A Toronto police officer was having an affair with a government worker – and then they found out about an elderly man who died with a large estate, and no will. For more on the story, read Katherine Laidlaw’s piece, “The Inside Job.” Say hello on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Sign up for our occasional newsletter. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts. Sign up for Criminal Plus to get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening of all of our shows, special merch deals, and more. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Adeline Balgobin and how did she meet Robert Kanasowicz?
One day, a 26-year-old woman named Adeline Balgobin was at her job with the Ontario government when a co-worker came up to her.
A co-worker said there was a cute officer downstairs that she should go down and talk to him.
This is reporter Catherine Laidlaw. Adeline's co-worker knew how much she wanted to meet someone. So Adeline went downstairs to introduce herself to the police officer. They started talking. His name was Robert Kanasowicz.
They exchanged numbers, and a few weeks later, they went on their first date.
Chapter 2: What were the complications in Adeline and Robert's relationship?
It went well, and so they kept seeing each other.
They partied a lot. They went out to eat with his friends. They traveled a lot. They went to Putnakana for his birthday, for example. She had a photo of the two of them framed on her desk at work. You know, and I think after about a year... of them going steady that she started to think that things weren't quite right. She had met a bunch of his friends. They were going out regularly.
He was available some of the time, but she couldn't shake the feeling that it was strange that she had never met his family and that sometimes he would have to cancel plans with her at the last minute out of the blue with very little explanation.
Earlier on, she asked why he never invited her to his apartment.
So he had confessed that he was still living with his ex-girlfriend, and that was why he'd never had her over, but insisted that they were no longer romantically involved and were living together as roommates. As expected at the time, her friends were not approving of this situation. They thought that their friend was having the wool pulled over her eyes. And so...
She started getting suspicious, and she did what everyone is able to do in this day and age, and went online and tried to vet some of those suspicions and see if there was actually something going on. And what did she find? She discovered that her boyfriend was very much together with his other girlfriend, his longtime live-in girlfriend.
It didn't take very long for her to find Candace Dixon's social media accounts. Her Instagram account was full of pictures of the couple at events, on family vacations, things like that. And this time, when Adeline asked him about it, he didn't deny it. He leveled with her and said that... He was with Candace, and he had no intention of leaving.
The way that he framed it at the time was that it was a financial decision. You know, he'd brought debt into that relationship, and he couldn't afford to live the same kind of life as the one he had with Candace if he left her, and so he wasn't planning to.
Adeline decided to try to make it work. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. a little bit about who is Robert Kanasiewicz.
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Chapter 3: Who is Robert Kanasowicz and what is his background?
Where did he grow up? Who is he? So Robert Kanasiewicz grew up in a city called Oakville, which is its own city proper, but sort of also acts as a suburb of Toronto. His father was a police officer for the Toronto Police Force.
And he, from what I understand, sort of has always had a penchant for flashy cars and sort of ran with harder party and crew in high school, as it were, before growing up and applying to college for police work himself.
Robert graduated in 2008 and got a job with the Toronto Police. He made decent money. But Catherine Laidlaw says he had expensive taste. He liked to go out to clubs and restaurants. And one night, when he was in his late 20s, he ran into an old classmate at a club, Candace Dixon.
When they were younger, they had jokingly made a pact that if they were both still single at 35, they'd get married. And when they ran into each other again, Knastowicz recognized her and mentioned the pact. And he assumed she was married. And she corrected him. And he said, so I still have a chance. And they developed a relationship very quickly. They started traveling together.
Candace had always traveled widely and often. So they went to New York together. They went to Turks and Caicos together, Candace's family. Takes an annual family vacation there every year, so she brought her new boyfriend along. You know, he quickly became her plus one for things like the Powerball, which is a prominent gala here in Toronto. And a few months after that...
He moved in to the condo that Candace was renting. And I think she thought that there was real stuff there. I remember her saying that he felt like her people, that they had known each other for so long. And she likened talking to her boyfriend to going to confession at times because he was so... quiet and composed and felt to her like a vault.
And so I think he felt like a very safe space for her for a long time.
How did they handle finances? She had more money than him.
She did have more money than him, and in her telling, that wasn't an issue necessarily. She didn't expect him to keep up. That just didn't sort of seem possible or fair to expect. She, of course, when they first met, he was still living at his parents' home in Oakville, and that didn't appeal to her. She did expect him to change that living situation, which is when he moved in with her.
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Chapter 4: How did Robert's dual relationships come to light?
Catherine Laidlaw says Adeline confided in friends and co-workers about the situation. At one point, she texted a friend, I'm not doing this anymore. I'm ready to move on with my life. But still, she didn't end the relationship. By 2017, Adeline and Robert had been seeing each other about three years.
Adeline was assigned to look after a new case at work, the estate of a man named Heinz Sommerfeld. Heinz Sommerfeld had been entered into the OPGT system years earlier. He'd been diagnosed with dementia. And when his doctor asked if he had any family, Heinz said no. He later died in a nursing home.
As his client representative, Adeline was in charge of arranging for his burial and canceling Heinz's pension benefits and insurance coverage. The OPGT would also figure out what to do with his money. Usually their clients didn't have huge amounts. But Heinz's case was different. He had an estate of nearly one million Canadian dollars. And he had no will. We'll be right back.
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Chapter 5: What is the significance of Heinz Sommerfeld's estate in the story?
You know, he alleged at the time that he, when he was 22 and working a security job at a racetrack in the East End, that he had met Sommerfeld, who would have been 66 at the time. And that the following year, the elderly man gave him the will. He went so far as to sort of plant Sommerfeld.
Christmas cards in the file at the OPGT, a card dated 2008 and signed, Robert appeared in the file that wasn't there before.
But one of Adeline's colleagues, also working on Hines' case, had discovered something. Hines actually did have family, his half-brother, Peter.
This colleague phoned Peter and delivered the news that his brother had passed away, that he had a sizable estate. And both of these pieces of information were shocking to him at the time.
Adeline's colleague had put all this together and spoken to Peter without telling Adeline. The colleague didn't know about the will appearing. Peter was told that he would be inheriting Heinz's money.
However, the following day, he got another call from the OPGT and was told that, in fact, there was a will, that there was a beneficiary, and that the half-brother wasn't in it.
Peter had not seen or spoken to his half-brother in over 10 years. He had never heard of Robert Kanasiewicz.
He figured that in the later years of his life, his brother must have met someone who he connected with enough to leave his estate to. But he and his wife, after talking it over, did decide to consult with a lawyer. Their lawyer examined the will, determined that it looked to be credible.
The will had been signed by two witnesses, John David William Leminski and Jonathan Stephen Asseltine. It had been notarized. their lawyers seemed satisfied. Peter and his wife didn't know what to think.
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Chapter 6: How was the fake will discovered?
So what happens next? Well, Dixon decides to open the letter. Inside the letter, she saw Adeline Belgobin's name. And at that point, she kind of lost it. She texted her ex, what is this? Why is Adeline's name on this? You know, is this some kind of sick joke? And he is, meanwhile, denying it. What are you talking about? Eventually, she just finally said, you're doing something illegal.
That was the moment where things sort of really coalesced for Candace. The truth finally crystallizes. She realizes... that there was no stalker. There's been a mistress this whole time. And something is sort of unleashed in her, and she begins to search the condo everywhere.
She goes down to their two storage lockers, starts rummaging through Knasiewicz's things, and, you know, uncovers all of this evidence of this other relationship in quite a heartbreaking way. You know, there's clothing, there are Christmas cards. She eventually finds...
an SD card that she doesn't recognize, slides it into her laptop, and on this SD card are pictures of women with her boyfriend, women in lingerie, dozens of photos documenting what looked like multiple indiscretions spanning the years of their relationship, and only one of the photos was of her. And that, I think, was the moment where everything really broke.
Candace sent Robert an email with some of the photos from the SD card. The subject line was, really faithful. Adeline was from Trinidad, and Candace posted racist memes on Facebook and Snapchat, making fun of her. At one point, Robert went to Candace's condo, but the concierge wouldn't let him in, saying they'd call the police if he didn't leave. Robert shouted at them, I am the police.
Candace's mother got involved, posting on Facebook, If you hurt my daughter, I can make death look like an accident. Candace started looking into the letters, trying to find out who Heinz Sommerfeld was.
Candace really went sort of full true detective on this situation. But she, through her lawyer, secures Sommerfeld's estate file. She tracks down his half-brother herself through Facebook. And in early March of 2019, she calls the police. She has sort of seen and read enough information to be convinced that they have pulled off something and decides to report it.
And so she gives a statement to the police. They begin building a case. And that's when the dominoes really start to fall.
What happens to Robert? What happens next?
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