Dark Poutine – True Crime & Dark History – A podcast about notorious Canadian crimes, dark history and other creepy topics as told by real-live Canadians

096 – Broken Arrow: Bomber 075 & the Lost Nuke (BC)

October 21, 2019October 21, 2019 by Mike Browne

Episode 096 – Just before midnight of Valentine’s Day 1950, a Convair B36 bomber on maneuvers was lost somewhere over British Columbia. Twelve of the 17 crew survived. Also aboard was a Mark IV nuclear weapon, aka a Fat Man, just like the one dropped on Nagasaki Japan. Although, the bomb itself was jettisoned, it is unclear what became of the lead box containing the plutonium core to make the weapon active. This core, which would still be deadly today, may still lay on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean or in the wilds of BC, near where the plane was eventually found, if it exists at all.

Dark Poutine Live Show
November 9, 2019 at 10:00pm in Vancouver at the Rio Theatre: tickets here

Shout to to Jess Huey Pottery

095 – NCR: The Death of Brian Smith & Life of Jeffrey Arenburg (ON/NS)

October 21, 2019October 14, 2019 by Mike Browne

Episode 095 – On a summer evening in 1995 sportscaster and former NHL hockey player Brian Smith, 54, was shot by a stranger as he exited the CJOH studios in Ottawa, Ontario after a day’s work. The two me had never met, but the gunman, a man named Jeffrey Arenburg from Bridgewater, Nova Scotia was convinced that the murder of the beloved sportscaster would bring attention to his plight, and perhaps, put a stop to his thoughts being stolen and broadcast by Smith’s TV station. Arenburg, who’d suffered from paranoid delusions for years, and had been in and out of court and hospitals, was found NCR, not criminally responsible, for the murder.

094 – Part 2 – Murder Most Pointless – Lynn Duggan & Patti Ducharme (BC)

October 21, 2019October 6, 2019 by Mike Browne

Episode 094 – Part 2 of 2: After the murder of Lynn Duggan in her North Vancouver apartment, to escape the heat, prime suspect, an ex-VPD officer, Brock Graham ran away to Campbell River, B.C. He moved in with mother of four Patti Ducharme, in late 1995. All seemed well at first but soon the cracks in Brock’s personality began to show.

In March of 1996, Brock brutally murdered Patti Ducharme after an argument. He ran back to the Lower Mainland where he was apprehended, charged and convicted for Patti’s killing.

Brock continued to refuse to acknowledging that he’d killed Lynn Duggan even while in jail for Patti’s murder with nothing to lose. In 2004, Brad Duggan, Lynn and Cheryl’s brother, had the first of two restorative justice meetings with Brock Graham. This is where the case to solve Lynn’s murder finally takes a turn.

093 – Part 1 – Murder Most Pointless – Lynn Duggan & Patti Ducharme (BC)

October 21, 2019September 30, 2019 by Mike Browne

Photo of Lynn Duggan supplied by the Duggan family

Episode 093 – Part 1 of 2: On the evening of June 17, 1993, after a day of worry, Cheryl Duggan, went to her 34-year-old twin sister Lynn’s apartment in North Vancouver, BC. Cheryl soon discovered a grisly crime scene, and Lynn Duggan was never again seen alive again. The prime suspect, an ex-VPD officer, named Brock Graham who Lynn had dated only 3 times, was the main suspect from day one in the minds of the Duggan. Eventually the police came to agree, but Graham was not talking. In 1996, before the Duggan family could find justice for Lynn, Brock Graham, would kill again. This time in Campbell River, BC, where a mother of four named Patti Ducharme, who happened to be Brock’s live in girlfriend was found brutally murdered in her home in much the same way authorities believed Lynn Duggan had been.

092 – Collateral Damage – The Bombing of Flight 108 (QC)

September 22, 2019September 23, 2019 by Mike Browne

Episode 092 – On the morning of September 9, 1949, a DC-3 Canadian Pacific passenger plane, CP Flight 108, on a routine small hop flight up the St. Lawrence River crashed into the remote forest of Sault-au-Cochon, Quebec. All 23 aboard, 19 passengers and 4 crew, were killed instantly. Thanks to eyewitness reports of an explosion and first responders reporting the odour of dynamite, it was quickly determined that the crash was the result of sabotage. A Quebec City jeweller, J. Albert Guay quickly became the main suspect, his wife, Rita Morel, had been on the plane and determined to be the sole target. She’d recently discovered his affair with the teenage beauty Marie-Ange Robitaille. Guay also took a $10,000 travellers insurance policy out on his wife the day he bought her plane ticket to the ill fated flight. The other 22 killed were merely collateral damage so one man could get what he wanted.

Guay was quickly picked up with his two unlikely accomplices, a wheelchair bound watchmaker and his 44 year old sister, who’d been smitten with Guay. They were charged with multiple counts of murder. As the three were tried a story of betrayal, infidelity and greed emerged shocking the nation. All three were hanged for their participation in what was, up to that point, the third worst air disaster in Canadian history.

091 – The .410 Murders – Denean Worms & Brenda Hughes (BC)

September 22, 2019September 16, 2019 by Mike Browne

Episode 091 – In early October 1984, Denean Worms, 19, went missing after a night out with friends. Denean’s nude body was found 6 different ays later in a nearby gravel pit. She’d been raped, shot twice in the head with a .410 shotgun and tossed aside. There were no real suspects until late December 1984. Brenda Hughes, just 16, was found raped and murdered in her own home by her family returning from church. She too had been shot twice in the head by a .410 shotgun. A 22-year-old local man, Terrance Wayne Burlingham, was arrested and tried for the heinous crimes. Convicting him was not a straight forward undertaking.

090 – Miscarried Justice – The Murder of Sandy Seale & Conviction of Donald Marshall Jr. (NS)

September 22, 2019September 9, 2019 by Mike Browne

Episode 090 – On evening in late May of 1971 police responded to reports of a young black male, Sandy Seale, having been stabbed in Sydney, Nova Scotia‘s Wentworth Park. A 17-year-old indigenous man, named Donald Marshall Jr., son of the Mi’kmaq Grand Chief who’d been at the scene, and injured himself, was later charged with the crime. After spending almost 12 years in prison Marshall was exonerated by a fresh RCMP investigation after new evidence was presented to Marshall by a friend. Donald Marshall Jr. was freed and the real killer, Roy Ebsary, was eventually convicted, and one of the largest inquiries into a wrongful conviction in Canadian history was launched.

Photo: provided by Marshall Family to the Canadian Encyclopedia

089 – Billionaire’s Daughter: The Kidnapping of Cynthia Kilburn (BC)

September 22, 2019September 2, 2019 by Mike Browne

Episode 089 – Four days before Christmas in 1990 a North Vancouver woman named Cynthia Kilburn was kidnapped from her home. A threatening ransom note asking for $8.5 million was found pinned to the door of her home; her two children, 4-year-old twins, were found bound, but unharmed, in an upstairs bathroom. Unknown to most of her neighbours, Cynthia is the daughter of the philanthropic BC billionaire businessman and Canada’s fourth richest man, Jim Pattison. The kidnappers knew who they had, but their poorly thought out scheme did not go as planned.

088 – Away Game: Burke and Hare – The Anatomy Murderers

August 28, 2019August 26, 2019 by Mike Browne

Episode 088 – Over a ten month period, starting in late 1827, a pair of Irish born serial killers William Burke and William Hare killed 16 people, for fun and for profit in Edinburgh, Scotland. The corpses of their victims, twelve women, three men and one child, were taken to Surgeon’s Square and sold off to anatomist Dr. Robert Knox, for use in his anatomy classes.

087 – The Murder of Amber Kirwan (NS)

August 19, 2019August 19, 2019 by Mike Browne

Episode 087 – On the morning of October 9, 2011, 19-year-old Amber Kirwan failed to show up for an arranged ride home after leaving a local billiards hall in New Glasgow, N.S. After a massive search for almost a month Amber’s body was found in a shallow grave in the nearby village of Heathbell. The man eventually charged and convicted of the crime had a surprising background. Should he have been in the community at all?