Crime Junkie - MISSING: Kimberly McAndrew

Episode Date: August 12, 2019

Today, August 12, 2019, marks the 30th anniversary of Kimberly McAndrew's disappearance. Over the years investigators have tried using old fashioned police work as well as psychics to solve the case but so many years later no one has found Kimberly.If we have any listeners in Nova Scotia who know anything about Kimberly’s disappearance, you can contact the Rewards for Major Unsolved Crimes Program at 1-888-710-9090. Or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/missing-kimberly-mcandrew/    

Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And today, I want to tell you a story that comes to us from one of our fan club members, and it's a missing persons case where today, August 12th, is actually the 30-year anniversary. And it's a case that has haunted the province of Nova Scotia, Canada for nearly 30 years. And this is the disappearance of Kimberly McAndrew. Are you ready, Britt? Let's do this. On August 12th, 1989, 19-year-old university student Kimberly McAndrew headed to work at

her summer job as a cashier at a local hardware store called Canadian Tire. Now it was a hot, sunny summer day in the city, and Kimberly was looking forward to the weekend. You see, it was her boyfriend's birthday, and she had plans with him, her sister Aaron, and a few friends that evening. They were going to be headed to a local street performer festival before meeting up with friends to celebrate her boyfriend's birthday. It was super busy in the store that day, so Kimberly's boss actually let her go a little bit early. And at 4.21pm, Kimberly clocked out at Canadian Tire, stepped out the back door into a parking lot, crowded with Saturday shoppers, and was never seen again. Kimberly McAndrew was

most often described as a sweet, friendly girl next door. She had light brown hair, brown eyes, and a mouthful of braces. Britt, she is like one of the people that when I see the picture, I mean, this happens with so many victims, but there's something about her braces filled smile that just breaks my heart. That mouthful of braces, actually those were set to come off her in just three days, which I didn't have braces, Britt, you did. Those like last months are just like excruciating, you cannot wait. Counting down the minutes, yeah. She was smart and outgoing and upbeat, and everyone she knew liked her. Now, Kimberly had four sisters and a brother. She was part of a very big, close-knit family from a tiny town of just 1,200 residents. It was a little town

called Parsboro, Nova Scotia, and that is on the east coast of Canada, and there is actually where her father was a police officer with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. While Kimberly was on summer break, she lived with two of her sisters in Halifax. Halifax is a university town, and there are several colleges in the city, and the neighborhood that Kimberly worked in was full of students who attended those schools. Now, she might have lived in the city, but she was still very much a small town girl at heart. One article that I read said she was so nervous to be alone in the city that she would rather go home to her parents' house than stay overnight by herself in the apartment that she shared with two of her sisters. I know. Now, one of those sisters was Erin,

and this is the one that was actually, she was supposed to go meet up with that night after she left work. Erin arrived at the Canadian Tire Store at 5 p.m. just like they planned. Now, she didn't go inside right away. She waited in the car for her to come out like she always did, but a couple of minutes pass, a couple more, and still no Kimberly. So Erin decided she was going to go inside, and that's when she's told by the other employees that Kimberly had left earlier. And Erin was super confused by this. Like A, that was never the plan. B, she didn't let her know that plans had changed, and C, Erin had just driven the same route that Kimberly would have had to walk to get home, and she hadn't seen her anywhere along the way. She's thinking, you know,

maybe somehow she missed her, maybe she caught a ride with someone else. She didn't know, but she went back to the apartment hoping to find Kimberly there, but everything was just as she left it, and there was no Kimberly. As the hours pass, Erin is getting more and more worried for her sister. Eventually, she can't take it anymore, and she decides to call her parents who feel right away what Erin felt. Something wasn't right. All of this was very out of character for Kimberly. She wasn't the type to blow off her friends and family. She had no reason to just walk away. In fact, all of her belongings were still there at the apartment, so it didn't make any sense that she wouldn't come home. The only thing that she had on her were the clothes on her back,

and a blue backpack knapsack that she carried back and forth to work. Kimberly's family was terrified at this point. By Thursday, August 17th, media had picked up the story, and Kimberly's brown eyes and big smile, braces and all, covered every newspaper, filled every TV screen in the province, and her missing person posters wall-papered every intersection. Everyone was asking, what happened to Kimberly McAndrew? Almost right away, Kimberly's parents put up a $5,000 reward for any information about what happened to her, and tips start rolling in one after another after another, and the first was from across the bridge in the next town. An employee at a flower shop in the neighboring town of Dartmouth said a young woman matching Kimberly's description came into

the shop between 4.30 and 5 o'clock on August 12th, and purchased a single balloon and a single flower. Now, that seems like a strange purchase, maybe for a 19-year-old to buy, but remember, it was her boyfriend's birthday that day. Right, yeah. Yeah, so people thought, okay, this could be her, and maybe those gifts were for him. Okay, but like, why did she have to go to the neighboring town? Like, was there nothing closer? I grew up in a small town, I get it, but it seems weird to kind of travel for one flower and one balloon. No, that's the thing. She did have a shop in her town, and there was one with literally, like, within walking distance from her work. And the biggest part that doesn't make sense to me is, you know, you talk about her traveling

to the next town, she left by foot, she didn't have a car, no one claims to have picked her up. If she had a flower shop right next door, why is she walking to the next town to pick up one balloon and one flower? So, still to this day, this sighting is wildly reported as her last known whereabouts, but it seems kind of questionable to me. Something that was pointed out by our fan club member who is familiar with Canada, because I am not, is to get there. Apparently, you have to walk across this almost mile-long toll bridge, which she's like, like, why? Like, not only is you're walking to the next town, but it seems dangerous. It doesn't seem like very doable. Like, none of that makes a ton of sense. And I mean, on top of that, like you said,

her sister described her as like a very small town girl. And she was definitely nervous in, like, the city, which isn't even a city. It's her tiny town. Like, again, I'm a small town girl. I get nervous in Ubers. I can't imagine her hopping on a bus or calling a taxi just to make this trip. Right. It doesn't seem like a super credible sighting, but it's all police have. There are no other leads. No suspects. It's like she walked out those doors and vanished into thin air. The days turn into weeks. The weeks turn into months. And there is still no sign of Kimberly. She hasn't called. She hasn't come home. And her bank account hasn't never even been touched until two years later in 1991, when we get a sighting of her, a missing persons organization in

Canada said the words that the McAndrews family, the police, and everyone following the case had been waiting to hear. Kimberly was alive. According to this missing persons organization, Kimberly was alive in a hospital in London, Ontario. Now this report shocked all of the family, all of the media, all of the public. However, what they didn't know was that this was just the beginning of the roller coaster ride. Kimberly's family had found themselves on during the course of this 30 year investigation because that person in the hospital, that wasn't Kimberly. Now it's not clear why the missing persons organization thought it was, but it was one of many possible Kimberly sightings over the years. Hundreds of people from New York to British Columbia,

all the way to her home in Nova Scotia, had reported seeing Kimberly. But none of those sightings have panned out and police followed up on every single lead. The next break in the case wouldn't come for four long years. And when it did come, it was a strange one. A prison inmate told police, I know where Kimberly's body is. This inmate said that she had been killed and her body could be located in a park. Now the name of the park, I'm not 100% sure I can pronounce. Again, this is why international cases are so hard. It's Sir Sanford Delming Park, I believe. So this is in 1995. And despite the fact that police were skeptical of this lead, police spent three days excavating this area. The informant couldn't pass a polygraph, but

it'd been years at this point since they had anything to work off. They wanted to believe that they were close to answers. But those three days of excavation didn't get them any closer. The entire province was glued to their TVs watching and waiting and hoping for answers, but not a shred of evidence was found. At this point, police were desperate for a break, something, anything that might help them close this case and give the McAndrews family the closure that they so desperately wanted. But all their leads went nowhere and investigators felt like they were out of options. So the next call that they made was to a whole different kind of detective altogether. And her name is Noreen Renye. And you know you're a hardcore crime junkie if that

name rings a bell for you. Noreen is a quote psychic detective who's based out of Florida here in the US. And her website says that she's been consulted on more than 600 cases across the US and in several other countries, including Canada. She actually says she's even worked for the FBI once before. Now she practices what's known as psychometry, where she holds on to an item that belongs to the missing person so she can quote become that missing person. Okay, but my eyes are rolling a tiny bit right now. I know, I know, stay with me. So I mean, this is the last ditch effort. Like, you know, they're not going to her day one. They're coming to her years later because they have nothing else and it's certainly it can't hurt. Right. So the

police constable leading the investigation schedules a phone reading with Noreen and in the room for that call with detective was Kimberly's mother Audrey and her sister Heather. They sent photos and other items of Kimberly's to Noreen in advance to make this reading happen. They spent an hour on the phone together that day with the psychic alternating between speaking as herself and speaking as Kimberly. Now, listen, I don't have a lot of experience with psychics and maybe the results of that reading are what you would expect from this kind of thing, but it's honestly so all over the map. Like at different times, she points them to a bridge, a clock, a water, a park, and she sometimes it's so weird. She's like sometimes speaking as herself and then other

times she's speaking as Kimberly. And this could all be like within the same 20 seconds. Oh, so it's also pretty difficult to follow, I would think. I would, I would think like again, I'm reading this all from like an article and it seemed like it was like all over the map. But clearly the detective got more of the conversation than I did from reading about it because from it, he gathers enough information to begin his next search in Halifax Point Pleasant Park, which is this huge park nearly 40 times the size of the last one where police did their search. Police dug in a well at that park, I assume because of the mention of water, perhaps, and they brought a forensic specialist from New Brunswick. But again, there's no trace

of Kimberly, but they weren't giving up on Noreen just yet. Another call with her led police to another spot of Point Pleasant Park, but it too came up empty. Now, before police could get to their third and final call with the psychic, a new lead emerged, and this time it was a confession. The confession came from another jailhouse informant. His story was that he had abducted Kimberly from the Canadian Tire parking lot with two other guys, then drove her across that mile long toll bridge to Dartmouth, where she was killed before being driven back across the same bridge to Fleming Park to be buried. Police were hopeful this was the lead that would finally put this case to rest for Kimberly's family, for the community still hopeful for justice,

and for the number of investigators who held that file in the year since Kimberly disappeared. Following this confession, police had a third and final call with Noreen, and she seemed to corroborate this confession. So back they went to Fleming Park, draining two ponds in search for Kimberly's body. But let me guess, they didn't find anything. You got it. Police later found out that the inmate was giving false information for his own purposes, and Kimberly's case once again went cold. What does his own purposes mean? You know, the article didn't say, but I think we've seen this a lot before with other prisoners that confess. It's usually either to like just get out of their cell, you know, get something new, some action, or it's like their way to still affect

people behind bars. Now many more years pass with no answers in the case, just more birthdays passing without Kimberly, more Christmases, big life events in her family, and all the while an empty hole in their family where she should have been. The next real movement in the case doesn't happen until 2013. While we don't know the source of this tip, one did come in. Now this is nearly 25 years after Kimberly disappeared. And this tip led the police to do an extensive search of a residential property in Shad Bay, Nova Scotia, and this is about 30 minutes from the place where she worked. The property belonged to not just any man, it belonged to the brother of a man who was already known to police, a man who had a suspected connection and at least a dozen

murders in Nova Scotia dating back to 1976. He's long been a person of interest in Kimberly's disappearance and his name is Andrew Paul Johnson. And let me tell you a little bit about this guy. Andrew Paul Johnson is a former chef and Coast Guard employee who spent time on both the East and West Coast of Canada. Now the good news is he has been in jail in Canada since 1997 after he tried to abduct three different 12 year old girls in British Columbia while posing as a police officer. We've heard this story before. Uh, yeah. And it gets worse when police did finally catch him. He had a 20 year old woman who media referred to as developmentally challenged, locked in his car and she'd been trying to escape him. Oh my God. During the arrest,

police searched Johnson's car and do you want to know what they found? Of course I do. Well, first of all, there was a meat cleaver under his driver's seat. Naturally. And that's not even the worst of it. In the trunk, police found what they refer to as a rape kit. He had pornography, toy handcuffs, a full mask, packing tape and lube. Police in Nova Scotia have never officially named Andrew Johnson as a suspect in any homicides. Again, he's only been connected to them. But his name has been connected to Kimberly's case along with at least two others. Like I mentioned before, before he was ever caught with that meat cleaver in his front seat, he was already known to police. In 1992, he pled guilty to confining and sexually assaulting his girlfriend. In 1997,

he'd been caught masturbating in a car while watching girls play. And there was even a warrant for his arrest for harassing a 12 year old girl while posing as a teen fashion representative. That sounds a lot like Christopher Wilder that we covered in the Colleen Orsborn episode. Yeah. I mean, I think again, like we see this all the time, often like these actions don't stay in a bubble. Like this is someone building and building and building. But this isn't even the creepiest thing about this guy. During his stay in a sexual offender program in Nova Scotia in the mid nineties, he was given an assignment. Now part of his, I assume this is therapy was to write about sexual assault from the point of view of the victim. Now,

he doesn't like do this abstractly. He picks a literal victim and he wrote about the rape and the murder of Kimberly McAndrew. Okay. Can we pause for a second? Like that's obviously super, super creepy, but there's no mention of her being assaulted. Is there? Right. I mean, I think the assumption now all these years later is that she's deceased, but there's no there's no, no report of her ever being raped because there's no way anyone could know if she had been raped. Right. And this reminds me so much of the episode that we just did on Lloyd Welch. He kept saying that the girls had been burned or one of the girls that had burned. And yeah, it kind of came out of nowhere and it ended up being what kind of caught him, right?

Exactly. Yeah. And his like very first statement with her, what do you think happened? He's like, they were burned and that was like out of left field. Because again, just like this case, those girls were just missing again, assumed dead, but no one had any idea what happened to them in between. And it was just so specific. Yeah. Over months and months. And so is this description of assault. Right. So because of the fact that he's writing about a person who still has like an open case, it felt totally wrong to the counselors. They notify police of what he did. And that's when police begin looking at Andrew Johnson in a whole new light, a murderer as well as a sex offender, which he's already been guilty of. But there's one more thing that ties Andrew Johnson

to Kimberly McAndrew. On that day in August 1989, his girlfriend at the time lived in an apartment building directly across from the Canadian Tire parking lot where Kimberly was last seen. Now, while most of the evidence against him is circumstantial, police have found physical evidence too. Now that last search that I told you about the one on his brother's property, it turned up some evidence, but police never released what it was. They did say though, that in a search, they found an eye shadow compact that actually belonged to a young woman named Andrea King. And Andrea King was another 19 year old girl who was killed just two and a half years after Kimberly went missing. Even though the police had all this information,

even though Andrew Johnson's writing about Kimberly McAndrew, he refused to talk to investigators about either of these cases after he was arrested in 1997. He's been in jail ever since and he's serving an indeterminate sentence for his crimes after being labeled a quote dangerous offender, which means there's no hard and fast date that he'll be released. Thank God, he'll likely stay behind bars until the parole board decides that he's been rehabilitated because again, crazy for us here in the US, but like in other countries, they still very much focus on rehabilitation. I know that's what we say we do here, but we kind of lock people up forever. It's like part of what people don't love about the US legal system. Even if someone's convicted of murder in other

countries, most of the times they don't get a life sentence, they get out. He's been there about 20 years and his parole applications all so far have been denied. And the last one was in 2017. Now, there are two other potential suspects in the case that I want to tell you about. Some people speculate that Canadian serial killer Michael Wayne Mcgray could be responsible for Kimberly's disappearance. Michael Mcgray had been convicted of killing seven people between 1984 and 1998. He was in Nova Scotia at the time of Kimberly's disappearance, but when asked by police, he said that her name didn't ring a bell. And though he's been connected to her, like as a victim, Kimberly didn't really fit his profile for a victim. He tended to choose people on the

fringes of society in those days, which were gay men, sex workers, people with substance abuse issues, and sometimes hitchhikers on like lonely stretches of highway. He tended to stick to those victims, but to be fair, not always. He sometimes just killed because the opportunity presented itself, which was the case when he killed his former cellmate, who he killed seemingly almost for no reason and with no remorse. Now, this guy is serving seven consecutive life sentences in a Canadian prison and will likely never share a cell with any person again, let alone be put back on the streets. Now, there's a final person who we know about that I want to tell you about, but I can't tell you a name of this person because the name has never been released. In 1997,

just after the psychic calls and the three extensive searches in those two parks, police were granted a search warrant for the home of this, we'll just quote, person of interest. Now, we don't know much about this guy, but media reports from the time say that he was in his early 30s and totally obsessed with Kimberly. He said that he frequently watched her and even followed her home on occasion, so he could quote, feel close to her. He had even said he thought Kimberly had been abducted, abused and killed. Now, this man who lived in Halifax at the time of Kimberly's disappearance and worked in the area where Kimberly worked, was even seen talking to her on the day that she went missing. Police believed he had souvenirs of Kimberly, which is why they

got a search warrant, and they were not wrong. When police searched his place, what they found was basically a shrine to Kimberly McAndrew. And remember, this was a full eight years after her disappearance. He still has this shrine. He had a pictures of her on the walls, missing persons posters from the days in the weeks after she was missing, but there was even more. They also found a handwritten book dedicated to Kimberly, an envelope full of pictures, a red wallet, and a blue backpack. Like the one that Kimberly had. Yeah, the one that she had on the day that she went missing. Along with this, they also found a bunch of creepy books, which included one titled The Encyclopedia of Modern Murder. Obviously, police didn't have enough to charge

him, or he would have been, and they never released anything more about the backpack. Like, was it hers? Did he just buy one that looked like hers because he was obsessed with her? And they never released this information or this guy's name because this creepy dude was never charged. Andrew Paul Johnson was never charged. No one has ever been charged in relation to Kimberly's disappearance. This whole thing is just so insane to me. Like, I thought for sure that Andrew Johnson was like, he looked really good for it, right? Yeah. And until you hear about this guy who has a shrine to Kimberly, who was seen talking to her, who's obsessed with her, like, it's frustrating to not know this guy's name and to not have any charges. But I also

see why you wouldn't want to, like, try to go to trial with circumstantial evidence because which one's circumstantial evidence? Like, no, they're both really good candidates. It's so true. And I see this not only in this case, but in so many other cases that I look at. And the more I become friends with police officers and investigators and talk to them, it's crazy when you look at just one case and how many people can look guilty for something. Like, the circumstantial evidence can weigh heavily on a ton of different suspects. And you would think that there's no way, like, it's just bad luck or what. Like, often you and I say, like, well, what are the odds? And it turns out, like, the odds are pretty great. In one case, someone can look so guilty. Like,

again, you have this guy who's writing about rape from her point of view, who is responsible for sexual assaults, has been, like, suspiciously connected to other murders whose girlfriend lived across a parking lot. And it seems great. And then you find out this guy who was obsessed with her and might have a backpack that looks like hers was talking to her that day. I get why this hasn't gone to trial yet without more information, without a body. Yeah. It's incredibly frustrating on the outside. But I also see in a case like this makes you understand why there hasn't been movement, you know. Right. Now, several retired Halifax-based investigators who worked the case over the years have said publicly that this is the case that haunts them. And it haunts the people of

Nova Scotia, too. People remember Kimberly and the details of her story. Every few years, media will start asking questions. As far as we know, her disappearance is still being investigated by police. And again, today, August 12, 2019, will mark the 30th year since Kimberly McAndrew disappeared. Almost everyone, including police, believes that she is dead and almost certainly met with foul play. She's still listed as a missing person. And there is a $150,000 reward up for grabs for anyone who has information leading to the arrest or to a conviction in this case. So if we have any listeners in Nova Scotia who know anything about Kimberly's disappearance, you can contact the Rewards for Major Unsolved Crimes program at 1-888-710-9090 or Crimestoppers

at 1-800-222-TIPS. For those numbers again or to see pictures in this case, you can go to our website crimejunkiepodcast.com. And be sure to follow us on social media at crimejunkiepod on Twitter and at crimejunkiepodcast on Instagram. And we'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Crimejunkie is an audio chuck production. So what do you think Chuck? Do you approve?