Bugged
49:16 Share

This is exactly right. Experience the glamour and danger of the roaring 20s from the palm of your hand in

In June's Journey, you have the chance to solve a captivating murder mystery and reveal deep-seated family secrets. Use your keen eye and detective skills to guide June Parker through this thrilling hidden object mystery game. June's Journey is a mobile game that follows June Parker, a New York socialite living in London. Play as June Parker and investigate beautifully detailed scenes of the 1920s

while uncovering the mystery of her sister's murder. There are twists, turns, and catchy tunes, all leading you deeper into the thrilling storyline. This is your chance to test your detective skills. And if you play well enough, you could make it to the detective club. There, you'll chat with other players and compete with or against them. June needs your help, but watch out.

You never know which character might be a villain. Shocking family secrets will be revealed, but will you crack this case? Find out as you escape this world and dive into June's world of mystery, murder, and romance. Can you crack the case? Download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android.

Discover your inner detective when you download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android. That's June's Journey. Download the game for free on iOS and Android.

Lady to Lady here to tell you we are celebrating our 600th episode. We commemorate every 100th show with the iconic actor and our dear friend, French Stewart. French, French, French, French, French, French, French, French. I'm French Stewart. And this time we took him to Las Vegas, baby. Tune in to hear about all the antics and make sure to check out more episodes. We've got literally 600 to choose from.

They're packed with sleepover games and ridiculous tangents with the best guests. Don't miss new episodes every Wednesday. Follow Lady to Lady wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the last 25 years writing about true crime. And I'm Paul Holes, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solved them. Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes. And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.

Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st century lens. Some are solved and some are cold. Very cold. This is Buried Bones. ♪♪

Hey, Paul. Hey, Kate. How are you? I'm doing well. How about you? I'm hanging in there. So I have a drink for you that I want you to consider. Because, you know, what do I usually drink? Cider. No, I don't drink cider.

Do not drink cider. I'm not unprofessional in that way. I drink hot tea, right? Everybody knows that. Nobody believes you, Paul. Oh, you're talking about during while we're recording? Yes, during the show, yes. Oh, yeah, but I'll just let the listeners know, when Kate is not in her professor mode, there's a little edgy side to Kate. Yeah, right, edgy. Yeah.

So this is what I usually drink, decaffeinated hot tea. But this is what I'm drinking. Hold on. It's not kava. It's cold brew. Have you tried cold brew? Yeah. In fact, that's when I was really trying to get off of the energy drink addiction. I didn't know you had that addiction. Oh, geez. It's bad. And I'm doing better on that front. But I can't do the hot coffee. I just don't like hot liquids. Yeah.

And so I did cold brew and I can drink the cold brew black. I don't put anything in it. I don't want the sugar and all that. But yeah, no, cold brew works good for me. I like cold brew. The acidity of coffee sometimes gets to me.

And cold brew tastes really good. So we just, I just busted it out because it feels so overwhelmingly warm here that I needed some good cold brew. So we're going to see, I might have to take a break in the middle of this episode and just go running back to my good old standard hot tea. Well,

Well, listen, Paul, I was thinking about you when I picked this next case because it is a case that I think you're really going to be interested in. Boy, there's a lot of forensics. I've got yellow all over the place. Yellow as far as the eye can see on my prep document, which equates to Paul has to comment on this. The story, the actual murder story ends like halfway through this episode and then everything unravels after that. So I can't wait to present this to you. It's in Canada in 1959. Yeah.

Okay. Well, let's hear it. Okay. Let's set the scene. This case is more than 60 years old. So this is, Paul, one of our more recent cases. More than 60 years old. My God, Kate. I mean, I'm used to you saying, hey, this case happened 300 years ago. We're in the 50s where people typed out things and there were telephones and mail mail and

people are not carrying information on horseback and buggies. So we're in a good time period with a lot of information. And I love going back and forth between the 1700s, and of course we've dipped our toe in the 1600s, and we're going to go, you know, B.C. here pretty soon, someday. So I'm always interested in these cases that are more recent.

And this is a good one. So this is the disappearance of a young girl. And that part of it is difficult. I've talked to listeners about this because we pick these cases. I'm the one who picks them. I'm thoughtful about it. I really think, what is Paul going to be interested in? What am I interested in researching? What information is available to us?

Are there cases that are heavy in forensics? Some are heavy in criminal profiling or victimology. So the ones involving kids are, everybody knows, I've got two kids, I've got two 13-year-olds.

Those are difficult for me, but if I'm picking them, that's for a reason. And, you know, we are cognizant that these are sometimes hard to hear, but I think this is a very important case, and we'll see what you think of it. Okay. Let's sort of talk about where we are. It's summertime, June 9th of 1959, and it's in Clinton, Ontario, Canada. There are a group of schoolchildren in the schoolyard, and they're all hanging out, and

And a lot of them are the children of officers at the Royal Canadian Air Force Base, which is nearby. And these are, you know, kids, middle class, who are all hanging out in this area. It feels rural, and I'll show you photos in a little bit. And the main person in this story, there are two of them. The center point is 12-year-old Lynn Harper. Lynn is playing with all of her friends, and she decides she needs to go home. And this is in the early evening on June 9th.

She has another friend there along with the other schoolmates. And this other friend is a 14-year-old boy named Stephen Truscott. And Stephen says, I'm going home to hop on my bike. I don't know if you ever did this. I rode on handlebars. I tell my kids don't ever do that ever, but they do it anyway. So this is what happens. He said, hop on. She gets on his handlebars.

And they ride off and all of the kids say they see them ride off, you know down a road She says to him, you know, I want to go home, but i'm gonna take my time Because there's a nearby horse pasture. I want to see the ponies there and he says well Why don't you go home straight home and she said well I got into a fight with my parents And i'd really rather go and hang out with the ponies to cheer me up and then I can head off from there

So he is going to drop her off, not in front of her house. He's going to drop her off somewhere, and then he's going to continue on to his own house. It is not particularly dark yet, it doesn't sound like. The location of where Lynn wants to go isn't very far from Stephen's place, and so he's got her on the handlebars. He's going down a road called County Road, literally called County Road.

They cross a bridge that runs over a river, and there are children swimming and playing and see them cross this bridge. About 7.30, Stephen says he dropped off Lynn at the intersection of County Road and Highway 8, which runs east-west. So, you know, there's this intersection. This is where the horses are. And she, you know, says, I'm going to go see the ponies, and then I'm going to go home. And he says goodbye.

He goes, he says he drops her off at 7.30. He gets home at about 8 o'clock and Lynn never comes home. So you have a 12-year-old boy who is the last person to see this girl alive except for the person who killed her. And we have to find out, is he the one who did it?

What do you think so far? You know, when I start assessing a case and I need to learn about the geography, you know, and we're talking about a whodunit case, especially in a case where there's a missing person, at least it starts out as a missing person. It's assessing that abduction location and where is that relative to the population base, as well as is there a transient aspect of

to whoever's going to be flowing through. If this is a log, let's say, a isolated county road, there's limited traffic on something like that versus a log of freeway where possibly you have a lot of transient population that's flowing through, and that really opens up a suspect pool.

So that's one of the things I'm just doing right now is I just pulled up Clinton, and I'm seeing that it's pretty close to Lake Huron, but it's not on the lake. It appears that it's a few miles away from that type of environment. And this Highway 8 that you mention appears to be a prime highway somewhat northwest to

to southeast that is connecting other small towns. So most certainly there's going to be some traffic and some transient aspect to the types of people who may be driving along this particular highway. Right. This is the county road.

This is the road that they rode down, you know, crossed over this bridge and then encountered Highway 8, and he dropped her off, he says, at that intersection. Paved road, but rural still, obviously. I don't see any houses anywhere on this road so far. Now, you know, what I'm looking at is I have a road that, in fact, it doesn't even have a center-dividing stripe. So this appears to be a fairly narrow rural road.

I see trees that have been planted many, many years ago that are planted in such a way to be a windbreak. And it appears that there's maybe agricultural aspects going on in this particular area.

There are utility poles, you know, that are feeding electricity along this road. So there's probably residential areas, you know, tucked back off of the road. But at this particular location, I see no buildings whatsoever. This appears to just be a road with farmland or whether there's cattle grazing or something going on, who knows. But it does appear to be a fairly remote road.

And the road itself does not appear to be one that would have much traffic at all.

Yeah, I agree. So Lynn has disappeared about 11.20 that night. Her father reports her missing. I'm sure he is frantic because she's supposed to be home by 8 o'clock or 9 o'clock or whenever. And he did not know she was going to go visit the ponies. According to Stephen, she was mad at her parents, so she was going to make them wait on her a little bit. We don't know if that's true. At 11.20, the father reports her missing.

So the police head to the Trescott house. Stephen tells the investigators that after he dropped her off at that intersection, he looked back and he saw her get into a car. He said it was a gray 1959 Chevy. He said that the specific model of the Chevrolet had a very distinctive look and it stood out to him.

And he said there was actually something on the backside, something yellow. It could have been a yellow license plate or a bumper sticker. And he said once Lynn got inside the car, the car headed east. And that's all he knew.

So the police have this information and they leave because she is still missing. We have no idea what happened to her. We don't know if she voluntarily got into this car. We don't know if the parents are lying. We have no idea what's happening. Two days later, they find her body. A search party had been looking for her and they discover her body. It's in a wooded area called Lawson's Brush, which is off that county road that Stephen and Lynn had taken. You have three choices here.

One, I can show you the route, the map, so you can see how far, if Stephen did this, the school is from the brush from where he says he dropped her off. I can show you where the body was and actually a photo of the body at the scene. Or we can talk about what happened to her and the results of the autopsy. Well, let's start with the map. Okay. This is the map. This is pretty simple. There's not a lot going on in this map.

Yeah, so this map is showing the path that Steve and Lynn took from the school to the location across the bridge to the location by the highway where he dropped Lynn off. The school is down on the southern part of the map, the way it's oriented, and a red line shows

shows the route along the county road going northwards, it's a straight route up to the highway where Stephen is saying he dropped Lynn off.

However, there is a spot that's about one-third the way up this route that is labeled as Bush. So it is, you know, shortly after Steve and Lynn left the school area, they would be riding along the county road.

with this bush area off to their right or to the east. And then a short distance after this bush area is where the bridge is located, where you had the children playing. And I believe, based on what you said, is that those children were witnesses and they saw Steve and Lynn playing.

cross that bridge. Yep. Okay. So that's an important part of the sequence of what we're going to talk about. So now I've got at least the, you know, when we start evaluating, okay, is this 14-year-old kid on his bicycle,

You know, does he offer the right to Lynn? And then along the way, they pass by this bushy area, which, of course, is going to probably hide anybody driving along the road and any type of view once you get back into this bushy area. So he's going past the area where Lynn's body is found two days later. Yep.

Now, with the witness statements, you have Stephen taking Lynn at least across that bridge. But in order to get back to this bushy area, they would have to cross back.

back over the bridge. Do we have witnesses saying they saw them heading in the opposite direction? Nope. But when Stephen drops Lynn off by the highway and then he says there's a car that's facing, she's getting into this Chevy that's facing the opposite direction, which means it's facing towards back towards where the bushy area is. Right now, Stephen's statements are consistent with what I would think is the sequence that would have occurred. Right.

So I'm kind of curious if the children playing in the creek by the bridge, if they saw this Chevy drive over the bridge. So, no, the kids don't report seeing a Chevy crossing over the bridge. It's interesting because, you know, he says, and tell me if you think this is wrong. So the county road is going north-south. It sounds like he's saying they went north, they crossed the bridge, and then the car was going east.

east, which on our little map would have been going right. So I wonder if this is what happened. Somebody gets her in the car and he drives and backtracks and go back over the bridge. But I don't know. There might be other entry points. There could be another bridge, you know, further down. And if she does get in a car, the person then goes east and then goes south and crosses over their bridge and accesses this bush. Let me show you where she was found and then we can talk

about injuries because you can imagine I mean she's dead there's trauma yeah let's talk about where she was found and if somebody has to know this area to know how to access it okay let's start with the body this is a photo of her body that was included in a documentary that we'll talk about later called the fifth estate okay so I'm I'm taking a look at

at this girl's body. She's laying on her back in a very brushy area, a lot of dense brush that is surrounding where her body's located at. She's laying face up. I can see what appears to be possibly some injuries to her face, like some bruises, and it appears that she is at least nude from the waist down. Her legs are spread.

Right now, it appears that there's some sort of garment that's laying to her right, further into the bushy area. Her left arm is in the foreground, and it's just propped up against her upper body. What I can't determine right now is if she has any garments on in her upper body.

There appears to possibly be something up around her neck, but I can't make that out clearly in this photo. Well, now I can give you some more details because you can see it a lot in this photo. So she was found partially nude, you're right. Clothes were scattered all over the place. She was strangled to death with her own shirt, which is, I think, the garment you see to the right. Yeah. It was tied around her neck. Okay.

And there were scratches on her body, including a very long, deep cut. They think that she was dragged over some barbed wire. I don't know if dead or alive, but there are also very clear signs of a sexual assault. So that's what happened to this 12-year-old girl. You know, this is a...

Hate to use the term prototypical. However, when we have a sexually motivated homicide, this is often when the victim is found quickly. This is often what this type of scene looks like. There's a lot of potential physical evidence at this location and on and in her body that today we can use to solve the case. In my experience, this is not the type of crime that a 14-year-old boy commits.

Give me details about that. Why? There are some examples of young boys, you know, committing sexual assault. In this particular situation,

When I started evaluating what was done to her, the use of her own garments as a ligature is significant. That often is something that is not thought of by a youthful person. You'll see manual strangulation, you'll see bludgeoning, you know, typical violence that young boys will do to each other. That's what they know what to do.

but to use garments like a shirt. A shirt is not an apparent ligature. That is something that somebody who is now thinking about, how am I going to ensure that this victim is dead?

Because if you're an offender and you kill for the very first time, if you use your hands to strangle somebody, and then at some point, let's say the person loses consciousness, how do you know that they're actually dead? You don't. And so offenders often will tie a ligature, even if they've manually strangled, they'll tie a ligature. So even if they're unsure if the person's dead when they leave, and you have to remember, the offender's time clock is ticking.

They're out in this location. There's risk to them. Somebody might stumble across. Somebody might drive past them. They have to get in. They have to get out. They don't have all day to commit this crime.

So now in this rush, they commit the sexual assault. They strangle. Is the victim dead or not? She's not breathing or maybe she is breathing. I don't know. Now it's the tying of the ligature. So the offender has confidence that the victim will die and they don't have a witness that they've left alive. A 14-year-old boy thinking about that? Yeah.

Coupled with the use of a shirt, that tells me that I'm dealing with, likely dealing with, a more mature offender. But I can't say it with certainty. But as I assess this scene, that's what I am looking at. That's what I'm drawing upon right now. Being able to overpower her, dragging her over barbed wire, yeah, it does seem like...

To me, that's immediately what I thought was this was not something that a 14-year-old boy would do. But this is also now assessing Stephen. I know nothing about Stephen's physical attributes. There are 14-year-old boys that are not very robust, not very strong. And then there are 14-year-old boys that have the size and strength of an average adult male, if not above average adult male. It just depends. Yeah.

Well, let me show you Steven. I don't know if you can get a whole lot out of this. This does not look like a robust adult male build to me. He doesn't look particularly tall. I don't know. What do you think? He looks like a 14-year-old kid. Steven looks like a very athletically built 14-year-old boy. I think Steven has, you know, some physical capabilities. Okay. Probably up and beyond the average 14-year-old boy, based on what I'm looking at. He has musculature that I can see in the arms.

He's actually got some shoulders to him. I wouldn't be surprised if he is an athlete in some capacity, plays sports for his school or, you know, on the city leagues, et cetera. So I told you cause of death, and now the police are trying to figure out what happened. We've got all these witnesses saying that the last person that they saw her with was Stephen, who's 14. There's clear signs of sexual assault. They did take what now we would know would be DNA evidence. Yeah.

The coroner is an important person in this story. His name is John Penniston. And John Penniston is looking at Lynn and trying to figure out what happened. And he says that he is trying to put together a timeline.

Because Stephen says, listen, you know, I left her at 730. I dropped her off. And then I went home and I was home by 8 o'clock. So the police are saying, who else would have done this? They do not believe Stephen.

that she was picked up by a random car. They do not believe that this was a stranger abduction and rape and murder. They think that this 14-year-old was capable of doing this. And so they start to put together a case. This is a case that's referred to a lot as a miscarriage of justice case because you've already stated, I don't think a 14-year-old could do this. And I think that the way that this case unfolds

is so interesting with the different techniques. And now you get to talk about a couple of things that you and I have never talked about, I don't think, before. Dr. Penniston is trying to pin down a time of death because it's important.

His parents say he was home by 8. The kids say that they left, I think, about 6.45, 7 o'clock. So Dr. Penniston's job is to try to determine when she died. So he looks at her stomach contents, and we haven't talked about stomach contents yet. He says that in this autopsy has removed about a pint of food from her stomach that has not yet been digested.

Her parents say she finished a meal around 5:45 p.m. and then she went to go play and hang out with her friends. Dr. Penniston is saying to the police, "Listen, if you want a time of death,

According to the food that I have taken out of her stomach that was not digested, I will tell you that because of my knowledge of the human digestive system, I know that she died likely between 7.15 p.m. and 7.45 p.m., which is, of course, coincidentally when Stephen was with her and she's riding on his bike.

What do we know about stomach contents and its reliability in determining time of death? There is no way that pathologists could form that opinion. You know, of course, stomach contents are something that are important in terms of, okay, when did the victim last eat? What types of food did the victim eat?

And is that food still present within the stomach? And, you know, to a greater or lesser extent, you know, what is the state of the digestion of that food? Those are all observations that a pathologist will make and, of course, will collect the stomach contents. However, there are so many variables. Imagine...

Lynn, she eats and now she's out there and she's playing, she's exercising. You know, this is going to impact the rate of digestion. It's just something where you can't definitively narrow down the time of death window to just within from 715 to 745. No way. That's a problem by my estimation.

Experience the glamour and danger of the roaring 20s from the palm of your hand in

In June's Journey, you have the chance to solve a captivating murder mystery and reveal deep-seated family secrets. Use your keen eye and detective skills to guide June Parker through this thrilling hidden object mystery game. June's Journey is a mobile game that follows June Parker, a New York socialite living in London. Play as June Parker and investigate beautifully detailed scenes of the 1920s while uncovering the mystery of her sister's murder. There are twists

turns, and catchy tunes, all leading you deeper into the thrilling storyline. This is your chance to test your detective skills. And if you play well enough, you could make it to the detective club. There, you'll chat with other players and compete with or against them. June needs your help, but watch out. You never know which character might be a villain. Shocking family secrets will be revealed, but will you crack this case? Find out as you escape this world

and dive into June's world of mystery, murder, and romance. Can you crack the case? Download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android. Discover your inner detective when you download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android. That's June's Journey. Download the game for free on iOS and Android.

This is what the prosecutor is really hinging the case on is the time of death. Who else would have done it? I don't believe his story about her getting into a stranger's car. Stephen is arrested. You know, the prosecutor argues that he should not be tried in juvenile court because the juvenile courts in this part of Canada have never dealt with a gruesome case before.

They are unprepared, and so the magistrate ultimately decides that Stephen is going to be tried as an adult, a 14-year-old. And the stomach contents take center stage. This just sounds terrible to me. You know, fundamentally, Stephen is the last one seen with Lynn when she's alive. Mm-hmm. You now have an expert that is basically saying that, well, she was killed between 7:15 and 7:45, which is exactly when Stephen was saying he was with Lynn.

That right now is the extent of their case. And I've already explained what the pathologist is saying about the stomach contents is just completely overreaching. Okay. So the Crown, who is obviously the Crown prosecutor representing Canada, is saying, why would any person pick her up, kill her in this area that's so close to her home? That seems like a big risk.

If he's going to get her in the car, why not drive to a different part of Canada and do this? So they're doing criminal profiling and really reaching. Does that sound dumb? I mean, they're saying only a local kid would know to take her back to this brush area that happens to be close to her house and happens to be close to the school. I would need to kind of assess this location a little bit better. Is this brushy area something that is within view from where Lynn was picked up at?

And then at that point, the reality is that anybody driving by who decides that they want to pick up Lynn could readily see, oh, there's a location where I can take this girl and commit violent acts against her and not be seen. Yep. This is a 15-day long trial, which is a lot in 1959. Fifty-nine people took the stand.

questioned by the prosecutor. Many of them were children whose testimonies, of course, were inconsistent and flimsy, made up maybe by parents who just wanted an answer here. There were 75 pieces of evidence, including a partial shoe print that, quote unquote, seemed to match a pair of Stephen's shoes. And one of the weirder things that I have heard is Stephen apparently had a

some sort of like markings or lesions on his genitalia that prosecutors say were lesions that were clearly caused by a sexual assault, a violent sexual assault. I'd have to see what they're talking. Are they talking about some sort of like abrasive injuries? Are they talking about some sort of sore like it's

This turns out to be later on a pre-existing skin condition. This is very convincing to the jury. There is no hard evidence against Stephen. There's no blood on his clothes. There's no cuts. There's no scratches. The shoes, they found all the pairs of shoes, including the one that he was wearing, the pair that he was wearing, no soil, no debris that might connect him to this brush.

No eyewitnesses placing him there. It sounds like wrong place, wrong time. And he is ultimately convicted. There is a guilty verdict and a death sentence, and he becomes the youngest Canadian ever put on death row, the youngest, in 1959. Based on this evidence, it's unreal stomach contents saying he was with her. Nobody else was with her. He was with her when this happened.

By my assessment, with what you have described, there isn't even probable cause for arrest. You know, he's a suspect just because of temporal aspects of being with Lynn. But his statement, it sounds like they just absolutely dismissed his statement outright and maybe even used that statement in a way to cast further suspicion. You know, here you got the boogeyman car, right?

He's making an excuse as to what happened to Lynn. But the fact that they were able to get a conviction and a death sentence on this flimsy evidence, stomach contents, that is absurd. Absolutely. And decades later, he's sitting in prison. He's on death row. Decades later, there is a film made called The Fifth Estate.

And it's a big film. It's a big documentary. And in it, there's a claim that the police ignored other suspects. And here's the most interesting one, I think. The Royal Canadian Air Force had a sergeant who was in the Clinton area. His name was Alexander Kalachuk.

He is described in this documentary, The Fifth Estate, as a heavy drinker with a history of sexual offenses. He was fixated on young girls. And in fact, just a few weeks before Lynn vanished, Alexander had been arrested for trying to convince a 10-year-old girl to climb into his car.

But because there was not enough evidence, the charges were dropped. Before you ask, I have no idea if it was a gray Chevy. We couldn't find that information. But this is a guy who had a criminal history, nearly a decade's worth of sexual offenses. He had apparently a huge bout of anxiety around the time of Lynn's death. And when the Fifth Estate looked at Alexander

Kalachuk's psychiatric files, it sounds like there was a suggestion, according to this film, that he had felt guilt after Lynn's sexual assault and murder. He sold his car shortly after her body was discovered. And he died, because this case goes for decades, he died in the mid-1970s due to complications caused by alcoholism. And the police ignored all of this, and it was available. All of it. And this guy sat in prison.

Just investigating a case like Lynn's, of course, there's always the look at the known sex offenders in the area. That's par for course. There's sometimes you run into, wow, you know, this, we just popped this guy out.

for, you know, trying to abduct, you know, like I'm thinking of a series that I was involved with, a known registered sex offender tried to abduct a sex worker, and then we had a sex worker killed a week later. And of course, you pay attention to that, but it turns out he's not responsible. You know, so you do get some coincidental overlap there.

I keep going back to the case against Stephen. And it's like, there isn't one. They needed to expand out. You know, Stephen may be in play just because of the circumstances. So, you know, and something like this Kalachick, I mean, you have to go knock on that guy's door. Yeah. Absolutely. And I think you have tunnel vision from the police, number one, thinking that a random person would pick up a girl like this in this area in this time period. Yeah.

And then you have what I call the being enamored by a scientist with supposed forensic tools. I just did an interview about America Sherlock, and the person asked me about, you know, did everybody believe Oscar Heinrich in the 1920s? A lot of people thought this was bunk, the things that he was doing with ballistics and bloodstain pattern analysis.

but also people were enamored by it when they shouldn't have been. And it's this brand new thing. And I think that's what happened with the summit contents is you have this coroner saying definitively, she died here. This kid was with her during this time period. He is guilty.

So I want to jump through this because there's a lot that happens over the decades after Stephen is sitting in prison languishing over the stupidest evidence ever. There's this Fifth Estate documentary that came out in 1966. There's a book called The Trial of Stephen Truscott, and that comes out. It completely condemns, of course, the police investigation for its hastiness and

He has an appeal that's denied. But after, in 1969, he spent 10 years behind bars. He was a model prisoner. He is released on parole. So they took him off of death row. Partially because of this case, in the 70s, Canada ended up getting rid of the death penalty. So he gets out.

In 1969, he changes his name and he settles down with a wife and he has a family. In 1974, Stephen's behavior is so impeccable that Canada's National Parole Board excuses him from the rest of his parole so he can go wherever he wants.

But he wants his name cleared because he had to change his name. And this is when the documentary comes up in the year 2000. The CBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, releases The Fifth Estate. And he talks for the first time. He says, I'm innocent. The police railroaded me. And I want to clear my name. And boy, does this take decades and decades.

So let me tell you what unfolds, okay? Because there's a lot that ends up happening. So eventually, the Justice Department in Canada says there's a miscarriage of justice. He shouldn't have been convicted based on the evidence. And now all this stuff starts to come out. I already told you about the suspect that we should have looked at. But there was a farmer who told the police that he had seen a strange car in the area exactly where Lynn went missing.

And a dermatologist who said this is not from trauma, the stuff on his genitalia. He had a pre-existing skin condition. This is not from an assault.

We've got the original coroner who seemed now to be insecure about the time period based on the stomach contents. He said, you know, I don't know. And he gave several different times where he said, maybe I'm wrong about this. I'm not really sure. So they bring a gastroenterologist named Nicholas DeMont.

And he tells the court, and tell me if this makes sense to you, he tells the court in 2004, listen, it's not strange that Lynn had a pint of food in her stomach because a stomach almost never empties entirely within two hours of a meal. He says that you can have 70% of your meal still sitting undigested in your body.

after a few hours. He said it takes up to six hours for food to leave the stomach, which of course blows away this timeline. Does that make sense to you, what he's saying? This is, I think, 2004 when he's talking about this. No, well, you know, that's my understanding. He is the expert. I'm not the expert on stomach contents. But my understanding is, yes, up to six hours in the stomach itself before it starts going through the rest of the digestive system.

But it's also dependent on the type of food. You know, there's so many factors. You know, that's when we get into situations to try to establish time of death, all the things that we use have variables that impact what we can determine about

how narrow or how wide the time of death interval really is. For a pathologist to say it had to occur within this 30-minute window, you just can't do that.

There's more forensic evidence. I will tell you, Stephen, he is exonerated. His name is cleared. It is not because of DNA. They collected DNA evidence, but it's not because of that. It's really what becomes convincing to people, besides all of this other BS with the stomach contents, is forensic entomology comes into play. So there's a biologist who worked in the Ontario Attorney General's office in 1959.

He testifies that there were maggots in her body at the time of her autopsy.

They were blowflies and fresh flies, which lay eggs in animals or humans that have been dead for mere minutes. And investigators in 59 had removed and preserved these maggots. Now entomologists refer to their size, which points to their age, to get a more accurate sense of Lynn's time of death, right? So they can't conclusively rule out the possibility that fly larvae were laid in her freshly dead body on the night of the 9th, but

But at the time of her autopsy, they said based on the maggot's size, probably she died more like the morning the next day, based on the size. Do you believe in that? I believe in it from my research, but do you believe in it? Insect evidence is typically the best when it comes to establishing the window for time of death.

And that window, the longer the body has been dead and out in the environment, that window gets bigger and bigger. In Lynn's case, you have the two days that she was out there. The entomologist would be able to put a fairly narrow window. One of the issues that I've seen and one of the issues that I'm thinking about is

is when the larva or the maggot evidence was collected, if it was collected out in the field and properly collected as well as the date time stamp put on there at the exact moment it was collected, then we're dealing with some good evidence.

Sometimes this evidence isn't collected until at autopsy. And now the body has been transported and placed in a refrigerator. And of course, that slows things down and that's going to throw things off. So that's part of what when I if I were to be consulting on this case and listening or reading this entomologist report or testimony, I would be evaluating was that type of

situation factored in? Was that something that occurred? Was she refrigerated prior to the maggots being collected? That, of course, is going to throw off the entomologist's timing if he doesn't factor that in.

I mean, all of this is to say you cannot pin this on Stephen Trescot at this point. That is the bottom line. So Dr. Penniston now starts to back down on all of this. And he is saying, I can't say when the exact time of death is. So in August of 2007, 48 years later, the Ontario Court of Appeal unanimously overturns Stephen Trescot's conviction.

The Ontario government compensates him with $6.5 million for the trauma he experienced at the hands of the judicial system. And at this point, Lynn's family is still convinced that he's guilty, which is completely understandable. But there is a lot of evidence that says that he's not. Well, at this point, this is an unsolved case. Where does this stand today?

The DNA evidence was collected in 1959. It was stored. And then according to the Toronto Star, who's been following this case, all of that evidence was destroyed in 1967. They exhumed her body and they couldn't get anything from it. So it's an unsolved case.

Well, you know, that's where, because it was an adjudicated case, they had a conviction. They had a guy that was sentenced to death. Probably, I don't know, Canada's process, but like typically here in the United States, you know, once the, you know, all the various appeals processes have been exhausted, they're

At a certain point, that's when the agency can go to the courts and get a court order allowing them to destroy the evidence because it's now taking up space and they don't want to have to continue to store it indefinitely. Stephen Truscott is still alive. He is 78 years old. You know, this is still a case that's talked about. Just the youngest person to end up on death row in Canada and it ends up like this.

I understand the victim's family wants that answer and

And I just cannot believe that the DNA evidence was destroyed. It just could have given us some information. And with this man, I mean, this man who seems like a very likely suspect who's now dead, and it's just unbelievable to me. But I really wanted to talk about forensic entomology because I find I've written about it. I find it so interesting. And that's one of the reasons why I honed in on this case. Besides the fact that there was an exoneration here, I like talking about bug evidence. I find it so interesting.

I also did not know that blowflies don't lay eggs at night.

Bugs are so specific. They just, I mean, they go in a predictable way. And boy, what a creative way to help solve a crime, you know, or to help prove someone's innocent. Forensic entomology, it is fascinating. And having been out and watching the insects work, it is a excellent source of evidence. But the people who are out there at the crime scene need to understand how to document and collect the evidence properly.

So the entomologists can really define in terms of time of death, that's absolutely critical. You know, kind of getting back to this evidence being destroyed, you know, I'm wondering, you know, maybe the evidence that was within the law enforcement evidence storage was destroyed.

But during trial, a lot of evidence goes into court. And so many people overlook the fact that decades later, the court is still got evidence that was admitted at trial. I wonder if they pursued that. Maybe some of the DNA evidence could still be in that reservoir or another reservoir.

My hope would be is that, you know, we could truly utilize modern technology to identify the killer. You know, I know Lynn's family is believing Stephen is the killer and get them an answer, a firm answer, you know, so they know whether Stephen truly is or not. I will tell you, based on the circumstances, I don't believe he is. I don't either. I don't either. It's a hard case. Let's end it here. I appreciate your help.

with all of this, sorting this out. I learned so much. And very rarely do you say, kind of from the beginning, boy, this doesn't sound right. So this is a good case for us to bring, and I'll try to find some more soon. This is my wheelhouse, you know. I know. It's a Paul Holes case. I know. They jump out at me. I like Kate Winkler Dawson cases, but I do throw you a bone every once in a while and say, let's get a Paul Holes case in here. I appreciate the bones.

You appreciate the votes. Okay. I will see you next week. All right. Sounds good, Kate. Take care.

This has been an Exactly Right production. For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com slash buriedbones sources. Our senior producer is Alexis Amorosi. Research by Maren McClashen and Kate Winkler-Dawson. Our mixing engineer is Liana Squilacci. Our theme song is by Tom Breifogle. Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.

Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer. You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at BuriedBonesPod. Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded Age story of murder and the race to decode the criminal mind, is available now. And Paul's best-selling memoir, Unmasked, My Life Solving America's Cold Cases, is also available now. ♪