Catherine Laidlaw
Appearances
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
And that was also where he was declared incapable of managing his own affairs. So that's when he was entered into the OPGT system. So during that experience at the hospital, he was asked whether he had any family, who they should put down as next of kin. And he said no. And whether that's a decision that was born out of estrangement or forgetfulness or anger, we will never know.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
And what they found was a home that was fairly sparsely furnished inside. He did have, in keeping with his fastidious nature, a set of meticulously kept records, you know, letters that he had sent to his family when he was a child, a stack of expired passports. You know, there were tons of information about his retirement funds, things like that.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
And then she would have, in an ideal world, passed the file on to the trust department to sort of handle the estate. And that's not what happened in this instance. She decided to hang on to the file for a little bit longer than she should have and saw an opportunity there.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
Of course, at no point during this process does Val Gobin indicate that Karnasiewicz is her longtime boyfriend.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
You know, he alleged at the time that he, when he was 22 and working a security job at a racetrack in the East End, that he had met Sommerfeld, who would have been 66 at the time. And that the following year, the elderly man gave him the will. He went so far as to sort of plant Sommerfeld.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
Christmas cards in the file at the OPGT, a card dated 2008 and signed, Robert appeared in the file that wasn't there before.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
This colleague phoned Peter and delivered the news that his brother had passed away, that he had a sizable estate. And both of these pieces of information were shocking to him at the time.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
He was available some of the time, but she couldn't shake the feeling that it was strange that she had never met his family and that sometimes he would have to cancel plans with her at the last minute out of the blue with very little explanation.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
However, the following day, he got another call from the OPGT and was told that, in fact, there was a will, that there was a beneficiary, and that the half-brother wasn't in it.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
He figured that in the later years of his life, his brother must have met someone who he connected with enough to leave his estate to. But he and his wife, after talking it over, did decide to consult with a lawyer. Their lawyer examined the will, determined that it looked to be credible.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
And the way that he characterized it at the time was, you know, if the lawyer says it's okay, it's okay. Like, you have to trust someone, right? And so they decided not to pursue it from there.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
And so, effectively, what he did with the money when he received it was he paid down $92,000 in debt and then dumped the rest of it into an investment account. He wasn't spending it. And, you know, acting as an estate trustee isn't as simple as collecting a paycheck. There are actual... decisions that have to be made. And so Knasiewicz began to make some of those decisions.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
He even went as far as to approve the design of the headstone where Sommerfeld was laid to rest in the cemetery. And at this point, he is aware that Sommerfeld has family and still makes that decision, acting sort of as a state trustee so as not to rouse any suspicion. Yeah.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
He becomes aware of his half-brother's existence and thinks, oh, this is a kink in the plan. That, you know, this is not quite as simple as we'd initially thought, but all of these things are in motion now. So he, at one point, calls his half-brother and says that he's interested in holding a memorial service for Sommerfeld. And...
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
His half-brother can tell at this point that something is not quite right. He'd messaged him on Facebook and asked him if he had time to talk, and he just was suspicious of the whole thing. And he said to Kanasiewicz on the phone, who are you to my brother? And Kanasiewicz didn't answer, hung up the phone, and the memorial service never came to pass.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
So he had confessed that he was still living with his ex-girlfriend, and that was why he'd never had her over, but insisted that they were no longer romantically involved and were living together as roommates. As expected at the time, her friends were not approving of this situation. They thought that their friend was having the wool pulled over her eyes. And so...
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
They started talking when she learned that his last name was Dixon. Oh, did he have a niece named Candace? Yes, he did. She was insisting that his niece's longtime partner had another girlfriend. So Candace's uncle calls Candace. Candace, outraged, goes to the hair salon to confront this receptionist. And she was demanding and demanding to know this purported girlfriend's name.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
And Kanasiewicz, meanwhile, is denying everything. No, no, this is crazy. This is a lie. I only got the business card during one of my work shifts at the OPGT. So Candace, who is a... very assertive individual, decides that the two together are going to get in a cab and go to the OPGT and confront this woman. And so they do.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
And as they're standing at the front desk and Candace is demanding to see this woman, Adeline, Konasiewicz is texting her upstairs, telling her not to come down. So after that, Candace, undeterred, decides to email Adeline. And she says, you know, I know you know who I am. Like, please call me.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
And Adeline writes her back very distantly, sort of feigning ignorance and just saying that she couldn't help her. And Candace wrote back sort of expressing disbelief that this could possibly be true. And so could she please help clear this up? And I remember she signed that email. I wouldn't be the first person to be taken for a fool, right?
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
And I think at that point she really was just sort of desperately examining the last seven years of her life and trying to think, like, is this even possible given how much time we spend together?
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
So she calls Candace one night and leaves this long, rambling, teary voicemail that sounds like a minute-long sentence and explains that she met Rob years ago at work and really liked him and wanted him to notice her and...
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
found out that he had a girlfriend but got jealous and told people that they were dating even though they weren't dating and that was a lie and effectively claiming that she had made it all up and that if she could get the two of them to break up, then Rob would ride off into the sunset. And so Dixon then starts to panic for a different reason.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
To her, the idea that her longtime live-in boyfriend, who she spends inordinate amounts of time with, could have a stalker seemed more plausible than possible. that he could have a mistress at the time. And so she starts feeling very nervous. And Knassovich, meanwhile, is sort of perpetuating this stalker idea.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
She started getting suspicious, and she did what everyone is able to do in this day and age, and went online and tried to vet some of those suspicions and see if there was actually something going on. And what did she find? She discovered that her boyfriend was very much together with his other girlfriend, his longtime live-in girlfriend.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
He sends cease and desist letters to his own mistress in an attempt to get Candace to believe this sort of cover story, that in fact they are together writing themselves.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
So all of his mail is still going to the condo that he shared with Candace until very recently. She starts collecting the mail. This was something that he had always done in their relationship. She begins to take this on and notices that a letter from TD Bank addressed to her ex, care of the estate of Heinz Sommerfeld. This didn't really register with her.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
She threw the letter in a pile of other mail that was coming for him and flew off to St. Barts for the holidays. And in January, when she came back, she got a call from her ex saying that he missed her and wanted to see her and could he take her out for dinner. And when they arrived at dinner, he asked if any mail had come for him. And she said, in fact, it had. Candace showed him the letter.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
And did he know anything about this? He said he had no idea. He made a joke about Heinz ketchup, and he tucked the letter away in his pocket. And a few weeks later, another letter arrived from a law firm this time, and it was also addressed to the estate.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
So what happens next? Well, Dixon decides to open the letter. Inside the letter, she saw Adeline Belgobin's name. And at that point, she kind of lost it. She texted her ex, what is this? Why is Adeline's name on this? You know, is this some kind of sick joke? And he is, meanwhile, denying it. What are you talking about? Eventually, she just finally said, you're doing something illegal.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
It didn't take very long for her to find Candace Dixon's social media accounts. Her Instagram account was full of pictures of the couple at events, on family vacations, things like that. And this time, when Adeline asked him about it, he didn't deny it. He leveled with her and said that... He was with Candace, and he had no intention of leaving.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
That was the moment where things sort of really coalesced for Candace. The truth finally crystallizes. She realizes... that there was no stalker. There's been a mistress this whole time. And something is sort of unleashed in her, and she begins to search the condo everywhere.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
She goes down to their two storage lockers, starts rummaging through Knasiewicz's things, and, you know, uncovers all of this evidence of this other relationship in quite a heartbreaking way. You know, there's clothing, there are Christmas cards. She eventually finds...
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
an SD card that she doesn't recognize, slides it into her laptop, and on this SD card are pictures of women with her boyfriend, women in lingerie, dozens of photos documenting what looked like multiple indiscretions spanning the years of their relationship, and only one of the photos was of her. And that, I think, was the moment where everything really broke.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
Candace really went sort of full true detective on this situation. But she, through her lawyer, secures Sommerfeld's estate file. She tracks down his half-brother herself through Facebook. And in early March of 2019, she calls the police. She has sort of seen and read enough information to be convinced that they have pulled off something and decides to report it.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
And so she gives a statement to the police. They begin building a case. And that's when the dominoes really start to fall.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
So he is, of course, still working unawares because he works in a different area of policing than the Fraud Squad, which is the team that is investigating this. But he is being investigated by his own colleagues. And so they begin to request bank records and phone records. There's a clear paper trail that ties Kanasiewicz and Balgobin together. And...
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
At one point, they begin to surveil the two of them, and then finally they decided that they had enough to proceed.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
And then seven months later, in July of 2020, they were finally arrested and formally charged with fraud. And Belgobin, in addition to her fraud charge, was also charged with something called breach of public trust, which is reserved for people in positions of public trust who... who are accused of crimes.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
Their defense teams really went hard on the sort of vengeful ex-girlfriend narrative, painting Candace as sort of a scorned woman who had fabricated this plot to get even. And the prosecutor's Thank you. ,,,,,, , , , , , , , , , , ,. P. P. P. P. beNent... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...,... ...,... ...,... tag�-N.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
The way that he framed it at the time was that it was a financial decision. You know, he'd brought debt into that relationship, and he couldn't afford to live the same kind of life as the one he had with Candace if he left her, and so he wasn't planning to.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
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Criminal
The Man Without a Will
Where did he grow up? Who is he? So Robert Kanasiewicz grew up in a city called Oakville, which is its own city proper, but sort of also acts as a suburb of Toronto. His father was a police officer for the Toronto Police Force.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
And he, from what I understand, sort of has always had a penchant for flashy cars and sort of ran with harder party and crew in high school, as it were, before growing up and applying to college for police work himself.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
When they were younger, they had jokingly made a pact that if they were both still single at 35, they'd get married. And when they ran into each other again, Knastowicz recognized her and mentioned the pact. And he assumed she was married. And she corrected him. And he said, so I still have a chance. And they developed a relationship very quickly. They started traveling together.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
Candace had always traveled widely and often. So they went to New York together. They went to Turks and Caicos together, Candace's family. Takes an annual family vacation there every year, so she brought her new boyfriend along. You know, he quickly became her plus one for things like the Powerball, which is a prominent gala here in Toronto. And a few months after that...
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
He moved in to the condo that Candace was renting. And I think she thought that there was real stuff there. I remember her saying that he felt like her people, that they had known each other for so long. And she likened talking to her boyfriend to going to confession at times because he was so... quiet and composed and felt to her like a vault.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
And so I think he felt like a very safe space for her for a long time.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
She did have more money than him, and in her telling, that wasn't an issue necessarily. She didn't expect him to keep up. That just didn't sort of seem possible or fair to expect. She, of course, when they first met, he was still living at his parents' home in Oakville, and that didn't appeal to her. She did expect him to change that living situation, which is when he moved in with her.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
But I think that she did notice early on that he managed money poorly. He brought some debt into the relationship. He hadn't been saving in the time before they had met each other. You know, he was traveling, going out with his friends, eating out, clubbing, living large.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
That said, she also observed that he didn't seem particularly stressed about it, and it became more of a pressure point for her.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
Part-time positions, working security to sort of supervise different things.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
They take care of the decisions for people who don't have others to help them, family members to help them make those decisions. And that can be healthcare decisions. It can be financial decisions, managing the affairs more broadly of people who are alone and can't manage them for themselves. It really is an agency that acts for some of society's most vulnerable people.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
Yes, they absolutely did. And the way that he explained this circumstance was that he was staying with Candace for the lifestyle, that their relationship had never been a positive one. But he was really attracted to her lifestyle. And so why would he leave? And With Adeline, he just had this crazy sexual, physical connection that was undeniable.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
And oftentimes, you know, he would sort of take her out and show her off to his friends and no one ever said anything about it.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
And that kicked off a series of several years of going back and forth, of tumult. Several years of romantic tumult.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
A co-worker said there was a cute officer downstairs that she should go down and talk to him.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
They exchanged numbers, and a few weeks later, they went on their first date.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
And for much of his life, Sommerfeld really kept to himself. He was devoted to his family. When he had nieces and nephews, he was deeply involved in their lives and was always present at family events, birthday parties, holidays, things like that. But he had very few friends. He lived a very quiet life. In fact, he shared a room with his brother until well into his 20s.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
until his younger brother got married and moved out. And that was the impetus for Sommerfeld to get a house of his own. He worked as a draftsman for the Ministry of Transportation here. And so he was sort of drawing detailed maps. He worked there for 36 years. And some of those years, he was actually commended for having perfect attendance records.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
And so he was a very sort of orderly, fastidious person. and he spent a lot of his life and his time alone.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
They partied a lot. They went out to eat with his friends. They traveled a lot. They went to Putnakana for his birthday, for example. She had a photo of the two of them framed on her desk at work. You know, and I think after about a year... of them going steady that she started to think that things weren't quite right. She had met a bunch of his friends. They were going out regularly.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
And eventually the fissure deepened and Hines went so far as to stop answering the phone and stop answering his door. You know, they lived 15 minutes away from one another. And his brother described driving by the house on his way home from work just to check to see if he could see a flutter of blinds moving in the window so that he knew his brother was okay.
Criminal
The Man Without a Will
And in 2008, that culminated with an incident where he went after a woman in the neighborhood with a hammer because he thought that he was being spied on. And so the police were called when that happened, and they took him to jail. a nearby hospital under the Mental Health Act. And that was when he received unofficial diagnosis of dementia caused by Alzheimer's.