Month: May 2021

Episode 172 – To curtail social ills like alcoholism, family violence, and other unsavoury behaviours, religious and puritanical proponents of the Temperance Movement demonized alcohol throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries.

After numerous U.S. states had become ‘dry’ outlawing the production and sale of alcohol in the years prior, in 1919, the United States ratified the 18th amendment to their constitution, which banned the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within the country’s borders. As hoarded supplies quickly began to run dry over the next ten years, Americans looked outside their borders to keep the liquor flowing into the country. 

Scores of Canadians stepped up, flouting the laws to move alcohol across the 49th parallel. Many were entrepreneurs with a daredevil spirit, a means of transportation and a desire to make a quick buck, but others were psychopathic, dangerous, mob-connected killers. We’ll talk about a couple of them here.

Mike Browne’s new book, MURDER, MADNESS, AND MAYHEM: Twenty-Five Tales of True Crime and Dark History, is available this November from Harper Collins Canada! You can pre-order your copy now: https://bit.ly/3oSnKXS

Sources:
[Prohibition: An Interactive History – Mob Museum]
[Women Led the Temperance Charge – Prohibition: An Interactive History]
[Captain Jack Randell]
[Captain Jack Randell – Classic Sailboats]
[The Sinking of The I’m Alone]
[Heaving To Is a Valuable Skill for All Sailors]
[Story of the I’m Alone | Decora-chan | Prince Edward Island]
[Ernest Hemingway – Biographical – NobelPrize.org]
[The Whisky King – Trevor Cole – eBook]
[Molls of a mobster | Maclean’s | OCTOBER 5, 1987]
[Biography – STARKMAN, BESHA (Tobin)]

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Episode 171 – Rosemary Podgis, 56, and her husband Alfred, 58, were found in a Pennsylvania Ravine. They had been fatally shot in their Loch Arbour, New Jersey home over the Fourth of July weekend in 1982. The apparent perpetrators arrested by police 5 days later were two 18-year-olds: Scott Robert Franz, Rosemary’s son from a previous marriage, and Scott’s Canadian friend Bruce Anthony Curtis, who had been Scott’s classmate at King’s Edgehill private school in Nova Scotia where the pair had just graduated.

The events leading up to the deaths of Rosemary and Alfred Podgis would be extremely important in establishing what led two teens, both with promising futures ahead of them, to kill Scott Franz’s mother and stepfather. Was it cold-blooded murder or, as Bruce would later claim, a tragic accident caused by a faulty firearm?

Sources:
[Blood Knot: The Trial and Conviction of Bruce Curtis by David Hayes]
[State v. Curtis :: 1984 :: New Jersey Superior Court, Appellate Division :: Justia]
[Two 18-year-olds, one from Nova Scotia, were held today… – UPI Archives]
[A disputed killing in New Jersey | Maclean’s | APRIL 16, 1984]
[Curtis’s long trip home | Maclean’s | MARCH 7, 1988]
[National Film Board of Canada – Journey Into Darkness: The Bruce Curtis Story]
[Dalhousie – The Gazette – Volume 117, Number 22 – February 21, 1985]
[Canadians Mount Campaign To Obtain Man in New Jersey Prison]
[YouTube – Deadly Betrayal: The Bruce Curtis Story – 1992 NBC Sunday Night Movie]
[Crime-Sep-24-1989-947717 | NewspaperArchive]
[Scott Franz’s Home – GoogleMaps]
[Bruce Curtis and Scott Franz case – MemoryNS]
[Shootings of Alfred and Rosemary Podgis – Wikipedia]

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Episode 170 – In November of 1902, a rancher named Issac Belt from Haynes Creek near Red Deer, Alberta, had gone missing. Investigating officers had gone to Belt’s ranch to question a young man calling himself Bert Ellsworth, who was suspected of horse theft, who had been lending a hand there. That young man and Belt were both missing. 

Police discovered the man claiming to be Ellsworth at a camp on the outskirts of Calgary. Some of Belt’s personal belongings were in Cashel’s possession, and Cashel was wearing Issac’s clothes. In reality, his name was Ernest Cashel, a 21-year-old American. He was on the run from U.S. and Canadian authorities for forgery and other crimes, including escaping from custody several times. 

Cashel was arrested and charged with theft and later charged with Isaac Belt’s murder, convicted and sentenced to hang. Cashel escaped one last time, only days before he was to be executed, and was on the run for more than a month before being recaptured and sent to see his maker via the hangman.

Sources:
[The Case of Ernest Cashel | Maclean’s | December 1st 1930]
[Ernest Cashel – Wikipedia]
[2 Feb 1904, Page 1 – Vancouver Daily World at Newspapers.com]
[Ernest Cashel Hanged at Calgary – Newspapers.com]
[Scoundrels and Scallywags: Characters from Alberta’s Past by Brian Brennan]
[The Pursuit of Ernest Cashel by MJ Malcolm]
[14 Dec 1929, 39 – The Province at Newspapers.com]
[Ernest Cashel Hanged – page 3 – Newspapers.com]
[Hanged – Edmonton Journal (archived)]
[Ernest Cashel on way to trial, Calgary, Alberta – Photo]
[Ernest Cashel Story – Glenbow.org – January 30 – February 5]
[Biography – NOLAN, PATRICK JAMES – Volume XIV (1911-1920)]

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Episode 169: On the evening of Christmas Day in 2017, upon gaining access to an Oak Bay, British Columbia apartment, police discovered a bloody crime scene. In the suite were the bodies of six-year-old Chloe Berry and her four-year-old sister, Aubrey Berry. They had been murdered in their beds. First responders also discovered Andrew Berry, Chloe and Aubrey’s father, naked, seriously injured and bleeding in the apartment’s bathtub. He had penetrating injuries to his left chest and throat. First responders took Andrew by ambulance to Victoria General Hospital for treatment. He’d eventually have a rather tall tale to tell about what had taken place that day.

Sources:
R. v Berry, 2019 BCSC 2362 (CanLII), < [https://canlii.ca/t/j5tr8]>
[Global News – SEARCH – Andrew Berry]
[Oak Bay News – SEARCH – Andrew Berry]
[Search Results | Times Colonist – Andrew Berry]
[Oak Bay Police Note – Twitter]
[Photo exhibits from Andrew Berry murder trial – BC | Globalnews.ca]
[Mom of slain Oak Bay sisters supports recent changes to Canada’s Divorce Act  | Globalnews.ca]
[Chloe & Aubrey Berry Bursary Fund – Victoria Foundation]

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Episode 168 – On the evening of July 28, 2010, Nadine Anne Taylor, a 29-year-old woman in Halifax, Nova Scotia, left the Convoy Avenue apartment in Fairview she shared with her boyfriend, Gene. Nadine, who did not have a telephone, told Gene she needed to make a call, left her home and walked a nearby payphone to make a call. She was never seen alive again. 

Sources and Further Reading:
[CANADA – Canada – Nadine Taylor, 29, Halifax NS, 28 July 2010]
[Police locate human remains | Halifax]
R. v. Laffin, 2013 NSSC 135 (CanLII), < [http://canlii.ca/t/fx9dc] >
R. v. Laffin, 2013 NSSC 136 (CanLII), < [http://canlii.ca/t/fxb17] >
[Global News SEARCH: Steven Elliot Laffin]
[Steven Laffin | Murderpedia, the encyclopedia of murderers]
[Obituary of Nadine Anne Taylor | J Albert Funeral Home]
[Fears grow for missing Halifax woman | CBC News]
[Fact Sheet – Prostitution Criminal Law Reform: Bill C-36, the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act]
[Stepping Stone Nova Scotia | Sex Worker Support]
[51 Weyburn Road – Dartmouth, NS – Google Maps]
[Luminol – Wikipedia]
[R.I.P Nadine Taylor – Facebook Group]

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