Dark Poutine - True Crime and Dark History

Episode 430: On the morning of May 28, 1998, police were called to a home on Encino Avenue in Encino, California. Inside the master bedroom, they found Phil Hartman — one of the most versatile performers in the history of North American television — shot three times at close range while he slept. His wife, Brynn, had pulled the trigger sometime around 2:30 in the morning, then driven to a friend's house and confessed. By the time police arrived, she was back in the bedroom. She never came out.

Phil Hartman was 49 years old and born in Brantford, Ontario. He had just wrapped his fourth season of NewsRadio. He had a film opening in July. Behind the public face of a thriving career was a marriage under years of sustained pressure — addiction, relapse, escalating volatility, and a final argument that ended in the worst possible way. The motive was listed as unknown. It remains unknown.

Sources:

Los Angeles County Coroner Case Report, Investigator's Report, Autopsy Report & Toxicology — Case No. 98-03785

Hartman's Death: The Police Version — Time, June 3, 1998

Reaction & Sanctions — NPR, May 28, 1998

Disturbing Details Found In Phil Hartman's Autopsy Report — Grunge, 2024

The Last Days of Phil Hartman — ABC News / 20/20, 2019

Phil Hartman — People Magazine, 1998

Jon Lovitz Blames Andy Dick for Hartman's Death — CBS News, 2007

Phil Hartman Wrongful Death Lawsuit / Zoloft — Salon, 1999

Birgen Hartman on her father's Simpsons legacy — The Hollywood Reporter, 2022

Brantford to honour Phil Hartman with mural — CBC News, 2024

Phil Hartman — Canada's Walk of Fame

Phil Hartman — Brantford Walk of Fame

You Might Remember Me: The Life and Times of Phil Hartman — Mike Thomas

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Episode 429: In January 1995, DNA testing excluded Guy Paul Morin, the man convicted of the 1984 murder of Christine Jessop, from the crime. The Ontario Court of Appeal set aside his conviction, and Morin was released. The man whose semen was recovered from Christine Jessop's underwear in 1984 remained unidentified.

A public inquiry led by Justice Fred Kaufman spent 10 months examining how an innocent man had been convicted twice. It produced 1,380 pages and 119 recommendations. The real killer remained unnamed for another twenty-five years — until a detective named Steve Smith, a Texas laboratory, and a forensic genealogist pulled a family tree apart and found a killer at the end of it.

Sources

Report of the Kaufman Commission on Proceedings Involving Guy Paul Morin — Full text (netk.net.au)

The Canadian Encyclopedia — Guy Paul Morin Case

Innocence Canada — Guy Paul Morin case file

Toronto Life — "Inside the Hunt for Christine Jessop's Real Killer" (January 2022)

CBC News — "Toronto police identify killer in cold case of 9-year-old Christine Jessop" (October 15, 2020)

CBC News — "Calvin Hoover's family 'devastated' to learn police believe he killed Christine Jessop" (October 22, 2020)

CBC News — "The answer to the mystery of Christine Jessop's murder leaves killer's ex-wife with painful questions" (February 2021)

CBC News — "The science behind why police now believe they have the right suspect in Christine Jessop's murder" (October 2020)

Global News — "Who was Calvin Hoover? The man Toronto police say killed 9-year-old Christine Jessop in 1984" (October 2020)

Blue Line Magazine — "Out of the Cold: Toronto Police Solve 1984 Jessop Murder With New Science" (January 2021)

RCMP — National DNA Data Bank of Canada: 20 Years and Growing

Game of Crimes Podcast — "Detective Steve Smith Cracks a 36-Year Old Cold Case" (March 2022)

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Episode 428: On October 3, 1984, nine-year-old Christine Jessop stepped off a school bus in Queensville, Ontario, and walked toward home. She was never seen alive again. Her body was found on New Year's Eve, fifty-six kilometres away. She had been sexually assaulted and stabbed.

What followed was one of the most consequential criminal proceedings in Canadian history — and the quiet destruction of a man who lived next door.

This is Part One of a two-part series.

Sources:

Kirk Makin, Redrum the Innocent (1992) — Viking Canada.

Report of the Kaufman Commission on Proceedings Involving Guy Paul Morin — Full text (netk.net.au)

The Canadian Encyclopedia — Guy Paul Morin Case

Innocence Canada — Guy Paul Morin case file

Canadian Registry of Wrongful Convictions — Guy Paul Morin

Library of Parliament — Wrongful Convictions in Canada (2020)

Bruce MacFarlane — "Wrongful Convictions: The Effect of Tunnel Vision and Predisposing Circumstances in the Criminal Justice System" (2006)

Federal Prosecution Service — Chapter 5: Jailhouse Informers

Federal Prosecution Service — Chapter 8: DNA Evidence

The Canadian Encyclopedia — Morin Inquiry Report

Kaufman Report — Wikipedia summary

Globe and Mail — "Morin Informant Named Dangerous Offender" (2007)

CBC Digital Archives — Guy Paul Morin acquitted

Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation

Williams Treaties — Government of Canada

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Episode 427: In the summer of 1934, John Sackville Labatt was one of the most recognizable names in Canada. The fifty-three-year-old president of John Labatt Limited had spent nearly two decades running one of the country's largest and oldest breweries, a family business built across three generations and tested by Prohibition, the Depression, and the rum-running trade that kept it alive through both. On the morning of August 14, he left his Lake Huron summer home running late for a meeting and took a shortcut through the forest on a little-used dirt road outside Sarnia. What happened on that road set off the largest manhunt in Canadian history, triggered Canada's first kidnapping trial, and sent an innocent man to prison for a crime he had nothing to do with.

Sources:John Sackville Labatt | The Canadian EncyclopediaJohn Labatt’s 1934 kidnap | The StarJohn Sackville Labatt | WikipediaLabatt Brewing Company | WikipediaProhibition in Canada | WikipediaLabatt Brewing | Company SiteLambton County's Infamous Abduction: The John S. Labatt Kidnapping - ArchivedLambton County's Infamous Abduction: The John S. Labatt Kidnapping - NewSnatched! by Susan Goldenberg - Ebook | ScribdThe Courier-News • Fri, Aug 17, 1934 • Page 10 • (Bridgewater, New Jersey)The Courier-News • Fri, Aug 17, 1934 • Page 1 • (Bridgewater, New Jersey)The Windsor Star • Fri, Aug 17, 1934 • Page 1 • (Windsor, Ontario, Canada)The Windsor Star • Sat, Sep 08, 1934 • Page 9 • (Windsor, Ontario, Canada)The Windsor Star • Sat, Feb 01, 1936 • Page 11 • (Windsor, Ontario, Canada)The Hamilton Spectator • Tue, Sep 11, 1906 • Page 9 • (Hamilton, Ontario, Canada)The Molsons, The Labatts and The St.Johns | StJohnsWort.ca
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Episode 426: On June 29th, 2021, Lytton, British Columbia, recorded the highest air temperature in Canadian history: 49.6 degrees Celsius. The next day, the town burned to the ground in under two hours, killing two people and destroying more than 150 homes and businesses across the Village of Lytton and the neighbouring Lytton First Nation reserves. Nearly four years later, the cause of the fire remains officially undetermined, the recovery has become its own bureaucratic disaster, and a class-action lawsuit against Canada's two largest railways is still working its way through the BC Supreme Court. This episode tells the story of the heat, the fire, the two people who didn't make it out, and the years-long collapse of the rebuild that followed. Later in the episode, Mike sits down with Tim Conrad of Butterfly Effect Communications to talk crisis communications — what the first hours of a disaster like Lytton demand, and what it takes to keep a fractured, grieving community informed years into a recovery that never seems to end.

Sources:

An Examination of the Lytton, British Columbia Wildland-Urban Fire Destruction

Provincial Support for the Village of Lytton's Wildfire Recovery

Lytton Wildfire | Wikipedia

B.C. Man Says He Watched in Horror as Lytton Wildfire Claimed the Lives of His Parents | CBC News

BC Coroners Service Confirms 2 Deaths in Lytton Wildfire | CBC News

Man Who Lost His Parents in Lytton, B.C., Fire Wants to Go Home | CTV News

RCMP Investigation Unable to Determine Cause of 2021 Wildfire That Destroyed Most of Lytton, B.C. | CBC News

Track Cleared for Class-Action Suit 4.5 Years After Wildfire Swallows Most of Lytton | Williams Lake Tribune

Remembering Lytton, the Town Wiped Out by Wildfire | The Walrus

⠀Guest:


Butterfly Effect Communications Company Website


Wildfires, Floods, and Chaos Communications Tim’s Podcast


Inside an Emergency Operations Centre | Butterfly Effect Communications Video

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