Suspicion | The Billionaire Murders: The hunt for the killers of Honey and Barry Sherman - S1 Death in a Small Town | E3 The Case

Episode Date: May 30, 2022

Shortly after Nathaniel is buried, police use a ruse to bring his parents in for interrogation. Rose-Anne and Kent reveal new information and the mystery of what happened to their son deepens. Audio sources: Toronto Star, CTV News London

The following content contains discussions of child injury and death, including frank discussions and displays of emotion surrounding that loss. Lister discretion is advised. From the Toronto Star, I'm Kevin Donovan, and this is Death in a Small Town, Episode 3, The Case. I'm the Lord of the sea and the sun, I am where my people's run, Oh, the planet I'm missing, I'm missing. Hands and I have been blessed with four beautiful boys. Gabriel, Lucas, Noah, and Daniel.

We love and adore each and every one of them. They have changed our lives in such special ways. It's November 6, 2015 at Sacred Heart Church in Park Hill. Roseanne, the Daniel's mother, stands behind a lectern on the stage. She has a round expressive face and when she smiles, which she somehow manages to do today, it's like a camera flash going off, it penetrates the room.

Her son's small, simple wooden casket is to her left, blanketed by yellow, white, and purple fall flowers. There's a framed photo of Nathaniel, it beams out at family and friends packed into the large church. Rosanne is composed, Her teacher voiced strong. It's easy to imagine her addressing a classroom of grade sevens, which is what she was doing when she got the call about Nathaniel being hurt. She rakes her dark hair back over shoulders as she begins. Miss Daniel was hourly and since his arrival has brought us so much joy. As I brought him each and every day I seem to find a peace and a calmness that I had not yet known. If you happen to see me, I am sure that I

alone are family blossom. The thing is time with us is not over. He will watch over us and be with us each and every day for the rest of our lives. Thank you to everyone who prayed for us. There were so many prayers. Your support and prayers continue to give us strength and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. God bless everyone and our new love you, Daniels. One week before Nathaniel's parents, Rosanne and Kent, had made the decision to remove

their son from life support. Nathaniel was brain dead. Yet here was Roseanne, cool, collected. Some were surprised that a mother would have the ability to speak at her son's funeral, and it would be just one of the many behaviors of the McClellans that would go under a microscope. Heather Jennings was not surprised. She's a well-known event photographer who in mid-career decided to become a funeral director. She said she felt a calling to help people in crisis. I had heard in advance that Roseanne was going to be speaking.

And knowing I could never do that, I cried easily so that wasn't something I would be able to do, but Roseanne had such determination that she wanted people to know Nathaniel. Heather said that when the call came into her funeral home about Nathaniel, it was a shock. She was new to the industry, not much more than a year's experience with grieving families. Heather knew the McCll and family well. She'd grown up knowing Kent, their kids play hockey together, and Heather often shoots hoops with Rosanne and pick up basketball games. I remember being as prepared as I could document wise going into the arrangement process. Emotionally, I don't know that you could prepare yourself at all. I remember not wanting to have Kenton Rosanne walking to that funeral. So I went out to the parking lot to meet them.

It just emotionally, it's still very hard. Heather helped the McClellans with two special requests. As Nathaniel was in the casket, anyone who saw him would have seen that there was actually a braid of Ozanz here in his hands. And he would always play with Ozanz here, so she made sure she actually had a portion of her hair braided and cut so that he could hold that. And having the kids be able to draw pictures for him in things, they were very, very concentrated

on helping the kids through the process. Kent sat in the front row, head bowed, he knew he could not speak without breaking down. As father Tony Lufferette welcomed the congregation, Rosanne sat close to Kent, slowly moving her hand over his back, trying her best to comfort him. Nathaniel's brothers gave Luke and Noah, they did speak. Rosanne had to pull a stool from under the lectern so the youngest could reach the microphone. The pictures the boys drew, colorful, sunny pictures made with pencil crayons. Those were tucked in the Daniels casket before burial. I love you, I love you, I love you, my name is I love you, my name is I love you, my name is

I love you, my name is I miss you, my name is I miss you, my name is I miss you, my name is As a funeral coach and procession left for the cemetery, the children from the adjacent elementary school

came out and lined the road to pay their respects. A tradition in the tight knit community of Park Hill. Heather, the funeral director, she said the sun burst through the clouds at the moment the procession passed the children. A few hours after the funeral, this story broke on the local news. A criminal investigation is underway into the death of an area toddler. Strathoroy police and OPP are investigating the circumstances surrounding the death last Saturday of a 15-month-old.

Police say the child was discovered with injuries on October 27 and died in a London hospital. Both the OPP criminal branch and forensic identification unit are involved in the investigation. One media outlet's Facebook and Twitter posting went further, saying Nathaniel had previous injuries. The implications seemed clear, Nathaniel had been a victim of abuse. But by whom? In Park Hill in the days that followed, the McClellins were shell-shocked and the house seemed empty, even though five people lived there. Nathaniel had been a

force of nature, the center of attention. Roseanne had taken the leave from teaching, Kent, who owned a heating and air conditioning firm, could not go into the shop, and certainly was not going to go on any calls, even though with winter coming, it was his company's busiest season. Neither paired was sleeping much. When Roseanne cried, all Kent could think to do was hold her. On the Wednesday after the funeral, the phone rang. Kent looked at Roseanne across the kitchen table. The boys were at school.

Breakfast dishes sat untouched. Kent picked up the phone. It was the police. Strathroid detective Jill Phylian, the one who interviewed them at the London hospital. You'll hear both Rosanne and Kent's voices in this recording. 10 o'clock.

Yeah. Kent said, can you come to the house? Because like we're just struck. Like, can you, and no, we cannot come to the house. We have information for you, and if you want it, you have to come here. Which should have been a clue to us. But anyways, he said 11.

Yeah, you got to be here for 11. So you called my dad, and he came down picked us up and took us to the strut. Because I said, I was called to the Strathroid Police Department. Oh, we had to go in Wayne's cart. I couldn't drive. We couldn't drive.

And I couldn't get in my truck. I couldn't. It took me months before I got back in my truck. Wayne in Wayne's car. I couldn't drive. We couldn't drive. And I couldn't get in my truck. I couldn't. It took me months before I got back in my truck. Wayne can't stand. Pick them up and they headed to the Strathroid Police Station. A few minutes after Wayne's truck turned off their long gravel driveway and onto the main road, three police cruisers and a forensics fan arrived, coming from the other direction.

Search warrant in hand this time, in what would be their third search, officers entered the McClellan home. As is the practice in the country, Rosanne and Kent had left their door unlocked, so please were able to just walk in. No notice was given. What the McClellins did not know, and would not learn until I got my hands on police notes two years later, was that detectives from both Strathroy and the Ontario Provincial Police had been busy interviewing doctors, nurses, and social workers at both hospitals that

treated Nathaniel. The behavior of the parents, what they said and did not say, Rosanne in particular, was of interest. Here's Grandpa Wayne. What the Stathroid Police Department has put them through. They were determined that Kent and Ruffan were going to be found guilty. The Stathroid Caridock Police Services headquartered in a two-story brown brick building

in the center of town. The local YMCA is one street over, and a McDonald's, Harvey's, and a Popeye's chicken is across the road. Rosanne Kent, who had last talked to Strathroid Police at the London Hospital, what seemed like a hundred years ago but was less than two weeks, were hopeful that officers could shed some light on what happened to their son. They were met at the front counter by two detectives, Connie Buckmuller and Todd Amlin, not with the Strathroid Police Department, but with the Ontario Provincial Police, the criminal investigation bureau.

The OPP they were told was now in charge. We'll be right back. We were both together out of the front and they came out and said, we're going to talk to you first. And so I was like, oh, all right, so I left. And Rosanna, my dad, for all I knew, my wife and my father were out from, waiting for me." In reality, as soon as Kent disappeared down the narrow hallway, Detective Amlin told Rosanne he would speak to her at the OPP headquarters across town.

It was the only meeting room available, Amlin said. Wayne drove Rosanne, then sat outside in his truck and waited, feeling protective, confused. Back at the Strathroid station, Detective Buckmuller took Kent into a small, windowless room. That would be familiar to anyone who watched television police dramas. At the time, the McClellons did not, though that would change. Kent settled into one of two chairs in the room, facing Buckmiller across a small table. Buckmiller has long wavy blonde hair. She's a veteran detective with special training

as a polygraph examiner. They said, you know, can you have the right to a lawyer? I said, do I need a lawyer? Like why? Like, no, we just need to be aware that anything you say here, you couldn't be charged with. We are seeking a manslaughter charge. And that's when I was like, like, what are you talking about?

And she said, well, Ken, your son had a nine centimeter fracture in the back of his head. I said, oh, I never heard about a 9 centimeter fracture. That was the first time no doctor, no nurse, so nobody said about a 9 centimeter fracture in the back of my son's head. That was the first time I heard it because it took me back. I could not meet off my feet that he had such a severe fracture in the back of his head. Kent has short-cropped dark hair and easygoing manner. He's trusting. His business is very much a relationship business. He likes to get along with people.

Sitting in the interview room, he found himself struggling. Where was all this coming from? Buck Mueller shuffled some papers on the table. I sat back on my seat and I was, I didn't know. And she said, I said, I don't know, like what do you, like, what do you want? Like what, what do we do? What do we start? How do we start? And she's like, well, tell me about your, tell me about yourself. I should say here that I've been trying since 2017 to get the audio of these interviews. Police refuse to release them. So instead, I'm relying on the recollections of the people interviewed and the police notes which I do have relating to all interviews they did.

And I said, well, I'm in business, I work a lot, we start talking, and then we came to the morning. Oh, I told her everything that I told you. And then she says, is there anything else you want to tell me? And I said, well, I want to tell you that the day before, I don't know if this means anything but the day before, make upunked by the bathroom or by the backroom door and felt. She said, tell me about the stairs and I said, what stairs? And she said the stairs that are on the opposite side of the door that hit Nathaniel.

And I said, well, those are the stairs to like the old basement. At this point, Kant is realizing that the police have been inside his house. He had heard from his dad and Kathy Webster that the police had been around twice when they were at the hospital. He does not know yet that they were at his house a third time that morning.

He'll find that out later in the day. But until now, it had not dawned on him that they were speculating house a third time that morning. He'll find that out later in the day. But until now, it had not dawned on him that they were speculating that Nathaniel had been heard in their house. Remember, Nathaniel collapsed at the babysitters. Can't assume that is where Nathaniel was hurt. She said, isn't possible that Nate fell down those stairs? And I said, no, it's not possible. The detective's theory was that Nathaniel was bumped by Rosanne opening the big steel

door and Nathaniel tumbled down into the cellar, crashing onto the cement floor. Now I've seen those stairs in the McClellan house. The house was built in the 1930s. The main floor, it's been renovated over time, but those eight steps down to a low ceiling basement. Just one step up from a crawl space, they are incredibly steep and dangerous. Fall down those steps, and I'm pretty sure you would break

your neck, and whether you are an adult or child, you would be severely bruised. But Nathaniel had only one bruise on his left temple. At Detective Buckmuller's request, Kent drew a picture of the layout of the area in front of the stairs, doing his best to explain that the two doors face each other across a short landing, and the way they are oriented, it would not be possible for anyone bump by one door to fall down those stairs. Besides, he said, the basement door is always closed and can't

added one more thought, which to him was as immutable as the laws of physics. And she said, well, how do you know he didn't? And I said, because my wife didn't tell me anything about anything to do with that. But it started to get pretty heated. And I said, my wife would tell me if Nate fell down those stairs. Because my wife calls me about every little thing that, you know, to keep me a heads up. Because I'm on business, I can leave work any time. She can't. And she gets up and she goes to leave the room. She says, she says,

to leave the room. She says, well, that might not be the case or something like that. And I said, are you telling me that my wife had told you that Nate fell down the stairs? Kent says that at the exact moment that Buckmutter pulled open the interview door, he heard a scream, a deep sobbing scream. It's a cry to him that sounded strikingly familiar, a scream heard two weeks ago at the London hospital. And I remember when they told us that Nate was not gonna live. The police had really screamed, really loud. And they opened the door to the outside. I remember that scream.

I remember Rosanne, I remember that screen. I remember Rosanne, I heard that screen. In the police station. In the police station, the Strathroid Police Station, I heard a crying screen. And of course, the first thing that comes to my mind is what did Rosanne say? Who made that screen and for what purpose was another mystery? Was it some sort of police trick designed to make Kent think his wife had made a confession?

To this day, the McClellan's do not know. In reality, Roseanne was on the other side of town, sitting across a table from Detective Todd Amlin and another OPP detective, Joan Wilson. Roseanne takes up the story. Because I interviewed Roseanne and Kent together, you'll hear Kent chime in. The interview began with Detective Amlin reading the standard place caution regarding her rights

and then asking if she wanted a lawyer. Roseanne said no, she didn't need a lawyer. Then a few simple questions. Roseanne's job, she didn't need a lawyer. Then a few simple questions. Roseanne's job, home life, what Roseanne calls warm and fuzzy questions. Detective Amlin let it be known that police had been talking to her friends and colleagues. Oh, he said like, you know, people say that I'm a great mom. And, you know, that everybody knows that I run the show, you know, that kind of stuff like your super mom.

Roseanne said she wanted to get immediately to the door bump issue. She'd been thinking about it since her only other place interview, the one two weeks ago, a couple of hours after Nathaniel had been transferred to the London hospital. She wanted to make sure the OPP had all the facts.

She tells Detective Amlin about something that happened on the Monday night, about 5 p.m., the day before Nathaniel collapsed at the babysitters. Rosanne's teacher nickname at North Meadows is Mighty Mouse, a reference to an old cartoon with a very powerful but small superhero. She speaks very quickly, lots of energy, nothing slow. When I first talked to her, I had to put a tea towel under my recorder because she has a tendency to tap the table hard when she makes a point, and that disrupted the sound quality. I wanted to tell them about the night before we just hadn't told them yet, and I didn't want that, like I didn't want it to be like I was withholding it, because I wasn't, I didn't remember, and I told them that, I didn't remember this, I wish I remembered and he said, oh, I'm sure you do. And because we're renovating the back room

as a disaster, like we were renovating and everything's piled everywhere. And I thought, oh, I'm going to clean this back room because separate made lunches are made. Rosanne explains that the back room is down a step. The door, it's cold out there so they keep it closed. It's a heavy steel door and there's a small window in it. But Rosanne is not tall enough to see in the little window when she is on the other side

And so I was cleaning the laundry room back into the back room back and forth back and forth back and forth And Nathaniel is top line beside me back and forth and I Walked out and I don't know if I close the door. He closed the door, but the door was closed. So when I went to come back in He bumped behind the door. I told the police, I don't have anything slow because I don't die. That's funny. But the back room, as you can see, is only about six feet long. So it's not like I could have a lot of momentum or, you know, be crazy. So it was just a normal thing. De-cryway film. Yes, he was mad. So when I got down, he was like that,

and his arm's like, he was like, ah, like, he was mad. He was not pleased that he had fallen. And I scooped him up and I carried him into our living room. And by the time I got to the rock and chair, he was done crying. And then when I was in the rock and chair, Kent came home and he got down, walked to Kent because Kent came in this door. He came in that door and Nate came running towards me and I scooped him up. No, it was talking to Rosanne and that hat, but there was a hat. Well, before that, though, I had to tell you... Oh, yeah, I said, how was your day?

And you said, oh, you've had some tears. Detective Amlin asked a question. And Todd asked me, did you stop breathing? Was there a point where he wasn't crying? And I said, no, he was snapped, he was crying. When Rosanne finished her explanation, she tried to hand over a USB stick, a flash drive she had brought with photos on it. One was taken by neighbor Kathy Webster, she's the one who looks after Nathaniel Mondays

and Wednesdays, who's taken before the door bump. Nathaniel's in a high chair eating a piece of cake at around 4pm. The other photo is one of Nathaniel, after the door bump. He's wearing a silly party hat. It was Rosanne's birthday the next day and the family was clowning around with a hat they wanted Rosanne to wear. In the second photo, the one after the door bump in the tears, you can see Nathaniel grinning and you can see he has a tiny red mark in the center of his forehead. In the photo, you can hardly notice it. What Rosanne was trying to explain with the pictures

was that the big bruise doctors had seen on Nathaniel's left temple. The one can't also notice that first day in the hospital. That was not there on the Monday night. But Rosanne said the OPP detective, he didn't want the photos. And I have the stick and I want them to take the stick because the picture to me, it's so clear, clear right? Like there's this picture of him eating cake

and Kathie's here and an hour later there's this little red mark that wasn't there an hour before that's the door here you go. Just getting the police to take the photo stick was a battle and it provided the only comic relief in a tense two-hour long interview. I drove up nuts because I had this flash drive that was made magnetic and I kept clicking it all the time. He took it away, I think at one point, but I got it back. Yeah, she took it away from me.

He might have. No, he didn't take it away from me. It was a steel table and I clicked it once and it fell and it stuck to the steel thing. It was like, don't touch it. Eventually, Strathroid Detective Jill Phillian, who had by this time arrived at the OPP station, he took the photo stick from Rosanne. As she walked outside, she was left with one terrible thought. Nobody would believe them. In my interview, I said, you know, I opened the door and I ran my life. And I probably didn't explain it. I said, like, because I opened my door this door in my house,

it's ruined my life. But it didn't mean like, like, I ruined my life because I heard explain it. I said, like, because I opened my door this door in my house, it ruined my life. But it didn't mean like, like, it ruined my life because I heard my son. I met, and I said, because people are going to judge. People are going to assume that that's what killed him. And it's not. It's not what killed him. The police told Roseanne they had no more questions,

but they would be in touch. Kent had arrived at the OPP station, driven by Detective Phylian, in a beat-up undercover car with a baby seat in the back, which Phylian explained was there to stop people from thinking it was actually a cop car. There was a rock music blasting from the radio when Phylian started the engine. Kent recalls thinking that he expected the police to be more professional. Grandpa Wayne, who had been waiting outside, collected Roseanne and Kent, and they headed

for home, trying to make sense of what had just happened. Why the focus on them? Police had asked them if they would agree to take a lie detector test, both did later and they both passed. As they left Strathroid behind, small retail strips giving way to checkerboard farms, all three had the same thought. Are the police even talking to Megan, the babysitter? What did she have to say? Had they asked her to take a polygraph? They had

no contact with Megan since the thandal went to hospital, and she had not attended the funeral. With hindsight being 2020, Roseanne said she thinks she was too trusting of the police in those early days. I talk too much, and I honestly believe if you have all the right information from you, you, from me, you will be able to figure out what has happened to my child. And if you have all the right information from Megan, you will be able to, and so that was what I did. Next time on Death in a Small Town.

When I would take Nathaniel, although he would cry when I dropped him off, all my other children cried at the other babysitters too, so that didn't raise any big, great flags. But also when I dropped him off, she said to me one day, she says, and there's his on my favorite days, because I love babies. Hello.

Hello, it was Megan there, please. Is it Megan? Megan, my name is Kevin Donovan, and I'm a reporter with the Toronto Star. I've been looking into the case of that said situation involving the Daniel who died about two years ago. Right. But I was wondering if I'd be able to talk to you about it. So what happened? I don't know what to say. I don't know if I should contact my lawyer. I really have no idea. I don't know what to say honestly.

It's kind of out of the blue that someone would be contacting me because I haven't heard anything about it in months and months and months. Death in a small town was researched, written, and narrated by me, Kevin Donovan, and produced by Radyo Mooder, JP Fozoo, and Sean Pattenden. Additional production was done by Andrew McDonald, Kelsey Wilson, and Brian Bradley. Photography by Lucas Oleniac, music and sound design for the series created by Sean Pattenden.

From the Toronto Star, I'm Kevin Donovan, and this is Death in a Small Town.