Speaker 1: That evening, one of the strangest things happened. I looked
Speaker 1: in the mirror and I said out loud, He's not
Speaker 1: coming home. And I thought, my god, am I being dramatic?
Speaker 1: And I dismissed it.
Speaker 2: I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal, a show about
Speaker 2: the people we trust the most and the deceptions that
Speaker 2: change everything. This is our last Betrayal Weekly episode for
Speaker 2: a little while. We'll be back in May with a
Speaker 2: whole new season of Betrayal. It'll be one story told
Speaker 2: over multiple weeks, and after that we have more Betrayal
Speaker 2: Weekly episodes coming. Right now, we're actively working on news stories,
Speaker 2: so if you have a story you'd like to share
Speaker 2: on the podcast, write to us at betrayalpod at gmail
Speaker 2: dot com. In the meantime, we have some spectacular bonus content,
Speaker 2: including updates on cases you've heard on betrail Weekly. We're
Speaker 2: also interviewing experts and getting their opinions on the stories
Speaker 2: you've heard. We can't wait for you to hear what
Speaker 2: we have coming up now. Onto this week's episode. This
Speaker 2: is Jancanty's story. She grew up in Detroit in the
Speaker 2: nineteen fifties and sixties. It was an era of social change,
Speaker 2: a time when protests erupted across the country and people
Speaker 2: demanded equality. It all informed the woman Jan became.
Speaker 1: I loved growing up in Detroit. It was a very
Speaker 1: historical time. I was very active in the women's movement.
Speaker 1: Even as a teenager. I was in demonstrations. I wanted
Speaker 1: to make a difference and I did not want to
Speaker 1: grow up and be a housewife and have kids. But
Speaker 1: I lacked role models for how to do that because
Speaker 1: everybody that I knew that was a woman stayed home
Speaker 1: and had kids.
Speaker 2: Jan didn't know what possibilities were out there for her.
Speaker 2: She loves learning, but she didn't love school.
Speaker 1: Hated high school with a big passion. Hated it capital
Speaker 1: h I thought it was a complete waste of time.
Speaker 1: I just saw it as babysitting. It turned me off
Speaker 1: to school, and I said I was never going to
Speaker 1: set foot in the classroom again.
Speaker 2: If she could have dropped out of high school, she
Speaker 2: would have, so college wasn't part of her plan. She
Speaker 2: didn't even know how to apply.
Speaker 1: So I just went from one crap job to another,
Speaker 1: didn't like any of them, got really bored. So I
Speaker 1: kind of started out really floundering, not knowing what I
Speaker 1: wanted to do.
Speaker 2: Looking for a little direction, she gave school one last try.
Speaker 2: She started taking classes at her local community college, and
Speaker 2: sure enough.
Speaker 1: I loved it, so different than high school.
Speaker 2: It was at community college that she took her first
Speaker 2: psychology course. It was a turning point. Working in psychology
Speaker 2: would mean helping others. Plus she found it interesting to me.
Speaker 1: There's nothing more basic than thought. They can take away
Speaker 1: your family, your health, so on, but they can't take
Speaker 1: away your thought. And that intrigued me. It still does.
Speaker 2: As she began her studies, she was eager to start
Speaker 2: a life on her own, so she moved downtown and
Speaker 2: rented the cheapest place she could find.
Speaker 1: My apartment cost me eighty dollars a month. It had rats,
Speaker 1: It had about six locks on the door. It had
Speaker 1: no kitchen. It was a hot plate, a bathroom, and
Speaker 1: a bedroom. I remember putting my mattress on the floor
Speaker 1: away from the window so the gunshots outside wouldn't bear
Speaker 1: through the window because there was always gunfire at night.
Speaker 1: But it was home to me, and it was proof
Speaker 1: that I was on my way.
Speaker 2: Still as cheap as it was, if she was going
Speaker 2: to continue to live there. She needed a job. A
Speaker 2: friend told her about a psychologist who was hiring. He
Speaker 2: needed help typing up a manuscript. This was right up
Speaker 2: Jan's alley, so she applied, and soon she got a
Speaker 2: call asking for an interview. When she pulled up to
Speaker 2: the office building.
Speaker 1: I noticed you had to pay for parking. I did
Speaker 1: not have two dollars and fifty cents on me to pay,
Speaker 1: so I thought, I'm going to have to ask for
Speaker 1: a loan from my future employer.
Speaker 2: She went inside and immediately felt like a fish out
Speaker 2: of water.
Speaker 1: It was staggering. It had marble and bronze and three
Speaker 1: feet long chandeliers in the corridor, and arches and paintings
Speaker 1: and you name it, very very very elegant. And so
Speaker 1: I remember walking through the doors and instantly I felt
Speaker 1: out of place. I'm like, I don't belong here. This
Speaker 1: is fancy. I don't have any money, I'm a phony.
Speaker 1: I was so nervous, and I had on my best clothes,
Speaker 1: which I bought used and I remember watching people how
Speaker 1: they got to the elevator and how they used the button,
Speaker 1: so I would know how to do it.
Speaker 2: But as she got off the elevator, her nerves faded when.
Speaker 1: I got off on floor eight. He must have heard
Speaker 1: the elevator going. He stuck his head out, way way
Speaker 1: down at the end of the hall. He said, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm down here.
Speaker 2: The psychologist's name was Alan Canty. Jan had been expecting
Speaker 2: a man who matched the building, someone intimidating, formal, classy.
Speaker 2: Alan was anything but he.
Speaker 1: Had a golf shirt on. His pants were too short
Speaker 1: for his shoes. He was bashful, and he was very welcoming,
Speaker 1: laughed easily.
Speaker 2: The two of them hit it off. Twenty minutes into
Speaker 2: the interview, Alan offered her the job, but before she left,
Speaker 2: she had a favor to ask.
Speaker 1: On my way out, I said, oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: can you deduct two dollars and fifty cents out of
Speaker 1: my paycheck?
Speaker 2: Jan explained that she wasn't able to pay the exit
Speaker 2: fee for the parking lot. Alan just smiled.
Speaker 1: He pulled out of his pocket a roll of cash
Speaker 1: and peeled it off and seemed more than happy to
Speaker 1: give it to me.
Speaker 2: In the beginning, Jan and Allan's relationship was strictly professional.
Speaker 2: After all, he was eighteen years older than her, well educated,
Speaker 2: he came from a wealthy family to Jan Alan was
Speaker 2: elite and accomplished. He was someone to look up to.
Speaker 1: My impression of him was one of respect. Given his
Speaker 1: station in life, I knew I could learn a lot
Speaker 1: from him him in terms of the field of psychology.
Speaker 2: Before long, he started treating her to lunch and.
Speaker 1: I would talk about classes and what I was learning.
Speaker 2: He wanted to give her advice to be a mentor.
Speaker 1: He was the first person to ever express belief in
Speaker 1: my goals, the idea that of course you can go
Speaker 1: to college. Of course you can graduate. Of course you
Speaker 1: can do that. I had never had anybody tell me
Speaker 1: that in my life. It really made a big impression
Speaker 1: on me, and I was so pleased that he saw
Speaker 1: potential in me that nobody else acknowledged or validated.
Speaker 2: He encouraged her to transfer to a four year university
Speaker 2: and get her bachelor's degree, and he helped her pay
Speaker 2: for college by promoting her to receptionist.
Speaker 1: It gave me a raise, and I was so grateful
Speaker 1: for that because I was really barely paying my own tuition,
Speaker 1: and one term I had to sell my car to
Speaker 1: make tuition. And I had started to walk to glass
Speaker 1: in those neighborhoods, which was a challenge to get home
Speaker 1: before dark.
Speaker 2: In the winter, Alan started giving her rides home at
Speaker 2: the end of the day. He liked looking out for her,
Speaker 2: and she liked being cared for. After a few months,
Speaker 2: Alan asked her out on a date. It didn't really
Speaker 2: come as a surprise. Jan knew they had chemistry. For
Speaker 2: their first date, Alan drove her somewhere she'd never been before.
Speaker 1: It looked like a Rundown neighborhood, and it looked dangerous.
Speaker 2: As Alan pulled up to a house, Jan thought for
Speaker 2: a split second that she might have made a terrible mistake.
Speaker 1: The windows were boarded up and the grass was overgrown.
Speaker 1: The only sign was a little tiny yellow and green
Speaker 1: sign that said lelli'es that's it.
Speaker 2: But as they drove around back.
Speaker 1: The aroma coming from the kit was beyond description, and
Speaker 1: they had a man with a violin in the parking lot.
Speaker 2: It was a fancy restaurant, one of the nicest she'd
Speaker 2: ever been to, and it was hidden, almost like a speakeasy.
Speaker 2: When they stepped inside, the place was decorated with real
Speaker 2: oil paintings, chandeliers, candles, and even roaming musicians. Jan was wowed, and.
Speaker 1: We talked and talked and talked until we realized we
Speaker 1: were taking up too much time. Like the waiter was
Speaker 1: kind of like, come on, I have a change over
Speaker 1: in the table.
Speaker 2: They were enjoying each other's company. Alan wasn't a standout
Speaker 2: when it came to his looks or his charm. He
Speaker 2: was shy, awkward even, but Jan thought a real connection
Speaker 2: with him.
Speaker 1: I liked how he treated me with respect, and he
Speaker 1: always helped me with my coat and opened my car
Speaker 1: door and never interrupted me, and was always eager to
Speaker 1: hear about my day. And he'd ask follow up questions,
Speaker 1: you know, like what did you think of that class?
Speaker 1: And what'd you think of that book? And tell me
Speaker 1: more about your parents? Or why do you like that singer?
Speaker 1: Or whatever it might be.
Speaker 2: Their attraction was rooted in conversation. Jan had never had
Speaker 2: a relationship like this before.
Speaker 1: I felt very lucky because a lot of my friends
Speaker 1: were floundering, you know. Their idea of a date would
Speaker 1: be to go to McDonald's and ride up and down
Speaker 1: Woodbert Avenue, and I was like, I'd rather go to
Speaker 1: the museums. I'd rather have an intellectual discussion.
Speaker 2: And with Alan, she could here was someone on her
Speaker 2: level They were spending all day together at work and
Speaker 2: then going on dates at night. Pretty soon Jan could
Speaker 2: picture a real future with him. They'd been dating about
Speaker 2: six months, and one morning over breakfast.
Speaker 1: He's very bashful, and I decided, you know, he's never
Speaker 1: going to ask me, so I better ask him. So
Speaker 1: I had a paper calendar in my pocket and I
Speaker 1: pulled it out, put it on the table, and I said,
Speaker 1: I think it's about time that we get married. What
Speaker 1: do you think? And he goes, okay. And I took
Speaker 1: my calendar out and it took a pen and I
Speaker 1: stabbed a date. It was a year calendar, and it
Speaker 1: landed on a Saturday in September, and I go, there's
Speaker 1: their date.
Speaker 2: They couldn't wait to be married just a year into dating.
Speaker 2: They had a tiny, no frills ceremony.
Speaker 1: By the time we got married, I was finishing my
Speaker 1: bachelor's and he encouraged me to go for my master's degree.
Speaker 2: When Jan doubted herself, he.
Speaker 1: Gave me the confidence to go into my master's program.
Speaker 1: And in the era too, women did not go to
Speaker 1: graduate school at all.
Speaker 2: In the early eighties, she started her master's in psychology
Speaker 2: at the University of Michigan.
Speaker 1: I loved it so much I did not even want
Speaker 1: to go home after class was over. I loved everything
Speaker 1: about it. I loved the old, old libraries. Oh, it
Speaker 1: was breathtaking.
Speaker 2: During this time, Alan wanted to move into a bigger
Speaker 2: home in a more affluent neighborhood.
Speaker 1: He wanted to have us have our own house together.
Speaker 1: And I said, I have nothing to bring to the table. Nothing.
Speaker 1: I mean, you could put everything I had in my trunk.
Speaker 2: And that's exactly what she did. Jan packed up her pillow, clock, radio,
Speaker 2: and a suitcase of clothes, and she moved in with
Speaker 2: Alan and.
Speaker 1: We moved into the sixth bedroom, six bathroom house.
Speaker 2: The new home he'd bought for them was a Tudor
Speaker 2: revival mansion and one of the most exclusive suburbs of Detroit.
Speaker 1: It was like a public building, it was so big.
Speaker 2: When Jane agreed to move in with him, she only
Speaker 2: asked for one thing.
Speaker 1: I said, what's important to me is if I can
Speaker 1: take one of the bedrooms and turn it into a
Speaker 1: dissertation room. He got me an electric typewriter with a
Speaker 1: little exchange ball so he could change the fons, and
Speaker 1: he got me there. He got me a bookshelf and
Speaker 1: a lamp, and he bought me a coffee mug that
Speaker 1: he found someplace where. On the inside, if you look
Speaker 1: at it down at the bottom, there's somebody looks like
Speaker 1: they're mountain climbing up the side of the cup on
Speaker 1: the inside. And he called it a struggle cup, and
Speaker 1: he goes, when you get discouraged, look in your struggle
Speaker 1: cup and remind yourself a day at a time, you're
Speaker 1: going to do it. You're going to finish. You have
Speaker 1: what it dates.
Speaker 2: In a little over a year, Alan helped transform Jan's life.
Speaker 2: Before she'd met him, she was broke, living in a
Speaker 2: Rundown apartment, searching for direction. Now she was on the
Speaker 2: path towards becoming a psychologist, and she had a beautiful
Speaker 2: home in a wealthy neighborhood. At the time, she was grateful,
Speaker 2: but looking back now she sees it all a little differently.
Speaker 1: He liked rescuing damsels in distress, which I did not
Speaker 1: understand at the time. That's his pattern.
Speaker 2: Once they got married, Alan and Jan were both busier
Speaker 2: than ever. He had a heavy caseload and would often
Speaker 2: work late into the night at his practice. Meanwhile, Jan
Speaker 2: was charging ahead with her master's in psychology, which eventually
Speaker 2: turned into a PhD and then a post doc.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, the hours you put in, I mean,
Speaker 1: seventy hour workweeks were not unheard of. And he was
Speaker 1: very considered about me coming home and going right up
Speaker 1: to my room and just working on my dissertation.
Speaker 2: Alan wasn't exactly the romantic type, but life with him
Speaker 2: was steady easy.
Speaker 1: I felt special, I felt lucky. I felt like I
Speaker 1: had gotten the jackpot. We had a routine. We'd either
Speaker 1: have breakfast together or go out to eat. He liked
Speaker 1: to order the newspaper and read it at night. We
Speaker 1: would have dinner at a prompt time because he often
Speaker 1: worked in the evenings and his home office and I
Speaker 1: would be doing homework. It was comfortable.
Speaker 2: Becoming a psychologist was Jan's sole focus.
Speaker 1: We got to the point when I was finishing my
Speaker 1: doctor and he said, you know, we really ought to
Speaker 1: furnish the living room. We've been in this house for years,
Speaker 1: and I go, oh, yeah, that's a good idea. Like
Speaker 1: I never noticed it.
Speaker 2: Alan took care of her.
Speaker 1: He took care of the bills, income taxes, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. He managed one hundred percent of it, and
Speaker 1: I was fine with that. I was just glad not
Speaker 1: to have one more thing on my plate. So we
Speaker 1: never argued over money. I never worried about it.
Speaker 2: They stuck to the same old routine as the years
Speaker 2: ticked by. Then in nineteen eighty four, ten years into
Speaker 2: their marriage, Jan noticed a change in Allan. It started
Speaker 2: in November, when she traveled to Arizona to be with
Speaker 2: her parents. She'd come down with mono, so she went
Speaker 2: to recover where it was warmer.
Speaker 1: That coincidentally happened to fall on his fiftieth birthday. That night,
Speaker 1: I remember it's his birthday, and I felt like crap,
Speaker 1: and I had such a raging, raw, sore throat, but
Speaker 1: I set my alarm and got up and called him
Speaker 1: at eleven o'clock and thang, a'm happy birthday, and he
Speaker 1: started tearing up. I thought it was because he was
Speaker 1: worried about me and my health.
Speaker 2: She stayed in Arizona for three weeks. When Jan got
Speaker 2: better and returned to Michigan, Alan seemed disturbed. He was panicked.
Speaker 2: She'd never seen him like this before, and he continued
Speaker 2: to spiral downward for months, and by May of nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty five, they decided to admit him to a psychiatric
Speaker 2: hospital for a few weeks of intensive mental health care.
Speaker 1: And he kept saying to me at the hospital when
Speaker 1: I was in the process of getting him hospitalized, you're
Speaker 1: pure snow here, a snow here as snow.
Speaker 2: What did that mean? The phrase didn't make any sense
Speaker 2: to Jan. Throughout Alan's stay in the psych hospital.
Speaker 1: He kept repeating words saying things like pure snow. I'm
Speaker 1: so bad, birthday, dawn money, pure as snow. I'm so bad,
Speaker 1: I need to stand tall. And I just thought, this
Speaker 1: is just craziness speaking.
Speaker 2: He was having a psychotic break. Eventually, he was released
Speaker 2: from the hospital and he seemed much better, but Jan
Speaker 2: couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't quite right, and
Speaker 2: that feeling only grew as spring turned to summer. One day,
Speaker 2: Jan was gardening out back and.
Speaker 1: I went back there to trim the lilac bush. And
Speaker 1: this is after days of rain, and I noticed three
Speaker 1: dry cigarette butts on the ground in the mud near
Speaker 1: our kitchen window. And that set off a big red
Speaker 1: flag because they were dry, which meant they were recent.
Speaker 2: It was a small detail, but one that didn't sit
Speaker 2: right with her. Neither she or Alan smoked, and they
Speaker 2: didn't have a gardener or a housekeeper, so that meant
Speaker 2: someone had been standing outside her kitchen window smoking. Jane
Speaker 2: imagined a stranger just lurking in her backyard, watching her
Speaker 2: through the window. She checked every room in the house,
Speaker 2: in the basement, all around the perimeter. No one was there.
Speaker 2: Alan was at work, so she left him a message
Speaker 2: at his office, but he never returned her call.
Speaker 1: He came home from work and I was livid that
Speaker 1: he had never called me, and he was patronizing and
Speaker 1: he said, well, what do we need to do? Do
Speaker 1: we need to get you a dog? Would that make
Speaker 1: you feel better? I said, what would make me feel
Speaker 1: better is if you return my phone call. Something is
Speaker 1: a myths? Can't you feel it? You don't find cigarette
Speaker 1: butts out there? Something is a myth? And he just
Speaker 1: started laughing, like, oh, you're so cute. Oh that infuriated me.
Speaker 1: You don't dismis somebody's got genuine reasons to be worried.
Speaker 2: Was someone casing the house and planning to rob them?
Speaker 2: Her mind went to dark places.
Speaker 1: My way of handling stress is to do tasks, to
Speaker 1: get busy and so after this incident, I decided to
Speaker 1: catalog every single thing in our house, how many towels
Speaker 1: did we own, where was our insurance policies? And put
Speaker 1: it in a photo album, so that if somebody was
Speaker 1: going to rob us, because that's what I thought was happening,
Speaker 1: I could say to the insurance company, this is what
Speaker 1: we have. Here's proof of our belongings. Then one day
Speaker 1: I went to go write a thank you note to somebody,
Speaker 1: and I reached up in the closet shelf above my
Speaker 1: head to pull out where I thought was where we
Speaker 1: put the thank you notes and realized that photo album
Speaker 1: had been missing. And I knew for sure that's where
Speaker 1: it should be because I was the only one that
Speaker 1: dealt with it.
Speaker 2: She confronted Alan about it, and.
Speaker 1: He goes, what is with you? I took it to work.
Speaker 1: I was bragging about you. You don't get it. I
Speaker 1: thought it was a great idea, And he went out
Speaker 1: to his car and he got it and brought it
Speaker 1: back in to show me, and it smelled like cigarettes.
Speaker 2: Alan explained that he wanted to show his colleagues this album.
Speaker 2: He didn't understand Jan's concern. Even with this explanation, she
Speaker 2: still felt uneasy, especially when.
Speaker 1: We started having hang up calls in the middle of
Speaker 1: the night. A couple of the first ones, I grabbed
Speaker 1: the phone, and it was always the same man. He
Speaker 1: had a southern draw, he sounded like he was drunk,
Speaker 1: and he was always asking for some person.
Speaker 2: JAN didn't know who he was asking for. But every
Speaker 2: few days this man would call back in the middle
Speaker 2: of the night, and every time.
Speaker 1: I said it was a wrong number and I hung up.
Speaker 2: But nothing was more unsettling than what happened one evening
Speaker 2: in the beginning of July.
Speaker 1: I was driving long Fox Canal on a stormy, foggy night,
Speaker 1: and this car was following me, speeding up and then
Speaker 1: backing off, speeding up and then backing off, And I'm like,
Speaker 1: what the heck? And we turned the corner onto my
Speaker 1: side street, and I knew that very very well, and
Speaker 1: I knew that there was a dip in the road
Speaker 1: where it turned, And so when I got close by,
Speaker 1: I turned off my lights and sped up as fast
Speaker 1: as I dare do it, drive and turn left into
Speaker 1: my driveway and left onto the grass behind the hedge,
Speaker 1: just sat there, and sure enough I watched them come by.
Speaker 1: They stopped at every driveway on our side street, and
Speaker 1: Eva stopped at my driveway, but they didn't see me,
Speaker 1: and they drove on.
Speaker 2: If one of these things had happened, sure she could
Speaker 2: have chalked it up to paranoia. But the cigarettes, the
Speaker 2: photo album, the hang up calls, being followed. Something was
Speaker 2: off and Alan wasn't taking it seriously.
Speaker 1: Al blew it off. You don't know that they were
Speaker 1: following you. Yeah, they were following me. He was always
Speaker 1: belittling me when it came to issues of safety because
Speaker 1: he wasn't bothered by any of that.
Speaker 2: Then, on July thirteenth, nineteen eighty five, Alan didn't come
Speaker 2: home for dinner at his usual time.
Speaker 1: It was a very stormy day. We lost power. It
Speaker 1: was hail, rain, wind, So I wasn't totally shocked when
Speaker 1: he didn't arrive promptly, although that was his pattern because
Speaker 1: of the weather, and I figured the roads were probably impassable.
Speaker 1: But by eleven o'clock that night, I got concerned. And
Speaker 1: this is before cell phone, so there was no way
Speaker 1: to check where he was. And one of the strangest
Speaker 1: things happened that evening. My anxiety was escalating and I
Speaker 1: was pacing I walked into his home off and he
Speaker 1: had a bathroom attached to it, and I looked in
Speaker 1: the mirror and I said out loud, he's dead. He's
Speaker 1: not coming home. And as soon as I said those words,
Speaker 1: I'm like, what the heck? It was like my voice
Speaker 1: but not my thoughts, and I thought, my god, am
Speaker 1: I being dramatic? This is stress speaking. Of course, he's
Speaker 1: going to be home. And I dismissed it.
Speaker 2: Jan woke up the next morning without Alan in bed
Speaker 2: beside her. He had still not returned. She called friends
Speaker 2: and family and coworkers of his No one had seen him,
Speaker 2: so after twenty four hours, she reported him missing.
Speaker 1: But nothing came of it that day or the next day,
Speaker 1: or the next day or the next day.
Speaker 2: With each day she grew more and more pain. He
Speaker 2: could have been in a car accident or a carjacking.
Speaker 2: He could have been mugged or kidnapped. After all, it
Speaker 2: was Detroit in the eighties.
Speaker 1: Crime in Detroit was at an all time high at
Speaker 1: that point in history. The statistics were at that time
Speaker 1: that a car was stolen every thirteen seconds. You heard
Speaker 1: sirens day and night. We were working in an area
Speaker 1: that was high crime so it would not be unthinkable
Speaker 1: that he was a victim of a crime.
Speaker 2: Jan needed support. Her parents flew in from Arizona to
Speaker 2: be with her, but they weren't the only ones at
Speaker 2: her door.
Speaker 1: On about this third day of him being gone, the
Speaker 1: media descended and they never let up at all. They
Speaker 1: were intrusive, they were relentless. They made it a living
Speaker 1: hell for me. Nonetheless, we had to get the word out,
Speaker 1: so they did. It was on the news every time
Speaker 1: I turned around.
Speaker 2: Jan waited. A week went by, then eight days, and
Speaker 2: nine days, and then.
Speaker 1: The tenth day. I got a phone call early on
Speaker 1: a Sunday morning from a detective marlus Landero's. She asked
Speaker 1: me to meet her down at the police headquarters.
Speaker 2: The detective was outside the building waiting for her. When
Speaker 2: she arrived, they went up in the elevator.
Speaker 1: We got off on floor five, which was homicide, and
Speaker 1: I was called into the office of the Inspector, Gil Hill.
Speaker 1: It was very short meeting. He said, we have reason
Speaker 1: to believe your husband's been murdered, but we don't have
Speaker 1: his body yet, and I suggest you go home and
Speaker 1: check your finances because we've been told that he's been
Speaker 1: handing out a lot of cash down on cast Quarder,
Speaker 1: which is the red light district of Detroit.
Speaker 2: Jan Canty's husband Alan had been missing for over a
Speaker 2: week when she got called into the Detroit police station.
Speaker 2: The investigators suspected that Allan had been murdered, but they
Speaker 2: didn't have his body. They'd been investigating his disappearance and
Speaker 2: found something surprising. Allan was well known in Detroit's Red
Speaker 2: lay district. He was often there spending money on sex workers.
Speaker 2: Jan knew her husband to be a bookish, bashful man,
Speaker 2: a psychologist who's spent his free time reading.
Speaker 1: He's got the wrong guy. No, this can't be uh huh.
Speaker 1: He doesn't know my husband. My husband is somebody who
Speaker 1: reads the newspaper every day. He's always home, but at
Speaker 1: a certain time when he says he's going to be home.
Speaker 1: He's not a ladies man. He doesn't to kill, he
Speaker 1: doesn't do drugs, he doesn't gamble. He's got the wrong guy.
Speaker 1: There's got to be another explanation, and the fact that
Speaker 1: he didn't have a body lent itself to my argument
Speaker 1: that they had the wrong guy.
Speaker 2: Jan was incredulous, but with no other leads, she took
Speaker 2: the detective's advice to take a look at Alan's finances.
Speaker 1: Everywhere I look, we were in the red, I mean IRS,
Speaker 1: house payments, office payments. There was no savings account, there
Speaker 1: was no life insurance policy, there was nothing. It turns out,
Speaker 1: when I totaled it up in nineteen eighty five dollars,
Speaker 1: I was thirty thousand dollars in debt and I had
Speaker 1: no income to speak of because I had just finished
Speaker 1: my training.
Speaker 2: A few days later, as she was still making sense
Speaker 2: of the finances, she got another call from the police.
Speaker 2: They had more intel.
Speaker 1: And they said he's been keeping company with John Carl
Speaker 1: fry Senor and Don Maurice Benz on Casper Street. And
Speaker 1: they looked at me to see my reaction, and I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: Like it might as well have been Greek. I don't
Speaker 1: know them. That was the first I'd heard of them.
Speaker 2: Then the police revealed.
Speaker 1: We have found his body and we need you to
Speaker 1: identify him.
Speaker 2: The detective explained to Jan that they would need to
Speaker 2: go to the Morgue.
Speaker 1: On the way over there. In her very professional and
Speaker 1: caring way, she did her darnedest to prepare me to
Speaker 1: see him in an altered state. Because he had been
Speaker 1: buried in a bog for ten days in three different places.
Speaker 2: His body had been dismembered.
Speaker 1: Some of his body parts were left done the freeway.
Speaker 1: I didn't have to identify those. What I had to
Speaker 1: identify was his head. My dad said, you can't do
Speaker 1: this by yourself. I'm going to go with you. And
Speaker 1: I said, Dad, this isn't your problem, this is my problem.
Speaker 1: But I could not stand. I could literally not stand.
Speaker 1: It felt like my legs were made out of silly buddy.
Speaker 2: The detective held her up on one side as her
Speaker 2: dad held her up on the other. The experience was
Speaker 2: incredibly traumatic. Jan can't even remember who was in the room.
Speaker 1: I do remember Detective Landero's telling me all you have
Speaker 1: to do is say yes or no. That's it, and
Speaker 1: we're out of here. And when they put his head
Speaker 1: in a table, I couldn't speak and I closed my
Speaker 1: eyes and she was very patient, and then she asked
Speaker 1: me yes or no. He didn't have his glasses on,
Speaker 1: but his hair looked the same, and his eyelashes and
Speaker 1: his eyebrows looked the same. When I said yes, I
Speaker 1: was sure it was him.
Speaker 2: The detective snuck Jan out the back. Camera crews were
Speaker 2: waiting for her out front. The story had become national news.
Speaker 2: On the way home from the morgue, Jen laid down
Speaker 2: in the back of the police car. Jan could no
Speaker 2: longer deny the reality her husband was dead and he
Speaker 2: was murdered by people she'd never heard of. And who
Speaker 2: were these people? Well, they were still at large.
Speaker 1: There was an APB for their whereabouts, and they started
Speaker 1: having their faces plastered in the news.
Speaker 2: Jan didn't want to look at the TV, but her
Speaker 2: dad insisted.
Speaker 1: He said, I want you to know their faces. I
Speaker 1: don't think they're on their way to our house, but
Speaker 1: you're out and about in the community. I want you
Speaker 1: to be able to identify them if you ever see them,
Speaker 1: and your first obligation is to call nine to one
Speaker 1: one then me in that order. So that's the first
Speaker 1: I knew of their faces and connected them with their name.
Speaker 2: Their names were John Carl Frei Senior, and don Marie Spence.
Speaker 2: As Jan watched the news, she found out for the
Speaker 2: first time who these people were. Jawn was a sex
Speaker 2: worker and John was her boyfriend. The media ran with
Speaker 2: the story of a wealthy psychologist being sucked into a
Speaker 2: dark love triangle, But could that be true? Jan still
Speaker 2: couldn't fathom it.
Speaker 1: And I'm still like, hell, that doesn't make sense. I
Speaker 1: just couldn't wrap my head out. It was so unlike him.
Speaker 2: The man she knew was quiet, intellectual, earnest, someone who'd
Speaker 2: get wrapped up in a world like this was a
Speaker 2: different Alan Canty entirely. Jan barely had the basic facts
Speaker 2: of the case. She didn't even know how Alan met
Speaker 2: these people and what their relationship really was. But she
Speaker 2: didn't have the time to look for answers.
Speaker 1: I had so many more urgent, immediate things on my plate.
Speaker 1: I was worried about the irs selling my house, if
Speaker 1: I had AIDS, I was going through AIDS testing. I
Speaker 1: had no time to wonder and think about what did
Speaker 1: he do, what did he say? Where did he go?
Speaker 1: That was a low priority. I was worried about my
Speaker 1: own safety.
Speaker 2: After all, she had been followed. The fear and stress
Speaker 2: were taking a massive toll on her.
Speaker 1: I wasn't sleeping. I into permanent menopause. I was physically sick.
Speaker 1: I lost a lot of my hair, I lost a
Speaker 1: lot of weight.
Speaker 2: Alan had led a double life one She still didn't
Speaker 2: have a clear picture of she was deeply betrayed, but
Speaker 2: she was also grieving.
Speaker 1: I was very defensive, irrationally angry, like I would get
Speaker 1: angry at going into the grocery store that they didn't
Speaker 1: make loaves of bread for one person. I was looking
Speaker 1: for things to get angry about. Somebody opened the door
Speaker 1: for me. I'm like, what do they think I'm weak?
Speaker 1: They got to open the door for me. I didn't
Speaker 1: maybe say anything to him, but internally I was very
Speaker 1: angry all the time.
Speaker 2: With Alan dead, there was nowhere for her anger to go.
Speaker 2: He couldn't answer for what he'd done. And to make
Speaker 2: matters worse, Alan had kept financial secrets big ones.
Speaker 1: I got handed a bill for thirty seven thousand dollars
Speaker 1: field for back rent. He'd taken out personal loans, he'd
Speaker 1: forged my name. I was so broke. I didn't know
Speaker 1: how I was going to get through the winter. I
Speaker 1: turned down the heat so much that I had frozen pipes.
Speaker 1: I started eating less. I can serve my trips to
Speaker 1: the store. I walked when I could. I sold off
Speaker 1: everything I could, his car, parts, jewelry, furniture, books. One
Speaker 1: night I was by myself as usual, and it was
Speaker 1: a peaceful night. I was sitting by the fire at
Speaker 1: my house. The room was empty. There wasn't a stick
Speaker 1: of furniture in there, because I'd sold it all, and
Speaker 1: I remember thinking, somehow, some way, I'm going to make
Speaker 1: this a positive thing. I don't know how, I don't
Speaker 1: know when, but I do know why, because if I don't,
Speaker 1: it'll trumble me.
Speaker 2: It took two years for Jan to get on steady
Speaker 2: ground after Alan was murdered, and during that time she
Speaker 2: was still unaware of who her husband really was and
Speaker 2: what he had truly done. Then, in nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 2: Jan got approached by a reporter. He was writing a
Speaker 2: book about Alan's case. At first, Jan tried to shut
Speaker 2: the book down. She didn't need anyone showing up on
Speaker 2: her doorstep again digging up old wounds.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to speak with him. I didn't want
Speaker 1: anything to do with it. And I went to my
Speaker 1: attorney about it, and he goes, you can't stop it.
Speaker 1: He's writing it based on public records, and in fact,
Speaker 1: there's a reason you should cooperate with them. And I go,
Speaker 1: what's that? And he said, you're going to learn things
Speaker 1: that you need to know. He's going to have the time.
Speaker 1: He's going to have the answers, and if you don't
Speaker 1: get the answers, you'll always wonder. So I'd suggest you
Speaker 1: meet with him.
Speaker 2: So she did, and through the reporter's findings, the other
Speaker 2: Alan Canty finally revealed himself. Here's what she learned.
Speaker 1: She bought our marriage. He had women on the side,
Speaker 1: and every single one of them was in need financially.
Speaker 1: He had offered to put up some in their own apartments.
Speaker 1: He had offered to pay the tuition of others. He
Speaker 1: paid the medical bills of some and even visited them
Speaker 1: in the hospital. There was never a time when he
Speaker 1: was the person I thought.
Speaker 2: He was all those late nights that he was working.
Speaker 2: It was really with these women. It was like he
Speaker 2: had a pathological desire to save women in need. So
Speaker 2: when his mother gave Alan five hundred dollars for his
Speaker 2: fiftieth birthday.
Speaker 1: He took that money and spent it on Dawn. That's
Speaker 1: the first time he met her.
Speaker 2: This was when Jan was sick with mono and resting
Speaker 2: at her parents' place in air Arizona. Jan thought back
Speaker 2: to that birthday call when Alan started to cry. Originally,
Speaker 2: she thought it was out of concern for her health.
Speaker 1: I think instead it was a little pang of guilt,
Speaker 1: but was short lived.
Speaker 2: The guilt apparently subsided, and Alan continued to spend time
Speaker 2: in the red light district where he met Don. There
Speaker 2: he wasn't the sheepish guy Jan had known. Even smaller
Speaker 2: details didn't square up with what she knew about him.
Speaker 2: For one thing, she discovered.
Speaker 1: He was a very good pool player, and he would
Speaker 1: challenge people playing pool, which I can't even picture him
Speaker 1: in a bar let alone playing pool.
Speaker 2: The other Alan spent his nights with Don at bars,
Speaker 2: and the reporter told Jan something that changed her understanding
Speaker 2: of the whole dynamic. Before Alan died, he'd been hanging
Speaker 2: out with Don and John for nine months, so that
Speaker 2: time Alan wasn't paying Don for sex.
Speaker 1: They stopped having sex. They only had sex the first
Speaker 1: two months.
Speaker 2: So what was the point of their relationship? Could it
Speaker 2: be drugs? The reporter turned to Jan for an answer,
Speaker 2: and in her gut she knew it was an addiction
Speaker 2: of a different kind, an addiction to being needed.
Speaker 1: So this was like a guarantee, you know, if I'm
Speaker 1: going to surround myself with people who need me financially,
Speaker 1: I have a guarantee of an audience. I have a
Speaker 1: guarantee of a partner. They're not going to leave me.
Speaker 2: He liked having a captive audience.
Speaker 1: He will go over there and read the paper and
Speaker 1: bring them breakfast, and they'd sit and listen with boredom
Speaker 1: to his stories.
Speaker 2: Of course, Don and John got something out of this
Speaker 2: relationship too. They were in it for money. Jan was
Speaker 2: able to figure out just how much Allan had given them.
Speaker 1: It was one hundred and fifty grand.
Speaker 2: In today's money, that's nearly four hundred and forty thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: And that doesn't include the cars he bought them, the
Speaker 1: rent he paid, the meals he paid for.
Speaker 2: He also bought them heroin.
Speaker 1: He would take them on drug runs for them, and
Speaker 1: I think that was his making sure they were going
Speaker 1: to be dependent upon him.
Speaker 2: This was Alan's m He got people to need him.
Speaker 2: But this time Alan was mixed up with some very
Speaker 2: dangerous people.
Speaker 1: I mean even among other criminals. John was feared, that's
Speaker 1: how vicious he was.
Speaker 2: Remember those phone calls Jan got in the middle of
Speaker 2: the night, the ones from the man with the Southern
Speaker 2: accent that was John Fry. Alan had lied and said
Speaker 2: he was a widower. So when John called the house
Speaker 2: and heard Allan's wife on the line, he was surprised.
Speaker 2: Then he got an idea he could use that information
Speaker 2: to extort Alan, to threaten his wife in exchange for
Speaker 2: more and more money, and they drained him dry.
Speaker 1: When he ran out of money, they lost patience with him,
Speaker 1: They had no interest in him and decided, at least
Speaker 1: John decided the best thing to do was just to
Speaker 1: kill him and get him out of their hair.
Speaker 2: Near the end, Alan started to see the writing on
Speaker 2: the wall.
Speaker 1: He was running out of money to give them. He
Speaker 1: realized that John had been calling our house and hanging up.
Speaker 1: Things were coming to a head, and I think he'd decompensated.
Speaker 2: That led to Alan's psychotic break, or what Jan had
Speaker 2: thought was a psychotic break. She remembered that phrase Alan
Speaker 2: kept repeating when he was in the hospital.
Speaker 1: You're purest snow, purest snow, snow. And I think in
Speaker 1: his mind at that point in time, he was seeing
Speaker 1: Don and me as very different people.
Speaker 2: To Alan, Jan and Don were total opposites. Jan was
Speaker 2: the woman he transformed into something good and clean and pure.
Speaker 2: Don brought out his dark side. But when Jan learned
Speaker 2: more about Don's backstory. It resonated with her.
Speaker 1: Don came from an abusive household, and she did not
Speaker 1: have a good self esteem. I mean, she quit school
Speaker 1: a month before she graduated high school and she was
Speaker 1: nominated val Victorian. Instead, she threw all that away, left
Speaker 1: the suburbs to go downtown and met up with John,
Speaker 1: and their life took a turn for the worst.
Speaker 2: After that, Jan learned of at least four other women
Speaker 2: he supported financially. Jan herself had been that young woman
Speaker 2: with a lot of potential and no direction to go in.
Speaker 2: When she met Alan, her life changed too.
Speaker 1: In a way that was the old me. I mean,
Speaker 1: I had nothing when I met him, and he was
Speaker 1: saying I'll pay your tuition, just like he said it
Speaker 1: to them.
Speaker 2: And now, for the first time she saw their relationship
Speaker 2: through his eyes.
Speaker 1: It explained to me his attraction to me. You know
Speaker 1: that I was a project. I was a challenged to
Speaker 1: be fixed, to be provided for. I was a good
Speaker 1: prop someone he could perform for with his knowledge and
Speaker 1: his money, and I sat and ate it all up.
Speaker 1: I was a willing participant.
Speaker 2: It's a strange feeling, especially considering that Alan helped her
Speaker 2: achieve so many dreams.
Speaker 1: I will always be grateful for what he gave me.
Speaker 1: I don't mean just financially, but the encouragement. He was
Speaker 1: instrumental in getting me on my path, and I don't
Speaker 1: think I would have done it without him.
Speaker 2: The very things she loved about Alan were the ones
Speaker 2: that destroyed him and destroyed her life. John Fry was
Speaker 2: eventually convicted of murder and the mutilation of a body.
Speaker 2: He served the rest of his life in prison. John
Speaker 2: served ten months plus three years probation for her role
Speaker 2: in the crime. As for jan she wanted to get
Speaker 2: out of Detroit.
Speaker 1: Once I left Detroit, I paid off the bills and
Speaker 1: got away from the media and got away from the police.
Speaker 1: I felt like I could start to reinvent my life.
Speaker 2: She's lived many lives since that time. She's taught in
Speaker 2: practiced psychology, traveled the world, gotten remarried. Still, she couldn't
Speaker 2: leave what happened with Alan behind completely. She continued to
Speaker 2: think about the man he'd been as both a victim
Speaker 2: and a perpetrator.
Speaker 1: What that did was end up in conflicted grief. You
Speaker 1: have dueling emotions. There's a part of you that's like
Speaker 1: the typical grief. Feel those loss and sadness and missing
Speaker 1: in person, but the other side of it is relief.
Speaker 2: Dealing with this complicated grief and trauma made it hard
Speaker 2: for Jan to connect with people who could possibly understand
Speaker 2: what she'd gone through, but eventually she found community and
Speaker 2: other homicide survivors.
Speaker 1: Homicide survivor is someone who is grieving over the homicide
Speaker 1: of a loved one. It's somebody who's left with the
Speaker 1: aftermath of murder. And the reason we don't know of
Speaker 1: that term is I don't think it's projected much in
Speaker 1: true crime. The focus is on the perpetrator and the
Speaker 1: deed a little bit on the victim, and we're in
Speaker 1: the background, and nobody cares. They think if we get
Speaker 1: the perpetrator convicted, that that's the end of the story.
Speaker 1: Kind of like, oh if you only knew.
Speaker 2: Knowing people who shared even parts of her own experience
Speaker 2: give her a deep sense of belonging.
Speaker 1: Now I hold that as near and dear to my heart.
Speaker 1: The people I have met, the stories I have heard,
Speaker 1: it's so healing. It was like the missing piece.
Speaker 2: Supporting and advocating for homicide survivors has become Jan's mission.
Speaker 2: In life. We end all of our episodes with the
Speaker 2: same question, why do you want to tell your story?
Speaker 1: If you think about most movies dealing with homicide, the
Speaker 1: family of the victim is either never shown or they're
Speaker 1: grieving in the corner wringing their hands. That's the end
Speaker 1: of them. There's not any curiosity about it. And the
Speaker 1: fact of the matter is anybody listening could be a
Speaker 1: part of our club. Homicide cuts across all racial lines, age, economic, geographic,
Speaker 1: you name it. Nobody is immune. And if anything's going
Speaker 1: to change, we have to put our story out there.
Speaker 1: Somebody Scott to do it.
Speaker 2: If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal team,
Speaker 2: email us at Betrayalpod at gmail dot com. That's Betrayal
Speaker 2: Pod at gmail dot com, and be sure to follow
Speaker 2: us on Instagram at Betrayal Pod. We're grateful for your support.
Speaker 2: One way to show support is by subscribing to our
Speaker 2: show on Apple Podcasts, and don't forget to rate and
Speaker 2: review Betrayal. Five star reviews go a long way. A
Speaker 2: big thank you to all of our listeners. Betrayal is
Speaker 2: a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group,
Speaker 2: in partnership with iHeart podcast. The show is executive produced
Speaker 2: by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fason, hosted and produced by
Speaker 2: me Andrea Gunning. This episode was written and produced by
Speaker 2: Kitlyn Golden and Monique le Board, with additional production by
Speaker 2: Ben Fetterman. Associate producers are Kristin Mercury and Caitlyn Golden.
Speaker 2: Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Jessica Krinchech. Audio
Speaker 2: editing and mixing by Matt del Vecchio, additional editing support
Speaker 2: from Tanner Robbins. Betrayal's theme composed by Oliver Bains. Music
Speaker 2: library provided by Mob Music and For more podcasts from iHeart,
Speaker 2: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 2: your podcasts.