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Restrictions apply. See the website for full terms and conditions. Hello and welcome to My Favorite Murder.
00:01:56
That's Georgia Hardstart. That's Karen Kilgariff. And we're doing it again. We're podcasting again.
00:02:01
Yeah. Can you believe it? I see you right here. You were in your dream last night.
00:02:06
Me? Yeah. Oh, you had an extra dog. Is there an extra dog in your life? No. Maybe you're seeing the future.
00:02:14
I think I am. What color, size, name? Sweet little medium sized black dog. I can't remember the name, but you were like watching it for now, like fostering.
00:02:24
So I think you should do it. Here's the thing. I don't like fostering. Of course.
00:02:29
Because how do you have a dog in your house that you're treating like your own dog and then you're just like, okay, bye.
00:02:34
Good luck. I know. But it's for the greater good. Not my greater good. And my greater good is the only one I care about.
00:02:43
Yeah, we know. Yeah. Yeah, it's been a real burden. And I didn't get to tell you the story of when we were heading home from Chicago.
00:02:53
And for the first, well, for almost the whole flight, so it was a four-hour flight.
00:02:59
So for three and a half hours, I was convinced I was sitting next to Steve-O. And it was so exciting.
00:03:06
But you couldn't actually look, so you just convinced yourself? Well, so when I walked on, it was a dude in the aisle seat with his hat pulled all the way down, real flat build skater boy hat.
00:03:19
And he was it was like that. So I was like, OK, famous person, whatever. So I just slide past him and sit down.
00:03:26
And then, of course, we have to wait and wait because there's all these crazy delays for weather.
00:03:30
Yeah. And so by the time we've taken off and I'm waiting for that seatbelt sign to go off, I have to pee so bad.
00:03:37
Oh, my God. And so I was just like, he was like turned away and was like all crunched in.
00:03:42
So I was like, I absolutely have to give this signal. I'm not trying to talk to you or make small talk.
00:03:49
Literally, I'm not going to wait for that sign to go off. I'm going to get up and go.
00:03:52
Get the fuck out of my way. I've got to piss. Oh, I've been there. I've done it.
00:03:55
And I planned accordingly. I didn't choose to wait. Yes. Like I was forced to wait.
00:04:01
Thank God. And I'm sorry to say, but it just looked like a crazy old lady came wandering up the aisle.
00:04:07
and she had kind of like long gray hair and I was like oh my god she's gonna do it first yes and
00:04:12
she did good for her she did it first she broke the seal for it she broke the seal for all the
00:04:18
people had to pee so then she walks back and the second she passed I think our seats our aisle was
00:04:24
the last one yeah the second she passed I just turned gave full energy of like move it yeah and
00:04:29
then he kind of looked but I wasn't trying to look in his face because I wanted to make sure he knew
00:04:34
I am not trying to talk to you. And I just jumped up and slid past him and went to the bathroom.
00:04:38
And as I went in, I just looked at the flight attendant and I was like, it's an emergency and went in.
00:04:45
And as I walk in and lock the door, they were like, attention all passengers, stay in your seat.
00:04:50
It's just for you. It's totally just for you. They announced shame to me. So then at the very end of the flight, he stood up, opened up the overhead, looked at me and said, do you have anything up here?
00:04:59
You want me to get down? And I was like, no, because you're not Stevo. So you can truly go to hell forever.
00:05:04
That whole time. It was so exciting. It's weird. I think we're all going to agree that it's weird that you got so excited about Stevo.
00:05:12
Like, I wouldn't have pictured that as like a Karen gets excited about celeb. Really?
00:05:16
Yeah. Well, maybe you weren't listening all the times I told you, but a huge thing.
00:05:23
What? No, just kidding. But I used to watch Wild Boys. Anyways, Wild Boys came on on my TV when I lived in a studio apartment.
00:05:32
It was broken. Literally got like three channels. Somehow I was able to watch that show.
00:05:37
I don't even know what it is. It was Steve-O and Chris Pontius, I believe is how you pronounce his last name.
00:05:43
And they would go all around the world and like dress as bananas and go sit near Silverback Gorillas.
00:05:48
Oh my God. Like pranks around the world. Pranks to themselves too almost. Oh yeah Like lots of bungee jumping off of bridges that like yeah they both having nervous breakdowns I love it That kind of stuff show Yes that amazing And I didn know that Congratulations It is kind of funny when you sit I do that all the time on planes thinking I recognize people were flying out of LAX
00:06:11
Yeah, of course. Like look around a little bit. But also when people get Heidi like that, you're like, why would you be doing this?
00:06:17
Does he have a zit? He probably had a big zit. That's why I'd hide. He looked like a regular guy when he stood up.
00:06:23
Not even a hot skater? Come on. I mean. Let's get skater. They're like, Karen, that was George Clooney.
00:06:29
Oh, I thought it was Steve-O. I don't give a shit. I love the idea of you like, get out of my way, George Clooney.
00:06:35
Steve-O's right there. I got to talk to him. Get a photo. Here's the thing. I feel like I know Steve-O better than I know George Clooney.
00:06:41
Of course. So it is that thing of like, you feel like it's the boy from high school that got famous.
00:06:45
Yeah. Not just a celebrity. Not the famous guy. Right. That makes sense. Yeah. Also, I tricked my dad into watching the most recent.
00:06:51
Jackass. Thank you. is a jackass four. Fuck if I know. The most recent, and I thought he would make me turn it off
00:06:57
because of all the filth. Yeah. And we watched it for so long before. Oh my God.
00:07:01
They literally showed men's genitals and he went, all right, turn this off. That's his heart out
00:07:07
is like four genital shots. He's like, I can't. This I would have normally been so mad about.
00:07:14
Yeah. But I think they won him over too. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Genital shots with your dad.
00:07:21
No. I couldn't believe it. I was just like, all of a sudden it's smash cut to like, here's how we're going to up this prank.
00:07:26
And then I was just like, what are we watching? I've turned movies off with my dad because of that.
00:07:32
Or we both go, oh, no. And like both of us turn away from the TV. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
00:07:37
No, thanks. No, thanks, dad. No, thanks. How was your flight home? It was uneventful.
00:07:43
And I was so happy to be home. That Friday afternoon home thing where you're just like, I just want to sleep for the entire weekend.
00:07:50
And I did. Yeah. It was great. And you get to your justified. Yeah. Yeah. Should we do highlights for our network?
00:07:56
Let's do it. Okay, you guys, we have a podcast network. It's called Exactly Right Media.
00:07:59
Please follow it everywhere if you want and can and should. If you would, please.
00:08:03
Yeah. And here are some highlights. This week on our weird news show, Bananas, comedian Abby Govindan joins Kurt and Scotty,
00:08:11
and they cover important news of the world, like a reckless driver who was fined for not
00:08:15
stopping at a crosswalk for his own children. and of course Walgreens shocking revelation
00:08:21
that locking up every item in their stores is bad for business. Who knew? Shocking, right?
00:08:26
Shocking. And then on That's Messed Up, Kara and Lisa cover the SVU episode Exile,
00:08:31
season 20, episode six, that covers the strange disappearance of Hannah Up and chat with actress Amy Spring-Fortier
00:08:37
who plays two different characters on the same episode. Wow, she's got range. Yes.
00:08:43
And then over on our brand new true crime podcast, The Knife, They've got a new episode out today.
00:08:48
Hannah and Pasha are sharing Tony Nova's story. Tony was newly married and just a month into her pregnancy when her husband became physically abusive.
00:08:57
Today, she's bravely telling her story in hopes of helping others find safety in similar situations.
00:09:03
The knife is doing the work. They're doing it. And Buried Bones has a big week. First, the new episode drops on Wednesday as Kate and Paul head to Delaware in 1892 to investigate the brutal murder of a 17-year-old woman.
00:09:15
Then on Friday, 4 p.m. Pacific, join Kate and Paul for the premiere of their very first video episode. It's at YouTube.com slash Exactly Right Media. They'll be in the comments live answering listener questions. You get to see their beautiful faces. Awesome stuff. Please go and check that out.
00:09:32
Yes. Kate and Paul on video. Can't miss. What more do you want? And finally, we have a personal question for you, listener. Have you checked out our merch lately? There's something for everyone, but especially there's stuff now for our day one listeners. Look, very small, but here it is. The day one listener pin. It's a little blue ribbon pin.
00:09:52
I love it. Yes. You've been telling everyone you've been here since the beginning. So now you can brag about it in pin form.
00:09:59
Yeah, and also we're not going to check your work. If you are a Day 37 listener or a Day 200 listener, you can still wear this beautiful pin.
00:10:06
I feel like we are. We've had to listen to this shit the whole time. We'll wear it.
00:10:14
You're locked into a lot of things you can't change. Weather, traffic. Hey, stay in your lane.
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For full offer details, visit boostmobile.com. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile.
00:10:46
I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying.
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It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today.
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I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 for three-month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required.
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Default terms at mintmobile.com. Hey there, it's Ryan Seacrest for Safeway. For you, save days are here now through June 23rd.
00:11:20
Find hot deals throughout the store and earn four times a point. Look for in-store tags to earn on eligible items from Triscuit, Quaker, Reese's, and Dots pretzels.
00:11:29
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Enjoy savings on top of savings when you shop in-store or online for easy pickup or delivery.
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Restrictions apply. See the website for full terms and conditions. All right, you're first.
00:11:47
Let's do the thing that is the thing we're supposed to do. Let's do it. Let's do the thing they've been fast forwarding to for the past two minutes.
00:11:55
All right This is a story that got suggested to me and I said I positive I covered that before And then Maren looked it all up and was like you talked about it before You have not covered it And the reason I thought I covered it is because I listened to and then recommended and talked about a lot a podcast by the CBC called The Village
00:12:17
It's a limited series podcast that is such an incredible deep dive. Journalist Justin Ling did it, and it is such a good podcast.
00:12:27
It's heavily cited in this. So that's why it was so familiar to me. But now I'm going to tell it to you myself.
00:12:34
So it starts in January of 2018 in Toronto, Canada, in and around the city's LGBTQ plus district.
00:12:42
You know, that area is known as the Church and Wellesley neighborhood, also known as Toronto's gay village.
00:12:49
Over the past 10 years, eight men with connections to the queer community have simply vanished from the city.
00:12:54
And for all those years, their loved ones have been waiting for answers. Now, in the morning of January 18th, 2018, just before 1030 a.m., a team of officers storms a Toronto apartment and arrests the homeowner.
00:13:08
He's been the target of their investigation in these disappearances for weeks, and he's been under 24-hour surveillance.
00:13:15
Soon the investigators' suspicions about this man will be confirmed. He is, in fact, a serial killer who has been hiding in plain sight all this time.
00:13:24
Today I'm going to tell you the story of Toronto's gay village murders. Wow. Yeah, we've never covered this.
00:13:30
Right. I think a lot of it was playing out over the past few years, and we've been probably waiting to see the results of it, too.
00:13:37
before we covered it. Right. The trial, I think, is 2019 and goes into 2020. It's recent in terms of our COVID brains of like,
00:13:46
yes, we wouldn't have talked about it then. And then I think listening to this podcast, The Village,
00:13:52
it's just like, oh, I know this story. Like then it becomes like, well, I know the story the way I would if I had told it.
00:13:57
Right, right. And that's when the lies begin. The rest of our sources are in our show notes if you want to go read those.
00:14:04
So I'm going to start in the 1970s before the gay village exists. Back then, Toronto's queer scene was centered around what they called gay strip, which is a cluster of dive bars on the same street.
00:14:17
This is just after Canada decriminalizes sex between consenting adults of the same sex.
00:14:23
That happened in 1969. Now the gay strip is the hub for the city's queer community.
00:14:29
Unsurprisingly, local bigots come out in full force against the gay strip and its patrons.
00:14:35
They hurl slurs, eggs and rocks at them. And sometimes it escalates into physical beatings.
00:14:41
But the police do not intervene. In fact, Toronto police refuse to meet with members of the queer community to discuss safety.
00:14:49
As York University historian Dr. Tom Hooper tells CBC's The Fifth Estate, quote,
00:14:55
when a gay person is a victim of a crime, they expect the police to pay attention.
00:14:58
That was not happening in the 1970s. But on the flip side, when it came to lesser crimes, like, for example, jaywalking, the police were hypersensitive to the gay community.
00:15:08
So the police paid close attention to enforcing the law, but not to protecting the community from threats.
00:15:14
End quote. So then between 1975 and 1978, a span of just three years, the bodies of 14 men are found strangled, stabbed to death, or both.
00:15:24
And only about half of those cases are solved. Jesus. How long is that? Between when?
00:15:30
Three years. So 75 to 78. OK. It's clearly a pressing matter of public safety, but the police seem to have very little interest in solving those remaining homicide cases.
00:15:41
And on top of that lack of urgency, there's also an issue with finding witnesses who can help push the investigations forward.
00:15:48
Because, of course, it's a time when anti-gay discrimination is rampant. So many people don't feel like they can safely speak up because that would mean outing themselves.
00:15:56
not to mention coming forward would require working with a police force that has been
00:16:02
at best indifferent and at worst overtly hostile towards the gay community yeah you'd like get on
00:16:07
their radar then right and that's a dangerous place to be yeah it's like just a problem of any
00:16:12
marginalized group of people right where it's like the all the people that the police work
00:16:17
fine for which is basically rich white people go well then go tell the police yeah be why didn't
00:16:23
speak up. Right. Why didn't you? Yeah. Yes. So then in 1981, tensions between Toronto's queer
00:16:30
community and the police hit an all time high during what are now the infamous bathhouse raids,
00:16:35
when more than 150 police officers sweep four of the city's bathhouses, sometimes using crowbars to
00:16:42
violently open private rooms and lockers and arrest employees and nearly 300 patrons who they
00:16:49
then charged with gross indecency or minor drug offenses. So the backlash to the bathhouse raids
00:16:56
is swift. Over 3,000 people take to the streets protesting police brutality and discrimination.
00:17:02
And those protests are sometimes talked about like the Canadian counterpart to Stonewall in America,
00:17:09
in New York City. The fallout in Toronto is that many people in their queer community remain deeply
00:17:17
skeptical of law enforcement. So now we're going to jump ahead 30 years. It's 2010. And nobody has
00:17:24
heard from 40-year-old Skanda Navaratnam for days. Skanda has first moved to Canada in the 90s as a
00:17:31
refugee from Sri Lanka. His loved ones describe him as a charismatic, fun, and excellent friend
00:17:37
who, wherever he goes, is always making more friends. People are drawn to his infectious
00:17:42
his personality. But him not being heard from for days is extremely out of character. So people are
00:17:48
worried. Lately, Skanda has been very excited about his new husky puppy who he brings everywhere.
00:17:54
So when his friends find the puppy at home in Skanda apartment with no food or water they know something is terribly wrong So that when Skanda reported missing
00:18:05
That same year, a man in his early 40s named Bazir Fazi is also reported missing.
00:18:12
He's a native of Afghanistan. He's a beloved father who works hard for his family.
00:18:17
And Bazir comes from a culturally conservative background. He was not out to his family.
00:18:23
Shortly before vanishing, he called his wife at the end of his workday, told her he had plans with coworkers, but then he actually drove to a bar in the village called the Black Eagle.
00:18:32
So when Basir's car is found abandoned on a residential street about 10 minutes away from the village a few days later, the police and his family are baffled.
00:18:43
All of this is 45 minutes away from Basir's home, so they don't know why it would be there.
00:18:47
two years later in 2012 the same story plays out again when 58 year old majid kayan who goes by the
00:18:55
name hamid disappears hamid is also from afghanistan and he hasn't come out to his family
00:19:02
either he's living in an apartment near church and wellesley and he has many dear friends in the area
00:19:07
they will all later comment on his deep love for bollywood films and their music which is just like
00:19:14
I don't know why that got me when I was reading this research of like the most lively, enlivening, like positive fun at the end of a Bollywood movie when they do the dance number and everyone does it.
00:19:26
It's like that idea that this was his favorite thing is like you can kind of imagine that type of personality.
00:19:32
So it doesn't take long for members of Toronto's queer community to connect the dots here.
00:19:37
These three missing person cases all involve men who fall in the same general age range, have emigrated to Canada from socially conservative Asian nations and have spent time in the gay village.
00:19:49
An advocate and member of Toronto's queer community, Mita Hans, tells journalist Justin Ling, quote,
00:19:56
Everybody who saw the missing posters brought up the words serial killer. This is not chance. This is not a lover's quarrel gone awry. This is a pattern. This is a definitive pattern.
00:20:08
Yeah. And Mita Hans is a big part of the village podcast. She's in it the whole time. She's amazing. So, of course, the initial police response to these three disappearances is, in a word, baffling. Not all bad. For example, a close friend of Hamid's named Kyle Andrews goes to the police and he's relieved to discover the detective that is handling the case seems both nonjudgmental and interested in the information he's giving.
00:20:37
So Kyle shares as much as he possibly can. He mentions that Hamid has been dating a guy named Bruce, but he doesn't know the man all that well.
00:20:47
Kyle is surprised when the detective follows up about Bruce. Then Kyle gets the sense the police are, for whatever reason, interested in knowing more about him specifically.
00:20:57
But here's where the baffling part comes in. Kyle eventually learns that Bruce, whose full name is Bruce MacArthur, actually has connections to both Skanda and Basir, which means he knows all three of the missing men.
00:21:11
The police learn this when they search all of the missing men's dating profiles and find Bruce's dating profile in connection with theirs.
00:21:19
And Bruce's profile is pretty unremarkable. He's a landscaper in his early 60s. he looks so much like Santa Claus that he actually works as Santa Claus at a local mall
00:21:31
during the holiday season. Meanwhile, he writes on his own profile, quote, I can be a bit shy until I get to know you, but am a romantic at heart. Police interview this Bruce
00:21:43
MacArthur as part of the investigation, but for whatever reason, they treat him more like a witness
00:21:48
than a suspect. In general, police are rejecting the idea that a serial killer could be behind
00:21:54
these disappearances. In fact, they release a statement saying that they've, quote, not found
00:21:59
any evidence to say that any of the missing men mentioned above knew each other. The only
00:22:05
information between all three that is similar is that they all like to attend similar bars,
00:22:10
especially the Black Eagle. So the police investigation loses momentum. The case is
00:22:16
stall. Detectives seem to accept the explanation that Hamid, Basir, and Skanda all decided to leave
00:22:22
Toronto on their own. Of course, that explanation doesn't make sense to the people who know these
00:22:27
men, including their friends in the queer community who've experienced the police's
00:22:31
disinterest, discrimination, and hostility. Mita Hans says, quote, initially, I think the tones were
00:22:38
very civil, asking for help, asking for acknowledgement, asking for a spotlight to be
00:22:42
shown on this, because obviously there's something going on. But when that didn't happen, I think the
00:22:47
tone became more urgent, more animated, and finally the tone became very angry. Why are you not
00:22:53
listening? If we see this is happening, if everybody we know sees this is happening, how can you not
00:22:59
see this? End quote. So now it's 2015. Skanda and Basir have been missing for five years and Hamid
00:23:07
has been missing for three. And then in August of 2015, 50-year-old Sarush Mahmoudi disappears.
00:23:15
He's come to Canada from Iran, and he's reported missing by his wife, who's worried sick.
00:23:20
The two have a loving relationship, and she speaks publicly about his beautiful smile and his good heart.
00:23:26
Like Basir, Hamid, and Skanda, Saroosh comes from a socially conservative culture.
00:23:32
His family members, including his wife, don't know that he spends time in the church in Wellesley neighborhood.
00:23:38
And because of that, investigators don't initially connect him with these other missing men.
00:23:43
And then 37-year-old Karishna Kumar Kanagaratnam disappears around the same time. He is also not connected to the other missing person cases because he has no clear ties to Toronto's gay village and police have investigated.
00:24:00
He still has none to this day. Karishna has been in Canada since 2010, arriving as a refugee from Sri Lanka after a dangerous 100-day journey on a boat from his war-torn native country.
00:24:14
But because his refugee claim is denied when he gets to Canada, when he falls out of contact, his family thinks he's laying low to avoid being deported.
00:24:24
And he ends up having to live on the street like he's really in a bad position when his refugee claim is denied.
00:24:31
Then in 2016, a 47-year-old man named Dean Lissowick disappears. He's never reported missing to the police.
00:24:40
Dean is white. He was born in Canada. He's a familiar face in the church in Wellesley neighborhood.
00:24:46
Justin Ling reports that, quote, everyone remembers him as an incredibly nice guy who had fallen on hard times.
00:24:51
times. Dean is often seen panhandling in the area, and sometimes he engages in sex work.
00:24:58
He's last been seen in a nearby homeless shelter. Then in 2017, 44-year-old Salim Essen goes missing.
00:25:06
Salim has moved to Canada from Turkey in 2013. Things haven't always been easy for him. He's
00:25:12
previously struggled with addiction, but his friends say that life for him lately had been
00:25:17
good and that he'd been turning things around. So when friends suddenly stop hearing from Salim,
00:25:23
he is reported missing to police. And he's last seen at his own home near the gay village. His
00:25:30
brothers will later release a statement about him saying, quote, he was very friendly, kind-hearted,
00:25:35
open, independent-minded, and curious, passionate about learning new things, gardening, exploring
00:25:41
new places, and meeting new people. His tender and kind humanity came before everything else.
00:25:47
So then in July of the same year, after the end of all the pride celebrations, a 49-year-old man named Andrew Kinsman vanishes.
00:25:56
Andrew, who's like Dean, white and born in Canada, is very active in Toronto's queer community.
00:26:02
He's described by loved ones as, quote, an extraordinary, quirky and caring individual.
00:26:07
So unlike the last three disappearances, Andrew and Salim's cases are soon linked to the 2010 and 2012 disappearances in the gay village.
00:26:16
And this reignites the queer community's suspicion that there is a serial killer targeting the area.
00:26:22
And finally, the police start listening. They launch a task force known as Project Prism aimed at solving these active cases.
00:26:31
But by this point, Toronto's queer community has been trying to ring the alarm bell for so long about these missing men.
00:26:38
They have real reason to worry that the police are going to let these cases go cold again.
00:26:43
As prominent Church and Wellesley community member and advocate Nikki Ward puts it, quote,
00:26:48
the anger was palpable, but then summer turns to fall, turns to winter, the media moves on,
00:26:54
some missing posters stay up and you still see their faces around the city. But then, fortunately, there's a break in the case.
00:27:08
As investigators are looking into Andrew Kinsman's case, they find a handwritten name in Andrew's calendar, and that name is Bruce.
00:27:17
That's how they learned that Andrew also knew Bruce MacArthur, the 66-year-old Santa Claus landscaper who was treated like a witness back in 2012.
00:27:26
So finally, five years after they first connect him to the three other missing men, investigators finally take a look at Bruce MacArthur.
00:27:35
They discreetly put him under 24-hour surveillance. And when they do, detectives follow him to a Toronto property belonging to one of his landscaping clients.
00:27:45
And that property is not far from where Bazir's car was abandoned back in 2012. I just realized how sinister landscaping is in this.
00:27:54
Yes. Oh, my God. Really bad. Yeah. Okay. So now it's September of 2017. Bruce MacArthur is under surveillance and investigators watch as he sells the van he owns to an auto parts shop.
00:28:07
They go in basically right after, seize the vehicle without Bruce knowing. And when the forensic team gets in there, they find traces of blood inside.
00:28:16
And when the DNA testing comes back, it confirms that the blood belongs to both Celine Essam and Andrew Kinsman.
00:28:24
Oh, my God. So now investigators are able to get a warrant to search Bruce's house, and they do, secretly, without him knowing.
00:28:32
And when they do that, they find a hard drive, and when they open the hard drive, there's a bunch of different folders.
00:28:39
And eight of those folders are titled with the names of the missing men. Holy shit.
00:28:45
And inside those folders are photos of the missing men, some of them clearly taken after they had been murdered.
00:28:52
Can you imagine being the forensic? investigator. Oh, but seeing those names and then being like, I know what's going to happen when I
00:28:58
open these. And there's a ninth folder of a name of a person they don't recognize. Holy shit. No
00:29:06
one's been reported missing. They cross check it. And now they realize there's a victim out there.
00:29:12
So in January 2018, the police raid Bruce MacArthur's apartment just in the nick of time.
00:29:20
Inside the apartment, they find a man tied to Bruce's bed. Luckily, he is physically unharmed at that point.
00:29:28
The police have probably just saved his life because when they interview him, they learn this is the man whose name is the title of that ninth folder.
00:29:36
Oh, my God. It's like a fucking movie. It's a horrible movie. And so police arrest Bruce MacArthur for the murders of Salim Essam and Andrew Kinsman.
00:29:46
Holy shit. So Bruce MacArthur just to get a little background on him for context he born in a small farming village in 1951 He comes from a quote good family His high school yearbook notes that his ambition is to quote be successful OK go for it After graduating Bruce gets married has two children with his wife and becomes very involved in his church
00:30:11
In the 70s, he gets a job at a department store in downtown Toronto. And that department store is just steps away from what then was known as the gay strip.
00:30:21
And that's exactly around the same time those unsolved murders start taking place.
00:30:28
Eventually, Bruce gets a different job, and that job is as a traveling salesman.
00:30:32
Oh, no. Later, he starts doing landscaping work. And in doing landscaping work, he builds up an impressive clientele.
00:30:41
He seems to have a charmed life. He's a family man. He donates to charity. He stays active in his church, puts on a Santa suit at the local mall at Christmastime.
00:30:50
people like him. So eventually Bruce divorces his wife and begins to live as an openly gay man.
00:30:57
But then a darker picture begins to surface. Bruce's son will later claim that he was abusive.
00:31:04
Men who encounter Bruce in Toronto's gay community describe him as being very controlling and
00:31:09
aggressive. And then in 2001, Bruce is arrested after beating a man he's presumably about to have
00:31:15
sex with with a metal pipe until he is unconscious. Bruce turns himself in the next day and because
00:31:23
of that is able to avoid jail time. But he's banned from the gay village for the length of
00:31:28
his probation and then he has to take anger management classes. Right. Once probation ends,
00:31:35
Bruce starts hanging out in the area again and even worse, I would say, becomes active on gay
00:31:41
dating sites. Yikes. So after Bruce MacArthur's arrest in 2018, police searched for
00:31:47
and find the dismembered remains of the eight missing men. Their bodies have been hidden
00:31:53
on the various Toronto properties that Bruce is a landscaper for. Can you imagine being one of those
00:31:59
people who live at the property? So horrifying. You're just like, you're reading the newspaper in the morning and then like
00:32:05
you look at your backyard and you're just like, oh fuck. For years and years, missing people
00:32:11
have been hidden on. A lot of them were the body parts were put in these really large stone planters.
00:32:18
Oh my God. Oh my God. Yeah. It's like, because also like the smell would be, you could explain away the smell really easily,
00:32:26
manure or whatever, like, you know, it's going to smell for a few days. Right. But that is just so creepy.
00:32:34
Yeah. So creepy. So creepy. So the case against Bruce MacArthur is overwhelming.
00:32:39
Investigators collect more than 18,000 pieces of evidence, including clippings of the victim's hair that Bruce was keeping, presumably as trophies.
00:32:50
He ultimately pleads guilty to eight counts of first degree murder. Then in February of 2019, he is sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years, which is the way they do it in Canada.
00:33:02
He will almost certainly spend the rest of his life behind bars. but even with this sentencing there are many people who worry this story is not over because
00:33:11
the idea that bruce mccarthur started killing when he was in his 60s is hard to believe right
00:33:17
well he didn't write the set 1970s ones are from him we don't know that okay it's unproven oh it's
00:33:22
just circumstantial okay that he was basically around the corner when all that started okay but
00:33:29
that's just it is if they keep on going like he was a traveling salesman that's horrifying
00:33:35
And so is there somebody that's actually going to sit down now that he's in jail? Will someone sit down and actually map out where he was and if there were missing people? And totally maybe some podcaster of the future. That reminds me of true crime bullshit. Oh, my God. Where he's just like mapping the Israel Keyes disappearances or pain. Lindsay get on that. Right. So far, there's no confirmed links.
00:33:58
The composite sketches of the potential suspect from the 70s, you know, you could say doesn't look like him, but he looks like Santa Claus now.
00:34:08
So what did he look like in the 70s? I actually have a picture of that composite sketch.
00:34:12
One of the composite sketches itself is very scary. You also don't know if the composite sketch is of the actual perpetrator or just someone someone saw at the same time in the same place.
00:34:24
Right. It doesn't like you didn't see him getting murdered by this perpetrator. Right.
00:34:29
You saw this random person around there at the same time. So it doesn't necessarily mean that's what the killer looked like.
00:34:35
Yes. You know, totally. Like Unabomber. It's the same thing. Like that creepy sketch with the hoodie and the glasses.
00:34:40
That's not him. That's someone else completely. That's the bass player of a yacht rock band.
00:34:46
Clearly. So police have never shared or found any physical evidence connecting him to those cases.
00:34:53
But there's another reason why for many people the case doesn't feel fully resolved. And that's because of how the police handled it for so long. The lives of the victims matter just as much as any other person in any other neighborhood in Toronto.
00:35:06
And again, those victims' names are Skanda Navaratnam, Basir Fazi, Majid Kayan, Surush Mahmoodi, Karishna Kumar Kanagaratnam, Dean Lizawik, Salim Essen, and Andrew Kinsman.
00:35:25
And we'll finish the story with another quote from activist Nikki Ward, who said, quote, Bruce MacArthur picked people he thought he could get away with killing because they were immigrants, people of color, maybe closeted, maybe homeless.
00:35:39
That's the common thread tying these men together. And to learn that he was someone walking among us, a wolf in sheep's clothing, was sadly not surprising.
00:35:48
I take exception to the phrase he was one of our own because he most definitely was not.
00:35:55
And that the story of Toronto gay village murders Wow I so glad you covered that I could have sworn I did Did you do it when we were in Toronto
00:36:05
I don't think so. Great job. Thank you. That was amazing. I do think that we should be able to do stories that we did live that never got aired on the podcast now.
00:36:15
You know what I mean? I know, but I think there's only like three. That we didn't ever air?
00:36:19
Yeah. Remember back in the days, like pre-COVID days when we get down to it, We'd be like, no, that one's really bad.
00:36:25
This audio is bad. Yeah. We'd be like, we don't care. We don't. We just want to put something up.
00:36:29
Steven, post the. How's the audio from fucking. How is the Des Moines audio? Not great.
00:36:34
Put it up. Put it up. We don't care. I can't do it this week. This week, my brain is fucking broken.
00:36:39
We're like getting into covid. Put up a fucking live episode and then we just have a week off and it would just be lovely and beautiful.
00:36:46
It was just like in that second apartment, things got real fucking intense. In the loft.
00:36:53
In the loft. It was like, for me, it felt like it was all going up like this. Yeah.
00:36:57
But nothing else was coming back down. Yeah. It was like me working multiple jobs and trying to do it.
00:37:03
It was all very intense. Yeah. Things were not good in that period. We'd just be like, Stephen, fix it.
00:37:10
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00:38:48
We're going to go in a totally different direction as we want to do. Good, good, good.
00:38:52
I think you're going to like this one. Okay. I'm going to tell you about what some people called a grifter, but some people called an international adventurer.
00:39:01
Okay. That's a good spin on it. From the 1950s, who caused an uproar in Atlanta society and sent shockwaves throughout the pedigree cocker spaniel community.
00:39:11
Your favorite. I should have heard about this already. Well, okay. This is the story of someone we're going to call for now, Janet.
00:39:20
Janet! The main sources for the story are a book called Confident Women, Swindlers, Grifters, and Shapeshifters of the Feminine Persuasion.
00:39:28
Yes. Read that by Tori Telfer. And Reporting from the Tulsa World, your favorite paper.
00:39:33
It's a good one. The rest of the sources can be found in the show notes. I'm definitely reading that book for sure.
00:39:38
Yeah, you should. All right. So here we are. It's 1954. We're in Decatur, Georgia.
00:39:42
It's an Atlanta suburb that borders the city limits. So it's kind of small townie still.
00:39:47
And then a glamorous, somewhat mysterious, middle-aged woman has just moved into town with her 15-year-old niece.
00:39:54
The woman introduces herself to the neighbors as Janet Gray and says that the teen is Candace Victoria Lane, her niece, who goes by Candy.
00:40:04
So her name is Candy Lane. Which is already like... Yeah. Okay. Is her middle name Kane?
00:40:10
Because what are we doing? Janet says she's from Washington, D.C., and the circumstances that have brought her to Atlanta are absolutely tragic.
00:40:18
She's just lost her husband, but the details are kind of vague. Janet lost a child at birth, she said, and then two weeks after her husband's sudden death, her last remaining child was hit by a school bus and killed.
00:40:30
That's her horror story. Don't get upset. It's not true. Great. It doesn't feel very true.
00:40:36
It's not. But she comes with this sob story of why she's here and, hey, why I have a lot of fucking money, too.
00:40:44
Oh. So Janet and Candy settle right into the new neighborhood. Well, actually, Janet settles in.
00:40:49
Candy starts at a local prestigious high school, but she has trouble making friends and she's frequently out of school due to poor health.
00:40:57
She's just not getting into the high school spirit and not being accepted, Candy Lane.
00:41:01
Yeah. Also, everyone thinks it's weird that Candy, who is 15 years old, looks way older than that. She's called, quote, built like Marilyn Monroe. Oh, like the word buxom is thrown around a lot. So they're like, this isn't a 15 year old girl. OK. Right. Something's fishy. But it's the 1950s. People believe what you tell them.
00:41:20
They just are reading the one newspaper. Right. And yeah. Yeah. It's a simpler time.
00:41:26
You haven't heard about all the crazy people in the world the way we get to these days.
00:41:31
Yes, exactly. And that's why you listen to this podcast. So meanwhile, Janet, she appears to be thriving.
00:41:38
She buys a big house in an upscale neighborhood, hires contractors to put in a big pool in the backyard, as well as a big kennel.
00:41:46
Because it turns out that one of Janet's big passions like yours is Cocker Spaniels.
00:41:51
Cocker Spaniels. Always. That's right. Yep. Have you ever met one? I never met a Cocker Spaniel I don think Are they the ones that are kind of brown and long ears floppy ears Yeah like blondish with like curly or like wavy kind of Yeah I feel like that was a standard dog right around here
00:42:05
I was just holding it like a show dog. Yep. This is tail up, head up. Yeah. I think I've met a couple, but my Aunt Jean next door, they had Springer Spaniels.
00:42:16
Oh, okay. Nellie was their dog. And I think she was she may have been a breed dog in some way because that's what like farm people do that sometimes.
00:42:25
Or they're like, yeah, when they have puppies, we sell them. Right. Totally. Yeah. I don't know the personality.
00:42:30
I'm assuming that they're I don't know why hottie. That's just like my take on looking at them.
00:42:34
But Cocker Spaniels. Yeah. Who knows? Maybe it's because they're show dogs. And I'm just like they're like princess.
00:42:39
Yeah. Princessy. Yeah. Yeah. That feels right. And so in a very short time while she's living in Decatur, she acquires between 30 and 50 of them.
00:42:49
Some of which have won big prizes at dog shows. Okay. So these are like, she's like a show dog lady.
00:42:54
Collector. Collector. 30 to 50 dogs. No thank you. And her neighbors hated her and you know it.
00:43:01
Just up with the dawn. One starts barking. Oh my God. Yeah. Like, no, you can't do that.
00:43:08
Sorry, in just a regular neighborhood? I think it was a well-to-do neighborhood where there's probably lots of like land.
00:43:14
I would hope so. Yeah. So they like built a pool in the backyard. But it wasn't like, you know, country.
00:43:18
side. It was like a neighborhood, a well-to-do neighborhood. 30 dogs. 30 to 50 dogs. 50 dogs. Put 50 dogs in this room right now.
00:43:26
No, you can't. I'll start screaming. Please don't. It's too many. I mean, I love dogs, but like 10 tops. 30 to 50 of anything.
00:43:34
No, it's true. Like imagine, like 30 to 50 Snickers bars. I'd be like, this is crazy, guys. I do cats. I would do cats. I would do cats. You're getting
00:43:42
there. I'd take them. They're so much more like manageable and they don't bark. You're like, can I get a slightly smaller home for these cats?
00:43:50
I really want to feel all of them. Poor Vince. So one of her dogs is named Capital Gain
00:43:55
and it actually wins its division at a dog show in South Carolina in 1956. And she also acquires
00:44:01
a famous Cocker Spaniel named Rise and Shine. I guess they're like racehorses where they have
00:44:06
weird ass names. Yeah. Yeah. Rise and Shine. Who won the Westminster Dog Show. Holy shit. It was
00:44:11
still a thing back then. Yeah. It still is a thing in our family. Yeah. You put it on immediately.
00:44:16
Isn't it like Thanksgiving Day? I feel like there's a holiday we watch it. You're thinking of the puppy bowl?
00:44:22
You're thinking of the Super Bowl. It's on Thanksgiving, right? Yep. Every year.
00:44:28
So Janet quickly ingratiates herself into Atlanta society. She is very glamorous.
00:44:32
She's like older lady, but that just means, you know, like. Bigger jewelry? No, just like the age thing is like an old lady is in her 50s then.
00:44:41
You know what I mean? Like it's not, but she acts like an older lady, but she is very like refined.
00:44:47
She has a closet full of beautiful dresses and furs and hats and her home is immaculately furnished.
00:44:53
It's like gorgeous. She's known around town as a very generous tipper, which we love.
00:44:58
We got served by a murderino. I forgot. What? We got served by a murderino at this restaurant called La Supreme when we were, Vince and I were in Detroit last week.
00:45:08
I think her name is Marie. and she was so wonderful and like gave us like you know after dinner drinks and dessert and was
00:45:14
just so nice and then i was like vince what if we don't tip her wouldn't that be funny
00:45:17
i was totally kidding but like obviously but like how what a great way to ruin everything
00:45:23
just not tip she's just being super cool and then you're just the tip is a weird bible quote yeah
00:45:29
you're just like bye marie how funny would that i mean not at all we obviously never yeah but
00:45:33
just kind of like what if wait that reminds me of walking down michigan avenue oh no i
00:45:39
I think we're on Whacker or something. But when we passed Megan, who saw you first as we were walking and said hi to you.
00:45:46
In Chicago. Who was listening to our podcast as she walked by us. Listening to the podcast and then walked in.
00:45:51
I was like 10 steps behind you or whatever. She looked at me. She's like, oh, my God.
00:45:56
And then I pointed back to you. And that one's here, too. She's like, by the time she got up to me, it kind of looked like she was crying.
00:46:02
But it was so cold that it could have just been that. But she just pulled an ear pod out and was just like, I'm listening to you now.
00:46:10
And I'm like, this must be so weird. What a trip. Sorry to fuck with you, Megan.
00:46:14
It's the Matrix. And she's also one of the best customers at the local dressmaker, obviously.
00:46:19
She's highly recognizable around town because she drives a bright pink Lincoln. There's like a scammer thing where they're basically like all eyes on me.
00:46:28
And then I think the logic of the people around is like, it couldn't be them. they wouldn't draw this much attention themselves.
00:46:35
Right. And like everyone else loves her and is around her all the time. Yeah. It's like a chameleon kind of thing.
00:46:41
Yeah. No one knows exactly the source of her wealth, but everyone assumes that her dead husband had a lot of money.
00:46:47
People also vaguely allude to her coming from a family of money. And so they think that she's the daughter of a high ranking military officer.
00:46:53
I'm sure she's like planted little seeds here and there. So it's kind of a surprise when Janet gets a job as a bookkeeper
00:46:59
at a local doctor's office in Decatur, because why would she need a job if she's rich?
00:47:04
But people assume that she likes to keep herself busy. She works there about three and a half years
00:47:09
and life seems to continue on normally. This all comes to a grinding halt at the end of July, 1957,
00:47:16
when Janet's bosses from the doctor's clinic where she works give her a call. They said they'd hired an auditor to go over the books
00:47:24
because something seemed fishy and the auditor had found that about $100,000 appeared to be unaccounted for.
00:47:31
in today's money, what they called ring, ring, ring nowadays. And they're like, hey, we got audited.
00:47:37
Here's how much is missing. Like, what would a lot of fucking money be? Well, it's the 50s.
00:47:42
So that's like, I was going to say 100 years ago. Like a million and a half. A million.
00:47:51
Good job. But imagine being like, hey, we're a mil short on the till. Yeah. And you're the person who's in charge of all of that.
00:47:58
And you're the one with the big pen. Yeah. Can you come in there? Like, can you come in and like explain this? And she's like, absolutely. Like, I'll be in on Monday. Like, don't even worry about it. And I'm sure it's not a big deal. You know, and they're like, OK, good, because they like love her and trust her. And also the hundred thousand dollar number goes up like later. So that's just like kind of a starting point.
00:48:22
But as soon as she hangs up the phone, she springs into action. She rents three moving vans and hires a handyman to come help her move out.
00:48:31
Two vans are filled with furniture and clothing. And one is filled with about 40 cocker spaniels.
00:48:37
No. Yeah. Into the truck, guys. Up the little ramp. Was there any cushions in there or anything for them?
00:48:44
I know. I know. And she finds homes for a few other dogs. And also the number of cocker spaniels sometimes changes as well.
00:48:50
Yeah. The next morning, she and her, quote, niece get into the pink Lincoln with three moving vans following behind and they skedaddle out of town.
00:49:01
But they do. Now, can I just say this? Maybe we've all learned this up until this point or since that time.
00:49:08
If you're going to call and say, hey, we've noticed some questions in the books.
00:49:12
Do you mind coming in on Monday? You're calling from the car outside their house.
00:49:16
Right. So that you can see if that's what they're about to do. Right. And then that's how you know.
00:49:20
Yeah, totally. Yeah. So they didn't have car phones back then, did they? They had their hands. They could have very easily. They had a banana that could hold up as a phone, didn't they? All right. Here's the truth. Janet's real name is Margaret Lydia Burton, although her maiden name is McGlashan.
00:49:36
McGlashan. Hey, Mary McGlashan. Margaret is born in 1906 in Taijin, China, born to British
00:49:44
well-to-do parents. Margaret's father dies when she's about 11 and the family moves first to
00:49:49
England and then to Canada. By the time she's 28, Margaret is living in Panama and manages a rug
00:49:55
importing company, which has ties to part of China where she grew up. So then she marries an
00:50:01
American named Jasper Burton. And in the 1930s, they have a baby girl named Sheila. Sheila,
00:50:07
it turns out, is the real identity of her niece, Candy Cane. It's her daughter. Who is not in high school.
00:50:14
Who is 20 years old. So they were not wrong. Okay. Well, will we hear more about that later?
00:50:22
Kind of. Of the why? We'll talk about it. Okay. We'll theorize. We're really good at that.
00:50:27
So it's not clear why Sheila had to pretend to be younger and a niece. Maybe like she was vain and didn't want to seem like an elderly mother with a 20.
00:50:37
I don't know. It's just there's no reasoning that I can understand from that. But it's thought that maybe Margaret wanted to protect her daughter from being culpable for any embezzlement.
00:50:46
So that's the positive one. The negative could be whatever. You know what I mean?
00:50:49
Yeah. So the first known case of that kind of embezzlement crops up in 1939. And by that point, the Red Company has transferred Margaret to Honolulu.
00:50:57
Margaret and Jasper separate when Sheila is about two years old and he stays behind in Panama.
00:51:03
Margaret's bosses realize she's been stealing money from the company. But before her case goes to court, Margaret and her baby daughter skedaddle.
00:51:11
There's a theme to Los Angeles where her mother and brother live. There, the LAPD arrests her for the Honolulu embezzlement case.
00:51:18
But the governor of California, for some reason, declines to extradite her to Hawaii.
00:51:22
So shortly after this, and I wrote warning to Knitterinos. Margaret collects investments from Los Angeles knitting enthusiasts, saying that she's planning to open up a yarn shop.
00:51:33
That's her scheme. Instead, she makes off with close to $10,000, which is $113,000 in today's money.
00:51:40
And it's at this point that Margaret starts using aliases for herself and her daughter.
00:51:44
By the time she's caught, she has about 22 different identities. Yes. A lot. It's easy to do back then.
00:51:52
Yeah. Margaret and Sheila eventually end up in San Antonio, and it's here that Margaret gets a job at a dog kennel
00:51:58
and discovers her passion for Cocker Spaniels. I mean, can you imagine the first day she walked into that kennel
00:52:03
and suddenly she's like, I got to get 50 of these yesterday. Imagine 50 Chihuahuas.
00:52:08
She had fallen in love with Chihuahuas. There's so many dogs I wouldn't want 50 of.
00:52:14
I'd do 50 Chihuahuas. Yeah, I'd do 50 Chihuahuas. I'd do 50 Terriers like Frank and Bless them.
00:52:20
I like that kind of dog. Maybe it's because Cookie's a chihuahua. I mean, like, definitely.
00:52:24
Yeah. Our dogs have done a good job representing themselves and their breeds to us.
00:52:28
They've indoctrinated us into their breeds. Yes. I'm a true believer. But there's some dogs where I'm just like, never.
00:52:34
Yeah. So she starts using some of her ill-gotten money to buy show dogs. They cost thousands of dollars.
00:52:42
There's also reports that she steals some dogs from other owners. Yeah. There's not a lot of information about how many dogs were stolen and how she would have done this because they're show dogs.
00:52:53
So they're kind of shuffled around a bit like no one knows who the actual owner, who the breeder, who the trainer is.
00:52:59
So then throughout the 40s and early 50s, Margaret and Sheila bounce around all over town, New Orleans, Denver, St.
00:53:06
Louis, Norfolk, Virginia. In each place, Margaret gets a new job, often as a bookkeeper in a doctor's office.
00:53:11
And when patients come in, and back then they paid with mostly cash, right? Lots of cash flowing.
00:53:20
Margaret pockets a lot of it. When she gets caught or close to being caught, she and Sheila skedaddle.
00:53:28
God. Yeah. What a way to live. Yeah. As my dad said to me once, there's some people that can't keep their hands out of the till.
00:53:37
and at the time I had been stealing $20 a week from the job I was at so I could buy beer
00:53:44
I'd only done it twice and then I was like oh no and I never did it again because I justified it
00:53:52
I was like they're paying me minimum wage and I was like do it and then the second time oh it was because the person I also worked at the student union at Sac State And our boss who was always like kind of in everyone business and da da da
00:54:09
I mean, what have you been doing? Can we see, will you do the count again on your thing or whatever?
00:54:15
And they had embezzled like $500,000. Holy shit, shut up. Yes. So that had just happened.
00:54:22
How do you do that? Same thing where I think it's just like just a little bit here and a little bit there and you work there for 20 years and no one suspects you.
00:54:29
All the jobs I've had that I've had to work the till, which is a lot of them, like the count out at the end of the night, if I were under by five cents.
00:54:37
Yes. I would be devastated. Yes. Like that because I was so good. Like I was like, there's no fucking way I did that.
00:54:44
But there was always some amount of money you were under. Yes. Or over randomly.
00:54:48
You were also in trouble. Like when I worked at Gap, you were in trouble if you were over and if you were under.
00:54:52
Like you couldn't win. No. That just reminds me of, though, you keeping perfect track of our merch money in the beginning, where you would just be like, there it is, just so you know.
00:55:01
Are you glad I'm not an embezzler? I really am. It would have been very difficult on top of everything else.
00:55:08
Where do you think that pod loft money came from? God damn it! Where'd you get all these frames for these pictures?
00:55:14
Okay, so that brings us back to 1957 when Janet, that's the fake name, who is about 51 at this point, fails to show up at her doctor's office in Decatur.
00:55:22
and her co-workers call the police. They quickly loop in the FBI because they're assuming she's crossing state lines.
00:55:29
She's driving a fucking pink car and has two moving vans following her, one of which is full of cocker spaniels.
00:55:37
So one of the agents says it'll be like, quote, finding an elephant in a haystack.
00:55:42
You know? Yeah. Like not the smoothest. Get her. In actuality, Margaret proves not so easy to find.
00:55:48
It turns out that the FBI's best clue is the trail of Cocker Spaniels. Okay, so a moving van full of Cocker Spaniels
00:55:56
is reported as a very funny, comical thing. But in actuality, it's clearly not safe or humane,
00:56:02
as you said. Yeah. There's no fucking pillows. And two of the 40-ish dogs actually don't survive the journey,
00:56:09
which is so sad. It should be so hot. So hot and probably no water. No, it's horrible.
00:56:13
No, it's awful. Most of the other dogs are dropped off with a trainer in North Carolina.
00:56:19
But Margaret keeps three of the dogs herself. She's in love with them. And the FBI...
00:56:24
She's in love with them except for the one she killed. She's in love with these three, I guess.
00:56:28
Margin's Shine, Capital Gain, and Piccolo Pete. My favorite firework. And the FBI finds the moving vans and the pink Lincoln abandoned in South Carolina.
00:56:39
As the news of Margaret's flight from Atlanta spreads, she's actually seen by many as a lovable antihero.
00:56:45
And it's kind of a feminist thing, too, where they're like, she got over on these like smart doctors who think they know everything.
00:56:51
And people are rooting for her to get out of the country and evade capture. They're like, you know.
00:56:56
But one group that's not impressed at all is the southeastern chapter of the American Spaniel Club.
00:57:02
Yeah. Because they liked her so much and she was a prominent member that they had been in the process of naming her as the regional leader.
00:57:09
So she was an actress. She was good at fooling people. True sociopath. Exactly. One member says, quote, it was like picking up the paper and reading that President Eisenhower was a spy for the communists, end quote, which is like, hey, welcome to today.
00:57:24
Hi, how are you? Guess what? What's up? 1957, I've got some news for you. The FBI underestimates Margaret completely.
00:57:32
She manages to evade capture for about a month, getting us to the end of August 1957.
00:57:38
She and Sheila wind up in Tulsa. They rent a house. Margaret assumes a new identity going by Madge Burton.
00:57:44
Madge. Madge. Bring that name back. Pretty great. A baby named Madge. Smoking. Oh, a little smoking baby.
00:57:51
Like a Madge. She loves her Virginia slams. Let her have another one before she goes to sleep.
00:57:55
Just let her. She'll go right down and just give her a Cosmo and a cigarette and she'll go right down.
00:58:03
So she goes to a doctor's office and gets a job there. Yes. They don't ask for any references because Madge tells them her husband was a doctor.
00:58:13
She worked in his office for years and years and he left her for another woman. So she doesn't have references, but she's got a lot of experience.
00:58:18
And they're like, great, get over here. And she actually does seem to have a lot of experience because she has done that.
00:58:23
So they believe her. She's stolen at all the great doctor's offices around the Midwest.
00:58:28
Then after Madge had been at the clinic for a week or two, a story about Margaret Burton, her real identity, runs in the Tulsa world.
00:58:35
And it catches the attention of the office manager who hired her, partly because of obviously working in a doctor's office, but also Margaret had a lot of freckles.
00:58:45
And so she matched that up. And the article describes her daughter, Sheila, as, quote, buxom.
00:58:50
And the office manager had seen this daughter and was like, bingo. It's Jessica Rabbit, you know.
00:58:57
The 15-year-old? Yeah, the 20-year-old. The 15, 20-year-old? Exactly. So the office manager is a rat and calls the FBI.
00:59:04
I'm kidding. And when they knock on the door of the house rented in Tulsa, they are greeted by the daughter, Sheila, and three cocker spaniels, which is like change up the dogs or like giving it away.
00:59:15
Or at least put them away for a bit. Or like put a disguise on them. Oh, raccoon disguises.
00:59:20
Three raccoons. What are you guys doing? Well, there's no cocker spaniels here. I guess we got to get out of here.
00:59:26
This can't be the same place. Margaret and Sheila are both promptly arrested and extradited back to Georgia where they're slapped with state charges of forgery and larceny.
00:59:36
It turns out that the federal charges don't stick like she gets lucky. And so the three dogs are all brought to a local kennel, but they're technically impounded like with all of Margaret's other property.
00:59:48
Like, can you imagine going to that fucking sale? Oh, my God. Like, next on the block.
00:59:53
The American Spaniel Club raises what is basically today about to buy back the best in show dog Rise and Shine Pickle Pete come here
01:00:05
Come here. It's me. It's your mother. That's your mommy. So all this comes out in the press and Sheila's birth father, her dad, Jasper Burton, who
01:00:16
hasn't seen her since she left Panama as a toddler, comes out of the woodwork. It turns out he'd been living in nearby Athens, Georgia.
01:00:23
He's thrilled to find his daughter again. and the charges against Sheila are dropped completely.
01:00:29
It does seem like she had nothing to do with her mother's schemes. That, again, started when she was a baby.
01:00:35
And you've got to imagine the mindfuck she grew up with. Nonstop. Nonstop mindfuck.
01:00:40
Everything is either for money or cocker spaniels. And we've got to get the fuck out of here now.
01:00:46
We have to leave. You're not this person. You're that person. That probably went on her entire life.
01:00:51
I wonder if the high school thing is like, you can go to high school in Decatur when we get there.
01:00:55
You can go to high school at the next place. No, it'll be great. You're going to go.
01:00:57
Yeah. Listen, you'll be a cheerleader this year. And she just keeps on doing it.
01:01:01
I mean, it's kind of a, what's it called? Not Rosemary's Baby, but Mommy Dearest.
01:01:05
Yes. Where it's just a little like, I mean, yeah, there's got to be some kind of like trauma
01:01:09
bond with her mother there. Right. Right. And also, I think only child, I'm only saying this because I've observed my sister and my
01:01:18
niece where it's like, it's closer than average because there's just one of each.
01:01:22
And so they're a team for sure. each other literally you can't make friends because you can't tell them anything truthful
01:01:28
yeah everything about your mother's life is this insane lie that you're trying to fit into totally
01:01:33
yeah because also if you were thinking about if you're past the age of high school but you're
01:01:38
moving to these new towns what are you supposed to hang around the pool hall or something like
01:01:42
what are you doing totally to socialize you wouldn't be able to and i'm sure your mom tracks
01:01:47
everything that you do yeah right when reporters ask her questions they say that she's shy
01:01:53
reserved and says that she's just scared that she's never going to see her mom again.
01:01:57
So Margaret faces charges all over the country and her Georgia trial begins in December of 1957,
01:02:04
ends in a mistrial because a juror hears his pastor at a sermon talking shit, essentially,
01:02:12
on Margaret. And so it's shit the juror is not supposed to know. And so it's a mistrial.
01:02:19
Wow. That's actually the ultimate getting out of it. Yeah. It's not his fault. Yeah.
01:02:25
It was church. It's my fucking, you know how pastors have big mouths and shit. I'm just trying to be a good Christian man.
01:02:30
Gossip, gossip, these fucking pastors. Every Sunday. Every Sunday, just talking shit about cases.
01:02:38
At the second trial, Margaret says that actually the doctors at the clinic she worked for were trying to evade taxes and she caught them.
01:02:44
And so they tried to accuse her of embezzling. Yes. It's not her fault. Nope. She's the victim.
01:02:49
She also faints a lot during the trial. Oh, as you do. One of these? You know how women just faint all the time?
01:02:56
Like sitting down in the witness box. Yeah. She slide out of the chair, like comedy style, just slide underneath.
01:03:03
Oh, hey, I'm fainting. And people are skeptical of it even then. And in the end, she's found guilty of two counts of larceny and two counts of forgery and serves two years in prison.
01:03:14
When she gets out, some of the other states have dropped their charges, but several others opt to ask the federal government to deport her rather than her going
01:03:22
to trial since she's actually a British citizen originally. So they're like, we won't charge her
01:03:27
and try her if you get her out of here. Before she's deported, though, she's charged in Los
01:03:32
Angeles for the knitting shop scheme, pleads guilty and serves about nine months in the county jail.
01:03:37
And then Sheila, her daughter, winds up moving to L.A. to live with Margaret's brother back in L.A.
01:03:43
He's a movie producer. His name is Ian McGlashan. And Ali looked it up on IMDb. And the only credit to his name is a 1964 movie called Three Nuts in Search of a Bolt.
01:03:54
Your favorite. Yes. Your favorite late night movie. Oh, my God. Those nuts are nuts.
01:03:59
Spengool-y. It's a Spengool-y classic. It seems like the daughter lives a quiet life.
01:04:05
There's no information about her online. There's a photo on her find a grave, looks like a grandma.
01:04:11
She's smiling. That's kind of all we've got. It's just a tiny picture on the bottom.
01:04:15
It's no dogs allowed. She flies. From that day on, she fucking hates dogs. Never been around a dog since.
01:04:21
It seems like she lives a quiet life. She gets married and has one child and she dies in 2015.
01:04:27
Wow. As an older lady. Margaret, meanwhile, is deported back to England in 1960.
01:04:32
Though some point, and no one seems to know when, she schemes her way back to the U.S.
01:04:38
and dies in Los Angeles in 1992. So I bet she was back with her daughter. I bet she was.
01:04:44
And who knows what kind of caper she got into that she didn't get caught for. Right, because now she's a whole new person.
01:04:48
I bet she was the one at the grocery store who's like, I'll give you a 20. And actually, give me back the change for that.
01:04:53
And she does like the change thing. Oh, give me five fives for that. And I'll give you back your 20.
01:04:58
She could be the old lady when I was so broke and I found a $20 bill. I put it in my pocket of my corduroy pants.
01:05:06
And then I was in the super cheap sunglasses store on Hollywood Boulevard because I was
01:05:10
going down to like the Walgreens or whatever. And I was standing there like, oh, I can buy a pair of sunglasses for like five bucks.
01:05:17
And this old lady came and like was standing to the side of me and I wasn't looking and finally I looked
01:05:23
and she's standing there smiling. She's like, hi. And I was like, hi. And then she walked away.
01:05:28
My 20 bucks is gone. Shut the fuck. I thought she was going to say, that's my 20.
01:05:34
No, she straight up robbed you. She robbed me and then made me look her in the eye with a big smile.
01:05:38
And I bet you it was fucking Janet. I bet you anything. She was in Los Angeles. It was her.
01:05:43
Oh, my God. How amazing would that be? So here's her photo. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
01:05:48
It's her. So, yeah, she dies in Los Angeles in 1992 at the age of 85. Could have been Yep And that is the story of the serial embezzler or the international adventurer Margaret Lydia Burton Wow That was great
01:06:07
Thank you. There's only a few photos of her, too. And like no information about after she went back.
01:06:12
There's a photo of her getting. Yeah. She's getting out of this car. She kind of looks like a little old lady, even though she's got like no wrinkles.
01:06:18
She's like the little old lady shampoo set, glamorous dress. And she's got the like railroad case with her makeup in.
01:06:24
and she's getting out of the car at the courthouse like it's a fucking premiere of a movie
01:06:28
and she's the star. Yeah. And she's like just eating it up and it's just kind of like,
01:06:33
God, I bet she was fun. I bet she was fun and I bet you that's why the press or like that's why the public
01:06:39
was able to get this kind of counter like anti-hero thing going for her. Because it's like,
01:06:45
well, you're showing up in an outfit. You seem to have a great attitude. Totally.
01:06:48
Americans don't need much more. No. Yeah, you're getting it over on the man. Yeah.
01:06:53
Kind of love that. Yeah. So, fuck it. Fun. Be a stealer. Be a stealer. Wow, we did it.
01:07:01
Thank you. We did it. Do you want to do some fucking arrays? Sure. Should we be doing fucking arrays too?
01:07:07
You and I? Sure. Oh, we don't have one. Next week? Yeah. I'm going to start next week.
01:07:13
Mine's Steve-O. Every week I'm going to give this. Steve-O! Okay, let's do some fucking arrays.
01:07:20
At the end of the show, we do just things you're fucking happy about. hashtag us on Instagram or on YouTube page on this episode.
01:07:27
Yep. Mine's from email. My first one, you want me to read it? Do it. That works.
01:07:31
The subject line is Karen's yogurt. Fucking hooray. And it says, hi, everyone. I'm an early listener.
01:07:37
And your podcast has given me so much over the years. Laughter, comfort, mental health support.
01:07:42
But Karen talking about her little morning yogurt has saved my coffee routine. Do you remember this?
01:07:47
I just learned on TikTok, of course, that to save the cortisol zip of drinking coffee on an empty stomach in the morning, I just drink a little drinkable yogurt first and let my body process that, then drink the coffee like an hour later.
01:08:02
That's right. I also heard eat a couple walnuts. Just like two walnuts. Oh, for the same reason?
01:08:07
See, I can't eat walnuts. Gotta get cold sore. Oh, no. Okay, don't do this. That's right. They're all separate.
01:08:12
It says, save my morning coffee routine and my esophagus. And for that, I am forever grateful. So fucking hooray for midlife hacks and a tureen of black coffee to keep us going through the terrible Kate.
01:08:25
I love it. I love hacks so much. It's a good hack. Yeah. To realize that I was just piling on like, because I think I'm trying to get started in the morning and it's like you're literally signaling more cortisol.
01:08:39
Seriously. Yeah, it's a monster. Okay, mine is from YouTube, from our YouTube page.
01:08:44
It's youtube.com slash exactly right media. And this is from a Kelsey, because remember we were saying we have to have a Kelsey?
01:08:50
I had a couple of those in there. I'm a Kelsey, and I have a fucking hooray today.
01:08:55
First, my older sister, shout out Celia, got me listening to you from the start, and I've been hooked ever since.
01:09:00
Today, my fucking hooray is my mom receiving life-saving surgery for an aortic aneurysm.
01:09:05
She had a complicated health history, and I like to think her doctors were nerds who wanted to get to the bottom of it because they ended up coincidentally finding the aneurysm on an unrelated scan.
01:09:16
And today she got it removed and is going to be fine. So scary. Her first words to my stepfather when she woke up were, do my girls know I'm OK?
01:09:25
She truly is the best. When you were shouting out Kelsey's at the end of the episode, I was like, I have to share this.
01:09:32
SSDGM at 7KS45. Kels. Kelsey! I'm so glad your mom's okay. That's amazing. Very, very scary.
01:09:40
Get your checkups, everyone. Yeah. Okay. This is from Instagram. It was a social media comment on episode 473.
01:09:48
And it is from Deb Miller Landau, the author of the book A Devil Went Down to Georgia, which is based on a recent story I did about the murder of Lita McClinton.
01:09:58
Oh, my God. It says, my hashtag fucking hooray is that this little murderino's dream came true.
01:10:04
Oh, my God. Several months ago, I emailed MFM and today on episode 473, Karen told the story of Lita McClinton based on my book, A Devil Went Down to Georgia.
01:10:13
Thank you for honoring Lita. Enough with rich white guys getting away with murder and all the other horrible shit, right?
01:10:20
Yes. Yes, Deb Miller Lando. Huge shout out to Maren for loving the book and getting the story on the show.
01:10:26
Fucking hooray to you all. I love that. I know. Isn't that great? Yes. Congratulations, Deb Miller Lando.
01:10:32
What a great book. Good job. Okay, my last one is also a YouTube comment. It was commented on episode 473 on YouTube.
01:10:39
Fucking hooray. April Fool's Day marked five years sober from alcohol for me. It did not seem possible and it wasn't easy, but the blessings have been abundant.
01:10:47
I left the medical field in 2022 and I'm now supervising a group of badass police record clerks.
01:10:53
Thanks for all you do. SSDGM, Ashley at AshleyWilliam-D5M. Congratulations, Ashley.
01:11:01
Five years. that's a long time I can't that's a big deal that's a big deal that's amazing
01:11:06
yeah good job send us your fucking horizon you guys maybe we'll do ours next week too
01:11:10
yeah we'll start doing some too yeah we'll have a little more gratitude in our lives
01:11:14
that's a good idea let's do it yeah thank you guys for listening we appreciate you so much
01:11:18
and stay sexy and don't get murdered goodbye Elvis do you want a cookie? This has been an Exactly Right production.
01:11:35
Our senior producers are Alejandra Keck and Molly Smith. Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.
01:11:40
This episode was mixed by Liana Squalacci. Our researchers are Maren McGlashan and Allie Elkin.
01:11:45
Email your hometowns to myfavoritemurder at gmail.com. Follow the show on Instagram at myfavoritemurder.
01:11:51
Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:11:55
And now you can watch us on Exactly Right's YouTube page. While you're there, please like and subscribe.
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