Month: August 2019

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.

Sources:
BurkeandHare.com
The Anatomy Murders by Lisa Rosner
Dr. Heinrich Von Staden’s The Discovery of the Body
Sanjib Kumar Ghosh’s Human Cadaveric Dissection
The Diary of a Resurrectionist – 1811-1812 by James Blake Bailey on Gutennburg.org
Mental Floss: The Era of the Body Snatchers
Mortsafes – The Vintage News
Burke and Hare: Serial Killing for Science (Ghastly Tales of Scotland) | Documentary
Broadside regarding the Burke and Hare trials
The History of Burke and Hare – 1884 by George MacGregor

Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/darkpoutine

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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?

Sources:
R. v. Falconer, 2016 NSCA 22 (CanLII) http://canlii.ca/t/gp1bx
Pictou County Advocate – archives
Obituary of Amber Donna Kirwan
Timeline of Events in Amber Kirwan’s murder – Cape Breton Post
Surveillance Video at Dooly’s – The Advocate
Murder of Taxi Driver – Robert Gerald LeBlanc
The song Taxi Phone by Dave Gunning

Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/darkpoutine

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode 086 – In October of 1902 the small, quiet Mennonite community of Altona, Manitoba was shaken by violent events at the hands of one of their own. The teacher at their one room school opened fire on three school trustees after an argument, wounding all three. He then returned to the school and shot three students, all daughters of the trustees he’d shot earlier.

Sources:
Spectator Tribune Article
Newspapers.com
School Shootings in Canada at Wikipedia
A Pictorial History of Altona
Winnipeg Free Press Article
Murder and Madness in a Mennonite Village

Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/darkpoutine

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

episode 085 – The day before Valentines Day in 2008, James Shannon, a nurse from Port Alberni, BC, met up with another man he’d met on the web site, Plenty of Fish. Although James was looking for love, the man he brought into his home brought something much more sinister. Days later, after not showing up for multiple shifts at work, James Shannon was found brutally murdered in his home. The man who committed the act, Kim Winslow Rothgordt, was claiming he’d been raped and was too intoxicated at the time to know what happened. The truth was nowhere near his claims.

Photo credit: Phil Smith on Flickr per CC licence

Sources:
R. v. Rothgordt, 2014 BCSC 1215 (CanLII)
Port Alberni on Wikipedia
MacLeans Magazine – Canada’s Most Dangerous Places 2018
Port Alberni ‘a safe place to be’ despite crime rate, says RCMP
Thunder Bay Podcast – CANADALAND
B.C. man convicted in second-degree murder of nurse in 2008 gets new trial
Gay Panic Defense on Wikipedia
BC judge says gay panic defence no longer valid

Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/darkpoutine

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices