Suspicion | The Billionaire Murders: The hunt for the killers of Honey and Barry Sherman - S1 Death in a Small Town | E7 Graduation Day

Episode Date: June 27, 2022

As the McLellans prepare to celebrate son Luke’s graduation, the Ontario Provincial Police make an arrest in Nathaniel’s case. It’s been six years. Why are child death investigations this hard and how can they be done better? 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. Listener discretion is advised. From the Toronto Star, I'm Kevin Donovan, and this is Death in a Small Town, Episode 7, Graduation Day. On October 31, 2015, Nathaniel McClellan, 15 months of age of the municipality of North Middle-Six, died in a London hospital. This is episode 7 of Death in a Small Town. To be perfectly honest, I never thought there would be an episode 7, but then this happened.

Members of the Strathorary Care Doc Police Service and the Ontario provincial police under the direction of the OPP criminal investigation branch arrested a strafflery resident following a joint investigation in a death of a 15-month old child. It's Wednesday, June 23, 2021. Our series on Nathaniel's death and the botched police investigation hit the front page of the Toronto Star exactly one week ago. Out of the blue, Detective Inspector Pete Liptrot, of the Ontario Provincial Police,

has released a press statement via YouTube. It's the first public comment by police on the case in six years. Liptrot has short, trimmed brown hair, tortoise shell glasses and a broad face. He's wearing a dark suit, blue and brown tie and a check shirt, the triangular black and golden

insignia of Ontario's police force, above his right shoulder. He looks more like a banker or a mutual fund analyst. The veteran investigator's eyes flip down to notes on a lectern as he reaches the meat of his announcement. Megan Van Hoof, 42 years old, of Strathroid, has been charged with manslaughter. 42-year-old of Strathroid has been charged with manslaughter. Let's wind the clock back a few hours. Here's Kent McClellan, Nathaniel's dad. I was at work. She was relatively early, so I'm going to say it was around 830 in the morning. And my cell phone rang.

I didn't have a number, but I answered it. And it was Detective Inspector Pete Littrod. He said, uh, uh, catch. Uh, this is detection inspector, uh, Pete Littrod. And, um, I was hoping that you would be able, you would be able to come in. There's been some developments in the case and we would like to go over them with you. And I said, I don't think that that could happen. It wasn't good the last time that we went into a police station, I didn't think it would be any better. It's easy to forgive the McClellans for being suspicious. In 2015, a few days after Nathaniel was buried, Rosanne and Kent were sitting at their kitchen table, lost in grief.

When Detective Jill Phillian, the Strathroid officer leading the investigation at the time, called and told them they had to come in if they wanted to hear an update of their son's case. It was a trick. When they arrived at the Strathroid station, OPP detectives were there. They split up Rosanne and Kent and conducted separate interrogations, asking if they wanted a lawyer and telling them they were pursuing a manslaughter charge. Oh, there was a lot of stuff going through my head. You know, part of me was scared. I didn't know what to expect. You know, based off of what happened the first time I got told the exact same thing.

And now here I am doing this all over again. I think it was more of the uncertainty that I was going to be walking into. And yeah, that's what it was. It was the uncertainty, it was the scare. Kent headed back home, his mind spinning. He had gone to work extra early because their son Lucas, Luke, was graduating grade eight. Due to the pandemic, each grad had an allotted time and Kent wanted to make sure the entire family was present for such an important day. And so I came home and came into Rosanne and told her that I had gotten a phone call and that the police told me that they had a development in a case and were wanting us to come in.

And again, it was no, but instead of calling them back, we sent an email to... Detective Superintendent Director Chuck. Kent and Rosanne had been given the name of a senior officer in Aurelia, the headquarters of the OPP, Detective Superintendent Tina Chuck.

They wrote an email explaining it was their son's graduation. They'd be happy to meet the next day, but would prefer it to be at their home. And within, what, a minute or two, would you think, Rosanne? My cell phone rang and it came up with a really phone number and I answered it and it was Mrs. Chalk. She wanted to let us know that she was in her car driving down and that it was imperative that we need today. Listeners of this podcast will not be surprised to know that Roseanne and Kent recorded this call.

How are you? Oh, good. Tina, how are you doing this morning? We're finally talking at the night. It is. It's actually really nice to hear your voice. Good. Fantastic.

I am good. I wanted to give you a call because I know why you were speaking with Pete there. Yes, Pete reached out this morning. Yeah, yeah, good. So I know we just received an email from yourselves indicating your wishes and respect to a meeting. Yes. Yep, yep. You've been privy to that.

Yeah, yep. So I just wanted to let you in on a little bit about why we wanted to meet. And we've been trying, you know, typically, and especially, we really wanted to meet you in person to give you the kind of news that we're giving it today. But I understand today's such an important day for us on the graduation. I've been there. It's quite an important day. It's exciting. But... But... Canton Roseanne faced a dilemma.

What was so important that could not wait a day? Was this another police trick? And why did it have to be at the police station? Superintendent Chauk told them she was going to continue driving from Arilia to Strathroy, a three-hour trip, no matter what. And so we kind of thought, okay, we better, this is important and we want to answer so we're going to have to overcome whatever, you know, we happened the last time and we're going to have to go in.

But we agreed. If we walked in and they attempted to separate us, we were immediately meaning, you know, we were not going to ensure or put up with the nonsense that happened the first time. Rosanne and Kent gathered their kids together, relatively easy to do because school was still online. Well, we had to arrange care for the little ones and we talked to the older ones. We told them that we were going to the police station, but that we would be back for Lucas' graduation, no matter what. And Lucas told us that it was okay.

If we didn't come back, he would, Grandpa would drive him, and that was okay. But we told him we would be back. Roseanne called the school principal and asked for the latest time slot for the graduation ceremony, 6 p.m. Kent was proud of how their 14-year-old son responded

to the uncertainty. But just having Lucas come in when this has just been turned upside down, you know, you just know for him to say that don't worry mom and dad, I will make it. To graduation. I will make it. You go and you do this. That is such a... It's so tight, it's just incredible to hear that he was okay with whatever happened, he was okay. Rosanne and Kent drove to a parking lot near the OPP detachment in Strathroy. That's a station where she'd been interrogated by Detective Todd Amlin back in 2015.

When she had a hard time convincing Amlin to take the flash drive containing photos of Nathaniel, Roseanne believed were a vital importance. Now, years later, she and Kent waited, nervous for the mid-afternoon meeting. When the agreed upon time arrived, 2.15 pm, they pulled up to the OPP station and were greeted by Pete Liptrod, the lead officer on the case. Liptrot escorted them into a meeting room and they were introduced to Tina Chalk, the only other person in the room. Well, they were both very polite, cordial, they sat us down and they... In the board room.

In the board room, and they expressed their... Condolences. Condolences, yes, they expressed their condolences. Yes, so they expressed their condolences and then things kind of went quiet and they said, we would like to tell you that we have made an arrest. And the charges man slaughter.

That June day in 2021 was sunny and warm. Summer had arrived. I was on the road in Toronto on a new story but fielding calls on Nathaniel's case which had touched a nerve like no other story I had arrived. I was on the road in Toronto on a new story, but fielding calls on Nathaniel's case, which had touched a nerve like no other story I had done. Having written about high-profile individuals the public naturally had an interest in, Toronto's crack-smoking, populist mayor Rob Ford being one of them, it was a pleasant surprise to see readers connect even more strongly with a story about an unknown child dying in an unknown place,

and the way the system had investigated the case. I heard there was a surprise development in Nathaniel's case and immediately called Rosanne and Kent. After six years, what was their reaction in that police boardroom when they heard a charge of being laid in Nathaniel's death? I cried. It was... it was...I don't know. It was so, so many emotions. I mean...yes. I wanted to handle back. You know?

I wanted my son back. I wish it didn't help him. It was just the big relief, that's... Yeah. We, yeah. We cried. Leaving the police boardroom, Canton Roseanne high-tailed it back to their home in Park Hill, gathered up the family, and headed for the outdoor ceremony at the school.

And we all jumped in my Yukon and we got there and we could see the teachers and the principal across the road all smiling and we rushed across and we didn't have a camera or anything. Like we didn't have our, like we had nothing. And so, the teachers all took pictures of our family on their phones because we had forgotten everything at home. We'll be right back. Megan Vennhoof had been arrested in the early hours of Wednesday morning. The Ontario provincial police charged her with one count of manslaughter. After a brief hearing in a London court room before just as of the piece Christine Diaz, Meghan was released from custody with a type of bail that required her to pay $10,000

to the court if she violated conditions of her release. Those conditions include not being within 200 meters of any place where the McClellan family live, work, or go to school. As of May 2022, the case remains before the criminal court in London. One of the oddities in a case filled with unusual events was that the original prosecutor on the case, Jeremy Carnegie, obtained a publication ban from the Justice of the Peace that forbid Nathaniel from being named or in any way identified in media reports on the case.

It made no sense, and was extremely upsetting to the McClellans, who felt it was an attempt by the Justice system to make their son anonymous. I appeared in court, and the ban was rescinded, with no explanation given as to why it was there in the first place. A more senior prosecutor, Joseph Perfetto, has taken over. As to the eight months for the prosecution to turn over the disclosure that the evidence police gathered to Megan's defense lawyer, Jenny Prasser. I should tell you that I've reached out on several occasions to Ms. Prasser with questions about the case and a request for her or her client to speak on this podcast. So far, I have not heard back.

None of the police documents describing the specific allegations against Megan have been made public, and there's still a lot about the story I'm in the dark on. The basis for the charge against Megan to begin with. The charge laid, manslaughter, it's a kind of homicide, but it's not first or second degree homicide where intent to kill is needed to form what's called the element of the charge. Manslaughter is a lesser homicide, one that is committed without the intention to cause death.

Talking about this generally, someone could be charged with manslaughter if they committed a separate crime and someone dies as a result. The scenario most often used to illustrate this is that of one person striking another, let's say in a bar fight, and the victim dies as a result. The guy doing the punching did not mean to kill, there is no intent, and the punishment would typically be less than if there was intent. Or, manslaughter can be charged if a person is negligent, say in the case of someone who has a legal duty to take an action, they do not take the action, and a person dies as a result. At one point, a detective told the McClellins that Roseanne could be charged if it was found

she took too long to pick up Nathaniel after Megan called the school. Given that Roseanne raced out of her class and rushed her son to hospital, you can see why that charge was never laid. With Megan facing a manslaughter charge now, I think it would be unfair for me to go too far down the path to speculation, though I expect the issue of the 911 call, rather, the lack of a 911 call when Nathaniel collapsed, to be part of the allegation. I hope to get answers to my remaining questions further into the court process. Megan Venhoof is no longer providing daycare.

Two years after Nathaniel died, the province of Ontario issued a compliance order to Megan, requiring Megan to immediately reduce the number of children in her care to no more than five, with no more than two of the children being under the age of two. The note posted on a government website in October 2017, that's two years after Nathaniel died, instructs Megan to provide parents or children she is caring for, with a written disclosure that her daycare program is not licensed by the government of Ontario. I want to spend some time on what I see as the central problem with child death investigations, proving that something happened. Let's use the bar fight example. Two men get into a brawl, one kills the other.

There are bystanders, they are adults, and some of these witnesses, they're going to talk to police. There are also forensics to be harvested from the scene, maybe fingerprints on the weapon, a jagged beer bottle, or a knife. Or maybe it's a married couple with a history of domestic problems, place a bean at the house before. There's a couple of 9-1-1 calls on file, maybe a previous assault. One of them grabs a gun and kills the other in a fit of passion and anger. There's blood spatter on the killer's clothes, gunshot residue too. These are relatively

simple cases to investigate and prosecute, but with little children, it is a completely different story. Typically in a child death investigation, the crime, if there is a crime, happens when there are no other adults around. There are no bystanders or witnesses, and no obvious forensics to tell the tale. These are tough, sometimes, impossible cases to solve. The overlap between something being an accident and something being a homicide can be extremely subtle, and in fact, it may be that when you have all the facts, all the evidence that you just can't tell, you have to pass matters on determined. It could be this, it could be that, but there's not enough evidence to shove it in that direction, and that's much more difficult with young kids. Dr. Jim Carons is retired now, but for many years he was the deputy chief coroner for

the province of Ontario. Carons has seen a lot of death in his days, starting in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s. I qualified for Queen's University of Belfast in 1969, and sadly so the first police officer killed the next day and then the first soldier killed, it's been basically four years as an emergency decision, nothing but bombs and bullets, which I find very exciting from a professional point of view, but at the same time I met my wife DeBee Jennifer who was also at Queen's University of Belfast in my year, we decided we really didn't think Norv Nang was a nice place to bring up her.

So we am a great to Canada in 1972. Jim Carrons has a snow white shock of hair combed rakeishly to one side. He's in his 70s now, but has for decades been a front seat witness to some terrible events. Carrons was a bit of a Quincy, if you get the reference to the television show about the coroner who always went to the scene of a crime. There's a famous picture of Karen standing beside a detective, looking into the open trunk of a car at the body of a man, murdered in a mob hit. Karen's is wearing a trench coat, he looks like he walked out of a rainman Chandler novel.

During his career, Jim Karen'sell with a lot of child death investigations as a coroner. He was also one of the senior government officials in Ontario, who has criticized for lack of oversight over a rogue pathologist who caused a lot of grief by wrongfully accusing parents years before an Nathaniel's case. Given what Roseanne and Kent went through, I asked Keren's how much stock should be put in an individual's demeanor, Rosanne's in this case, immediately after a serious accident or death. They're not thinking right in many ways because of the stress, no, no, so that what otherwise, when you checked in, these were really nice people, but they were just so shocked,

only people like me have coped with this, you know, most people never see a death, you know, so you have to remember these are ordinary citizens. You know, we're not weirdos like me. As an investigating coroner and senior government official, the danger of wrongful accusations came into sharp focus for Karen's in 2005, with revelations that an Ontario pathologist, Dr. Charles Smith, was found to have unfairly accused innocent parents of killing their children. The Smith cases were found to have led

to numerous wrongful convictions. But here's the thing, these problems were explored 10 years before an ethanious case in a public inquiry called the Gauge Commission. While it focused on Smith the rogue pathologist, it also looked at problems with other parts of the system, including a lack of specialized training of police investigators,

and the importance of bringing all parts of the investigative team together to examine a case. Karen's, who did eventually raise alarms about Smith, said he learned a lot from the experience, though it left him bruised. Teamwork, he says, is key. It's like a jigsaw puzzle. I've got one piece of the jigsaw puzzle and somebody else has got another piece.

But by one people, it won't be enough. But when you all get the jigsaw puzzle, then the jigsaw puzzle comes together and that's the way, particularly in literary years, we want multi-discipline. So we want the police, we want the carner there, we want the pathologist there. And then if there were other experts, firearms, or we'd want the police to, we'd want the carner there, we'd want the pathologist there. And then if there were other experts by our arms, but we'd want the folder in the CM room at the CM time, so we could all hear what the other were saying, instead of making assumptions what they were saying.

But if you talk to Rosanne and Kent, the great recommendations the Gauge Commission made to improve child death investigations and believe me, they have read every word, were not followed in Nathaniel's case. Their advice to anyone caught up in the broken system is to fight. Okay, so for me, and I'm sure Kent feels the same way, but especially for me, I have learned

that if this happens to you, that you have to add meat and skeek on behalf of your loved one. I've learned that the system is not designed to protect the interest of a victim. And that families of victims have to be engaged in the process and we have to make sure our voice is heard. And we have to make sure our voice is heard and if things don't seem right, you have to ask questions. You never have to accept what our voice is heard. And if things don't seem right, you have to ask questions. You never have to accept what someone tells you as the truth. You can research procedures.

You can research protocols. You can read other cases. And in doing so, it's also, you know, if you want justice, you, we as families of victims, have to hold those that are conducting investigations accountable. That's not an easy thing to do, especially when you have a busy life with family and work commitments. No, it's a full time. Well, yes, it's, um, it is not an easy thing to do. And, you know, it was really hard for me in the beginning to question people in positions of authority, right? But over time, I learned that I had to.

For me, I learned, don't be afraid to speak to the media. It is imperative that family tell their stories that you use any platform that is available to address your concerns. You, just like Rosanne said, you can't sit there in silence. You have to beat the voice.

And you just have to be that voice. And like Rosanne said, if it's hard to question people that are very high up and very professional, but you have to be that person that asks those hard questions. Having seen the system from the inside, Rosanne has some thoughts on how it could be improved. I hope that there are changes in the way investigations and reporting are handled in child investigations in the whole system.

And ideally, I would like some type of an oversight system where everyone recognizes that their role is of equal importance. And that should, say for example, someone not have what they need to complete their role, you know, there is a way for them to access it. And of course, after living what we've lived, I hope within the justice system that people who conduct investigations at the child deaths

will avoid the pitfall of tunnel vision. Because no one wins, not that you can win in this, but no one, there's no justice for the child. If investigations are conducted in that manner. I've been talking to Roseanne and Kent for five years, watching them advocate for Nathaniel while still maintaining a happy home life for Gabe, Luke, Noah, William, and now Bella, the daughter who arrived three years ago. And they not only kept their marriage together, they made it stronger. Still, they pressed on for their lost son. As an example, back at home after the graduation and dinner, once everyone was in bed, Rosanne worked on new avenues of investigation, in her bid to fix the system for others and to get answers for her family.

It's a daunting task. Revelations piling up on revelations. Just a few days later, a request she had made to Children's Aid workers years ago showed up in the mail. You'll recall that Children's Aid investigated her family, and were present for the interviews with Gabe Liu Kanoa. Ripping open the envelope, she finally saw written proof that she and Kent aced their lie detector tests with flying colors as a document noted,

and that despite the Strathroid Police and OPP's myopic focus, both children's aid and top medical officials had cleared them of involvement of Nathaniel's death in the early days. Just thinking of what this small town couple has accomplished and what they were up against, I asked them, how did you keep going? It's been a hard six years. I get to go to work and it takes a lot of my thought away from what we fight for. And I come home and the Roseanne tells me about your day about how many doors you get slammed on you.

And it's hard. You know, it's hard to see something that you care about to be so turned down or just so mistreated. And yeah, there was times when I just I just didn't know if I could do it anymore, not just for me, but for my family. But then you know, you have little moments that you know you're doing this for the right reasons. And you hold onto those ones and let them stay with you as opposed to the ones that

are discouraging. And so, yes, sometimes I felt it was maybe too hard, but the Rosanne is very persistent and dedicated, and thankfully Those are what made it through for me. I never would stop. I would never stop. Never, never until I got justice for my son. I want to give a special thanks to the Maclellan family. Rosanne, Kent, Gabe, Luke, Noah, William, and Bella. It was not easy opening up their lives to a complete stranger, but they answered all questions no matter how tough, and Rosanne in particular became a valuable resource sharing every scrap of documentary or audio material on her quest for answers in Nathaniel's case. Thank you for listening.

I want you to know I'll be keeping a close eye on this case, and when there's more to report as the court case develops, listen for updates in this space, and in the Toronto Star, and at thestar.com. Death in a Small Town was researched, written, and narrated by me, Kevin Donovan, and produced by Radyo Mooder, JP Fozzo, and Sean Pattenden. Additional production was done by Andrea 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. death in a small town.