She was wearing blue jeans, a jean jacket, black running shoes,
Speaker 2: plastic glasses with a broken nosepiece on one side, and
Speaker 2: possibly a silver bracelet.
Speaker 6: She was in a good mood that morning, but she
Speaker 6: was mad that she had to go to school. She
Speaker 6: even we were in the process of packing and moving
Speaker 6: to another place, and she says, well, even let me
Speaker 6: stay home and I'll pack alled it all the times
Speaker 6: did it go on that day? But I said, you
Speaker 6: can't truant Officer's way.
Speaker 2: There were other tensions in the household at the time
Speaker 2: as well. Chrissy had been deeply troubled by her parents'
Speaker 2: divorce years earlier. Her father, Lorne, lived in Western Canada
Speaker 2: at the time of Chrissy's disappearance and has since passed away.
Speaker 2: Chrissy got along with her younger brother named Sean, but
Speaker 2: did not always see eye to eye with her stepfather,
Speaker 2: who was also named Sean. Sean Russworm, who was then
Speaker 2: aged twenty six.
Speaker 5: She didn't like keeping a room clean. She's kind of
Speaker 5: a tomboy.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Russworm is a large man in a T shirt sporting
Speaker 2: a mustache and smudgy blue line tattoos on each shoulder.
Speaker 2: Back at their current home, he and Marianne are settled
Speaker 2: into a couch. Two chihuahuas named Chloe and Angel sit
Speaker 2: on their laps.
Speaker 5: As long as they behave that maybe they can stay.
Speaker 6: The best thing to do is to hand her to
Speaker 6: you and let you hold her.
Speaker 5: There.
Speaker 6: Angel, see.
Speaker 2: Mary Anne hands me Angel the extra small one so
Speaker 2: she can get used to me and stop barking. I
Speaker 2: walk around the room a bit with the dog in hand,
Speaker 2: looking at some photos of Chrissy spread out on a
Speaker 2: coffee table with a yellow lunch pail on her first
Speaker 2: day of kindergarten, blowing out birthday candles in red ribboned
Speaker 2: pigtails and Chris Stmas tree moments.
Speaker 5: I was gonna try something with.
Speaker 2: That light for okay, the dogs seem calm and we
Speaker 2: start talking about Chrissy.
Speaker 5: I like to take stuff apart and.
Speaker 6: Her back together to see what made it work. She
Speaker 6: loved kids, loved going for walks, into cricks, catching frogs
Speaker 6: and what have you.
Speaker 2: I see Chrissy seeming to watch me through her big
Speaker 2: glasses in the photos.
Speaker 5: I love those glasses.
Speaker 6: She hated them.
Speaker 5: There was times where other people would pick on her
Speaker 5: younger brother, Sean, and then Chrissy be right there sticking
Speaker 5: up for her brother. Chrissie was right there and punched
Speaker 5: out a couple of boys that were picking on Sean.
Speaker 5: This was in public school already, so she could hold
Speaker 5: her home and she was feisty and when she needed
Speaker 5: to be.
Speaker 2: Sean admits that his relationship with Chrissy was sometimes strained,
Speaker 2: and he says that he is bipolar and sometimes can
Speaker 2: be aggressive, But he says that one of his last
Speaker 2: memories of Chrissy is her helping him replace the spark
Speaker 2: plugs in his car.
Speaker 5: When we started to get closer, she'd come out to
Speaker 5: the garage and asked me if she could use my tools. Yeah,
Speaker 5: they're right there if I go to help. No, no,
Speaker 5: she wanted to do it herself.
Speaker 6: But she wasn't one to go out to parties or
Speaker 6: anything like that. Like she'd come home a couple of
Speaker 6: times and said, well, they're drinking.
Speaker 8: So I left.
Speaker 6: She was against smoking, she was against drinking.
Speaker 5: She told her we were really proud of her for that.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 6: She was close to her grandma, my mom, very close. Yeah,
Speaker 6: they spent a lot of time together.
Speaker 8: We always had a good relationship for any reason. If
Speaker 8: she just wanted to talk, she'd call me. She used
Speaker 8: to spend a lot of time over there with me.
Speaker 2: Grandma Phillis socks at her home.
Speaker 8: And then when ninety three we moved to Guelf. That's
Speaker 8: what upset me so bad, because I felt she if
Speaker 8: she's out there, she's gonna try and reach me, because
Speaker 8: she always did if she wanted something or other. And
Speaker 8: and I thought, well, I move away, she won't have
Speaker 8: my phone number, and that's upset me. And once I
Speaker 8: moved away, I couldn't even look at her pictures anymore
Speaker 8: for a long time. It really upset me bad.
Speaker 9: It says Grandma, It says Grandma Wild, Thanks all.
Speaker 5: Wild, Thanks Alley, Oh, I said.
Speaker 2: Grandma Christine sits around a Christmas tree with her family
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety I watched the grainy archival video as
Speaker 2: she quietly makes sure that everyone has a gift to
Speaker 2: open before she does. Then the footage shifts to a
Speaker 2: Santa theme park and Christine's pretending to be a reindeer
Speaker 2: in front of a big red sleigh, a mischievous strength
Speaker 2: to her every move, just three years before she walks
Speaker 2: off into oblivion.
Speaker 8: Whoh, I got an a sewing machine. I'm bringing her
Speaker 8: out and letting her use it. She made an apron
Speaker 8: the one time she was out and we'd baked and
Speaker 8: we'd just play games. We always used to go do
Speaker 8: worm hunting and picking water two and she'd go fishing.
Speaker 8: I just couldn't believe it when she disappeared and she
Speaker 8: didn't call me. It's something you can't never forget. I
Speaker 8: don't know, no matter what, you can't forget about it.
Speaker 2: Marianne reported Chrissy missing to Hanover Police Sat. Nine to
Speaker 2: twenty one pm on the day she disappeared, May eighteenth,
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety three. Christy was known to have a poor
Speaker 2: sense of direction and would get lost easily, But despite
Speaker 2: this and her habit of skipping classes or sleeping over
Speaker 2: at friends' houses, Marianne and others say that Chrissy would
Speaker 2: always call home and never go far.
Speaker 6: When she didn't show home, I started phoning her friends
Speaker 6: and my family just to see if maybe she went
Speaker 6: to one of her friend's house after school or something.
Speaker 2: The story of Christine's case, at least in the beginning,
Speaker 2: is a familiar one. A teenager leaves home, supposed to
Speaker 2: be somewhere school but never makes it. Local police investigatively inexperienced,
Speaker 2: finding nothing and flying in the face of what a
Speaker 2: mother knows.
Speaker 6: And nobody had seen her or heard from her. So
Speaker 6: then the family and I we started going out and
Speaker 6: looking for her, looking in part in the area, just
Speaker 6: to see, you know, if she was someplace else and
Speaker 6: just hadn't come home.
Speaker 9: Yet.
Speaker 6: We had formed the police, and they said it was
Speaker 6: too soon yet to do anything. What we actually got
Speaker 6: from the Hanover police chief himself was that his daughter
Speaker 6: runs away a lot, takes off for days, so mine
Speaker 6: probably did the same thing. So she never showed home,
Speaker 6: and I sat up all night and waited for worried.
Speaker 6: I even had the feeling too all along that she
Speaker 6: was down there by the park somewhere. I kept trying
Speaker 6: to get them to search more, and the church and
Speaker 6: I we even got together and formed our own search,
Speaker 6: and we wanted to search down there, and they wouldn't
Speaker 6: let us. They made us go in the opposite direction,
Speaker 6: and the.
Speaker 5: Top police was very upset. Yes, when we set that up,
Speaker 5: they were not impressed that you had set up a search.
Speaker 6: Yes, yes, they didn't want the public to panic.
Speaker 5: We were told if we went anywhere near the park
Speaker 5: that weekend, the very first weekend she disappeared, there would
Speaker 5: be consequences and repercussions. Who told you that the.
Speaker 2: Police There had been an antique car show on at
Speaker 2: the park that coming Victoria Day weekend, and police were
Speaker 2: concerned about disrupting it. According to Mary Anne, the Hanover
Speaker 2: Police and Fire department did eventually coordinate and conduct a
Speaker 2: single search using volunteers on May twenty third, nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 2: five days after she disappeared. The search encompassed the Hanover Park,
Speaker 2: the south shore of the Saugine River going east, and
Speaker 2: the town water tower. No trace of Christine was found.
Speaker 6: I think everybody just wanted to believe she was a runaway.
Speaker 6: Nobody would actually think of her as something had happened
Speaker 6: in a small town, not to their town. So everybody
Speaker 6: just told us, no, she's a runaway. She'll come back
Speaker 6: when she's ready. Even when we were putting up posters,
Speaker 6: people would take him down. They just didn't want to
Speaker 6: believe it.
Speaker 5: The town police took them down.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but nobody would believe it. I actually got phone
Speaker 6: calls from people, you know, stop making such a fuss,
Speaker 6: She'll come back. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Did you ever cast any suspicion or doubt suspicious of
Speaker 2: people in town.
Speaker 5: Or anything ang of it?
Speaker 2: Nope, Mary Anne and Sean didn't have any suspects, but
Speaker 2: almost a year later they had to be ruled out
Speaker 2: as suspects themselves.
Speaker 6: Yes, we all wear At one point they asked us
Speaker 6: to take polygraphs, and I agree, just to rule out
Speaker 6: being a suspect so that they would get on with
Speaker 6: the case and find the person that did it. I
Speaker 6: did it and willingly, knowing that it would clear me
Speaker 6: and would help the case. Yes, I would do would
Speaker 6: have done anything at that time. And you went through
Speaker 6: two of them.
Speaker 5: I went through too. The first one was fairly basic.
Speaker 5: It didn't bother me too much. The second one was
Speaker 5: at a very tense time in my life. My employer
Speaker 5: at the time was on strike. In nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 5: I had the interview over at malfors ol Ppe station
Speaker 5: and I believe it was October of nineteen ninety nine
Speaker 5: and I was interviewed by one of their forensic people
Speaker 5: from Kingston, supposed to one of their head people. It
Speaker 5: was very, very intense. It's about a four to five
Speaker 5: hour process, and they accused me in many different ways
Speaker 5: of murdering Christine, strangling, rape, shooting her, drowning her, and
Speaker 5: just everything they could pushed my buttons. What pushed my
Speaker 5: buttons the most during this process. I know that they
Speaker 5: were videotaping and recording the session. They mentioned that they
Speaker 5: had Paul Bernardo in another room. They wanted to know
Speaker 5: what my thoughts were.
Speaker 2: Paul Bernardo was a serial rapist and murderer in Ontario
Speaker 2: in the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties. He and his
Speaker 2: partner Karla Homolka horribly murdered two young women. Bernardo had
Speaker 2: been arrested and jailed months before Chrissy disappeared, So using
Speaker 2: his name here was a tactic to get Sean talking, and.
Speaker 5: With myself already being bipolar things that were going on
Speaker 5: in my life at that time, I completely lost it.
Speaker 5: I jumped out of my seat. I seemed to remember
Speaker 5: throwing a couple of things around. I just said, let
Speaker 5: me add the son of a bitch, because only one
Speaker 5: of us is going to walk out of the room alive.
Speaker 5: I completely lost control. They tried to calm me down.
Speaker 5: I shut them off. All I had in my mind
Speaker 5: was looking for Paul Bernardo and wanted at him, and
Speaker 5: I wanted them dead. And that's the last I can remember.
Speaker 2: Russworm had been at work until three pm in Durham, Ontario,
Speaker 2: at the time Christy disappeared, about a fifteen minute drive
Speaker 2: away from Hanover. After work, he drove to Marianne's, where
Speaker 2: he heard that Christine had left for school shortly before
Speaker 2: he arrived. And what did they tell you about the
Speaker 2: results of either of those polygraphs.
Speaker 5: That you took from that? I was clear, as far
Speaker 5: as they've chriscerned, I had nothing to do with it.
Speaker 5: What they said they had to do what they had
Speaker 5: to do to prove that I was not guilty.
Speaker 2: Sean and mary Anne did pass their first polygraph tests,
Speaker 2: according to documents, and neither was ever arrested or charged.
Speaker 2: In Christine's case, Do I.
Speaker 5: Wish any to ever go through a process like that? No,
Speaker 5: it's hell. It's not a very nice process. But they
Speaker 5: did everything that they needed to do, and I commend
Speaker 5: them for doing it. I just still wished that we
Speaker 5: had something more could bring justice and bring Christine home.
Speaker 6: I did know before the night was over she was dead, though,
Speaker 6: call it mother's intuition or whatever, I knew she was gone.
Speaker 2: There weren't many Christine heron news reports to look at
Speaker 2: early on in my investigation items I could find. Talked
Speaker 2: about the local Hanover police making no headway in Christine's case,
Speaker 2: claiming even a year later that there was no evidence
Speaker 2: of foul play. Even though Chrissy had left her house
Speaker 2: without her id, any extra clothing, or the eighty dollars
Speaker 2: in birthday money she had just received, police continued to
Speaker 2: suggest that she was a runaway, that there were sightings
Speaker 2: of her. Christine was in Toronto with skinheads who had
Speaker 2: been seen in Hanover, she'd dyed her hair blonde and
Speaker 2: shaved the side of her head, or she'd left home
Speaker 2: to go live with her father Laura, out west, but
Speaker 2: she never appeared there or Toronto, or was seen anywhere
Speaker 2: else again. After May eighteenth, nineteen ninety.
Speaker 5: Three, Marianne and I spent a lot of time the
Speaker 5: first six months to a year. We went to Kitchener, London, Toronto.
Speaker 5: Where else did we go, dear, I can't even remember.
Speaker 2: Even if police weren't looking for Christine, Marianne and Sean
Speaker 2: were trying their best.
Speaker 5: Every chance we had, going to places that we probably
Speaker 5: we checked, shelters we went into. I'm not sure if
Speaker 5: it's a halfway house or a drug house or what
Speaker 5: it was.
Speaker 2: The media would report on these supposed sightings of Chrissy
Speaker 2: and help to generate more rumors and to make matters worse.
Speaker 2: According to Mary Anne, the few articles that were written
Speaker 2: were often filled with inaccuracy.
Speaker 6: I found that whenever you tried to tell them something,
Speaker 6: they twisted into something else. It was never what you
Speaker 6: were trying to explain. They always just took bits and
Speaker 6: pieces and made their own sentences.
Speaker 10: It wasn't always the truth that we had said, so
Speaker 10: it became frustrating and upsetting, to the point where we
Speaker 10: just had to refuse to.
Speaker 5: Speak from We were so scared of jeopardizing Christine's case
Speaker 5: that we shut out all reporters for quite a while
Speaker 5: until now.
Speaker 6: I've kept most of the clippings for the newspapers all
Speaker 6: these years, got those in somewhere, the posters. Yeah, typical girl.
Speaker 9: Yes.
Speaker 2: So do you think that there's a chance in this
Speaker 2: case still or what's your aim?
Speaker 3: The want to solved, justice and solved.
Speaker 5: I think you're still a chance now. I hope, I
Speaker 5: hope this will bring her home. We will do our best, working,
Speaker 5: sure you will.
Speaker 6: My panaver does not feel like home anymore.
Speaker 5: She went missing us. It's not our home.
Speaker 11: We had the same homeroom in grade nine, so the only.
Speaker 9: Desk goes right beside her.
Speaker 11: So that's how I met her and Finn there we
Speaker 11: pretty much were like fast friends.
Speaker 9: Like Kristine was very shy.
Speaker 2: Cindy Galen McPherson, one of Christine Herron's school friends.
Speaker 11: I mean, if you didn't know her, it took a
Speaker 11: long time to kind of get to know her, and
Speaker 11: a lot of people would like to pick on her
Speaker 11: because she was really easy to pick on. How So,
Speaker 11: if somebody said, well, why don't you go do this,
Speaker 11: she'd go and do it because she wanted to be accepted.
Speaker 11: People would like froll in a locker.
Speaker 6: She'd just stay there until like we we're.
Speaker 11: Gone, and I'd come and be like, okay, you can
Speaker 11: get out now. She really wasn't once for conflict, either
Speaker 11: if people were fighting or that there was a chance
Speaker 11: that they could be fighting.
Speaker 9: She was out of there.
Speaker 11: We'd hang out pretty much every weekend. The day she
Speaker 11: disappeared and I found her house, then her mama answered
Speaker 11: and I'm like, it is christ you know. She's like, no,
Speaker 11: she haven't gotten home from school yet.
Speaker 9: I thought it was kind of weird. And I'm like,
Speaker 9: well she didn't.
Speaker 11: She wasn't at school, and her mom's like, oh, okay.
Speaker 9: And then I think it was about two hours later.
Speaker 9: I got another phone call.
Speaker 11: And she's like, are you sure Christy isn't there, And
Speaker 11: I'm like no.
Speaker 2: Cindy and her father drove the roads that Chrissy might
Speaker 2: have traveled to get to their farm.
Speaker 9: We didn't see her.
Speaker 11: So my dad's like, well, we.
Speaker 9: Can't stay out, you know.
Speaker 11: So I went home and I phoned her mom and
Speaker 11: I said, well, we didn't find her on any other
Speaker 11: roads coming from Hanover.
Speaker 2: Cindy had spoken to Christy on the phone the night
Speaker 2: before she disappeared. They were planning the May Long weekend
Speaker 2: where Chrissy was supposed to come to Cindy's farm, So.
Speaker 11: Like I was the last person to talk to her,
Speaker 11: and everything seemed fine. She was excited. She loved being
Speaker 11: at my house because of all the animals and everything
Speaker 11: like that.
Speaker 9: Saying May we had baby.
Speaker 11: Goats and sheep and calves and pigs, and she was
Speaker 11: excited to come and see them. And I didn't really
Speaker 11: think anything was up.
Speaker 9: Okay, So the police then did they talk to you all?
Speaker 5: Wait couple of years they.
Speaker 2: Come and maybe turn Cindy says she spoke to police
Speaker 2: several times over the years and that sometimes they would
Speaker 2: insist that Cindy knew more, that she knew where Chrissy was,
Speaker 2: but she didn't. The best Cindy could do was tell
Speaker 2: police about what Chrissy was like, her routines and habits,
Speaker 2: certain places she liked to go.
Speaker 11: Chrissy used to go and put on the swings at
Speaker 11: the park and just think, she said, that's what she
Speaker 11: liked to do when she wanted to think was go
Speaker 11: and sit on the swings. Like Crinty was a very
Speaker 11: good friend to me, and it kind of hurts me
Speaker 11: to know that she's missed out on a lot of stuff.
Speaker 9: That I've gotten to do. What's your theory? Everyone's got one.
Speaker 11: I think somebody picked her up, because see what would
Speaker 11: have gotten into a car with somebody?
Speaker 9: Do you think that she wouldn't run into a stranger's
Speaker 9: car if they were nice to her?
Speaker 11: Probably she was like just driving to some sort of
Speaker 11: a doubt to prove it.
Speaker 9: Well, if you're older and you were a nice time,
Speaker 9: she would like move having a nice to keep that
Speaker 9: like that. I don't even know the word. I'm looking
Speaker 9: for her that, yeah, to keep that attention on her.
Speaker 9: So do you think she got into a car and
Speaker 9: you think that there was the wrong car.
Speaker 11: I honestly do.
Speaker 2: It should be noted here that some feel Chrissy would
Speaker 2: be shy of strangers or even run away from them
Speaker 2: if she were alone.
Speaker 9: Just for sure, she.
Speaker 11: Would have phoned me if she was still alive, Like
Speaker 11: push first, she would have phoned me. And I kind
Speaker 11: of knew deep down I had to.
Speaker 9: I'm like, seems not around anymore. She's dead.
Speaker 2: I'm sitting in the passenger seat as Sean and mary
Speaker 2: Anne give me a short tour of Hanover Main Street,
Speaker 2: the river, the school, the park, population about seventy seven
Speaker 2: hundred Hanover Rose and then fell as a furniture making
Speaker 2: capital of Canada, with much of that business gone now overseas.
Speaker 2: A town at the time of her disappearance down on
Speaker 2: its luck, but where Chrissy called home. Shawn and mary
Speaker 2: Anne moved not long after Chrissy disappeared to shelter themselves
Speaker 2: from what sounds like an onslaught of neighbors.
Speaker 6: They were very rude, with a.
Speaker 9: Long Mega ten.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I actually had phone calls.
Speaker 7: You get a lot of calls in the middle of
Speaker 7: the night, were hanging up, so we.
Speaker 9: Had the hand of her.
Speaker 6: Police put a trace on her phone so they could
Speaker 6: try and find out who was doing the phone calls,
Speaker 6: but they never did.
Speaker 2: A brief flurry of police activity surrounded a call that
Speaker 2: a boy going into grade ten named Mark Koontz received
Speaker 2: in July nineteen ninety three, a couple of months after
Speaker 2: Chrissy disappeared. The call, Koontz told his parents and police
Speaker 2: came from someone who said they were Chrissy. The girl
Speaker 2: on the other end said she was calling from a
Speaker 2: payphone and that she was near one of the abandoned
Speaker 2: factories in town. The person on the phone said she
Speaker 2: had run out of money and asked Coontz to meet
Speaker 2: her behind a shed near the school. She also told
Speaker 2: him that she wanted to have sex with him. Kontz
Speaker 2: says the person sounded like Chrissy, but when he went
Speaker 2: to the shed with police standing by, nobody appeared. Later
Speaker 2: that night, another call came in where the girl's voice
Speaker 2: asked Kons if he had told police. He said he had,
Speaker 2: and the voice said thanks a lot and hung up.
Speaker 2: Coons admitted later that he had previously received crank calls
Speaker 2: on other topics, and also that he had not heard
Speaker 2: Chrissy's voice for well over a year and barely knew
Speaker 2: her or saw her even then.
Speaker 5: We had asked for the OPP to be able to
Speaker 5: step in. We pleaded with the hand Or police to
Speaker 5: bring the OPP in. They said no, it was their jurisdiction.
Speaker 5: They don't have to bring an outside source in, and
Speaker 5: it turned out to be six years later before we
Speaker 5: were able to have the OPP come in.
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety nine, Hanover Police requested the assistance of
Speaker 2: the Ontario Provincial Police on Chrissy's case. At that time,
Speaker 2: a cataloging of the case was undertaken by the OPP
Speaker 2: and new interviews were conducted along with reinterviews, DNA samples
Speaker 2: were taken from Mary Anne, and a profile obtained for
Speaker 2: Chrissy from a tube of her lipstick. A reward fund
Speaker 2: for thirty thousand dollars was renewed on the ten year
Speaker 2: anniversary of Chrissy's disappearance in two thousand and three. One
Speaker 2: of the original investigating officers on the case, Stanley Edwards,
Speaker 2: is charged with several criminal offenses, including robbing a bank,
Speaker 2: forcible confinement, and sexual assault. None of the charges were
Speaker 2: connected to Chrissy's case.
Speaker 9: This move fuck.
Speaker 5: Now talks with nice.
Speaker 2: Did you ever receive any documents from the OPP by
Speaker 2: the case?
Speaker 6: No? The OPP wouldn't let us know anything.
Speaker 2: And since that time, we're now in twenty eleven here,
Speaker 2: what has the OPP done or to year knowledge?
Speaker 9: How they communicated to you?
Speaker 6: They followed up on some other leads, but we've never
Speaker 6: been told any results from those. We haven't heard from them.
Speaker 6: So as far as I know, the case is closed, I'll.
Speaker 5: Forget into telling you what I know to myself.
Speaker 2: I'm going to leave you with some today that you
Speaker 2: guys can read. Did you hear back at Marianne and
Speaker 2: Shawn's place? I share some documents with them that the
Speaker 2: Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General has sent me. The
Speaker 2: basic story that they tell is known to Marianne and Sean,
Speaker 2: but the crucial details have remained hidden and out of
Speaker 2: reach until now. Details about a local man named Anthony
Speaker 2: who had a frustrating night at an August two thousand
Speaker 2: and four party. He'd had a few drinks and then
Speaker 2: confessed to killing Christine Herron. This season on Someone Knows Something,
Speaker 2: the Christine Heron case, the.
Speaker 5: Crown Attorney told us was a slam dump. At one
Speaker 5: point he was ninety percent sure he was going to
Speaker 5: be convicted.
Speaker 4: Listen to me very carefully, right now, you're under arrest
Speaker 4: of the murder of Christine Herron because you told that
Speaker 4: police officer that.
Speaker 5: You killed her. This story here and moved me to
Speaker 5: a d I died bucking doesn't weave these whips.
Speaker 3: Did you know Christine?
Speaker 2: Did you kill Christine?
Speaker 5: Why did you confess.
Speaker 3: To her murder?
Speaker 2: Someone Knows Something is hosted, written and produced by me
Speaker 2: David Riggin. The series is also produced by Katie Swires.
Speaker 2: Sound design by Evan Kelly. Natalia Ferguson is our transcriber.
Speaker 2: Emily Canal as our Digital producer. Chris Oak is our
Speaker 2: story editor. Our executive producer is Cecil Fernandez. Tanya Springer
Speaker 2: is the senior manager, and Rafnurani is the director of
Speaker 2: CBC Podcasts. If you want to help new listeners discover
Speaker 2: the show, please rate and review wherever you listen. Find
Speaker 2: us on Facebook by searching Someone Knows Something, or on Instagram.
Speaker 2: At CBC Podcasts. You can hear next week's episode now
Speaker 2: by searching for the CBC Podcasts channel on YouTube. If
Speaker 2: you're looking for more investigations, check out the past seasons
Speaker 2: of Someone Knows Something from a deadly bomb hidden inside
Speaker 2: a flashlight to two teenagers killed by the KKKA. There
Speaker 2: are eight seasons of Someone Knows Something you can binge
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Speaker 2: in next week for an all new episode of Someone
Speaker 2: Knows Something, or you can bingeless in the whole series
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Speaker 9: Out jo About That in the World and a Train
Speaker 5: Giledliency