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Dark Poutine / Curiouscast

True crime, legends, folklore, dark history and other creepy topics from the perspective of real Canadians.

Support the show: https://buymeacoffee.com/darkpoutine

Dark Poutine - True Crime and Dark History

Episode 435: In November 1944, the Imperial Japanese Army began launching paper balloons from the coast of Honshu — each one carrying incendiary and anti-personnel bombs, designed to ride the jet stream across the Pacific and set fire to the forests of North America. They called the program Fu-Go. Canada called them White Paper. Over the following five months, more than sixty balloons came down on Canadian soil, from the British Columbia coast to Manitoba, and a small team of Canadian Army bomb disposal officers spent eight months recovering live ordnance from some of the most remote terrain in the country under a blanket of total secrecy that reached all the way to the Prime Minister's office. 

Sources:

Fu-Go Balloon Bomb — WikipediaJapan's WWII Balloon Bomb Attacks on North America — Smithsonian MagazineBalloon Bombs: Japan's Answer to Doolittle — National Museum of the United States Air ForceOn Paper Wings — IMDBOn Paper Wings Retrospective — Oregon HumanitiesOn Paper Wings — Oregon ArtsWatchOn Paper Wings Screening — Japanese American National MuseumOn 75th Anniversary, Bly Remains Connected to Tragic WWII Event — Herald and NewsJapanese Balloon Bomb Explosion Location — PBS History DetectivesWWII-Era Balloon Bomb in B.C. Blown to Smithereens — Global NewsBC Studies No. 203 — Balloon Bombs, the Alaska Highway, and Influenza: Tsek'ehne Perspectives — BC StudiesEast, Captain Charles A. Japanese Balloons of World War Two. Prince George: College of New Caledonia Press, 1993.Coen, Ross. Fu-Go: The Curious History of Japan's Balloon Bomb Attack on America. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2014.Mikesh, Robert C. Japan's World War II Balloon Bomb Attacks on North America. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1973.
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White Paper: Balloon Bombs from Japan

Episode 434: On the morning of February 25th, 2005, Crystal Taman, a forty-year-old dental assistant, wife, and mother of three, left her home in East St. Paul, Manitoba on her way to work. She never arrived. Stopped at a red light on Highway 59 at the Perimeter Highway, her car was struck at highway speed by a blue Dodge Dakota truck driven by an off-duty Winnipeg Police Service constable named Derek Harvey-Zenk, who had spent the night drinking with fellow officers at a north-end bar and a colleague's home. Crystal died on impact. Harvey-Zenk refused to provide a breath sample and was charged with impaired driving causing death, dangerous driving causing death, criminal negligence causing death, and refusal to provide a breath sample. More than two years later, all charges except dangerous driving causing death were stayed in a plea deal, and Harvey-Zenk was sentenced to two years less a day — served at home, with no conditions. The outcome sparked a public inquiry.

Sources:TAMAN CRYSTAL - Obituaries - Winnipeg Free Press PassagesTaman Inquiry | WikipediaCrystal Ann Sveinson Taman (1964-2005) - Find a...http://www.tamaninquiry.ca/May 2012: No memory of fatal crash: Harvey-Zenk | Winnipeg Free PressReview clears police force after controversial case | Global NewsHarvey-Zenk appeared tired, not drunk, at party before crash, inquiry hears | CBC NewsProvince of Manitoba | Archived News Releases | Taman Report PublishedFormer cop finally takes the stand | Global NewsMajor changes to how police officers will be investigated | CTV NewsPolice told cousin Harvey Zenk was drunk | Global NewsJun 2012: Ex-officer from Taman inquiry sues RCMP, police | Winnipeg Free PressBringing the Thin Blue Line into Line: Bill 16, the Police Services Act, 2011 CanLIIDocs 256Disgraced cop’s lawyer slams Taman inquiry | Global News
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Botched Justice: The Death of Crystal Taman

Episode 433: On August 16, 1995, Avis Ottey came home to her townhouse in Scarborough, Ontario, expecting to find her daughters packing for the future. Instead, she found nineteen-year-old Marsha Ottey and sixteen-year-old Tamara "Tami" Ottey murdered in the basement.

Marsha was just two days away from leaving for Arkansas State University on an athletic scholarship she had worked years to earn. She had also confided something chilling to her mother while packing her bags: "If anything should happen to me, it's Rohan."

What followed was a seven-month investigation that stretched beyond the murders of the Ottey sisters. Two unsolved sexual assaults, a seemingly unrelated killing at a Toronto subway station, that of TTC employee Dimitrija Trajceski, DNA evidence, and the largest manhunt in Toronto Police history ultimately exposed the truth behind a crime driven by obsession, control, and extraordinary violence.

Sources:https://www.canlii.org/en/on/onsc/doc/1999/1999canlii14909/1999canlii14909.htmlhttps://www.canlii.org/en/on/onca/doc/2003/2003canlii15438/2003canlii15438.htmlhttps://www.canlii.org/en/on/onca/doc/2003/2003canlii32900/2003canlii32900.htmlhttps://www.canlii.org/en/on/onca/doc/2003/2003canlii52177/2003canlii52177.htmlhttps://www.canlii.org/en/on/onca/doc/2011/2011onca311/2011onca311.htmlhttps://www.canlii.org/en/ca/scc-l/doc/2012/2012canlii5501/2012canlii5501.htmlGuilty verdict in 1995 slaying of Toronto sisters | CBC NewsWalk in memory of Agincourt Collegiate’s Ottey sistersIf anything happens to me: The murder of the Ottey sisters | Global NewsCrime Beat: If Anything Happens To Me - The Ottey Sisters | S1 E8Murder suspect appears in Canada court - UPI ArchivesMANDEL: Killer of Ottey sisters granted 60-day unescorted passRosie DiManno: Killer of the Ottey sisters, now out on parole, still has a life ahead of him, unlike his victimsMANDEL: Killer of Ottey sisters granted full parole despite riskISN CEO Revisits One of His “Most Challenging Cases” In Global TV's ‘Crime Beat’ Episode88 Valley Stream Drive, Toronto, ON, CA
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If Anything Should Happen: The Ottey Sisters Murders

Episode 432: In February 1884, a Scottish storekeeper named James Bell was shot dead in his cabin along Telegraph Road in Washington Territory, just south of the Canadian border. Within days, a fifteen-year-old Semá:th boy named Louie Sam was arrested on suspicion of murder and placed in lawful Canadian custody on Sumas Prairie. He never made it to trial. On the night of February 27, a mob of seventy armed and disguised men crossed the international boundary from Washington Territory into British Columbia, took Sam from his cell, and hanged him from a roadside tree 169 paces north of the border. No one else was ever charged for Louie Sam’s lynching, and the investigation into Bell’s death seems to have stopped with Sam’s death.

Sources:

 Deadly Neighbours — Chad Reimer (Caitlin Press, 2022)

 The Lynching of Louie Sam — Keith Thor Carlson, BC Studies No. 109, Spring 1996

 The Lynching of Louie Sam — John Vaillant, The Walrus, December 2008

 Lynching Information — Tuskegee University Archives

 An American Mob Crosses the Canadian Border and Lynches Louie Sam — HistoryLink.org

 Our Territory — Sumas First Nation

 Sq'éwlets: A Stó:lō–Coast Salish Community in the Fraser River Valley

 Daily Colonist (Victoria, BC), February–March 1884 — britishcolonist.ca

 BC Historical Newspapers — British Columbian (New Westminster) 1884, UBC Open Collections

 Whatcom Reveille, February–March 1884 — Jeffcott Collection, Western Washington University Archives

 Mesachie and Louie Sam — Chilliwack Progress, October 8, 1958 — Newspapers.com

 Washington State Expresses Regret Over 1884 Lynching of Canadian Teen — CBC News, 2006

 Plain Injustice — Literary Review of Canada, 2022

 Louie Sam — Wikipedia

 PDF of The Lynching of Louie Sam by Keith Thor Carlson

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Not Justice: Lynching Louie Sam

Episode 431: In the fall of 2011, the first of three indigenous women disappeared from a stretch of Winnipeg's West End that those who worked there called the Street of Tears. Their families searched, put up posters, and made phone calls that went nowhere. The man believed responsible had been known to police for decades. His criminal record ran to 109 convictions. He was already on their radar when the final woman disappeared. This is the story of Tanya Nepinak, Carolyn Sinclair, and Lorna Blacksmith.

Sources:

 Shawn Lamb coverage index — CBC News

 Tanya Jane Nepinak — CBC News

 Shawn Lamb sentenced to 20 years for two slayings — CBC News

 Police paid killer Shawn Lamb $1,500 for information — CBC News

 Winnipegger speaks about life on streets, alleged assault by convicted killer Shawn Lamb — CBC News

 Shawn Lamb gets statutory release — CBC News

 Convicted killer Shawn Lamb must stay at halfway house — CBC News

 Shawn Lamb pleads guilty to killing 2 women — Global News

 Landfill search progressing for Ashlee Shingoose; Tanya Nepinak family hopeful — Global News

 Parole Board grants Indigenous Winnipeg killer Shawn Lamb statutory release — APTN News

 Statement on Brady Road Landfill Search for Ashlee Shingoose and Planning for Tanya Nepinak — Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs

 NFSC Calls for Justice and Accountability Following Statutory Release of Shawn Lamb — National Family and Survivors Circle

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Street of Tears — The Crimes of Shawn Cameron Lamb

Episode 430: On the morning of May 28, 1998, police were called to a home on Encino Avenue in Encino, California. Inside the master bedroom, they found Phil Hartman — one of the most versatile performers in the history of North American television — shot three times at close range while he slept. His wife, Brynn, had pulled the trigger sometime around 2:30 in the morning, then driven to a friend's house and confessed. By the time police arrived, she was back in the bedroom. She never came out.

Phil Hartman was 49 years old and born in Brantford, Ontario. He had just wrapped his fourth season of NewsRadio. He had a film opening in July. Behind the public face of a thriving career was a marriage under years of sustained pressure — addiction, relapse, escalating volatility, and a final argument that ended in the worst possible way. The motive was listed as unknown. It remains unknown.

Sources:

 Los Angeles County Coroner Case Report, Investigator's Report, Autopsy Report & Toxicology — Case No. 98-03785

 Hartman's Death: The Police Version — Time, June 3, 1998

 Reaction & Sanctions — NPR, May 28, 1998

 Disturbing Details Found In Phil Hartman's Autopsy Report — Grunge, 2024

 The Last Days of Phil Hartman — ABC News / 20/20, 2019

 Phil Hartman — People Magazine, 1998

 Jon Lovitz Blames Andy Dick for Hartman's Death — CBS News, 2007

 Phil Hartman Wrongful Death Lawsuit / Zoloft — Salon, 1999

 Birgen Hartman on her father's Simpsons legacy — The Hollywood Reporter, 2022

 Brantford to honour Phil Hartman with mural — CBC News, 2024

 Phil Hartman — Canada's Walk of Fame

 Phil Hartman — Brantford Walk of Fame

 You Might Remember Me: The Life and Times of Phil Hartman — Mike Thomas

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I Don't Know Why: Phil Hartman’s Murder

Episode 429: In January 1995, DNA testing excluded Guy Paul Morin, the man convicted of the 1984 murder of Christine Jessop, from the crime. The Ontario Court of Appeal set aside his conviction, and Morin was released. The man whose semen was recovered from Christine Jessop's underwear in 1984 remained unidentified.

A public inquiry led by Justice Fred Kaufman spent 10 months examining how an innocent man had been convicted twice. It produced 1,380 pages and 119 recommendations. The real killer remained unnamed for another twenty-five years — until a detective named Steve Smith, a Texas laboratory, and a forensic genealogist pulled a family tree apart and found a killer at the end of it.

Sources

 Report of the Kaufman Commission on Proceedings Involving Guy Paul Morin — Full text (netk.net.au)

 The Canadian Encyclopedia — Guy Paul Morin Case

 Innocence Canada — Guy Paul Morin case file

 Toronto Life — "Inside the Hunt for Christine Jessop's Real Killer" (January 2022)

 CBC News — "Toronto police identify killer in cold case of 9-year-old Christine Jessop" (October 15, 2020)

 CBC News — "Calvin Hoover's family 'devastated' to learn police believe he killed Christine Jessop" (October 22, 2020)

 CBC News — "The answer to the mystery of Christine Jessop's murder leaves killer's ex-wife with painful questions" (February 2021)

 CBC News — "The science behind why police now believe they have the right suspect in Christine Jessop's murder" (October 2020)

 Global News — "Who was Calvin Hoover? The man Toronto police say killed 9-year-old Christine Jessop in 1984" (October 2020)

 Blue Line Magazine — "Out of the Cold: Toronto Police Solve 1984 Jessop Murder With New Science" (January 2021)

 RCMP — National DNA Data Bank of Canada: 20 Years and Growing

 Game of Crimes Podcast — "Detective Steve Smith Cracks a 36-Year Old Cold Case" (March 2022)

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Part 2 — Justice Prolonged: The Murder of Christine Jessop

Episode 428: On October 3, 1984, nine-year-old Christine Jessop stepped off a school bus in Queensville, Ontario, and walked toward home. She was never seen alive again. Her body was found on New Year's Eve, fifty-six kilometres away. She had been sexually assaulted and stabbed.

What followed was one of the most consequential criminal proceedings in Canadian history — and the quiet destruction of a man who lived next door.

This is Part One of a two-part series.

Sources:

 Kirk Makin, Redrum the Innocent (1992) — Viking Canada.

 Report of the Kaufman Commission on Proceedings Involving Guy Paul Morin — Full text (netk.net.au)

 The Canadian Encyclopedia — Guy Paul Morin Case

 Innocence Canada — Guy Paul Morin case file

 Canadian Registry of Wrongful Convictions — Guy Paul Morin

 Library of Parliament — Wrongful Convictions in Canada (2020)

 Bruce MacFarlane — "Wrongful Convictions: The Effect of Tunnel Vision and Predisposing Circumstances in the Criminal Justice System" (2006)

 Federal Prosecution Service — Chapter 5: Jailhouse Informers

 Federal Prosecution Service — Chapter 8: DNA Evidence

 The Canadian Encyclopedia — Morin Inquiry Report

 Kaufman Report — Wikipedia summary

 Globe and Mail — "Morin Informant Named Dangerous Offender" (2007)

 CBC Digital Archives — Guy Paul Morin acquitted

 Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation

 Williams Treaties — Government of Canada

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Part 1 — Justice Prolonged: The Murder of Christine Jessop

Episode 427: In the summer of 1934, John Sackville Labatt was one of the most recognizable names in Canada. The fifty-three-year-old president of John Labatt Limited had spent nearly two decades running one of the country's largest and oldest breweries, a family business built across three generations and tested by Prohibition, the Depression, and the rum-running trade that kept it alive through both. On the morning of August 14, he left his Lake Huron summer home running late for a meeting and took a shortcut through the forest on a little-used dirt road outside Sarnia. What happened on that road set off the largest manhunt in Canadian history, triggered Canada's first kidnapping trial, and sent an innocent man to prison for a crime he had nothing to do with.

Sources:John Sackville Labatt | The Canadian EncyclopediaJohn Labatt’s 1934 kidnap | The StarJohn Sackville Labatt | WikipediaLabatt Brewing Company | WikipediaProhibition in Canada | WikipediaLabatt Brewing | Company SiteLambton County's Infamous Abduction: The John S. Labatt Kidnapping - ArchivedLambton County's Infamous Abduction: The John S. Labatt Kidnapping - NewSnatched! by Susan Goldenberg - Ebook | ScribdThe Courier-News • Fri, Aug 17, 1934 • Page 10 • (Bridgewater, New Jersey)The Courier-News • Fri, Aug 17, 1934 • Page 1 • (Bridgewater, New Jersey)The Windsor Star • Fri, Aug 17, 1934 • Page 1 • (Windsor, Ontario, Canada)The Windsor Star • Sat, Sep 08, 1934 • Page 9 • (Windsor, Ontario, Canada)The Windsor Star • Sat, Feb 01, 1936 • Page 11 • (Windsor, Ontario, Canada)The Hamilton Spectator • Tue, Sep 11, 1906 • Page 9 • (Hamilton, Ontario, Canada)The Molsons, The Labatts and The St.Johns | StJohnsWort.ca
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Three-Fingered Abe: The Kidnapping of John S. Labatt

Episode 426: On June 29th, 2021, Lytton, British Columbia, recorded the highest air temperature in Canadian history: 49.6 degrees Celsius. The next day, the town burned to the ground in under two hours, killing two people and destroying more than 150 homes and businesses across the Village of Lytton and the neighbouring Lytton First Nation reserves. Nearly four years later, the cause of the fire remains officially undetermined, the recovery has become its own bureaucratic disaster, and a class-action lawsuit against Canada's two largest railways is still working its way through the BC Supreme Court. This episode tells the story of the heat, the fire, the two people who didn't make it out, and the years-long collapse of the rebuild that followed. Later in the episode, Mike sits down with Tim Conrad of Butterfly Effect Communications to talk crisis communications — what the first hours of a disaster like Lytton demand, and what it takes to keep a fractured, grieving community informed years into a recovery that never seems to end.

Sources:

 An Examination of the Lytton, British Columbia Wildland-Urban Fire Destruction

 Provincial Support for the Village of Lytton's Wildfire Recovery

 Lytton Wildfire | Wikipedia

 B.C. Man Says He Watched in Horror as Lytton Wildfire Claimed the Lives of His Parents | CBC News

 BC Coroners Service Confirms 2 Deaths in Lytton Wildfire | CBC News

 Man Who Lost His Parents in Lytton, B.C., Fire Wants to Go Home | CTV News

 RCMP Investigation Unable to Determine Cause of 2021 Wildfire That Destroyed Most of Lytton, B.C. | CBC News

 Track Cleared for Class-Action Suit 4.5 Years After Wildfire Swallows Most of Lytton | Williams Lake Tribune

 Remembering Lytton, the Town Wiped Out by Wildfire | The Walrus

⠀Guest:

 
Butterfly Effect Communications Company Website

 
Wildfires, Floods, and Chaos Communications Tim’s Podcast

 
Inside an Emergency Operations Centre | Butterfly Effect Communications Video

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Wildfire: The Day Lytton Burned

Episode 127 - On the morning of October 20, 2003, in North York, a quiet neighbourhood in Toronto, Ontario, Raymond Zhang and Sherry Xu awakened to find their only child, 9-year-old, Cecilia was missing. She had clearly been abducted. There were no ransom demands or clear motives for her kidnapping. All efforts to find the girl were fruitless, until a Scarborough man stumbled across a body in a ravine late in March 2004.Sources and further reading:Agreed Statement of Facts (PDF)Raymond Zhang - Victim Impact Statement (PDF)Sherry Xu - Victim Impact Statement (PDF)CBC Zhang Case BackgroundCBC Zhang Case Background (more)Cecilia Zhang search at Newspapers.comhttps://missingkids.ca/https://protectchildren.ca/https://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/en/gazette/child-abductionhttps://www.canadasmissing.ca/pubs/2019/index-eng.htmweb.archive.org - ceciliazhang.orgGlobe and Mail - RIP Cecilia, Happy Birthday
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Little Girl Gone - Cecilia Zhang

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