Canadian True Crime - End of season | Personal message and recommendations

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi there and happy new year. I hope you've had a safe and comfortable holiday season. This is just a quick personal message to wrap up 2024. Share some highlights from behind the scenes and mention a couple of lowlights for balance. It's also a reminder that the Huneman and Leatherbarrow murders was the final case of the season, more on that in a second. And I've got a couple of podcast and documentary recommendations for those looking for something new over the break. The full list with links is of course in the show notes.

Starting point is 00:00:37 But first, on behalf of our little team, I'd like to thank you for listening to Canadian True Crime. Whether you're listening to the ad supported feed that pays our bills or you're a subscriber on our ad-free premium feeds. And thanks also for all your positive and constructive feedback, ratings and reviews and supportive messages and comments on Instagram and Facebook. We really appreciate it. Right now we're fast at work on our new season

Starting point is 00:01:06 which will start in late February. For those wondering, it is new for us to take a longer break from releasing episodes at the beginning of the year, so I wanted to quickly explain why. You would think that the longer you do something the easier it becomes but this hasn't been the case for me with this podcast. You all know I started it as an amateur passion project but as I've gained new skills and knowledge along the way it's effectively moved closer to the professional end of the scale with a lot more steps and processes involved in production. And with a larger audience comes larger stakes, not to mention the risks of defamation lawsuits which have started happening in the true crime

Starting point is 00:01:50 space. So it's crucial that our coverage is factual, nuanced and legally sound. And all of that takes time. And while we do slow down over the summer, it hasn't really worked out as the best time to focus and build a buffer on the next season. So that's why we've decided to use this very slow post-holiday season to get ahead before releasing anything. Thanks so much for your patience as we work to bring you our best. Before we get to the recommendations, I wanted to quickly share the main highlights of last year.

Starting point is 00:02:26 Canadian True Crime was just named the number eight podcast in Canada for the year, according to Apple podcasts. It also made the Amazon Music Best Canadian Podcasts of the Year and Top Podcasts of the Year lists. And we've also been lucky to collaborate on an audio campaign for ad-free listening on Amazon Music Included with Prime that was heard by hundreds of thousands of listeners across the app. In other highlights, the annual Canadian Podcasts Listener Survey results were just released and Canadian True Crime was named the number two podcast in Canada for 2024 by Anglophone listeners. The number one spot went to Joe Rogan by quite a bit. I'm always happy to hear that we've made it

Starting point is 00:03:14 to these lists, but I do wish there was more Canadian representation in the top podcast charts across the board. It's kind of been the same thing every year. Out of all the podcasts named in the Apple Podcasts Top 10 charts for the year, Canadian True Crime is typically the only one actually produced in Canada. The rest are always US based podcasts like The Daily, Smartless, Dateline, Rogan, Crime Junkie and Call Her Daddy. Why do Canadians prefer to listen to American podcasts? It's such a strange phenomenon. That's why I've got some Canadian podcasts to recommend to you in a second.

Starting point is 00:03:55 But let's talk about downloads and what our download numbers tell us are the top episodes from the year. It's always interesting to see which cases were the most popular because there are always a few surprises. Over the past year or so, our episode titled The Very Bad Doctor came out on top by quite a margin. That's the British Columbian case about the very unhinged Dr. Joseph Arcus Charalambous, who was accused of sexual assault by his 19-year-old patient

Starting point is 00:04:27 Sharn Simmons, and then hired a hitman to murder her. Another hit with the downloads was the Murderous Mountie series from Saskatchewan, and I should also mention that Part 1 was named by Apple Podcasts as the number 8 episode in Canada for the year. The Murderous Mountie series was of course about Sergeant John Wilson, the Mountie from Scotland who murdered his wife to be with his young mistress, with the story pieced together from a treasure trove of letters, memos and other documents from library and archives Canada.

Starting point is 00:05:03 Thanks so much to journalist Danielle Parody who discovered and brought all that material to our attention and thanks also to true crime author Nate Henley for going through it all to put together the narrative. Also high on the downloads list was the Kingston cases from back in February. The murder of Yvonne Rouleau at Nozzles Gas Bar by her young employee Terry Kennedy and his friend Richard Charles Joyce, who were trying to rob it. It wasn't until years later that a DNA test revealed Joyce alone had also abducted and sexually assaulted Kerry Kehoe and two other young girls in the late 80s and early 90s. Kerry continues to tirelessly advocate on behalf of the victims and survivors.

Starting point is 00:05:50 And in a second, I'll tell you about a compelling new documentary that's being released about these cases. The last main highlight of 2024 for Canadian true crime is something that's been in the works for the last few years and this is the first time I've spoken about it publicly and I have to be a little bit vague on the details for now sorry but it won't be too long before I can tell you more. So a film production company approached me about creating a documentary based on our coverage of a particular case. As a pessimist, I never expect these things to go anywhere, but I was recently extremely

Starting point is 00:06:31 shocked to receive the news that this particular documentary has been greenlit by a major broadcaster and has just had an award-winning director attached to it. It's a go. My role is consulting producer and it'll be the first TV documentary I've ever been involved with so I'm incredibly excited to see how it all comes together from behind the scenes. It's slated for release later in 2025 and I'll be sure to give you more details as soon as I can. Now just for a little balance, here are a couple of lowlights, challenges or things that didn't quite go to plan over the last year or so.

Starting point is 00:07:12 Because life is a roller coaster and I don't think it serves anyone well if we only ever talk about the good things. I often mention that there's always something going on behind the scenes here, usually several projects involving families of victims or survivors at various stages. And sometimes things happen and the project has to be stopped or paused. The victims and survivors might need to take a break and being trauma-informed in our dealings mean we don't ever rush them or push them. Sometimes that's the end of the project. All the work is archived and no one ever push them. Sometimes that's the end of the project. All the work is archived and no one ever knows about it. And that's the way things go when you're working in this space.

Starting point is 00:07:53 In 2024 I'd been working on a project with the loved ones of a person who was murdered, with the case still technically unsolved. And I'm keeping the details deliberately vague again, sorry, for obvious reasons, but in a nutshell, this family approached me with information they'd been keeping to themselves that they would like to finally share, and I was eager to help them in whatever way I could. We embarked on what ended up being one of the biggest projects I've worked on with the family so far, with a wide scope that went far beyond just an episode. It was all supposed to culminate in September of 2024, but I'd been so deep in the weeds of the project over the summer that when I stopped for a second to look at it in totality,

Starting point is 00:08:42 I realised I needed to send it to my lawyer to review. And I'm so glad that I did because she found a glaring legal issue that could have impacted both the podcast and this family, something that I never would have thought of. And it required everything to be put on pause for us to work out our next steps. Now the reason I wanted to tell you this is because it's another lesson I've learnt the hard way that no matter how much I think I've learnt in the years since I started this podcast I still don't know what I don't know and that's another reason why it's so important to stay vigilant about quality.

Starting point is 00:09:23 In other behind the scenes lowlights I still continue to battle with my own personal demons around perfectionism. No matter what I will always take up all available time to make an episode as perfect as it possibly can be with multiple rounds of edits and changes to the point where I don't even think anyone would notice what's changed except me. It's actually quite debilitating and I'm trying to figure out how to dial back from attempting to satisfy every single listener with the most perfect episode ever, which is of course impossible, to instead aiming for somewhere closer to good enough that comfortably satisfies the majority of listeners. But how can you tell where that line is and how do you learn to settle for good enough?

Starting point is 00:10:11 If I figure it out, I'll let you know. So now we've got to the recommendations part. Some Canadian podcasts and documentaries I've really enjoyed recently and think you might too. I have to add a disclaimer that these are just recommendations. They don't necessarily equal an endorsement of the content or the people making it. And they're personal recommendations based on my own tastes and preferences, which might be completely different to yours and that's totally okay. We're all adults here. Podcast recommendation number one, The Hatchet.

Starting point is 00:10:50 It's a brand new podcast about white collar crime hosted by Archie Mann and producer Jordan Cornish, the team behind the award winning podcast series, Commons by Canada Land. They've gone out on their own now with The Hatchet, an important journalistic podcast that aims to expose the truth about power and money in Canada, and they bring the facts. My episode recommendation is titled, Canada's Criminal Bank, a Triptych on TD,

Starting point is 00:11:21 which is a fascinating exploration about TD Bank and their admission that for years they helped launder hundreds of millions of dollars in drug money in the US. And that is not all there is to the story. Special mention to other episodes about price fixing in the grocery industry and how Canada's economy is even more screwed up than you think. So that's the hatchet. My second podcast recommendation is The Secret Life of Canada, a CBC podcast that should be at the top of the charts. And I had the absolute pleasure of sharing a stage with hosts Leah Simone Bowen and Phelan Johnson a few months back. They're incredibly funny, entertaining

Starting point is 00:12:06 and thoughtful as they reveal the beautiful, terrible and weird histories of the land known as Canada. My episode recommendation is A Brief History of Nudism in Canada. It's a funny one. Check it out and subscribe to The Secret Life of Canada. My third podcast recommendation is a political one. It's another staple in my podcast roster, particularly since the pandemic shenanigans gave us a glimpse behind the curtain to the ugly truth about how politics really works and who politicians are really focused on. Because spoiler alert, it's not the working class. There's a reason that Sandy and Nora Talk Politics is the number one political podcast

Starting point is 00:12:52 in Canada. Sandy Hudson and Nora Loretto are engaging, witty and really good at explaining complex political issues and how we can see them play out in our day to day lives. So if you're like me and you don't support any political parties and you want an honest to a fault critique of the ones we have to choose from, check out Sandy and Nora Talk Politics. My episode recommendation is called, Democracy's Death. And I've just got a special mention for In Her Defense 50th Street, Jana Pruden's long-form investigative podcast about the unsolved murder of Amber Tuckeroe,

Starting point is 00:13:34 who disappeared from the Edmonton area in 2010 after getting into a car with an unknown man. In Her Defense 50th Street was named one of the best Canadian podcasts of 2024 by Amazon Music and one of Apple Podcasts 10 favourite podcasts for the year. If you haven't listened to In Her Defence 50th Street already, I highly recommend it. And if you're looking for more Canadian podcasts to listen to, that list of the best Canadian podcasts of 2024 curated by Amazon Music is a pretty decent one. Links to all of these are of course in the show notes. And now for three excellent Canadian documentaries. The first is an episode titled Out of the Darkness

Starting point is 00:14:27 from Crime Beat on Global News. You might remember a few months back I reported that Global News reporter Karen Lieberman and her team were travelling to Kingston to interview key people for a documentary about the Yvonne Rouleau murder and the Kingston predator known as Richard Charles Joyce. I'm pleased to tell you that the episode was recently released on the Crime Beat TV YouTube channel and I can't recommend it highly enough. I'm a huge fan of Karen Lieberman's work. She's an amazing journalist who always covers crime cases with great sensitivity and care.

Starting point is 00:15:07 And you'll hear from Robert Rouleau, the brother-in-law of Yvonne Rouleau, and Kerry Kehoe who tells her story of being abducted by Richard Charles Joyce and why she stayed silent about it for so long. And for the first time, the mother of the survivor with Down syndrome we refer to as Annie agreed to be interviewed on camera with her voice and silhouette disguised about the way they were treated by the Kingston Police. It's called Crime Beat TV on YouTube and the episode is titled Out of the Darkness. It's an amazing documentary and I hope you'll watch it.

Starting point is 00:15:45 I've included links to this and other recommendations in the show notes. My second documentary recommendation is another one from Crime Beat TV on YouTube. The episode is titled Mad Trapper. I was really excited to see Crime Beat's newest season included the episode covering the Teslin Lake incident, otherwise known as the crimes of Chezley Freemike, Michael Oros or the other mad trapper. We obviously covered that case earlier last year as well and it was great to see Gary Rogers and the others being interviewed about what happened that day and the strange painting that followed.

Starting point is 00:16:27 So that's also available to watch on the Crime Beat TV YouTube channel. It's called Mad Trapper. And my last documentary recommendation is called In Cold Water, The Shelter Bay Mystery on Amazon Prime. It's about a very mysterious case we covered here at Canadian True Crime that has had multiple updates and remains a mystery. In Cold Water is a three-part series described as quote, the chilling true story of school teacher Laura Letts Beckett's drowning in the ice-cold waters of the Canadian Rocky Mountains.

Starting point is 00:17:06 The only witness, her husband, Peter Beckett. You might remember Peter Beckett as that larger-than-life character originally from New Zealand who married Canadian schoolteacher Laura Letts. Laura was unable to swim and apparently fell out of their boat one day, and Peter Beckett claimed he dove in after her but said as a large man he was too buoyant to rescue her and she drowned. Beckett agreed to be interviewed for this documentary series with his explanation for everything that happened and all the strange coincidences.

Starting point is 00:17:42 It is enlightening to say the least. You'll also hear from Tim Petrick, the journalist who originally covered the case in depth and who we spoke with at the end of our episode. Again, this documentary is called In Cold Water, The Shelter Bay Mystery on Amazon Prime Video. So that's about it for this wrap up. Again, see the show notes for all the links

Starting point is 00:18:08 and thank you so much for listening and supporting Canadian True Crime. We couldn't do it without you. I hope that your 2025 has gotten off to a good start and we'll see you again in late February for the return of our new season. Take care. you

Canadian True Crime - End of season | Personal message and recommendations

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