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Eighty years ago, on August 19, 1942, in Operation Jubilee began as the Allies attacked the French port of Dieppe on the English Channel Coast. Of the more than 6100 troops involved, five thousand were soldiers of the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division and a thousand British, many commandos, with a handful of others including Americans. The hope was to gain a foothold in Europe, breaching Hitler’s heavily-fortified Atlantic Wall. But unfortunately, the Germans were ready for them, and things did not go as planned. After nine excruciating hours of brutal fighting along the shore, the allied force retreated. Almost 1000 Allied troops lay dead, and at least 2000 more were prisoners of war, making this one of Canada’s darkest days ever in a time of war.

On March 3, 2005, a contingent of RCMP constables, attended the property of James Michael Roszko, 46 in Rochfort Bridge, near Mayerthorpe, Alberta. The members were there to serve a search warrant for stolen property and a marijuana-growing operation on the farm, discovered the day before. Roszko, knowing the police would be arriving soon, armed himself with the help of a couple friends, Shawn Hennessey and Dennis Cheeseman, and then he laid in wait for the RCMP. When four of the officers, *Anthony Gordon, Lionide “Leo” Johnston, Brock Myrol and Peter Schiemann*, walked into a quonset hut on the farm. Roszko, hidden inside the building, opened fire on the four members, killing them and then himself before the other RCMP members on site could come to their aid. In the last episode we learned of the life of the murderer leading up to the day of the slaying of the four RCMP members. In this episode you’ll hear about the crime and its aftermath.

On March 3, 2005, a contingent of RCMP constables attended the property of James Michael Roszko, 46, in Rochfort Bridge, near Mayerthorpe, Alberta. The members were there to serve a search warrant for stolen property and a marijuana-growing operation on the farm, discovered the day before. Roszko, knowing the police would be arriving soon, armed himself with the help of a couple of friends, Shawn Hennessey and Dennis Cheeseman, and then he lay in wait for the RCMP. When four of the officers, Anthony Gordon, Lionide “Leo” Johnston, Brock Myrol and Peter Schiemann, walked into a quonset hut on the farm. Roszko, hidden inside the building, opened fire on the four members, killing them and then himself before the other RCMP members on-site could come to their aid. This episode covers the life of the murderer and leads us up to the slaying of the four RCMP members. Next week in part 2, you’ll hear about the crime and its aftermath.

At the outset of World War II, a number of Canadian citizens of German and Italian decent, as well as Jews who were immigrating to Canada, fleeing Europe were rounded up and put into internment camps. After the Japanese attack on the United States in Pearl Harbour, Hawaii, on 6 December, 1941, North Americans were afraid. The Second World War had come far too close to home. Just over a month after the Pearl Harbour attack, a process began which saw the mass internment of Japanese Canadians from 1942 until 1949. Many of the detainees, including women and children, had been born in Canada. The country they’d grown up to love had uprooted them from their homes, seized their properties and taken away their rights and freedoms.

The episode you’re about to hear is a sample of the “Driven By Her” series from the Ongoing History of New Music presented by Porsche Canada. On this 5 episode…

In our last episode we heard of the murder of eleven-year-old Kathryn-Mary Herbert in Abbotsford, B.C. The 1975 murder went unsolved for nearly 40 years. Less than a year after Kathryn-Mary was killed, another girl from Abbotsford, Theresa Hildebrandt, 15, also went missing. Her body turned up in 1980, she’d been murdered. Two years after that and more than 200 kilometres from Abbotsford, another girl, Monica Jack, 12, went bike riding near Merritt, B.C. and was never again seen alive. Her remains were not found until 1995 near Nicola Lake, she too had been murdered. Police believed that all three murders were connected. They had only circumstantial evidence on one suspect they presumed had committed all three killings.

In Abbotsford, B.C., on the evening of September 24, 1975, Kathryn-Mary Herbert, age 11, was abducted while on her way home from a friend’s home. Last seen The girl’s body was discovered almost two months later on the Matsqui Indian Reserve north of Abbotsford. Investigators determined that she was likely murdered on the day she’d disappeared. In May 1976, Theresa Hildebrandt, 15, vanished without a trace from her Aldergrove, B.C. home. F Police believed she might be a runaway, but her family felt otherwise. or nearly four years no one knew what had become of Theresa. In March of 1980, her skeletal remains were found in a shallow grave off Downes and Mt. Lehman roads. Almost exactly two years after Theresa’s disappearance, in early May 1976, 12-year-old Monica Jack was riding her bicycle near Merritt, B.C. when she disappeared. As Monica was of indigenous heritage, her disappearance fell under Project E-PANA, the RCMP’s initiative to solve the multitude of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls along B.C.’s infamous Highway of Tears. In June of 1995, Monica’s remains were discovered off a logging road on Swakum Mountain, to the west of Nicola Lake and several kilometres from where she was last seen. Families of the victims had their suspicions about suspects and worked hard to hold police on task, to solve the murders of their girls. Due to similarities in the cases, police believed them all, potentially, linked. After years of running down tip after tip, a man with a history of sexual assault convictions and had been living in B.C. during all three killings fell under suspicion of investigators. After a long operation which involved the employment pf their infamous Mr. Big technique to get their suspect to talk, RCMP arrested 67-year-old Garry Taylor Handlen, and charged him with the murders of Kathryn-Mary Herbert and Monica Jack in 2014, more than 36 years after the murder of Monica Jack. He was later convicted of first-degree murder�. Sadly, in regards to Theresa Hildebrant’s murder, no one has yet been charged in her killing, and 46 years later, her family has yet to receive any official answers about Theresa’s death.

On a fall evening in 1991, police discovered the bodies of Alfred Critchley, 75, and Virginia Critchley, 73, in the Chatham, Ontario residence they shared with their son and his family. The couple had been brutally stabbed. Alfred was unconscious but alive and Virginia was barely alive. Virginia died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital and Alfred died later in the hospital having never regained consciousness. After a brief search, the couple’s grandson, Jasen Pangburn, 19, was discovered partially buried in a nearby ravine. Jasen had been executed with a single gunshot to the chest from a .22 calibre firearm. Thanks to Virginia’s dying words, suspicion fell on two youths, who’d been acquaintances of Jasen Pangburn’s, Jason Shawn Cofell, 18, and a 15-year-old accomplice we’ll call C.B.

In our last episode, we heard about the murder of 61-year-old retiree, and beloved mother, grandmother and recent great-grandmother, Diana Russell. On February 22, 2002, after her car was found abandoned, in out-of-the way Boston Bar, her family became concerned. Diana was not answering her phone and no one knew where she was. She was later found by police in the basement of Kelowna ,B.C. townhome. Diana had been beaten, hogtied, raped and then strangled. The number one suspect was no stranger to the family. He was Ronald Leal Fowler, an ex-boyfriend of Diana’s eldest daughter, Michele, and father to that daughter’s two-year-old son, Brandon. After killing Diana, Fowler had fled in her car, but after it became hopelessly stuck after a freak winter mud and snow slide he’d hitchhiked to Vancouver. Fowler was arrested there after the truck driver who’d dropped him off in the Lower Mainland called police about the sketchy guy who’d ridden with him. Fowler, who’d illegally walked away from half-way house in which he’d been living, claimed amnesia due to drug and alcohol binge at the time. He denied responsibility for Diana’s murder and maintains that position to this day. Diana’s remaining family was left to pick of the pieces of their broken lives. This crime is still a painful wound for them, ripped open by Fowler’s every appeal and applications for parole.

Episode 235: On February 22, 2002, a vehicle was found in the ditch off the Trans-Canada highway near Boston Bar, B.C. The car was registered to 61-year-old mother, grandmother and recent great-grandmother, Diana Russell, who was nowhere around the car. RCMP obtained a key to Diana’s Kelowna townhouse and went inside finding the woman partially clothed body underneath some mattresses and furniture. She’d been hogtied, raped, beaten and strangled. Police quickly determined that Ronald Leal Fowler, 31, was a person of interest in the murder. Fowler, father of one of Diana’s grandchildren after a brief relationship with Diana’s eldest daughter, Fowler was later dramatically captured in Vancouver. He was then charged and in 2006 was convicted of first degree murder. Diana Russell's daughter Valerie MacPherson kindly shared her writings about her family's pain around the time of the murder and the twenty years since. In part 2 we will hear from Diana's grandson, Collin Lucksinger, as he shares first hand his thoughts and feelings around Diana's murder.