Sam Mullins
Appearances
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
Sorry, you want me, art auction secretary, to work for you? Just based on us chatting right now?
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
So Elaine was like, what kind of business are we even talking about here?
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
So after a few more volleys from Elaine, he's like, well, if not those, then what, Elaine?
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
Elaine had honed her photography skills with Ron over the past decade and even went back to college for a couple of years to study.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
And it's here, at Geneva Fountain Coffee Table Book, that Elaine says what anyone in their right mind would have said.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
I could be the worst photographer in the UK for all you know. And besides, Elaine knew that this whole exercise was moot anyway.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
But instead of David Davis letting it go, the Canada thing only seemed to make him more excited.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
As bizarre and thrilling as this conversation had been, Elaine had to get back to work. But it was clear that Davis wasn't going to take no for an answer.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
So David Davis finally took his cue, and then Elaine's business card, which he wielded like a golden ticket as he backed away.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
He bid her adieu, and Elaine watched him stride away in disbelief. Elaine wouldn't fully understand why David Davis seemed so thrilled to have found her that day until five years into her future. He appeared in her life as an express lane that would deliver her and Ron to their Canadian dreams ahead of schedule. The answer to her problems. But in reality, she was the answer to his problems.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
MacDonald and his colleague Ian Clenahan had learned in the interview with Ron's big brother Brian that Ron Platt had an old girlfriend.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
After work, Elaine had to relay to Ron what had happened at the shop.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
When she got home to Ron, she launched into it.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
As the words left her mouth, she could hear how it sounded. An American stranger who thinks I'm special wants to start a business with me.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
As they talked it through a bit more that night, Elaine safely drifted all the way back to Earth. Of course, she thought, this was probably just an eccentric having a laugh. Yeah, it was nothing.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
So on the Thursday, Elaine meets up with Davis in a cafe, not really knowing what to expect.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
David Davis was self-aware enough that he could totally appreciate how his offer must look through the eyes of her significant other. It made perfect sense for Ron to be skeptical. How it must sound. So Davis proposed a solution.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
So the three of them went out to dinner. And when he walked in, Davis seemed genuinely thrilled to meet Ron.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
If you were to glance at their table that night, you might assume that the two were brothers. They were the same height, same build, same hair color, age. Even their dialects seemed to be winking to each other over the mid-Atlantic somewhere. Once they'd made fast friends, Davis turned the conversation to the business at hand.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
They learned that Elaine was living in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, the same town in which the dead man's Rolex had last been serviced. So a plan was struck for Clenahan to set up a meeting, face-to-face.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
So the three of them raised a glass and they had a deal. And almost immediately to Elaine and Ron, the door to a more exciting life seemed to swing open.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
Elaine and Ron met up with David and his teenage daughter, Noelle. The story was that Davis had been a high-powered finance guy in New York and then later all over Europe. But now he was all but retired and was in the midst of what sounded like a very messy divorce. He had other children too, but Noelle chose to live with her dad instead of with her mom and siblings back in the US.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
To Ron and Elaine, it was pretty easy to see why a kid would choose him. He seemed like a good dad. And she, a sweet kid. She had his features.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
She was deferential to her dad, but so were Ron and Elaine. There was no mistaking the dynamic. He was the man in charge.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
Ron hadn't had anyone treat him to a fancy dinner like this because he was a TV repairman. But it's important to remember he was a TV repairman with a Rolex. There, ticking on his wrist, powered by the unprivileged movements of his life, was his Rolex. A real one that he bought with his own money, his most prized possession. He'd wear it in the shower, even.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
David Davis had told police that he'd known Ron for several years, so they thought it likely that this Elaine and David Davis would know each other. And therefore, the police had to be careful.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
When he'd pose for pictures like a model who believes they have one good side, the Rolex side was the one he wanted people and the camera to see. In Ron's life, he wouldn't have many moments where he got to experience the finer things, the luxuries. But then in walked David Davis. Refined, classy, a man who from where Ron was sitting must have appeared to be the Rolex of people.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
And it was easy to tell that Davis liked Ron too. And more than that, Davis was starting to see potential in Ron. Back in Harrogate after the whirlwind weekend in London, Ron went back to his job and Elaine had to return to hers at the art auctioneer. She'd given her notice but was on the hook for a few more weeks.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
The days dragged for Elaine as the movie of her future jet setting and photography played on a loop in her mind. She and Davis still needed to iron out some of the details of the work itself, and he encouraged her to name her own salary, which wasn't something Elaine was comfortable with. So she called her old friend Chris for some guidance.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
But something about the job Elaine was describing wasn't adding up.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
Elaine named her salary. Davis accepted. She worked her final shift at the auctioneer. And finally, it was time to start her work with David Davis. And in our interview with Elaine, when we got to this part and asked her about her work with Davis over 30 years later, you can hear, it's still too hot to touch.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
So here's what happened. For the first trip for David Davis, the plan was go to Geneva and then on the way back, swing by France to meet with a real estate agent who is going to show her some properties that David Davis was interested in buying.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
Davis said, I'll meet you there, we'll go for lunch, and then I'll take you out to the hotel by the airport so that you can fly for Switzerland in the morning.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
As they walk toward the elevator and get in, Elaine feels the feeling that has been quietly present with her from the moment she first met Davis. A small niggling part of her that she'd been brushing to the side.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
So Clenahan sat down with Elaine in a cafe up in Harrogate. And very quickly, he would come to learn that Elaine was more important to this story than he could have possibly imagined.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
On the surface, everything had been so warm and pleasant and exciting. There was nothing he said that made Elaine afraid of him. There was nothing that he did to make her fear him. But there was something she couldn't explain. The subtlest of feelings. Like an ancient whisper from the animal part of her that said, you're not safe.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
Before she showed up this day in London, she almost acted on this feeling.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
They walked down the hallway toward Elaine's door, her mind cataloguing every possible meaning of the phrase, Can I look at your room?
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
Elaine opens the door and Davis slides past her in the doorway. He does a half-hearted lap of the unremarkable room and then saunters over to the bed.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
And there he is, the man who's offered Elaine so many things... leaning on the bed of the hotel room he just bought for her.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
It appeared to be a formidable stack, a serious amount of cash.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
Once the door clicked behind him, Elaine went straight for the phone.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
But Ron was already the head of the David Davis Appreciation Society.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
It had started. Elaine didn't know it, but the photography, looking at the real estate, even the changing of currency were not what David Davis was really after with Elaine and Ron.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
Elaine had a bad feeling. She didn't know if she trusted David Davis. She didn't know if this job was real. But whatever she felt didn't matter, because she'd made a series of decisions that led her here, to this plane seat, with tens of thousands of Swiss francs in a bag beside her. In her work and relationship with David Davis, the rubber was about to meet the Switzerland.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
This would be the first of many trips Elaine would take where she didn't comprehend what she was really doing.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
There were other trips with other currencies and different deposits into different bank accounts. Picture Elaine with her camera in one hand and Davis' thousands in the other, breezing through airports. The work felt vague. The dollar amounts she was exchanging felt gargantuan. Elaine found herself wondering if this was all an audition of some sort.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
I'm Sam Mullins, and this is Sea of Lies from CBC's Uncover. Episode 2, When Ron Met Ron. When Elaine was young, she entered the workforce with a clear dream in her mind. One day, she hoped to become the executive assistant to someone important. Capital S, capital I. A line of work she was a natural for. Supremely organized, competent, and useful in the arena of business where big egos run amok.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
Elaine felt that he was testing her in darker ways too.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
while his antics felt odd sometimes. For Elaine, all that mattered was that her paychecks were clearing and that her and Ron's dream of having enough money to get to Canada felt closer than ever. One day, Davis told Elaine to meet up with him for lunch in Harrogate. He said he had something important to ask her.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
Sometimes instead of incorporating your own business, you can just purchase a good-as-new existing corporation, Davis explained. He said he was the happy new owner of an entity called the Cavendish Corporation.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
Elaine was taken aback. Directors? Of a corporation? Her and Ron?
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
As he laid it all out, Davis seemed genuinely distressed by the situation with his wife.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
She was going to take him for everything. And thus, he needed Elaine and Ron's help.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
You would be there in title only. It wouldn't be more work. You wouldn't be exposed to any liabilities. You would just be doing me a favor, for which I would be very appreciative.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
After this surprising ask, Ron and Elaine talked it through and thought, we could do that. And they were named directors of the Cavendish Corporation, a corporation that did what exactly?
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
And from the moment that Elaine and Ron agreed to be directors, a current slowly started to pull them deeper. Davis took Elaine to open a corporate bank account. And with the account, Cavendish was now a real thing. As far as Elaine could tell, the corporation existed so that it could have a bank account. And the bank account existed so that he could acquire assets.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
Assets that would happen to further entangle David Davis with Ron and Elaine. It started with the apartment.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
Davis was like, what are you guys renting for? That's dead money you should buy. And then in a year or two, sell it for a profit.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
So Elaine and Ron moved into their new place that they co-owned with a corporation that they still couldn't confidently describe the purpose of, when Davis had another bright idea.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
One day, Davis calls Elaine excitedly and says, Elaine, come downstairs. I'm outside in a taxi.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
Elaine and Ron were dragged deeper still.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
And this is how Ron and Elaine came to be directors of Davis's corporation, co-owners of an apartment with Davis, and proprietors of a TV repair business.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
So as they reached December of 1992, they were completely committed to the Davis relationship. And with the business and flat, Canada seemed to be nudged into the future further than they'd originally planned. it was obvious that Davis wanted to keep them around, which is why what happened next was so shocking.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
At the end of a whirlwind year, Elaine and Ron became close enough with Davis and his daughter, Noelle, that the four of them got together for Christmas. They gave Noelle a hug, and as the house steeped in the smells of turkey in the oven, the four of them sat down in the lounge.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
If you go to Canada by the end of February?
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
For Elaine, this wasn't a thrilling development. The whole idea was that they were going to save up enough of a nest egg to make the international move as smooth as possible. And after a year of Davis pulling them closer and closer in embrace, this felt like a sudden shove out the door.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
She was hardwired to please, hardwired to de-escalate, and do whatever is asked of her.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
As Elaine sat trying not to be a Christmas bummer, she kept thinking. The end of February felt so quick and oddly specific. Why was the date imposed by him? Merry Christmas, you need to leave all you've ever known in the next 60 days? Why? Why? Why? I find myself thinking of this scene, though, often. About the four of them sitting around that table for Christmas dinner.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
These four souls whose lives would be completely blown up in the next few years. There's Ron, feeling elated. Davis, pleased. Elaine, pushing her food around her plate, trying to mask her panic. And Noelle. Noelle is the one I wonder about the most. How did she feel as she sat there knowing why they needed Ron and Elaine gone? They were bound for Canada. They were bound for ruin.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
Sea of Lies is produced by What's the Story Sounds for CBC. It's hosted and written by me, Sam Mullins, and produced and reported by Alex Gatenby. Mixing and sound design is by Ivan Eastley. From What's the Story Sounds, our executive producers are David Waters and Daryl Brown. At CBC Podcasts, the senior producers are Andrew Friesen and Damon Fairless. Eunice Kim is our story editor.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
Emily Connell is our digital coordinating producer. Executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. Senior manager is Tanya Springer. And the director of CBC Podcasts is Arif Noorami.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
While lots of peers were pairing off and getting married in their early 20s, Elaine didn't have the time or interest for a relationship. A stance which, as we know from the first act of any romance, will not be sustainable.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
Elaine walked into the dim warmth of the pub with her friends, took off her coat, and there he was.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
Hold up. This reference is a little before my time. Cliff Richard images search. Oh, Elaine.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
Ron was older than her, in his late 30s, trim, well put together, and as Elaine picked up on quickly, shy, painfully shy. But luckily, Elaine is the perfect antidote to shyness.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
There was a knock, there was a discovery, and then suddenly there were two Ronald Platts. One dead in the coroner's freezer in Devon, and the other walking around, paying bills in charming neighbours in a small village in Essex.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
A chatty few pints later, the four of them stumbled out of the pub, back into the cold. When Ron, perhaps with a little liquid courage in him, took Elaine aside to shoot a shot.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
On the day in York, as they strolled through the quaint medieval city's cathedral and cheese shops, Elaine felt a profound comfort with Ron. The man was a good egg.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
When they got back to Harrogate, Ron invited her to his flat. They'd spoken so much about photography, he wanted to show her some of his stuff. There was a portrait he'd taken of a friend's cat he was especially proud of. But there was something he was even more excited to show her.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
I love this detail so much. And after learning everything I have about Ronald Platt, I'm convinced that this track selection was no accident. This was Ron revealing himself. It's all there in the lyrics. This was him saying, I'm a rock. I'm an island, Elaine. This fortress is steep and mighty. I'm a heavy cat. Can you dig it? And she could.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
And that was it. They became Ron and Elaine. And to those who knew Elaine well, this came out of nowhere.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
The police had accidentally figured out that the man they had interviewed nearly two months ago, who they knew as David Davis, and who told them he was a close friend of Ronald Platt's, was now possibly living as Ronald Platt.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
This is Chris Idle, one of Elaine's best friends.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
They built a life together. But even from the very beginning, it was clear that there was something missing for Ron. He loved Elaine very much, but his heart was always somewhere else. Canada. With Ron, it was always about Canada. And who better to describe Ron's lifelong connection to Canada than his one surviving family member, Jeff Platt. He was my big brother.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
Ron and Jeff's folks had been struggling to make ends meet in post-war England for years, and were desperate for change.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
So when the opportunity to teach in Canada came up, they leapt at it. But the Platts were cursed from the beginning. A few days before their first Canadian Christmas, their house burnt down, nearly with Ron in it, and they lost everything.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
But instead of taking it as a sign that they'd made a horrible mistake by coming here, this incident would be recorded in the pliable young brain of Ron Platt as a foundational positive memory because of what happened next. The neighboring farmers rallied to help this new family of strangers.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
They took the Platts in, gave them their coats, and helped them salvage their first Christmas and survive their first real winter.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
This was the Canada that Ron Platt was never able to shake, the Canada in his heart and tattooed on his hand, the one that he would describe to Elaine. But the Platts remained a family constantly on the brink of financial ruin and existed in a permanent state of limbo.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
So now, a death which, up until this point, had been understood to most likely either be a boating accident or a suicide, was a big question mark, followed by an exclamation mark.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
Ron grew up bouncing between England and Canada with his folks. And then when he became an adult, he kept doing the same thing on his own. He tried joining the Canadian army, but they wouldn't take him. So he went all the way back to England to join the British army. He worked in the Signal Corps for many years as a radio technician, where he learned he had a gift for understanding electronics.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
While electronics made perfect sense to him, there were many things in his life that didn't. He struggled socially. He couldn't seem to hold down a job or ever find a baseline of happiness. In the moments that he'd examine his life like it was an electronic on his workbench, he always seemed to arrive at the same diagnosis. This isn't running properly.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
There could be a missing part, or more likely, it must be in the wrong place.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
So it was into this lifelong will they or won't they between Ron and my home nation that Elaine first entered Ron's life. During the first decade that they were together, he'd make plans for them to lay roots in Canada. He'd fly there by himself and try and get established so that Elaine could join him. But it would never work out. He'd have visa issues or couldn't land a job and have to return.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
But he couldn't let the Canadian dream go.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
So if Elaine wanted a future with Ron, she knew that eventually she was going to have to join Ron's Canadian dream. So they made a long-term plan to finally get to Canada properly. They were going to take their time, work hard to save up as much money as they could. And when the moment was right, they'd go. Together. And nothing made Ron happier to think about.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
So this is Ron and Elaine in the year 1991. Still very much in love with a Canadian plan. But unbeknownst to them, everything was about to change. That year, Elaine was 31 years old and working as a receptionist at a fine art auctioneer's in Harrogate. One day she was on the phone behind the desk in the showroom when in walked a man she'd never seen before. A well-dressed man.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
A man with whom she'd be linked for the rest of her life and beyond.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
The piece that caught his eye was a pastoral Scottish scene by the artist Alfred Dobransky.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
For investigators, the doorknock revelation had so thoroughly flipped everything on its head that the detectives, like Bill McDonald, were forced to look backwards at the work they'd already done to see if there was anything that jumped out under this new light. A new lead? A new person?
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
The man grinned, extended his hand and said, I'm David Davis.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E2: When Ron Met Ron | Sea of Lies
That's actually what brought him up to Harrogate, he said. He was looking at real estate and trying to get a feel for the area. But even for someone house shopping in an affluent spa town, he seemed like he had all the time in the world.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E7: Plausible, Intelligent and Ruthless | Sea of Lies
His story was a meandering, hairy one, filled with tangents. Ferguson tried to keep him on track, but Albert seemed to relish finally having the stage to himself. He smiled often, tried to keep it light, and it was obvious to those in the courtroom, like Elaine watching from the gallery, that his confidence was growing as he went.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E7: Plausible, Intelligent and Ruthless | Sea of Lies
Sheena stumbled as she went up the step, was sworn in, and then when the clerk whispered something that only she could hear, she took the hard candy out of her mouth and wrapped it tightly in a napkin. Your full name is Sheena Elizabeth Walker? Correct. And you were born in Canada? Correct. Was it your choice to accompany your father to England? Yes. You used fake names. Why?
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E7: Plausible, Intelligent and Ruthless | Sea of Lies
But when he reached the part of the story of most consequence, everyone in the courtroom leaned forward because this is where the prosecution and defense's stories were most at odds. The prosecution had alleged that Walker killed Ron on July 20th, but Walker claimed that the last full day he spent with Ron was 10 days before that.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E7: Plausible, Intelligent and Ruthless | Sea of Lies
Walker's story was that he'd enlisted Ron to help him sail the Lady Jane all the way from Devon to Essex, but when they set out on July 9th, they immediately had trouble. Their plan was to sail the first 60 miles to a place called Portland Bill. But Ron Platt got seasick and then in the choppy waters had hurt himself. They had to abort the trip and turn the Lady Jane around.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E7: Plausible, Intelligent and Ruthless | Sea of Lies
The next day, Walker had said, maybe it's best that you just go to France and gave Ron enough money to be on his way. And he alleges that he never saw him again after that. He claimed that he told all of this over the phone to Sheena that night. But he said that Sheena tends to forget things.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E7: Plausible, Intelligent and Ruthless | Sea of Lies
Ferguson ended his time with Albert in the witness box by asking him to describe the nature of his relationship with Ron when he became overcome with emotion. Walker said, he was a friend, somebody I felt a responsibility to, to take care of. I have never hit anyone in my life, nor have I ever been hit by anyone in my life. I'm a very passive person. I had no reason in the world to kill him.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E7: Plausible, Intelligent and Ruthless | Sea of Lies
His version drew to a close, and the general impression was that he'd done what he'd set out to do. He offered a clear and plausible version of events.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E7: Plausible, Intelligent and Ruthless | Sea of Lies
The easy part for Walker was done, but all the while he was regaling the jury with a whirlwind tale of the six years in question, Barton, the prosecutor's pen, never stopped moving. He got his crack at Walker the next afternoon, which happened to be July 1st, Canada Day.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E7: Plausible, Intelligent and Ruthless | Sea of Lies
Barton began his cross-examination by honing in on Walker's story about this aborted sailing trip he claimed to have had with Ron. He asked, Did you call the Coast Guard about the sailing trip you took on July 9th, 1996? Yes, Walker said. You were sailing from the River Dart to Portland Bill was the plan. Do you know the distance from Dartmouth to Portland Bill? Walker said, I don't know.
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Barton asked, for a ballpark. Walker said, I haven't the faintest idea. Interesting. Also interesting, Barton pointed out, was that there was no record of him calling the Coast Guard on the 8th, 9th, or 10th. Barton pivoted to the fact that Ron's three suitcases were filled with clothes and personal belongings and were found in Walker's storage unit.
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How could Platt exist in his new life in France without his clothes? He was emigrating, claimed Walker.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Barton demolished the supposed sailing trip to Essex just in the first 20 minutes and posed to the jury that July 9th wasn't about moving a boat. It was, he argued, Walker's first botched attempt at killing Platt. From there, things only got worse for Walker. When Barton asked if Walker's adoption of Ron Platt's name was intended to be permanent, he hesitated for a moment before answering yes.
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My mother was after custody of my siblings and after my father for financial support. As prosecutor Charles Barton steered her through, Sheena answered every question with conviction. Detective Ian Clenahan was there in the courtroom.
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When Barton pointed out that he seemed unsure, Walker said, some things aren't permanent, to which Barton bellowed, surnames often are. Barton posited a simple idea of motive, that Ron Platt returning from Canada was a problem for Walker.
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The only thing you forgot, said Barton, was the Rolex. Barton's cross-examination of Walker was a complete disaster for the defense. In Barton's final words to the jury, he chose to praise Sheena. He said, what a job for a daughter. She came over to nail the fundamental lie that he knew where Ronald Platt was at all material times. He knew Ron was down on the dart.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Just imagine the scope of the story that he could have constructed had Sheena not come to testify. Barton then put to the jury one final thing that he thought warranted their consideration. There had been a series of unmistakable strikes of luck that had led them all here to this courtroom. The killer had forgot the Rolex. The copics' miraculous discovery of the body.
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The police knocking on the wrong door. The anchor not selling at the boot sale. Each of these carried meaning by virtue of their unlikelihood. It was as if someone or something was watching over them, guiding them to be the ones to bring this man to justice.
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Before sending them to deliberate, Judge Butterfield addressed the jury. He said that while the prosecution had presented a case nearly solely of circumstantial evidence, that they should consider all these factors not in isolation, but in combination. He said, now take your notebooks and pencils into the jury room with you.
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But above all, take with you your common sense and your knowledge of the world. And then for all involved, it was nail-biting time.
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The general rule in cases like this is the longer the deliberations, the better the outcome for the defence.
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But in this case, it just took them the lunch break.
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Walker was led back upstairs from his holding cell.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Sheena was only on the stand for a short period of time that day, but she was able to cover a lot of ground. Meeting Elaine and Ron, taking their names. She and her father posing as a married couple. Ron moving back to England. And then, the key timeline detail. Sheena said that the last time she ever saw Ron Platt was at Christmas 1995.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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With everyone in their places, Walker was ordered to rise.
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And the clerk asks, how did you find the defendant, Albert Johnson Walker? Guilty or not guilty? Guilty.
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Two years of diligent police work. Two hours of deliberation. It was the biggest victory some of these officers would ever be a part of.
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At the end of everything, Judge Butterfield addressed Walker directly. You are convicted of murder. It was, in my judgment, a callous, premeditated killing designed to have eliminated a man you used for your own selfish means. He became an inconvenience and then a threat to your continued freedom. He was expendable and a danger to you, and he had to die.
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The killing was carefully planned and cunningly executed with chilling efficiency. You covered your tracks so effectively that only the merest chance led to any suspicion falling upon you. You are plausible, intelligent, and ruthless, posing a considerable threat to anyone who stands in your way. You may go down.
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Elaine strode out of the courthouse toward the cameras, a caricature of joy. Sheena left the trial and country the same way she had entered them, undetected. She was whisked away, and thus her public life had concluded.
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There's no trace of Sheena Walker for those trying to find her, and her ability to remove herself and her children from the public eye so thoroughly is something I consider to be a success story. In her teenage years, she was untraceable, thoroughly erased and reinvented by her father. And when she came out the other side, it seems, she was able to fly under the radar just as effectively.
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But this time, perhaps, to protect her own children. And I have a great deal of respect for that. How poetic that in the end, it was the women in his life, the women he had targeted, bullied, manipulated, coerced, and taken advantage of in every way possible. It was them and the courage of their testimony that undid him.
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About six months later, in June 1996, Walker told her that Ron had, quote, given up and had traveled across to France, to the Bordeaux region. Sheena told detectives that on July 20th, during their holiday in Devon, Walker went for a solo sale for the entire day. A month after that was when Officer Peter Redman called Walker to inform him that Platt's body was found in the channel.
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For the police in Devon and Essex, who had lived and breathed this case, it was a career-defining win. And it was justice for Ronald Platt.
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I'm not someone who believes in things like luck or fate or the hand of God, but maybe I just needed to hear the right story.
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Albert Walker was sentenced to life in prison, with no chance of parole for the first 25 years, the most severe possible punishment. It was unequivocal justice for Ron Platt and those who knew and loved him.
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So in 2023, when we embarked on making this series and we began our research, we learned that Walker was not only still alive, but that a couple months earlier, he was granted day parole somewhere in Canada. We tried to arrange an interview with him, but were rejected every which way, and I get why.
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He once gave a CTV journalist an interview from behind bars in 1998, one that didn't end well for him. It's also the only recording of his voice that we have.
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The victims of his crimes were so appalled by his apparent lack of remorse in the interview that they mobilized to write victim impact letters to the parole board pointing to his ongoing lack of accountability. So, he wouldn't talk to us. But when someone applies for parole, whether they're granted it or not, all board decisions are publicly accessible.
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And in the case of Albert Walker, I was shocked by how much one can glean through reading them. After serving his first eight years in England, Albert was transferred to the Canadian Penitentiary System in 2005, where the paperwork describes him mostly as an exemplary inmate. He was transferred to Minimum Security in 2017, where he participates in a seniors group and Bible study.
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He was once written up for contraband for having a pack of cigarettes, and one time he was reprimanded for helping his peers fill out their tax forms, which he's not allowed to do for obvious reasons. Walker is described as being an active participant in the rehabilitative programming on the inside, where he was taught to recognize his possible risk factors of re-offense.
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Things like having access to large sums of money, bad, or losing his religious faith, bad. In these programs, Walker was also taught to watch out for, quote, thinking errors that had plagued him in the past. Namely, these three. Everyone does it. I won't get caught. And I deserve this.
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All in all, though, reading through the details of his engagement and good behavior, it's not surprising that he was granted day parole in June 2023. A fact that we relayed to Ron Platt's one surviving family member, his little brother, Jeff.
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Sheena was in the room when he called him and described her father as seeming shocked. And what happened then, after the police first called your dad? We made plans to move. But the most important detail Barton wanted Sheena to tell the jury, the reason the police were so keen to have her on the stand, that they worked with the RAF to make it possible, that, of course, was saved for last.
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Many of the folks we talked to were disappointed to hear about Walker's day parole. But then, a few months later, we learned that his day parole was revoked for a very simple reason. The man cannot stop lying. Of great concern to the board, reads the decision, is that you continue to misrepresent your criminal behavior. Walker was caught downplaying the severity of his fraud offenses.
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In conversation, he'd characterize Walker Financial mainly as a legitimate business venture that simply didn't work out. But that wasn't all. He was also caught trying to lead a church service while the chaplain was on leave.
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And concerningly, the decision goes on to say, "...your case management team noted concerns that you were asking others to refer to you as David, one of your aliases you used in the UK." You also continue to claim that contrary to the evidence presented at your trial, that the victim of the murder first attacked you.
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Even 26 years after his conviction, for the man who could convince anyone of anything, when it comes to convincing a parole board that he takes accountability for his actions, he can't. He cannot. And there's a reason why. The language in the parole decision says that he has, quote, longstanding personality features that are unlikely to ever completely go away.
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Personality features like a marked lack of empathy and a propensity to be manipulative. But to really understand why, after all these years, Walker still can't own what he did, I turn to the person who perhaps knew him best. Sheena. In the only TV interview she ever gave to CTV News in 2005, Sheena said this of her father.
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Albert Walker is 79 years old. He is still behind bars. Sea of Lies is produced by What's the Story Sounds for CBC. It's hosted and written by me, Sam Mullins, and produced and reported by Alex Gatenby. Mixing and sound design is by Ivan Eastley. From What's the Story Sounds, our executive producers are David Waters and Daryl Brown.
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At CBC Podcasts, Emily Connell is our digital coordinating producer. Eunice Kim is our story editor. Our senior producers are Andrew Friesen and Damon Fairless. Our cross-promo producer is Amanda Cox. Our video producers are Evan Agard, Tamina Aziz, and John Lee. Our podcast artwork was designed by Good Tape Studio. Special thanks to the CBC Reference Library.
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And special thanks to Rachel Heinrichs. The executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. Senior manager is Tanya Springer. Arif Noorani is the director. And Leslie Merklinger is the executive director of CBC Podcasts. Uncover will be back with an all-new season next month. Between now and then, consider listening to one of the many excellent seasons that came before Sea of Lies.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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When was the last time you talked to your father? He asked me to change my testimony. He asked me to say that I knew Ron was in Devon, and that I was supposed to know that Ron had been on the boat as well. And with that, the first day was done. It had been a gutsy move to open with Sheena, but the guts Sheena showed on the stand were all anyone was talking about.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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My personal favorite is The Village, which is season three. In it, host Justin Ling explores the numerous cases of missing and murdered men in Toronto's gay community dating back to the 1970s. I've asked other former Uncover hosts about their favorite seasons. Click on the link in this episode's show notes to see what they have to say and to find your next listen.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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I'm Sam Mullins, and this is Sea of Lies from CBC's Uncover. Episode 7, Plausible, Intelligent, and Ruthless. As Sheena took the witness stand on the second day of her cross-examination, one reporter noted that she seemed even more grounded than the day before. She glanced in her father's direction, but his eyes were no longer on her.
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Whether he had resigned himself to the realization that he no longer had any sway over her, or his attorney Richard Ferguson had coached him to stop eyeballing her so intensely, his eyes were elsewhere as Ferguson took the floor.
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The defense began by getting Sheena to reconfirm something that came up the day before, that it was indeed her idea to accompany her father to Britain, and that she left Canada of her own free will. It was.
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He then led her to confirm that she knew Platt to be a depressive, and someone who had become disenchanted with England, and that she had heard there was a plan in place for Ron to move to France to start a new life. That was right. But the point Ferguson seemed most determined to amend from her testimony was the same one her father had called her from prison to amend.
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My lord, the first witness I'm going to call is Sheena Walker. There was an audible gasp as everyone looked to the back door in disbelief. Most of the reporters weren't expecting Sheena Walker to be on the witness stand at all, let alone be first. And she was all alone, because even though Officer Brian Slade had been with her every step, preparing her for this moment...
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Ferguson posited that her father had called her in Essex from Devon on July 9th and told her about the best day of sailing in his life and that he had told her that Ron was with him on the boat. She said, no, that call never happened. And then she said, Ron was impartial to water. Ferguson then turned to paint the phone call from prison in a new light.
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He said that her father wasn't telling her to make up a story for his benefit. He was merely helping her to more accurately remember the truth. But Sheena's story was solid as a rock. After Albert told her Ron had gone to France in June, there was not another mention of him, and certainly no time where her father had said he was hanging out in Devon with Ron.
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When Ferguson was done with his questioning, before the judge let her go, he turned to Sheena for clarification on her comment about Ron being impartial to water. She said he didn't like water, he didn't swim, he didn't like getting on a boat, even a large boat. With that, Sheena's testimony was done. But the judge needed one more thing before they moved on.
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He turned to both attorneys to address the elephant that had entered the courtroom ever since Sheena had said that she was posing as her father's wife and had become pregnant.
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He said, it is obvious that there were matters raised that were not explored in detail. Are you absolutely comfortable that all the matters relevant to the jury's case have been heard? Both agreed they had nothing further.
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The paternity of Sheena's two children was information that never entered the public record. In the center of the storm, she had been credible and poised. While it was obvious that Ferguson had been coached by his client to poke holes in her testimony, Sheena's clear-eyed denial of knowing that Ron had been in Devon painted a damning picture of Albert Walker.
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He had intentionally left Sheena, the person he was most honest with, in the dark about Ron Platt's final movements. And there's really only one reason he would do that. Sheena was free to step down, as the detectives who had been on the case for two years were left in awe of her.
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Sheena had delivered the prosecution an undeniably strong start.
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And there were still 35 witnesses to go. One after the other, the jury heard from everyone related to the case. Fisherman John Coppock, who discovered Ron's body, the coroner, Detective Redman, Clenahan, the residents of Little London Lane, his colleagues at his therapy business. And then finally, it was Elaine's turn.
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He was not there in the courtroom to see it.
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Naturally, Elaine was riddled with anxiety until a police officer told her, no need to worry, just be Elaine. So when she got into the witness box... I actually did okay, yeah.
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The jury were then presented by admitted relevant facts, agreed to by both sides, namely this little detail, that Walker ran a financial company in Canada and is being sought by authorities for stealing over $4 million from his friends, clients, and partners. The prosecution then ended with a focus on the forensics.
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A tidal expert explained that the body could only have been found where it was if it had entered the water out at sea. Next, the jury were told that there were microscopic bits of metal from the anchor walker bot that were found in the fibers of Platt's belt.
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Platt's fingerprints and hair were discovered in the cabin of Walker's boat, the Lady Jane, and that the GPS had been turned off on the evening of July 20th, when the Lady Jane's coordinates were virtually exactly where the fishermen discovered Ron's body one week later. Mic drop. And with that, everyone turned to the defense and to Albert Walker.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Most attorneys would advise their client in the situation, even when you're perceived to be losing, not to take the witness stand. Exposing yourself to cross-examination is no joke, and most defendants will wilt under the pressure of a talented prosecutor like Barton. But most defendants are not Albert Walker.
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Albert Walker had sat for days biting his tongue as Sheena and Elaine and neighbors and colleagues, one after the other, effectively painted him in the least flattering and most incriminating of lights. According to them, he was a liar, a ruthless, duplicitous villain.
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As she moved toward the witness box, all eyes were on her, none more intently than those of her father. His eyes seemed to be reaching out, determined to meet hers, but he was boxed out by the body of a support worker.
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Everything he'd gotten in life, earned or not, was by persuading people that he was an honest and caring man. It didn't matter what people in his Canadian past or what his daughter or police or what the press or barristers thought of him. All that mattered was the jury, and he was determined to change their minds.
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These mere eight women and four men, regular citizens, held the rest of his life in their hands. Walker knew that no reasonable person would have thought that he was innocent after what they'd heard thus far. But he also knew that he possessed a gift, and therefore a puncher's chance. Ferguson called his client to the stand.
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And so, for the next several hours, he had the opportunity, with strategic prompts from his attorney, to present his version of his time in England, beginning in December 1990. He told the jury that he didn't want Sheena to join him in the UK, but she pleaded that
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He bought Elaine and Ron the tickets to Canada not because he needed to steal their identities, but simply because he couldn't afford to pay Elaine's salary anymore. And Canada was his dear friend Ron's dream. And it was Sheena's idea for them to first pose as husband and wife. Ron knew that I was posing as him. He had willingly given me his ID to do just that.
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And yes, yes, I am on the run from Canada for financial crimes. It's true. But I never would have done anything to hurt my friend Ron. At intermittent breaks, all the reporters would run outside to do a quick hit for television.
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I remember Sheena, the flower girl, going up the aisle. I mean, sweet Sheena.
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After the move, Albert and Barb would drive to visit Bob and Betty as often as they could, which always perplexed Barb. While Barb had always enjoyed the Staley's fine, she was baffled by why Albert continued to be so insistent on remaining close to them after they moved. This was a man who maintained no other close friendships, who maintained no other relationships.
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He didn't even talk to his own siblings. Why the Staley's and no one else? In her book, Barb describes one day asking her husband, point blank, why do you keep in touch with them? Why are Bob and Betty Staley so important to you? And he said, because one day they will have money. The 1980s were Albert Walker's salad days. From the Walker Financial Promotional Materials.
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Walker's Financial now has branches in Brantford, Hagersville, Paris, Woodstock, London, and Guelph. And this relatively small company has announced new plans for expansion using the same unique formula. Andy was out of his parents' house by this time, but he remembers his mom Betty keeping him updated during Walker Financial's heyday and how enthusiastically she would celebrate her friend.
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And for the Staley's, Walker's success in the financial world could not have been coming at a better time. Because burning a hole in their pocket was a windfall. A lottery ticket of inheritance that they'd been waiting their whole lives to cash in.
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In the late 80s, Betty Staley and her brother Bill inherited a huge swath of undeveloped land just outside Toronto, passed down all the way from their great-great-great-great-grandfather. 200 acres split between them. Nice little chunk of land, eh? It was finally time to cash in.
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So as Andy's parents start getting ready to go about selling off their hundred acres, what should appear from stage right but the silhouette of an opportunist?
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He'd never sold real estate before, but he had proven that he knew what he was doing in general. So they say, sure. And the Staley's prepared for their lives to change forever. Economically, their existence had always been a modest one.
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But always humming in the background of his and his family's existence was a promise, a whisper of future prosperity.
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Hey, I mean, how much do you want me to tell you? All of it. I wanted to know all of it. I first read the Staley family name in an old newspaper clipping when I was learning about Albert's life in Canada and the people left in his wake. I cold emailed Andy Staley telling him what I was trying to piece together.
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And then it was real. The story goes that Albert Walker, real estate agent extraordinaire, had managed to drum up something of a bidding war on the Staley's property. The wildest expectation pre-sale was that he would fetch something in the ballpark of two and a half or $3 million. And keep in mind, we're talking about 1989 dollars here.
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But Walker didn't get them two and a half or three like they hoped. Out he goes and sells the farm for more than it's worth. He got them over five million. Like, wow, how much? Really? And holy moly. Eddie's Uncle Bill was so impressed with the sum Walker managed for the Staley's, he got Walker to sell his hundred acres. So Walker sold that for over five. And he became a god in that family.
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This is always how it began. When he offered Elaine the career of her dreams. When he bought Ron his own business. When he gifted them tickets to move to Canada. It was just like this. The magic money man who turns water into wine. In a short period of time, Andy's family turned their 200 acres into over $10 million. It was a very, very comfortable time when it happened.
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That niggling economic anxiety that rode shotgun with them for their whole lives was gone. There was no mistaking it. They were looked after. They could breathe easy. They had arrived. Andy remembers the money changing his dad in a good way. He moved through the world differently now. He was more grounded, confident, taller. He was like a country squire.
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In our interview, Andy's expression gets heavy as we get to this part. In 1989, the Staley's found themselves in the unfamiliar position of not just having money, but more than they knew what to do with. Luckily for them, though, they knew a guy.
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They had every reason to believe that to be the case. He was 15 years deep into a well-to-do business. He managed the portfolios of many people they knew, and every time he turned around, there was another location opening up. His reputation was immaculate. So they handed their best friend their millions.
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Albert Walker had spent the entire 1980s portraying himself as a stock savant. He just had a knack for spotting an up-and-coming company at the right moment, he'd say. He sought opportunities that others missed. So what was his favorite company to convince folks to buy shares in?
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Well, there was this exciting young company in southwestern Ontario, with locations in Brantford, Hagersville, Woodstock, and even London and Paris. The Canadian ones, but still impressive. A little one-stop financial shop called Walker Financial.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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How did this man I'd been hearing about called David Davis and Ronald Platt come to be hunted by authorities across the globe? How did a middle-aged family man from small town Ontario come to be an international fugitive? and he responded by saying that he had something to show me, something that might help. The box. To say I was intrigued is an understatement.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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When the Staley's millions arrived, Walker invested the money immediately in Walker Guaranteed Investment Certificates, Walker's Capital Corporation, Walker's Financial Services, and the United Canvest Corporation, which is four fancy ways of saying Albert Walker's pocket. The vast majority of the documents Andy gave me meticulously detail exactly how Walker was scamming people.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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And having gone through it all, I can assure you he wasn't stealing in an exciting or innovative way. Attract new investors by promising bigger returns than you can get anywhere else. If you bought a Walker promissory note, TM, he promised 15% returns annually. These promissory notes were his Ponzi scheme, his crypto coin. Please don't email me about that.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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As long as investors kept receiving their 15% annual returns without him bouncing a check, Walker was free to do whatever he wanted. Lavish vacations, Michelin meals, buying a Jaguar, all investments went directly toward the Albert Walker just having the nicest time fund.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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As long as his businesses continued to grow, as long as he kept attracting enough new investors to keep paying existing investors, and nothing happened to disrupt the market as a whole, Albert Walker could ball out. But then, 1987 happened.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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After the 87 crash, Walker was cooked. Until he miraculously convinced his best friends to not only use him as their realtor, but to hand over their whole fortune to him. But even the staley millions wouldn't be enough to save him. It just gave him a bit more time to make a plan. So Albert crunched the new numbers and looked at the calendar.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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In the box, I found a list of all the promissory notes he'd signed that year. Harold Ziegler, 50% matures at 15%, June 6th. June Kaufman, 60,000, matures 13%, June 10th. He'd issued millions of dollars worth of promissory notes that would all mature in early 1991. That was it. That was when he wouldn't have the money.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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He could carry on the way he was without being found out until the end of the year, December. And then, after that, well, he'd have to figure something out. That was a problem for 1991 Albert, but it was still summer 1990. And he had a much bigger mess to deal with in his own family. Albert Walker had been unfaithful to his wife for years. To those in the community, that was old gossip.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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What was new, however, was how shameless and out in the open it all was. He had an open affair with a woman from church, the Reverend's wife to be specific. He was conspicuously courting at least two of the women who worked for him.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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And I found out in one of the case files in the Staley box that he had a Swiss girlfriend who he paid to fly to Canada and was putting up in a nearby hotel in Woodstock. But that summer was when it all blew up, when Albert and Barb's relationship went nuclear. They were getting divorced, and Albert, of course, was feeling greedy.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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He wanted the house, the kids, the businesses, and he'd do anything to win. The main war was waged through the children. Albert had them all write letters to the court, saying that they preferred him to their mother. Fifteen-year-old Sheena wrote...
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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When I walked into his place right away, I see it. Spread out on the dining room table are piles and piles of papers stacked high. Notepads, duotangs, folders, handwritten notes scrawled on post-its. As I set up my microphones, I see one of the file folders has written in Sharpie, the Walker file. Let's start. Why don't you tell me what we're looking at?
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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And Sheena got what she asked for. When they finally had their day in court, the judge said that Sheena and Jill could stay with Albert, while Barb was awarded temporary possession of the house and custody of the two younger children. Under no circumstances was Albert allowed in the house.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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This was the arrangement when the most consequential thing in a summer filled with consequential things happened. One day, Albert crossed the threshold of the house and got into a shoving match with Barb at the door. She called the police, and despite their best efforts to talk her out of it, she said she wanted to press charges. So for the first time in his life, Albert Walker was arrested.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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He was processed. They took his mugshots. And crucially, very, very crucially, dear listener, they took his fingerprints.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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As it turned to fall 1990, his companies were overextended. He'd lost his house, custody of two kids, and his reputation in the community. The board of his company was firmly demanding more transparency, and Barb's divorce attorneys were lighting up his phone lines, demanding a full disclosure of his entire financial picture so that they could divvy up their estate.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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But as the pressure was building, Albert was not available. He was out of office. If you called his business number during this time, a secretary would tell you he was in Switzerland or the UK or France or Cayman Islands. Every week, it seemed he had a first-class ticket somewhere new. Barb knew all along that he would almost certainly try to hide money from her.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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But seeing all the travel he was doing and noticing the weird blips of large sums of money cruising through their shared bank accounts, she began to suspect that he was up to something much bigger. After a game of tennis with Betty Staley in the late summer, Barb took Betty aside for a candid conversation.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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And Barb wasn't the only one who warned them.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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A classic move among men who have just lost all of your money. So the Staley's were like, it's probably nothing, but we'll run this past him. Albert, would you be a dear and tell us exactly where and what you invested our millions in? And he wouldn't get back to them. And then he finally sent them this letter I found.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Dear Bob and Betty, I have enclosed a spreadsheet list of all your investments placed on your behalf through this office. Please accept my apologies for the delay in getting this to you. A combination of corporate affairs and the tax season has put me behind in all areas. And he always signs off the same. Yours very truly, A.J. Walker.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Just about every spreadsheet I find in the box that Walker sent the Staley's. The Staley's have marked up the pages with pen. Numbers are circled. There are question marks beside some of the columns. They do their own math in the margins at times. You get the sense that to the Staley's, things weren't quite adding up.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Where was he? Under all of this pressure, with all of the mess of Walker Financial and his personal life mounting, what was he up to? One of the most surprising things I find in the box is from November 1990, a letter addressed to Albert from a bank in Sarasota, Florida.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Dear Mr. Walker, During our discussions in Tampa on Monday, October 29th last, we reviewed the international expansion of Walker Financial into the United States, Japan, South America, and Europe. While everything was aflame, Albert was trying to get an investor to bail out the company. But he'd run out of time.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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In a last-ditch effort to stop him from fleeing, Barb tipped off the police, saying plainly, He's flying on all these business trips with a briefcase filled with stolen funds. But they didn't act. And what Barb didn't realize was that Albert was planning on taking something much more valuable and precious than just her money.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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As the holidays neared, the Staley's finally secured a meeting with Albert Walker. They had a prepared list of questions and copies of all the spreadsheets and correspondence that they were going to confront him with when he arrived at their home.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Andy's mother curated the box, but when she passed away, none of her adult children wanted to take it because they knew what was in there, vaguely at least, and they knew it wasn't good. As I sit down across from Andy and I see on the wall behind him, dusty portraits of his ancestors, men in uniform, family shields.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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At the scheduled start time of the meeting, Albert Walker was sitting in a first-class seat in a plane over the Atlantic. Every credit card he held was maxed out on jewelry and as many things of value he could carry on his person. His trusty briefcase, which he used to mule millions of his clients' dollars, sat beside him. His months of hard work were done.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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He'd emptied every account he had access to. He remortgaged the family farmhouse and transferred every penny he could into untraceable Swiss accounts. In the years to come, left in his wake, there was heartbreak and carnage he would never fully understand.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Bob and Betty Staley had opted to keep most of their Walker financial concerns a secret from their children. But after being stood up by Walker and the initial rumblings they were hearing around the community, they feared the worst. My father said, Walker's left the country. They've left the country. What does that even mean? For the holidays? Is he coming back? No one could say for sure.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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The true meaning of his departure would arrive a few weeks later, January 15th, a day that Andy would never forget.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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All of Andy's family's and his uncle's money, the generational security, was gone.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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In the coming days, Andy was barely able to keep it together. Losing his family's great blessing at the hands of their best friend was too bitter of a pill for Andy to swallow. He kept running it over in his head. I was just full of questions, full of questions. The more he thought about it, nothing made sense.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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It makes sense to me that he's the one in the family who wound up with this box, this decade of his mother's work.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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People around Andy coped with the loss in different ways. Andy's sister seemed less phased than him and were able to move past it with relative ease. And his grandmother, the optimist, said it would all balance out in the end. My uncle was crushed. My uncle was crushed.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Andy started being haunted by a vision. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw an evil cartoon face, delighting in his misery. Sneering at me all the time, laughing at me, how...
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Andy was brimming with anger about the money, about the betrayal. But the thing that kept the fire of his rage burning white-hot for years was what this ordeal had done to his father. Yeah, it ruined him.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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At first, Bob Staley, a lifelong problem solver, tried to be a leader in the investigation at Walker Financial. He volunteered to be the point of contact for the dozens and dozens of devastated people frantically trying to recover their money. But some folks started directing their anger at him, started holding him at least partly responsible for what happened.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Hey, wasn't this guy your best friend? Why are you so interested in cleaning this up for him? Somewhere in and around there.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Just last year, a friend of his recommended that he should just burn it all. Take the box to the family cottage and throw it in the fire pit in an act of catharsis. I remember going to, a couple of times going to burn it.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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During those years, while her husband was fighting for his sanity, Betty Staley tried to keep hers in a different way. She started the Box of Documents. She needed to feel like she was doing something, so she compiled everything. She cut out news clippings written about Al Walker fleeing.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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She collected every family photo in which Albert Walker appeared, every bit of correspondence, spreadsheet, and letter that she could find between her and their former best friend. all in the hopes that if someone somewhere eventually did catch the man, she would be ready. She would have all of the information organized for him to be brought to justice.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Like if it didn't happen to you, you just don't feel it. Andy told me that the same year his family's fortune was lost, one of his best friends lost his fiancee suddenly under tragic circumstances. So the two friends were grieving together, grieving these very different losses. And they were driving one day when his friend turned to him.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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In the end, Walker made off with between $3 and $12 million of his client's money. One man hanged himself. Another, the Walker financial employee who had warned the Staley's, died suddenly of heart failure.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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When he couldn't bring himself to do it, he just left the box by the wood pile for months. But I never moved it from the burning pile either, but it never got burnt. And there it sat, unprotected from the elements, until a journalist from Toronto emailed him out of the blue.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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In the moment that Albert Walker touched down in the UK, I imagined he was feeling very pleased with himself. He had dreamed since he was a young man of starting a European life. A life as a man of culture. An important man. A wealthy man. And now, he was. But best of all, he had someone to share it with.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Because it turned out the most valuable thing he took was not something squirreled away in a Swiss bank account. It was the person seated beside him in first class. His 15-year-old daughter, Sheena. In the next six years of Albert's life, no one would believe what he would become. No one would believe what they would become.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Sea of Lies is produced by What's the Story Sounds for CBC. It's hosted and written by me, Sam Mullins, and produced and reported by Alex Gatenby. Mixing and sound design is by Ivan Eastley. From What's the Story Sounds, our executive producers are David Waters and Daryl Brown. At CBC Podcasts, the senior producers are Andrew Friesen and Damon Fairless. Eunice Kim is our story editor.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Emily Connell is our digital coordinating producer. Executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. Senior manager is Tanya Springer. And the director of CBC Podcasts is Arif Noorani.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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As we talk in the kitchen of his home, something suddenly flew between us.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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In the coming weeks, I would pour through this box, through the spreadsheets, the personal letters, affidavits, brochures, newspaper clippings, photographs, and discover a story. One that begins with friendship, faith, and loyalty, and descends into betrayal, madness, and rage. To be dramatic, and I do intend to be, the box was the origin story of a villain.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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The story of a man who brought an entire community to its knees and vanished. I'll tell the story as I choose to tell the story, and I'm not here to protect anybody.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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I'm Sam Mullins, and this is Sea of Lies from CBC's Uncover. Episode 4, The Day of Reckoning. Before the Staley's became entwined with Albert Walker, they were just one of those families who moved around a lot. Andy's dad had one of those careers where if he wanted to move up, he had to move. But luckily for Andy and his siblings, moving to new towns and making new friends was never an issue.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Because their parents weren't just anyone. They were Bob and Betty Staley. Bob was an affable government man, a leader, and mensch. And his mom?
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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In a story filled with consequential door knocks, here's another. That's the sound of my knuckles on the door of what's important to know for this chapter of the story, a modest middle-class home. Hi, Andy. I'm Sam. Sam, a pleasure. So nice to meet you.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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She's posing on the hood of a Plymouth. Hot stuff, right? Andy says his folks were the best parents imaginable. They gave him the kind of idyllic Canadian childhood that you'd think only existed in the paintings of a dentist's office. Winters with hockey on frozen ponds, days at the beach, county fairs in the summers. Andy's folks were college sweethearts.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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And with their four children in tow, they made every space and community they inhabited brighter. Better. This was Bob and Betty Staley, Before the Nonsense. One of the first documents I find in the box that Andy gave me is an affidavit written by his dad. My father's affidavit, which he gave to the police.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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They belonged to Knox United Church in Ayr, Ontario, a special place. The church was their life.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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If Knox United was the center of the Staley's lives, the center of the center was on stage in the choir loft.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Andy first noticed Albert in 1968 when Walker was only 23 years old. He joined the Knox United Choir after having just married into one of the church's more prominent families, the McDonald's. He married their only daughter, Barbara, after having just known her for three months, and took his place on stage beside the Staley's. His voice was a baritone.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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He was tall, handsome, and to those at Knox United, a complete mystery. Nobody really knew from where he came. He just kind of showed up, right? Walker's life in the years before 68 still remained shrouded in mystery. Over the years, just a few press clippings and a self-published memoir by his wife Barbara shed any light.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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These tell how he was born in Hamilton, that he grew up in a poor family who rented farmland, and he dropped out of school after having failed two grades. That's about it. I've come to believe that the details about his upbringing are hard to find by design. He didn't want people to know that he was from a poor family or was poorly educated.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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And so when he arrived in Andy's life, he was ready to shed all of that and become someone new. And where better to be reborn than the church? Inside these walls, he could walk up to the most well-regarded couple in town and be considered their equals. and he never took the opportunity for granted.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Walker made quick work of joining the tight-knit clique of choir singers to which the Staley's belonged.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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To figure out how a mere Canadian man named Albert Walker became one of the most wanted men in the world, one frosty night, I drove an hour from Toronto to a small town called Orangeville to meet someone.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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In the 70s and 80s, the Walkers and Staley's built a beautiful friendship. Andy remembers working as the Walkers' paperboy. And then when Al and Barb had their first two daughters, Jill and Sheena, they enlisted Andy for some childcare.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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the two families grew to be fully entwined. It was a life of Sunday dinners with kids running around. Christmas at the farmhouse. Church socials. Al and my dad skied together. And the two couples even traveled to the UK a few times together.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Sitting with Andy, he's almost confused, like he's flipping through a photo album from another dimension. So much happened before the nonsense, as he calls it, came to overshadow everything. There was an age gap between the two couples. Albert and Barb were many years the junior. And the gap was most notable looking at their careers.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Bob was solidly mid-career when they met, whereas Albert Walker was still trying to figure out what he wanted to be when he grew up. He'd been a man of many jobs. He worked in a candy factory, a men's store. He was in management training at Zellers, which is sort of like a Canadian Walmart. He sold insurance for a time, once in Scotland. He worked for a big feed and supply company.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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He worked as a cattle herdsman, pig farmer, market gardener, and then for several years as a librarian. Walker was really searching. He was limited by his lack of schooling, but was always described as ambitious, thirsty to become a somebody. His big break though, came from the most surprising of places.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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While Albert was bouncing wildly from career to career, Barb, right under his nose, was building their bright future from the dining room table. She was always good with numbers, so she started a side hustle doing taxes for a handful of local farmers and folks that she knew through the church. And this is where everything shifted onto a dark and ruinous track.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Everything that would go down with the Staley's and then later in the UK with Elaine and Ron Platt and Noel, none of that would have happened if it wasn't for Barb's innocent little business. Picture Barb doing her taxes at the dining room table, the percussive clack of the calculator, when one day Albert, who had never shown much of an interest in his wife's work, looked over her shoulder.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Laid bare on the table before him were the numbers and assets and incomes and most intimate of financial details of her clients, people he knew. And the numbers surprised him. He couldn't believe how much money and savings and assets these humble rural folk had amassed. This was the moment that Albert had an idea. Walker's Financial Services. It used to be so simple.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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You went to a bank for a checking account, a trust company for a mortgage, a broker to buy stocks, and an insurance agent to buy insurance. Life isn't that straightforward anymore. That's from an old brochure I found in the box. Walker Financial Services was the weapon with which Walker would begin his career as a criminal. It was incorporated in the province of Ontario in 1978.
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Walker's vision was to turn his wife's tax business into a scalable, one-stop financial shop. Investments, bookkeeping, all of it and more. This was a whole hog career pivot. He literally went from being a junior-level librarian to the front man of a full-service financial institution. And did a good job of doing people's taxes.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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That's Andy Staley. Talking with Andy, I learned quickly that whenever he references the intersection of his family's life and Albert Walker's life, he calls it broadly the nonsense. Andy's in his 60s now. He outclasses me by wearing a sharp blazer for our audio-only interview, as if we're doing it on camera. As I set up, he uncorks a bottle of red. Where we're going, he's going to need it.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Around the time that Walker Financial was born, both the Walkers and Staley's moved away from the town of Ayr. But the bond between them didn't suffer. Albert saw to that. I think, if anything, that was where the friendship continued to grow. In the ensuing 10 years, the families were as entwined as ever. When the Staley's daughter Kim got married, Sheena was part of the ceremony.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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But what are the chances that the small town nobody cops from two separate countries an ocean apart were out here sharing fingerprints? No, they had nothing. He was sure of it. For the Devon police, their time was up. They had all they were going to get in the interviews, the team at the house had sent along their initial findings, and it was pencils down.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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It was now up to the Crown Prosecution Service to determine whether or not they had enough to formally charge Davis for murder. It certainly wasn't a given. They really agonised over the decision. Well, to be fair, we didn't have a lot of evidence then. Nothing they yielded from their interviews was helpful to laying a charge.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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The documents the team found in the house in the first 24 hours seemed promising, but they would require a lot of following up before they could be considered solid. The strongest thing that they did have was a provable lie.
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Davis originally told police that he last saw Platt in June, but they knew that Davis' cell phone was in Devon in July, making calls to local businesses and that both he and Ron were there at the same time.
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And the other thing that they knew was that there was a boat. In the search of Little London Lane, they'd found a photo of Davis proudly posing with his boat, the Lady Jane.
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Very strong, but very circumstantial.
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It was out of the detective's hands and into the hands of the Crown Prosecution Service. And the deadline to either charge or release him was imminent.
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Nearby, Elaine was anxiously awaiting word of what they'd decide.
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Joining the investigative team that day was a young officer called Brian Slade. The neighbors had told police that the man they knew as Ronald Platt had been living in the house with his young wife. So they mobilized in the driveway and prepared to take her in for questioning, and then bring in scores of officers to search every square inch of Little London Farmhouse.
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Finally, late that night, MacDonald gets the call from upstairs.
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With Davis behind bars for now, the real work was about to begin.
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Yes, he was in custody. And yes, they were confident they had the right man. But they also knew for certain that they didn't have anywhere near enough to convict him. Not yet. They had no idea what was coming. David Davis was formally charged in early November.
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But in late November, who could have guessed that a revelation was coming so gargantuan, so what the hell is going on, that all charges would be dropped against David Davis. One night at the police station, MacDonald was at his desk working on the case, when through the door burst the most calm and measured detective in the office, looking not at all calm and measured.
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And he said, sir, you need to come with me right now.
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For our Gen Z listeners, a fax machine was a tool used to send important documents or photocopies of your butt cheeks in the year 1996.
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Not only is he the most wanted man in Canada, he's one of the most wanted men in the world.
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When Noelle Davis was called back into the police station, detectives Clenahan and McDonald told her that they knew she was Sheena Walker, that she was Canadian, and that her father was Albert Walker. The jig was up.
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Peter Redman, the man whose original door knock had started all of this, was the one who knocked on this door too. The woman who opened the door was shocked to see the officers. The feeling was mutual. I was surprised how young she was. To Redmond, she looked like she was 20 at the oldest. Redmond asked her name. She said, I'm Noelle.
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But the lingering question in the air, her relationship to Albert and how on earth they came to pose as husband and wife with two children, that was something nearly everyone we spoke to felt hard to address with us directly. Even some police only agreed to speak with us on the condition that we didn't ask them about this aspect of the case.
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What I can tell you, though, is that when the detectives asked her, this stolen child who had spent a quarter of her life on the lam, who the father of her two small children was, she said nothing and began to cry. To understand how Sheena had got to this point, sitting in this police station being asked such sensitive questions, we need to go back in time to when Sheena became Noel.
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Six years earlier, on December 5th, 1990, Albert and Sheena Walker touched down at Heathrow and checked into the Ritz, London. It was a risky choice to bring his 15-year-old daughter into this dark unknown with him, but there was no turning back now. Albert had successfully squirreled away millions of stolen dollars in the months leading up to this.
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And even more valuable than that, he had a head start. And every intention of using it to throw those who'd be looking for him off his scent.
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Using a driver's license he swiped accidentally on purpose from a former client named David Davis, Walker goes to Geneva as Davis, visits a safety deposit box, buys two London Geneva first class tickets, return with his Amex that he knows they'll be able to trace as a decoy, then he flies to Paris and takes a boat back.
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After tying a thorough naval knot with his movements, he needed a place where they could lay low. He found a place in London that served as a temporary cocoon.
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While Sheena's mother back in Canada was reporting her missing, and the Canadian police were sending Interpol Switzerland photos of father and daughter, Albert and Sheena were getting ready to make their debut as different people, 200 miles north of London, in Yorkshire.
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Reverend David Hoskins was the flock leader of the Baptist Church in Harrogate in 1991, when David and Noelle Davis, a lovely American father-daughter duo, first appeared.
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Reverend Hoskins was one of the first people to meet this new version of Albert Walker.
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Harrogate was a perfect town for them to start a new life. Far from the glare of London, but still a place where you can throw some money around without people raising an eyebrow.
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Redmond said, I'm arresting you under suspicion of murdering Ronald Platt. And she said, what about my children? Children? Children?
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He got a nice place, became a regular at the higher end spots. And one day, he went into an art auctioneer, where he met a woman named Elaine Boyes, who had a boyfriend named Ronald Platt, who had a medium-term plan to move to Canada. And immediately, of course, Albert Walker devised a medium-term plan himself. Their current identities had limits.
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He had the Davis driver's license, but Noel had no ID to speak of. So if he could find a way to earn the trust of Elaine Boyes and Ronald Platt, and find a way to entangle himself with them, by the time they made their big move to Canada, he and Sheena would be able to smoothly and permanently step into the shoes and identities of Elaine and Ron.
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And all through this, just as it was in Canada, home base for Albert and his daughter was the church.
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Molly Mountford was a well-traveled and discerning woman who belonged to the church. She remembers David Davis not only showing up, but showing up in a big way.
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He'd show up at all the extracurricular church meetings and gatherings and seemed to be interested in becoming a leader in the community. And one day, this community took a big blow. One of the biggest employers in town was a huge chemical company. And around this time, they closed their plant in Harrogate. So suddenly, several of the congregants found themselves out of work.
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Then please do. Among the depressed figures gathered around the reverend's dining room table that night was Molly, whose husband's job was in jeopardy with the big layoff.
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But as Molly watched Davis that night, essentially taking over the meeting, she saw clearly a quality in him that she'd been wary of from the time she set eyes on him.
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As Davis was giving a spiel that felt like he'd given many times before to this room of vulnerable people, Molly couldn't bite her tongue anymore.
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Davis's whole demeanor changed, and he glared at her.
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The baby was still breastfeeding, but the three-year-old, the police explained, would need to either stay with a friend or the police would arrange for social services to take her. They were going to take Noelle all the way to Devon for an interview. As the officers began moving through the house, they noted how sparse it was. It hardly looked like the warm home of a young family.
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Molly left the others with a warning.
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And she left. No one took Davis up on his offer that night. Apart from the one woman at church giving Albert side-eye, generally speaking, everything was going swimmingly for Albert Walker in Harrogate. Elaine and Ron were wrapped around his finger and had helped him turn his millions in Swiss banks into physical assets in the name of his corporation.
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They were saving up money for their move to Canada, and he had seen not a single flag to indicate that the authorities had the faintest idea where he and Sheena were. He was like a hero from one of his thriller novels that he so loved reading. He had outsmarted everyone. But then, just before Christmas 1992, something happened that would change everything. Sheena got pregnant.
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Suddenly, everything was in fast forward. He bought Elaine and Ron the tickets to Canada and all but shoved them out the door before she started to show. Merry Christmas. Goodbye. No time to sell your flat. No time to sell your business. I'll do it. You just need to leave right now. He needed to sell everything as fast as he could.
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And they needed to leave town before people started asking questions. He had a pregnant teenager and he needed to find a new place to start over. Like a snake, he needed to shed his skin. And they were gone.
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With the real Elaine and Ron happily away enjoying the good times in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Albert and Sheena Walker made their debut as husband and wife. Albert was Ronald Platt. And in person, Sheena was no longer Noelle Davis, but Noelle Platt. Although on paper, she was Elaine Boyes. God, this is confusing. Anyway, they were the Platts now.
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The age gap between the fictional married couple of Elaine and Ron was conspicuous, so they were going to need to bridge the gap with the best tool at their disposal. Tacky dye jobs.
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They changed their whole deals. Sheena went blonde, Albert did away with the fancy clothes, they traded in for an older car, and they mostly kept to themselves.
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In the year in Devon, a lot happened in their lives. Sheena gave birth to her first child. Albert got a sailboat. And in early 1994, Albert enrolled in a course for, get this, psychology and counseling. And every month, he'd be back in Paula's chair, not mentioning any of it.
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At the end of the Devon year, Albert had a new plan. He finished his course in counseling and decided to invest in a company called Solutions in Therapy, which was based in Essex. What he liked about Solutions in Therapy was that much like Walker Financial, it would be easy to run and easy to scale. So the fake Platts moved to Essex, Woodham Walter to be specific.
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Outside, there were flowers and a well-manicured lawn and a bountiful vegetable garden. But on the inside, there was hardly any signs of a life being lived within its walls. Upstairs in the toddler's bedroom, there was scant a single toy. It looked like they had been squatting in a foreclosure home. Was this woman and children held against their will? Were they prisoners in their own home?
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Little London Farmhouse on Little London Lane to make a meal of it. It was there that Sheena gave birth to her second child. Albert started his work in solutions and therapy and began pitching people on expanding the operation further. Maybe he could run a new office in Chelmsford, he thought, have his own shop. So he did. And here is where he'd done it.
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He found a perfect pastoral setting, just a short drive from the office, with a wife and two children. A twisted mirror image of his Canadian life six years earlier. This time, the wife was his daughter. This time, the one-stop financial shop was a one-stop therapy shop. This time, he had millions of dollars. Who knows how long it would have lasted? Who knows if anyone ever would have found them?
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Who knows how long this sordid tale would have played out if it wasn't for the day that Albert Walker received a letter from Ronald Platt saying that he was done with Canada and was moving back to England for good. There are so many questions about what happened in the final year of Ronald Platt's life. Did he know that Walker had stolen his identity? What did Platt make of Sheena having children?
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But the only people who know what happened were Ron and Albert and Sheena. To me, there are a million questions. But to the Devon police, by necessity, there was only ever one. How did Ronald Platt end up at the bottom of the ocean? When they arrested Albert Walker, they had all of their resources on trying to answer this question.
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Even with their undivided attention, they knew enough about Albert Walker to know that this wasn't going to be easy. This was a man who'd hidden in plain sight, undetected for six years, because he'd been crafty and knew how to cover his tracks. So if he really was the one who killed Ron, undoubtedly, he would have done a clean job of it.
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If the police were going to find justice for Ronald Platt, they're going to need to do their very best detective work. They were going to need timelines, paper trails, and the latest technology all pointing in the same direction. They were going to need witnesses just to have a chance. And even with all that, they knew they'd need something else.
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The guiding force that had been with them all along and had brought them to this point. Luck. Their next miraculous stroke of good fortune begins with the name Lady Jane written on a whiteboard.
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Early on in the inquiry, the Essex police in charge of searching the farmhouse had a briefing where they were laying out possible leads based on their discoveries at the house and things that needed following up on.
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The wife disappeared from sight for a moment.
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And the lucky breaks didn't stop there. When the police charged David Davis with murder, it was all over the media, which jogged the memory of a local fisherman named John Coppock, the man who first discovered Ron Platt in his fishing net that summer.
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As he read that police continued to investigate the death of Ronald Platt and put out calls for tips, Coppock remembered something from that day that seemed inconsequential at the time. Ron Platt's body wasn't the only out-of-the-ordinary thing in his net that day, and the more he thought about it, he wondered, could the two things be related?
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Coppock called the police and asked, what about the anchor? To which the detective replied, Come on, John, what anchor's this?
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And he said, what anchor are you talking about? Coppock explained that the day they caught Ron Platt's body, back at shore, they discovered that caught in a different part of the netting was an anchor.
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It was caught more near the net's mouth, in the same trawl that produced the body. So the police asked, where's this anchor now, John?
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That first day, right after the police took the body off Coppock's boat, Coppock steered his vessel to its usual parking spot in the fishing boat pens. As Coppock was finishing up, one of his buddies walked by, spotting the anchor in the net, and was like, is that anchor up for grabs? Coppock gave the anchor to his friend, who ended up not needing it.
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So a month later, he gave it to his wife to sell at a car boot sale. She tried to sell it for £15, but there were no takers. So Coppock's friend's wife just takes the anchor to her mother's house.
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So the police go to her house. She leads them to her backyard where they find the biggest piece of evidence in the biggest case any of them will ever work. They send it to forensics.
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When the officer chaperoning Noel stepped closer, suspicious at what was taking so long, the young wife sheepishly held the bag and the officer gestured for her to hand it over.
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The first post-mortem had noted there was a serious wound on the back of the head and along the right side of the body there was bruising at the hip and bruising at the thigh. And now, like a jigsaw piece, the points of contact aligned exactly.
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They put the belt under the literal microscope and discovered on the right hip portion of it, there were tiny silvery deposits of zinc that matched the zinc of the anchor.
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This was the murder weapon. Now they needed evidence to put Ron Platt on the Lady Jane, and to put him there in mid-late July. To do that, police needed to rely on two relatively new technologies at the time, DNA and GPS. On the Lady Jane, they found Ronald Platt's fingerprints on a plastic bag, which, if you can believe it, also contained the sales receipt for the anchor.
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In the cabin, they found Ronald Platt's hair on a pillow and specks of Ronald Platt's blood, both inside the cabin and on one of Lady Jane's sails. They also found a GPS unit that was one, turned off, and two, appeared to be missing a component. The second component of this GPS they found on the other side of the country.
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Walker had rented a storage unit in the same week that police first contacted him. Inside, police found several more gold bars, three suitcases containing Ronald Platt's clothes, and... We found the GPS that fitted to the boat.
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With the camera rolling, someone from the GPS manufacturer turns on the devices. and they discovered that the devices had been switched off on the evening of July 20th, the last day that Ron Platt was seen alive.
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When the switch was flipped at 9pm on July 20th, the Lady Jane was on the water.
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It was an extremely solid circumstantial case.
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But one thing we all know from listening to prestige true crime podcasts is that strong circumstantial cases are not always a slam dunk. Reasonable doubt is a huge hurdle, and know who loves cases built entirely on circumstantial evidence? Defense attorneys. What the prosecutors really needed to shore up this case was testimony from the one person who was there with Walker in Devon.
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They needed Sheena, and they needed her to testify. Shortly after the Interpol revelation, Sheena flew home to Canada with her two children and her mother Barb. While the detectives and prosecutors were building their case in England, Sheena disappeared completely from the public eye and was sheltered from the media circus by her mother and community.
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Because what child doesn't need their gold bars for an overnight? As the neighbor arrived to pick up the toddler, downstairs Brian Slade was unprepared for what he was about to find.
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But during that year and a half, those working the case wondered, would she take the stand against her father? Or even now, would she remain loyal to him? No one knew how deeply Albert's hooks were sunk in. One day, back in Canada, Sheena got a call from a UK prison. It was her father. He said, listen to me closely. I need you to change your story. Coming up on Sea of Lies.
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Sea of Lies is produced by What's the Story Sounds for CBC. It's hosted and written by me, Sam Mullins, and produced and reported by Alex Gatenby. Mixing and sound design is by Ivan Eastley. From What's the Story Sounds, our executive producers are David Waters and Daryl Brown. At CBC Podcasts, the senior producers are Andrew Friesen and Damon Fairless. Eunice Kim is our story editor.
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Emily Connell is our digital coordinating producer. Executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. Senior manager is Tanya Springer. And the director of CBC Podcasts is Arif Noorani.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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As he pressed record on his trusty camcorder to keep a visual record of any evidence they collected, officer after officer came forwards, their hands full.
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An eerie silence creeped into the house as the officers began their work. Even before the first puzzle pieces were snapped together, they could sense that this was all leading somewhere very dark. I'm Sam Mullins, and this is Sea of Lies, from CBC's Uncover. Episode 5, Life on the Lamp. Suddenly, everything was in motion.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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It was Halloween, 1996. While everyone was putting on their costumes, pretending to be Tickle Me Elmo or Baby Spice, or whatever the fine folks of 1996 dressed up as, there was a man in the back of a police cruiser in Essex, apprehended for pretending to be someone he was not. David Davis was arrested under suspicion of murdering Ronald Platt.
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You only have 36 hours to hold someone before you have to either A, charge them, or B, let them go.
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One team of police were heading from Devon to Essex to help catalogue everything they found in the house. Another team was transporting Davis and Noel back to Devon. And back in the police station, detectives Bill MacDonald and Ian Clenahan were preparing for their high-stakes interviews with Davis and Noel.
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One more thing they needed to happen was for their star witness to get to Devon as soon as possible. They called Elaine.
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Elaine arrived at the Exeter police station that afternoon, 30 miles from where they found Ron's body in the first place. They had interviewed Elaine before, but this time, with the pressure of a charge looming, they needed her to tell them everything. About Davis and Noelle and Ron and herself. Everything. On the record.
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Every detail was essential. A well-dressed stranger showing up to her work, coffee table books, trips to London, Switzerland, France, bank accounts, rubber stamps, flat buying, flat selling, Harrogate, Calgary, back to Harrogate. The full story of Ron and Elaine and Davis. But when the interview turned to Noelle, there was a bombshell waiting for Elaine, from which she would never fully recover.
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Elaine, of course, knew about Davis's children, who still lived in the States.
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So I said, he's got three daughters. All three of them in their teens and twenties. And as she was describing this, the female officer interviewing her furrows her brow.
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How, in this case, is the heaviest question of all.
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Elaine had never so much as seen Noel interact with a male other than her father. And now the police told Elaine that Davis and Noel were living and presenting as a couple with kids?
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And there was more. The police told Elaine that since Noel had been living in Essex raising these children, officially, on paper, she was going not by Noel Davis, but by a different name. Elaine Boyes.
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Noelle and her father had arrived from Essex, and the detectives were ready to finally get some answers.
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They had proof he'd been stealing Platt's identity, and that he'd been in Devon that July, the same month that Ron's body was pulled up from the seabed. But if Davis really was the one who put him there, the police needed evidence. So with Davis taken off in the cruiser, all attention turned to his home. the quaintly named Little London Farmhouse on Little London Lane.
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Davis had picked a lawyer from the local directory to sit in with him during their inquiry. Traditionally, when someone in custody meets with their lawyer to discuss strategy, they do so in the designated solicitor's room. But to Davis, that was out of the question.
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Immediately, he was trying to establish a position of strength.
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With him smugly seated in the interview room, he remained chatty and jovial up until the exact second that they pressed the record button on the tape. And then he changed.
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Regardless, Clenahan still put the questions to him.
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No comment, no comment, no comment. When it was Noelle's turn to sit in the hot seat, she opted to be a different kind of uncooperative.
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Her story was that yes, she was married to David Davis, and yes, she was originally from the States. But everything beyond that was slippery.
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They just needed a single verifiable time that she, Noelle Davis, was being Noelle Davis somewhere.
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What were you doing in mid-July, Noel?
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The police made the call to release Noelle. She was on the hook to return at a later date if they saw fit, but by virtue of her needing to care for her children and their gut feeling that she wasn't directly involved in Ron Platt's death, they let her walk for now. She wasn't the one they were after.
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Back in the David Davis interview, Clenahan continued peppering him with questions.
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Out in the world, Davis had been acting in the theatrical role of Ronald Platt for months. So now the police were anxious to peer into the backstage area and see who else was participating in this production.
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There was only one thing that seemed to shake the confidence of the confidence man.
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I imagine Davis running an algorithm in this moment. He knew that the unique ridges from the tips of his fingers held the power to unravel his whole plan. And he knew he'd been fingerprinted exactly one other time, which was not ideal. 3,500 kilometers away, his prints were likely sitting on a dusty shelf in an Ontario office labeled Albert Walker.
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Elaine knew Ron better than any person on earth. And the idea that a man who had failed to establish himself in Canada and England would somehow have a go of it in a country where he knew no one and didn't even speak the language? Yeah, Elaine wasn't buying that.
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Was she going to be one of those people who lived their whole lives in the same town? Or someone who says yes to adventure and yes to love? It wouldn't be a huge culture shock. It'd just be Canada. They have the queen on all their stuff too. And sure, it's the year 1993. And it's not like you can ask Google, is Calgary a place that I should go to live?
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And then there's nothing for two weeks. It's important to note that it was two weeks between the phone call and the next unusual thing that happened in Elaine's life. Elaine was working at her office job when her mom showed up. She never came to Elaine's work. It was a pleasant surprise until Elaine saw her mother's expression.
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So they found a private spot and her mom said, there was a call to the house from the police in Devon. They found a dead body in the ocean. They think it's Ron.
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Elaine knew all too well how dark things could get for Ron. There were times in their relationship where she would be afraid to come home after work, worried at what she'd find.
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Maybe it had finally all become too much.
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Elaine's mom told Elaine to grab her coat. The Devon police would be calling her at seven o'clock. And this phone call would be the most important call of Elaine's life. Sergeant Bill McDonald introduced himself, told her that they'd found a body in the midsummer that they'd ID'd as Ron. He asked her about his tattoo and Rolex. But then, a bombshell.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Even over the phone, Bill MacDonald could sense that Elaine was suddenly distant.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
As Detective Ian Clenahan drove up to Harrogate to meet Elaine for the first time, after months of follow-ups leading nowhere and every tiny bit of progress earned the hard way, it felt like the truth was now the one pursuing them.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
All that mattered was that they had each other, they had their love, and together they could do anything. But what Elaine didn't know was that there was a problem with their plan, a bullet through their foot. And it seemed so obvious in retrospect. Their problem could have been solved through one conversation with one Canadian. Sorry, you guys are going where, when? Calgary in February?
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
It had been one week since Peter Redman had accidentally discovered that David Davis appeared to be living as Ronald Platt in a small village in Essex called Woodham Walter. And one week since the chief of police ordered his detectives to figure out who the man living in the little London farmhouse really was.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
So the police put out a flurry of inquiries.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
A week later, Clenahan sat across from Elaine for the first time in Harrogate, where things would accelerate even further.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
It was clear to Clenahan that Elaine was very suspicious of David Davis herself and was still spooked about the phone call.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
And the next question that emerged from their chat... Why, in all of his conversations with police, had Davis failed to mention a little ditty about him paying for Elaine and Ron to move overseas?
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
Elaine told police that Davis named them directors of his company, funded their apartment, bankrolled Ron's TV repair business, and that he essentially paid for their whole move.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
While the interview with Elaine had been thoroughly illuminating for police, Elaine left their conversation more bewildered than ever.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
Just before the detectives were about to head back to Devon, Elaine, quite shaken by all of this, asked, what should I do if Davis shows up or tries to contact me? And they said, not to worry. He likely won't. So in late October 1996, at the end of a very fruitful week of discovery, the police took stock of what they had.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
They could prove conclusively that Davis was paying bills and signing documents as Ronald Platt. So they had him on that. But they didn't go and arrest him there and then, because everyone sensed there was more to this.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
Was he posing as Platt to do something nefarious? Did he need to stop being David Davis for some reason? Or was it something more? Was he involved in Ron's death? Because if Davis was in any way involved in Ron's drowning death in Devon, the police needed more.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
To get to the truth, they needed one more thing on their side.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
When Clenehan and MacDonald put out their first wave of inquiries a couple weeks prior, one of the requests to the phone company took longer than the others to come back. And it was worth the wait.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
The same phone that Davis was calling Clenahan anxiously on for the past few months had been pinging all around the coast in late July, both where and when Ron's body was found.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
He was signed into one B&B as David Davis, while Ron Platt was at another nearby. Why were they staying in different places in the same area at the same time? And then another bombshell. Someone said that he'd been seen on his boat in the River Dart.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
So at this exact moment, as the police are getting Davis dead to rights through their investigation in Devon, 500 kilometers away, Elaine, who knows nothing of the police breakthroughs, is sitting at her desk.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
As they touched down in Calgary, it was a new beginning. The beginning of the end.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
With only 40 minutes until Davis arrived, Elaine had to scramble to prepare herself.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
She called the Devon police and said she needed McDonald. Fast.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
He's going to be here in 20 minutes. What do I do?
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
So she gets off the phone and stares into space, adrenaline coursing, trying to prepare herself when her boss swung by.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
With just a few minutes to spare, Elaine devised a plan with her boss Carolyn and her colleague Ken to create an escape hatch. They'd stay close, keep an eye on her, and after 15 to 20 minutes had passed, they'd stop by Davis and Elaine's conversation to urge Elaine back upstairs to the office. And then it was time.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
She looked to the door and there he was, Mr. Davis. Smiling the smile from the day he first walked into Elaine's art auctioneer job and offered her the world. It felt like a lifetime ago.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
And now it was the day before Halloween, 1996. Over three years since they'd last seen each other. So naturally, they had a lot to catch up on.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
In the pocket of their brief, strange conversation, Elaine had to keep reminding herself of what the police told her. But even though she was advised not to ask any questions, she couldn't help herself. She asked him how often he would see Ron in Essex. He said that they'd meet up about once a week for coffee, just like this.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
It was supremely uncomfortable for Elaine to sit with him. But thankfully, right on schedule, Elaine's colleagues showed up to bail her out.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
He finally let on that he was nervous about the police calling him so often. He told Elaine that they contacted him earlier in the week and they wanted him to come in yet again to give another statement about Ron.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
Her colleagues, angels as they were, motioned for Elaine once more.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
He said, I'll be back up in Harrogate in a couple of weeks and maybe I'll take you out to dinner.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
After Elaine relayed the details of their conversation and described that Davis seemed to have great anxiety about meeting with the detectives, the following day, the police decided that they needed to arrest Davis. Now. He was scheduled to show up at the Chelmsford Police Station in Essex the following afternoon to give a statement, but they suspected he might be on to them.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
They believed Davis to be traveling by train from Harrogate to Essex that evening. So an officer, equipped with Elaine's description of what he was wearing in the cafe, waited for him at the train station in Chelmsford. But either he missed him, or he wasn't on the train. The next morning was Halloween, 1996.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
Detective Peter Redman, the same Peter Redman who had fatefully knocked on the wrong door in Woodham-Walter two weeks earlier, had a big day ahead of him. His department in Essex had been given the green light by Devin to arrest David Davis at their earliest opportunity.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
The plan was originally that they'd arrest him when he showed up to the police station later that day, but Redman didn't trust that he'd show up. They didn't even know if he was on the train the night before. So before heading to work that morning, Redman needed to check something.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
Redmond wanted to see if Davis had in fact made it home safely to Little London Farmhouse and see if his car was in the driveway. So he pulled into Little London Lane and stopped. Davis's car was back.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
Redmond got comfortable and radioed in that Davis was back at home and that they should get the firearm squad ready to head to Woodham Walter.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
The reason they made the decision to bring guns was straightforward. They believed two things of David Davis. That he was likely responsible for the death of Ron Platt. And two, he was American. And what is something that Americans are famous for? So it's in this moment, with Redmond's eyes on the farmhouse and waiting for the firearm squad to arrive, that something unexpected happens.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
A taxi appears and pulls into Little London Lane.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
When taxi driver Morris Cooch drove into Little London Lane, like every other person who's ever turned in, he got lost. So he pulled a Yui and headed back toward the road, when the person who ordered the cab suddenly appeared and flagged him down.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
From Redmond's vantage point, all of a sudden the cab pulled out and started driving toward town before he could make out who had gotten the car. Shit, was that Davis? Or did the cab pick up one of the other folks across the lane?
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
Despite all of the hope and excitement that they'd shared in the lead up, Ron seemed to get caught in the same ruts he always did. He was a bright man and a gentleman and a fine worker, but the bare minimum of social skills required to head out, apply for a job and have an interview go well, he just didn't have that in him.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
So Redman made a split-second decision. He left his post and pursued the cab. He grabbed for his phone to alert MacDonald, but there was no signal. So he drove along, hanging a couple cars back.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
They turned onto a busier road that leads back to Chelmsford, so Redman has to get closer to ensure he doesn't lose the taxi, its occupants still unaware they're being tailed.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
Redmond finally got a signal and made contact with the Devon crew. Here's Clenahan.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
McDonald took the call from Redmond, and immediately he was coordinating with the firearm squad, trying to help them reroute to find their way to Redmond and the taxi.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
As Redman followed the taxi around another turn, he kept checking his rear view anxiously. I was wondering where the armed response vehicle were going to appear. Finally, he saw them. Two traffic cars roared past Redman with a wink and turned on their lights.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
The police approached the cab, holding up their jackets to reveal their weapons.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
Redmond got out of his car and was finally able to confirm with his own eyes. Thank God, the right man was in the cab. He bounded toward him as he was being handcuffed.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
And they had him. Back in Devon, Clenhan and the other police were elated to learn that after months of mystery, they now had an explanation and a suspect in custody.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
When the police searched David Davis right there on the side of the road, in one pocket, he had an apple. And in the other pocket, he had two IDs. One for David Davis and one for Ronald Platt. But what the police had no inkling of was that this man in their custody was neither David Davis nor Ronald Platt. He was, in fact, a man called Albert Walker, one of the most wanted men in the world.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
Sea of Lies is produced by What's the Story Sounds for CBC. It's hosted and written by me, Sam Mullins, and produced and reported by Alex Gatenby. Mixing and sound design is by Ivan Eastley. From What's the Story Sounds, our executive producers are David Waters and Daryl Brown. At CBC Podcasts, the senior producers are Andrew Friesen and Damon Fairless. Eunice Kim is our story editor.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
Emily Connell is our digital coordinating producer. Executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. Senior manager is Tanya Springer. And the director of CBC Podcasts is Arif Noorani.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
After years of hyping to Elaine how much happier he was going to be when they left England, now that they were here, it was clear that Canada was only working to exacerbate Ron's depression further. And as it turned to spring, everything remained untenable.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
It was never going to work. Elaine didn't have the resources to look after herself, let alone take care of Ron. After only six months, it all became too much to carry. I just, I didn't know for the struggle. The only thing that kept her going was a moment of respite written on the calendar. Her sister was getting married in Norfolk, England that summer. Elaine had her ticket booked.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
And as the date approached, she wondered, what was she going to do? When it was time to head to the wedding, Ron took Elaine to the airport, completely impervious to what was happening.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
Elaine had made her decision. She knew this was it.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
There's no salvaging it here. There's no salvaging it there. They had tried. They tried. Elaine hugged Ron for the last time. And they never saw each other again. I'm Sam Mullins, and this is Sea of Lies, from CBC's Uncovered. Episode 3, A Dream State. Elaine arrived back in the UK, not exactly in the right headspace to be attending a wedding.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
But luckily, she wouldn't be going to her sister's wedding alone.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
Davis and his teenage daughter Noelle were invited too and had kindly offered to drive. But then when Davis arrived on the day, Noelle was conspicuously absent.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
Upon laying his eyes on her, Davis could see right away that Elaine was in bad shape. She was trying to rally for the sake of her sister's big day, but was falling short. Among the guests, Elaine wasn't the only one who seemed off. Davis, too, seemed uncharacteristically tense and agitated. Elaine remembers him being annoyed that the photographers kept taking shots with him in the frame.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
When David Davis gifted Ron and Elaine one-way tickets to Canada for Christmas, suddenly this plan to move, which for Elaine had only ever existed in the abstract, was now as tactile as a brick. As they closed the door to the aircraft and England with it, Elaine knew there was no turning back now.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
His foul mood filled Elaine with dread because she knew that she had to tell him she wasn't going back to Calgary. She hadn't the courage to tell Ron that she was leaving him, and now she was afraid to tell Davis. After all, it was his generosity that had paid for her and Ron's tickets to make the move in the first place. So she steeled herself and came out with it.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
It's normal to struggle when you move it first. You can't leave Ron now. He needs you. You need each other.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
He took her around her hometown to show her some of the housing options and her price range.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
Riding shotgun, Elaine couldn't believe how different the dynamic was between them. After all the interest he'd showered on her, all they'd done together, now all she got was a patronizing, maybe you could afford this crummy room in this crummy house with these weirdos, Elaine. Or of course, you could always go back to Ron, in which case I'd happily pay for your flight.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
But Elaine was unwavering, and for some unexplained reason, Davis seemed annoyed. Before he left, Davis told Elaine that he'd be spending some time in Scotland and then be moving to France, most likely. So the only way she'd be able to reach him was through a P.O. box that he'd set up in London. And then he was gone. For Elaine, it was hard to stand up, hard to exist on her own.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
Her being alone muscles had atrophied, like an astronaut feeling gravity again. She had to start over. While Davis had effectively disappeared himself from Elaine's life, Ron, alone in Canada, was slowly beginning to understand that Elaine really wasn't coming back.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
Ron would send things in the mail to her.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
One time it was just a toothbrush. It was as if he could only process through one object at a time that she was gone for good. The year following, in 1994, Elaine went to Italy to teach English for a bit. Italy strikes me as the perfect palate cleanser after a winter in Calgary. Her relationship with Ron settled into that vague purgatory where all of our exes live.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
where there's no direct contact, but you might hear things through the grapevine like, oh, he got a job at Radio Shack? Good for him. And Davis would keep tabs on Elaine by calling her mother from time to time.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
Beside her, Ron grinned the grin he'd been grinning since the moment that he learned he was going home to Canada. He was returning home to the only place he ever felt comfortable and loved and safe, his happy place. But for Elaine, this moment felt a lot more fraught. She was leaving everything she'd ever known, and she was doing it for him. She talked herself into it. But maybe she'd love it.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
And this is how things were between the triangle of Elaine and Ron and Davis. They had drifted apart, become constellations in different parts of the sky. But then, in early 1995, 18 months after Elaine had left Ron in Calgary... Ron writes to me to tell me that he's thinking of coming back to England.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
He was clear. He said, I'm not coming back to disrupt your life. I'm just coming back. And then shortly after that, guess who suddenly wanted to talk? Not to Elaine's mother, but to Elaine.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
This feeling stayed with Elaine for days. The question wouldn't leave her. For what possible reason would Davis be upset about Ron coming back to England? And it's here, with this question spinning in Elaine's mind, that something changed. The combination of Davis not being there for Elaine when she moved back, and then this annoyance with Ron? She just had a bad feeling about it.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
Once Ron was back in England, he stayed out of Elaine's orbit like he promised he would. Elaine continued getting patchy information through the grapevine about Ron. I heard he's moved to Essex. He's found a job down there. I heard he's living not too far from David Davis. Davis stopped calling Elaine and Elaine's mom at regular intervals. They had essentially lost touch.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
This was over the period of months. But then one day... There was a very boring issue with Elaine's mom's house. They talked to a lawyer about it. They didn't like what they said, so they wanted a second opinion.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
Sure, he left me high and dry and more or less ruined my life for a minute there. But the man does no business. So Elaine, for the first time in over a year, calls Davis.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
As ever, Noelle didn't divulge an ounce more than the minimum.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies
But then four days later, Davis finally did return her call. It would end up being the second most important phone call of Elaine's life.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
The officer tasked with setting up this sensitive reunion was Brian Slade, a member of the original team that conducted the search of Little London Farmhouse.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
The ceremony was in Atlanta, but since the UK is five hours ahead, it aired on tape delay in the UK the following night.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
Albert Walker eventually came back that night around 10 p.m., looking windswept and disheveled, and went straight to bed. The next morning, Captain Kirk took Albert, Sheena, and the kids to the Lady Jane to, quote, tidy up. Two days later, they went back to Woodham Walter, and five days after that, the fisherman John Coppock discovered Ron's body in his fishing net, six miles away from the shore.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
So as the timeline came into focus, it was clear. By placing Ron and Albert and Sheena all on the river dart on those key dates, the inquiry had unearthed a clear story of circumstance. But the fact remained. If you're going to tell a story of circumstance in a jury trial, you need something more. They needed Sheena. And they needed her to testify.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
The police knew that they had some time. A trial date for something like this was at least a year out. They needed to use that time to earn Sheena's trust and build a relationship with her. And how were they going to do that? They didn't know. That was Officer Brian Slade's problem to figure out. I was asked to keep contact with her.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
When Slade put Sheena on the plane back to Canada, he vowed to keep in touch with her over the phone in the coming weeks and months, to check in, to not be a stranger. But as he watched her go, he certainly didn't like his chances.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
While everyone who had met her in the UK described her as quiet, deferential, soft-spoken, this didn't jive with the version of her that Slade met.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
Every time Slade made contact in the early going, he was met with silence.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
Slade had been assigned to be the point of contact between Sheena and the police ever since they still thought Sheena was Noelle.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
Even though she was trying to build a new life back in Canada, her feelings towards Slade and the police in general remained unchanged. It was still quite a testy relationship as such. But even though it was awkward at times, Slade kept calling.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
Over the course of weeks, Slade got to know the unknowable Sheena Walker.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
The way she talked about her father was not in a way that suggested she felt victimized by him. It was only when she talked about her current situation, re-acclimating to life inside her mother's house, that she sounded displeased with one of her parents.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
During the month between the Halloween arrest and the police figuring out that the Davises were in fact the Walkers, Sheena was laying low at Little London Farmhouse with her children and almost nothing else. The police had seized everything, and Sheena didn't have a penny to her name, to any of her names. So she was being looked after by social services and Officer Slade.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
And this is the moment, a couple of months after her return to Canada, when Sheena receives a call from the UK, not from Slade, but from her father in prison. His calling card only gave him a couple of minutes, but he successfully got the message to Sheena that he needed to. He said, I need you to amend your statement. I need you to say that you did know that Ron was in Devon.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
That while we were there, you knew that he was staying nearby. And then they were cut off. This was the test. The gut check. When he needed her the most, would she do her father's bidding?
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
Before she'd left the UK, she gave an on-the-record statement about what exactly she and Albert were doing that July.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
Because it turned out that in addition to telling the police that Ron had left for France that June, this was the story he told his daughter as well.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
Slade rushed down the hallway to tell his chief, Phil Sincock.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
After so many conversations, things between Slade and Sheena felt much different than the last time they were in the same room, in a good way. The relationship was getting better at that stage. But even though Sheena knew that Slade was coming to collect this specific statement, in which she would merely be restating what she told him over the phone, seeing it on paper seemed to give her pause.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
So they sat in it. And just like he had every step thus far, Slade gave her space and made it clear that he wasn't here to convince her to do anything she didn't want to do. He explained that all this is really about is the truth. A statement of the truth.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
The fact that Sheena was comfortable sharing this with Slade was very meaningful. Not just because she would have known that this would hurt her father, who she obviously still cared about. But just by virtue of the act of him calling her to change her testimony, that alone would be one of the most damning facts that the prosecution could put to a jury.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
But then the facts from Interpol, the police learning her true identity, and all of a sudden, her mother, who she'd spurned six years earlier, was on a plane to reunite with her. Barb Walker was the only person who never stopped looking for Sheena. When Sheena first disappeared, of course, there was outrage, media coverage, police investigations.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
Charles Barton would be the one leading the prosecution. And as the trial date was imminent, he made crystal clear what they'd need to have their best shot at winning. He took young officer Slade aside.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
But just because her framing of everything had evolved didn't mean that she was ready to face her father in court with the entire world watching.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
The relationship had been built, the trust had been established, but now it was finally time for a definitive answer. Will you testify against your dad?
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
The case was making headlines in Canada, and there had been a seemingly permanent gaggle of photographers camped out at her mom's house.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
They needed to go to Edmonton because that's where the military aircraft would be taking off from.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
Canadians, if someone from abroad approaches you and is like, I'm in Edmonton for two days, what is there to do there? We all say in unison on the count of three, one, two. And apparently they've got a really large mall, shopping mall. West Ed, one of the biggest malls in the world.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
But as the months folded into years, the crowd thinned out. Until it was just Barb, trying to get Sheena's story on TV in any way she could. America's Most Wanted passed on her pitch. Unsolved Mysteries didn't call her back. So she settled for an episode of the shortly-lived program called Missing Treasures.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
On the eve of the flight, with the start of the trial a mere 48 hours away, everything was going according to plan. But each hour brought more visible anxiety to Sheena's face. What she yearned for was privacy, solitude, a peaceful place to just be with her children. And where she was going was the exact opposite. Clearly it was getting a lot for her.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
That evening, Slade went to go check on her to make sure that she was okay. But when he knocked on her door, there was no answer. She went missing as such. She left the hotel. Trying to stay calm, Slade went into the lobby and out on the street, but there was no sign of her. God damn it. He had one job, and their flight was only hours away.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
I didn't know where she was or if she was going to come back. After Slade had a brief heart attack, Sheena finally reappeared. She just needed some space. And after a poor night of sleep, it was time.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
Sheena in a war plane, heading to a hostile territory to be brave.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
It was massive. Detectives Clenahan and McDonald had never seen anything like it.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
The Exeter Crown Court was on the grounds of the thousand-year-old Rougemont Castle, one of the oldest castles in England. Shakespeare mentions it in Richard III, and there's a plaque on the wall that says, The last people in England to be executed for witchcraft were tried here and hanged.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
It was on this historic red cobblestone, upon which the key players in the case made their entrances in tinted vehicles. The judge, the prosecutor, the defense lawyer, all men worthy of this stage, all considered among the best barristers in England. Albert Walker was brought handcuffed out of the van and out of view of most of the telephoto lenses.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
Of course, no longer able to get his bi-weekly color treatments, he showed up wearing a beard of solid white. Clenahan arrived with his captain, Phil Sincock, as Sheena was whisked into the courthouse undetected. To the prospective jurors, the Crown attorney advised that they would be calling a total 36 witnesses and that the trial would last about four weeks.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
They quickly selected a jury comprised of eight women and four men. And with that, the judge nodded to begin. Crown Prosecutor Charles Barton was a man of substantial size and volume. He was well known to never need the aid of his notes. And when he spoke in court, he never made eye contact with anyone but the jury.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
The first five words of Barton's opening statement were, "...this case depends upon detail." His opening remarks gave the jury a quick skim of all the evidence that he would be presenting, and promised that while almost all of it would be circumstantial in nature, that when held all at once, the truth of what happened to Ron Platt would be undeniable.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
And with that, it was time to call the first witness.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
Who Barton would call to the witness stand first was of huge significance strategically, and was a call that he'd been ruminating on for months. And so, with all eyes fixed on him, Barton said the words that one reporter in the courtroom described as having the effect of gunfire in a church. He said, My Lord, the first witness I'm going to call is Sheena Walker. Coming up on Sea of Lies.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
Sea of Lies is produced by What's the Story Sounds for CBC. It's hosted and written by me, Sam Mullins, and produced and reported by Alex Gatenby. Mixing and sound design is by Ivan Eastley. From What's the Story Sounds, our executive producers are David Waters and Daryl Brown. At CBC Podcasts, the senior producers are Andrew Friesen and Damon Fairless. Eunice Kim is our story editor.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
For Barb, Sheena's birthdays came and went on the calendar, marking not her arrival in this world, but her absence from it. After a few years, a Canadian police officer suggested to Barb that she should just move on and forget about her, because she wouldn't be the same kid anyway. But then the call finally came, and she got on a plane to meet her now 21-year-old daughter.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
Emily Connell is our digital coordinating producer. Executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. Senior manager is Tanya Springer. And the director of CBC Podcasts is Arif Noorani.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
Detective Bill McDonald sent Slade to meet her.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
This is a CBC Podcast. I've been thinking about what it means to be 15 years old. When you're 15, you don't have the responsibility yet of a driver's license, and you don't need to have clear answers about who you want to be. You're still more kid than adult. But you can feel that starting to change.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
They set up the meeting in a social services building, in a room with a children's play area. They brought Barb through the door, and there was Sheena, the daughter she never gave up on, in the flesh, a mother herself now, The moment that Barb thought might never happen was here.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
As mother and daughter embraced, everything around them was an unconscionable mess. But this moment was not. There was a flurry of loose ends to be tied up before Sheena was allowed to fly back to Canada with her mother and children.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
She needed to give statements to both the British and Canadian authorities, get her bail cancelled, and to alert the Canadians about the avalanche of paperwork heading their way to process not just Sheena, but her two children. And the biggest meatball of all was that not tomorrow or next month, but at some time in the future, the Devon police would need her to testify in court against her father.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
If Sheena was going to testify in the eventual murder trial, it would need to be her choice and her choice alone to do so. By putting her on the plane to her home nation, her actual home nation, the Devon police knew that she was under no obligation to ever come back. Up to that point, she'd been aloof and uncooperative at every step.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
And now they had every indication that even though the jig was up, she was not about to turn on her father.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
No one knew where her head was at. No one knew what her father had indoctrinated her with. No one knew what she thought or felt or was still trying to hide. And she certainly didn't seem in a hurry to talk to anyone about any of it. I'm Sam Mullins, and this is Sea of Lies, from CBC's Uncover. Episode 6, Sheena.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
Bill McDonald took us around the Dart region, the area in Devon along the River Dart, to retrace the steps of Walker and Platt's July 1996.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
When the inquiry began, guided by the calls and the cell tower pings of Walker's cell phone, the Devon police began a rigorous door-knocking campaign, all up and down the dart, to see if anyone remembered seeing Ron Platt or Albert Walker that July. Or, better yet, if they'd seen them together.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
You can sense that you're at the beginning of having real agency, where you're like, what am I good at? Where do I want to go? What do I want all of this to look like? To be 15 is to still be a child, but a child first grasping the raw, undiluted potential of life. It's the age Sheena Walker was in 1990, when she first disappeared from her mother, her siblings, her friends.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
The details of Ron Platt and Albert Walker's movements in the final month of Platt's life are complicated, but to those building the murder case, essential to understand. The verified timeline of the final month of Ron Platt's life goes like this. In June 1996, Albert and Sheena Walker are living in Woodham-Walter, Essex, and Ron Platt is living nearby in Chelmsford.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
Sometime that June, Albert tells Sheena that Ron has moved to France, and Ron Platt's actions that month seemed to support that he did indeed plan to move. Ron gives his notice at the Chelmsford place. On June 21st, Albert helps him move out. They put all this stuff into a storage unit, and then Albert checks Ron into a nearby hotel, where he'll remain for a couple of weeks.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
Then, in the first week of July, Albert picks up Ron, and they drive four and a half hours west to Totnes on the River Dart in Devon, where they check into a place called the Steam Packet Inn. Two days later, Albert walks into a nearby yachting shop where he purchased seven items. A jacket, varnish, grease, a length of rope, a roll of green duct tape, a roll of black duct tape, and an anchor.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
What was Ron thinking during this time? That he and his good friend Albert were simply having a mini-vacation, a sort of send-off before he moved to France? We don't know for sure. But the police found two women who remember chatting with Albert and Ron in the pub at the Steam Packet the night of July 8th.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
The talkative one of the two men told them that they were both divorcees and that they had a plan to sail to France to start a new life. Which brings us to July 9th, 11 days before Ron Platt died. July 9th remains a big question mark, a day that fascinates those familiar with the case to this day.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
That morning, Albert and Ron checked out of the Steam Packet Inn after breakfast, got on the Lady Jane, Albert's 24-foot sailboat, and headed out to sea. No one sees them until late that night. At around 11 p.m., Albert calls a hotel in Totnes, one called the Royal Seven Stars, and says, We're on a boat waiting for the tide to come in. Do you have two rooms? They did.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
So, a very tired-looking Ron and Albert arrive at the Royal Seven Stars Hotel shortly after that. And Albert says to the concierge, memorably, My God, we were stuck out at sea, and then on the drive here, I just ran over a cat. Why did they check out of the steam packet inn that morning if they knew they were coming back? What were they doing for all of those hours on the Lady Jane that day?
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
All we know is that the next morning, Ron Platt checked back into the steam packet inn for 10 more nights, which is significant because he only had 10 nights left in his life. So with Ron checked in, Albert Walker drives four and a half hours to Woodham Walter.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
Then, on July 12th, Albert Walker loads Sheena and the kids into the car for a pre-planned, pre-booked holiday halfway up the dart in Dittisham. Albert, Sheena, and the kids had reserved a cute little cottage called Potter's Loft. They were booked at the cottage for a full week, July 12th to 19th. But the week was dreadful. The weather was bad, and both the children caught a nasty cold.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
So, feeling robbed of their holiday, or perhaps for some other much darker reason, Albert called the booker.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
Albert was told that another similar place just around the corner was available, a cottage called the Old Brew House. So with 48 hours left in Ron Platt's life, they moved a few houses down the hill.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
Her mother got the call that they'd found her six years later. When the Devon police figured out Sheena's true identity, immediately, they set about how best to reunite mother and daughter. Taking into consideration, of course, that the daughter in this case now had two young daughters of her own.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
If the river dart is a snake, we have Ron in the steam packet inn at the very tip of the tail in the north. And we have Albert in Didisham, the fat middle of the serpent, with the Lady Jane moored just across the river.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
But then suddenly on July 18th, Albert tells Ron to leave the steam packet inn and move to an accommodation down river of him in Dartmouth, where the mouth of the snake spits the dart into the channel.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
Which brings us to July 20th, 1996. Albert Walker wakes up that morning and tells Sheena that he's heading out for a solo sale for the day on the Lady Jane.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
To get to the Lady Jane's mooring just across the river, he needed a ride. Not just from anyone, but from a man named Captain Kirk.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
On the short ride across the river, Albert would have had a perfect view of the Greenway estate.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
The house is famous because Agatha Christie, the most famous mystery writer in history, lived there for the last 40 years of her life.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
Before he was picked up by Walker, Platt had breakfast at the place he was staying and checked out.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
As Ron Platt walked away from the Anchorage that morning, it was the last time he was ever seen alive. Back in the rented cottage, Sheena spent the day doing something I'm very familiar with. She was just trying to have a smooth time with her two young children.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
When the kids fell asleep that night, as she waited for her father to return, Sheena did something that would prove to be very important in the case against Albert Walker. She turned on the TV. When Sheena first told police that she watched television the night Albert was gone, right away they asked, oh yeah, what was on?
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies
And Sheena remembered exactly what she was watching that night.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
After the police surgeon had taken his notes, the body was loaded into the coroner's van. And for the first time in many hours, it was just Craig and his dad on the boat again. But the moment was brief, as they noticed a figure approaching.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
From small town Canada to coastal England, this is a story that spans continents and decades and centers on the ruthless villain who almost got away with it. So who is he? And how was he finally caught? Right now, here's the first episode of Sea of Lies. This story begins with a miracle. I don't know what else to call it. And when I say miracle, I don't mean it in the religious sense.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Every night at 8 p.m., the bells of All Saints Church chime the tune to Abide With Me. The hymn was written right here in Brixham in the early 19th century by a vicar whose flock was comprised almost entirely of fishermen. the chimes are thought to call home all the souls of the men lost at sea.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Which is to say that Brixham and the Devon Coast is a place where finding the body of an unidentified man in the ocean is not necessarily a rare occurrence. It's a holiday town, so swimmers get into trouble, leisure boats capsize, fishermen get caught in storms. And Stone's Throw Away is Barry Head, a sea cliff well-known locally as a place where people go to take their own lives.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
With the body now safely in the hands of the coroner and Devon police, they don't know who they have, and they don't know what they have. But lying in their mortuary was the key to unraveling a nearly perfect crime that spanned years and continents. An unimaginable web of lies was about to come undone. I'm Sam Mullins, and this is Sea of Lies from CBC's Uncover.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Episode one, luck or something like it. Since Detective Ian Clenahan was both young and new in town, he'd been partnered up with a veteran of Devon Police.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Bill is measured with his words in a way that only someone with 30 years of interrogation experience could be. We interviewed him in his purpose-built bird-watching space, where he patiently sits, confident the birds will come to him.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
After two days passed without anything, MacDonald and Clenahan decided that it was time to take action. So if you were the two guys tasked with trying to learn the name of an idealist man plucked from the bottom of the ocean, Where do you even begin?
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Lacking readily available information from out in the world, the Devon Police naturally were very interested to learn if the results of the post-mortem had a story to tell.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
The pathologists listed the body as male, 5'9", brown hair, receding, possibly in his 40s. Estimated time in the water? One week. Both noted the tattoo on his hand. But either because it was old or it warped in the seawater, neither pathologist could make out what the tattoo was of. There was bruising on the right hip and on the outside of the knee on the same side of the body.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
But it wasn't obvious when the bruising occurred. One thing that was obvious, though.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
And as for the gash on the back of the head, while the first pathologist thought it consistent with being trawled along the seabed and the roughs, the other advised that it was inconclusive what had caused the gash and that they should keep an open mind. But really, there wasn't anything new to go on after the autopsy.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
And after devoting police resources for a few weeks, it felt like it was time to scale down the effort. If no one cared enough about whoever this poor soul was to come forward with new information, there was little more the cops could do. This was looking like it would be recorded forever as an unidentified person.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
And that would have been the end of it. But it wasn't. Because I'm telling you, luck or something like it was leading them somewhere. The thing that saved this person from being forever unknown came in the form of a suggestion, really, from one of the staff members of the coroner. A casual suggestion that might sound familiar to you.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Because one of the two men in the autopsy, Robin Little, had a chance conversation with a friend just afterwards.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
At least I don't think I do. I mean it in the sense of luck. Luck is a spectrum. There are lucky breaks, flukes, good fortune. But then there's a tier of luck that is so far beyond the parameters of chance that it feels divine.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Oh sure, it doesn't sound like such a bad idea when the coroner officer says it.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
No one who handled the watch saw the serial number at first because it's only visible when you take the pin out of the band to expose the side of the casing. So Robin Little sent the watch to Rolex.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Curiously, Harrogate is about the opposite end of England from where the body was found. Devon is down in the southwest, and Harrogate is way up in the central north.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
It was only seven letters, but R.J. Platt rolled off the tongue a lot better than the bloke from the sea. He had a name now. It was a start. Clenahan spent the week typing the name into every tool at his disposal, checking registries, council tax receipts, and state records. And he found an address linked to a Ron J. Platt in Essex. Geographically, Essex isn't near Devon either.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
It's way on the Belgium-Netherlands facing side of England. So they needed a man on the ground in Essex to head to this flat. And they found one.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
So Redmond headed out, and when he arrived at the place, he was able to confirm that Platt had once lived in one of the flats there, but had moved out a while back. Redmond contacted the local tax department about the address, and they told him that Platt had written on his termination notice, I'm no longer liable for property tax. I'm moving to France. Platt was moving to France?
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
This detail would light up the imaginations of Clenehan and MacDonald when they heard it. Because a move to France could conceivably place Ron Platt on a boat in the English Channel where his body was found. But the most useful bit of information that Redmond was able to find in Chelmsford came when he spoke to Platt's old landlord. They did give me the name of the chap who stood guarantor for him.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
And while the story that I'm about to tell you features the whole spectrum of luck, coincidences, right places, wrong times, million to one shots connecting, there's no story at all, no truth, no justice, without the thing that happens first. The thing so far beyond the brackets of likelihood, it was a miracle. Because a father and son who weren't even looking accidentally found something.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
When he applied to rent the place, Ron Platt needed to provide a reference. So he gave one. Mr. Davis. David Davis. In an investigation in which they had failed to find a single person involved in Ron's life who actually knew Ron, learning the name and mobile number of a character reference felt like gold.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
And since this Davis person lived nearby in Essex, Peter Redman was the one who called him up.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
And Davis obviously wanted to know what this was all regarding. So Redman had to come out with it on the phone.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Redman said that if it was okay with him, he would like to ask Davis some questions about Ron in person. And Davis said, sure.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
After their chat, Redman told him that his colleagues, who were the ones investigating Ron's death in Devon, would be contacting him as well. And they would be able to give him more information about the circumstances of their finding his friend. The first time Ian Clenahan called David Davis, there was no answer.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
But then, as so often happens in British police procedurals, there was a high-stakes scene involving tea.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
David Davis began telling Clenahan the story of how he and Ron Platt became friends.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
They first met up in Harrogate, the northern town where the Rolex was last serviced. And then they both wound up living near each other in Essex some years later. As David Davis launched into the story, Clenahan, standing at the tea station, was unprepared to take notes.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
The mundane detail of writing utensil was more significant than Clenahan realized in the moment. He had no way of knowing that in two years' time, this very note would become evidence.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Proof that the man he was talking to was intentionally misleading him.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
When Ron Platt first broke the surprising news about his move to France, David Davis said that he offered to help his friend out financially to make it happen. And while an exchange of money just before someone dies of mysterious circumstances can be a red flag, it didn't sound like it in this case.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
But ultimately, as to the question of what the hell happened to him, like everyone else, Davis had no idea what his friend would have been doing in Devon. Boarding a boat that would take him to France? That would make some sense. As they ended their chat on the phone, Clenahan asked if Davis could point them toward any other people who knew Ron.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Davis said he'd never met Ron's family, but he knew that he had brothers. And then notably, Davis told Clenahan that Ron had once served in the military, so maybe they could find his family that way.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Someone who was never supposed to be found. We begin July 28th, 1996, in the holiday town of Brixham in Devon, England, where a college kid, happy to be home for the summer, was looking forward to two straight months of sleeping in.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
This confirmed that they didn't just have a Ronald Platt, but this Ronald Platt.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Finally, with a little wind in their sails, through the army records, they were able to find a family member of Ron's in Wales. So they grabbed their coats and were out the door to meet Brian, Ronald Platt's big brother.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
They began by showing Brian a photo from the coroner's office, a zoomed-in shot of the hand tattoo.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
The best guess that anyone had at this point was that the tattoo was maybe of a star or a constellation.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
And then the three men sat down for the tough part.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
In their conversation with Brian, MacDonald and Clenahan learned that Ronald Platt was the middle child with two brothers, that he'd spent his formative years growing up in Canada before coming home to the UK at 17 to join the Royal Air Force. Brian described his little brother as being quiet, private, that Ron suffered from depression and dark moods, which pricked up the ears of both detectives.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
But even here, sitting with a member of his nuclear family, clear answers remained elusive. It turned out that the three Platt brothers weren't close at all. There had never been a falling out or any animosity. It was just that where their brotherly bond was supposed to be, instead, there was just a vacuum.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Brian didn't know much of anything about his little brother's life and certainly knew nothing about the end of it. Clenahan and MacDonald thanked Brian and started their drive back to Devon.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
The mystery of what happened to Ron Platt had consumed water cooler chatter at the police station for weeks.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
And in the coming weeks, nothing new would turn up. It was obvious to MacDonald and Clenahan that it was time to let this one go. Wind it down and get this thing off their desk. It wasn't all for nothing. They ID'd the mystery man and notified the family so that they could have a proper funeral. That was something, at least. It felt like it was over.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
How are we ever going to find out what happened?
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
The day that everything changed begins with Clenahan at his desk in the police station. As far as he was concerned, all the final paperwork on Ron Platt was filed and finished. The only minor outstanding thing that remained was for him to make contact with David Davis on behalf of Ron's brother, Brian, to retrieve some of Ron's possessions. So Clenahan had to call Davis.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
But consequently, there was a hiccup.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Craig Coppock was the son of a fisherman, a line of work that Craig knew to be fundamentally incompatible with the sleepy goals of a university kid. So whatever dreams he had for that summer were quickly dashed by a pronouncement from his dad.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
So he got Peter Redman of Essex Police back on the phone.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Peter Redman again, the most low-key cop of all time.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Redmond's post in Chelmsford is a really busy office. He usually has a million things to do and wouldn't, under normal circumstances, drive the half-hour drive to go and do another detachment a favor right away. But this day, he had a reason to want to make the drive.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
So Redmond heads out for the small village called Woodham Walter.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
As Peter Redman drives his brand new car that day in 1996, he has no idea that he himself has become a vehicle of fate. He and Clenahan and McDonald will spend the rest of their lives thinking about how big a role luck played that day. What would have happened if Clenahan didn't lose Davis' phone number? They'd wonder in the coming decades.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
What if Redmond didn't feel compelled to take the new car for a spin and someone else went to Woodham Walter that day? They'd never know.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
He was told that Davis' home was a place on Little London Lane that was called simply Little London Farmhouse. When Redmond took my producer Alex on this exact drive, everything looked the same as it did back then, but for one key detail.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
The houses all have signposts with their names on them, but they didn't then.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
And this, Redmond standing on the doorstep with his hand perched to knock, this, dear listener, is the biggest what if from that day. What if Redmond didn't accidentally knock on the wrong door? And Frank and Audrey answered. Frank and Audrey, the neighbors, were both in their late 70s. Charmingly, whenever they met a new person, like the police officer on their doorstep, they'd offer right away.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
We're not married to each other. We're both widows and live together just as friends. Peter double-checked the address for David Davis and asked them if this was...
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Craig had been helping his father on the trawler since he was 11, so he knew all too well what assisting dad on the boat would look like.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
David Davis? Frank furrowed his brow. He'd never heard of a David Davis. And he said, oh, no, Ron Platt lives next door. I beg your pardon? The man in that house right there? In the address that David Davis said was his house? To you? He's called Ron Platt? That was the spark. Redmond took a second to process what he just heard. Suddenly, this routine visit felt ominous. Ronald Platt is dead.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
But Davis is Platt? So Platt is alive? And living here next to this platonic couple? Redmond needed to find out more.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
As Redmond stands on the exact stoop with my producer Alex today, at the same crooked cottage with the same wooden door, retracing the steps he took nearly 30 years earlier, all of a sudden, a man peers out from the side door of the house, suspicious as to why we're staring at his property, armed with a microphone.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
They'd lived there for about a year. Oh, and one more thing, they had a boat.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
After chatting for a fair while, Redmond stood up and asked if they would be so kind as to keep this conversation just between the three of them and made his way back to his car, dizzy.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Redmond drove the new car straight back to the station in Chelmsford because he knew two detectives in Devon who needed to hear about this.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Clenahan waved over MacDonald and told him that the neighbours in Woodham Walter know David Davis as Ron Platt.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
They knew immediately that this was something they were going to need to bring to the boss.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Sinkhog finally relented. And after he absorbed the information, he had a plan. He said, we need to learn everything we can about the man living in that house. And we need to do it discreetly.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Coming up on Sea of Lies, we meet the one person who knows both Ronald Platts.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Sea of Lies is produced by What's the Story Sounds for CBC. It's hosted and written by me, Sam Mullins, and produced and reported by Alex Gatenby. Mixing and sound design is by Ivan Eastley. From What's the Story Sounds, our executive producers are David Waters and Daryl Brown. At CBC Podcasts, the senior producers are Andrew Friesen and Damon Fairless. Eunice Kim is our story editor.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Emily Connell is our digital coordinating producer. Executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. Senior manager is Tanya Springer. And the director of CBC Podcasts is Arif Noorani. That was the first episode of Sea of Lies from Uncover. If you like what you heard, episode two is waiting for you right now. Just search for Uncover wherever you get your podcasts.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Craig and his dad headed out on their 10-meter rig, the Malkery, to trawl for cod a few miles offshore. And after the first few hours, it was shaping up to be an underwhelming day of fishing.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
But John Coppock was as experienced a fisherman as you could find in all of England. His body seemed like it was designed by God to wrestle slippery things on unstable decks. He was solid in stature and sharp of mind from countless years of reading between trawls. And he had a hunch on where they'd find their big catch for the day. A notorious area known to the local fishermen as the roughs.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Craig's dad was unafraid of the roughs because he'd modified his nets specifically to traverse the big rocks that the other fishermen were wary of. After a couple of hours in the roughs, they started to bring up the net to see if their third toe would be different. And as the seagulls began circling, they could tell right away that this was the catch they were after.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
But then, their fortunes turned.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Hi, I'm Sam Mullins. I'm a writer and podcaster, and you might know me from shows I've made like Wild Boys or Dr. Dante. And I want to tell you about my brand new podcast series. It's called Sea of Lies from CBC's Uncover. When the body of a man is found at the bottom of the ocean, the only clue to discover his identity is through the Rolex watch ticking on his wrist.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Father and son stared at the body in disbelief.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
The man on their deck was fully dressed, wearing a button-up shirt, trousers with a belt, and laced-up shoes. His skin had a grayish hue and appeared almost like latex.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
The Coppix approached slowly for a closer look when they noticed two key details.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
To young Craig, there was a body on the deck, and with it, a mystery. But to his father, a much more experienced seafarer, all he could see upon the deck was the dilemma now before him. The right thing to do would be for him to go into the cabin and radio the Coast Guard about this. But the right thing in this case, as it often is, would not be the financially savvy thing to do.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
And beyond today, Craig's dad knew there could be a second, even bigger financial hit coming down the road from this. There was an urban legend among the fisherman community that they believed to be true.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
So before they did anything, father and son would need to have a sober talk about their options. In the privacy of the open sea, it was obvious. No one needed to know about this. This could easily be kept between them and the gulls.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
The more they thought about it, the lost money, the lost day, the hassle of inviting cops on board and giving legal statements, it didn't seem worth it to get involved. Even though it felt wrong, this didn't need to be their problem.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Coppock made contact with the Coast Guard over the VHF radio, and Central Command paged one of their most experienced men.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Agate was told that the Coppix had a body on their deck, so he headed out on a small Coast Guard sea rider to meet them. And as he crested toward them, he felt confident that he knew the identity of the man upon their deck. He'd been expecting this call.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
It was all over the news. A couple local 20-year-olds found a pedal boat on the beach when they were stumbling home from the pub and took it out into the bay. What they didn't know was that the pedal boat they found was broken. And what the surviving boy didn't know was that his friend never learned to swim. Two weeks of searching had yielded no trace of the kid, except for a single item.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
So Agate boarded the Coppock ship with a body bag, fully expecting to quickly zip inside a single white-shoed lad. But of course, that wasn't a bee when I got there and saw what I saw. As Coppock was steering the ship toward the harbor, on the shore, the police were setting up a perimeter on the customs pier.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
What starts out as a mystery of identity grows exponentially into a race against time to capture one of the world's most wanted criminals. It's the story of a man who couldn't stop lying. A story of murder, betrayal, stolen identities, diaper bags stuffed with gold bars, and the incredible police investigation that brought it all to light, led by a miraculous string of luck.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
The authorities were hoping to tape off a relatively private part of the quay, where they could deal with the body out of view of the holidaymakers and kids with ice cream cones.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Clenahan was a young cop from Liverpool, a scouser. And on the day he got his first call on what would turn out to be the biggest case he'd ever work, he was still in his 20s and had just been posted in Devon earlier that week.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Clenahan, like the Coast Guard, was expecting this to be the body of the missing 20-year-old. But on the ride in, Paul Aggett of the Coast Guard became certain of two things. One, this was not the body of the 20-year-old.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Once the boat was docked, Ian Clenahan and a couple of other Devon police officers climbed aboard to collect the body. When Agate, the Coast Guard, raised his hand.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
As they waited for the team, Clenahan and the other two looked at the body for themselves, when one of the officers suddenly turned his attention to Craig Coppock and his dad.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
This was exactly what Craig and his dad didn't want, and partly why they had a moment of pause before they radioed the body in in the first place.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Young Craig was sweating at the accusation, but luckily his dad was a bright man who could think on his feet.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
Crisis averted. The accusing officer circled back to the body.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
The time on its face read 1135, the 22nd. Today was the 28th. And it's at this point when Craig opened his mouth in a slip of youthful confidence to offer what he thought was something helpful to say.
Someone Knows Something
Someone Knows Something Introduces | Uncover: Sea of Lies
While Craig was embarrassing himself off to the side, Inspector Clenahan continued looking at the body.