Pod Insights Canadian True Crime Alfred and Rosemary Podgis [1] About this episode A two-part series — A teenager from Nova Scotia is invited to stay with his wealthy school friend on the Jersey Shore, but finds himself at the centre of an American horror story.
The intention of this series is to take a look back at a shocking crime sensationalized through headlines across the US and Canada, and explore its impact on relevant communities.
Some names have been changed to respect the privacy of those involved.
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This month we have donated to the Canadian Mental Health Association https://www.cmha.ca./, who advocates and provides resources for the 1 in 5 people in Canada who have a mental illness.
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1:15 Speaker 03 Alice Curtis was alone when her phone rang at 2:30 in the morning. She was at home on her family farm in Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia, and her husband Jim was a couple of hours away in Halifax with the Canadian military. Both were in their mid-40s, and their 18-year-old son David was away too, in the United States, visiting his friend in New Jersey. Alice wasn't sure how long the phone rang that night before she woke up, but she was surprised to hear the local RCMP dispatch on the other end of the line. The person on the phone informed her that a squad car was parked outside her house.
2:00 Speaker 03 She was instructed to go downstairs and speak with the officers immediately.
2:07 Speaker 03 Alice would remember feeling a little startled, maybe disoriented, but not overly concerned. Nothing much ever happened on their Annapolis Valley farm. Why should this alarm her?
2:22 Speaker 03 The officers waiting for Alice wanted to know if she had heard from her son. They asked, "How long had David been gone for, and when was he coming home?" Then, they told Alice Curtis the reason for their visit. The people her son was staying with in New Jersey were missing. Alfred Podgis and his wife Rosemary Podgis, along with Scott Franz, Rosemary's 18-year-old son from her first marriage. Also missing was their son, David Curtis.
2:58 Speaker 03 It's rarely good news when the police show up on your doorstep in the middle of the night, and this was certainly alarming. But Alice Curtis wasn't worried. She felt certain there had to be some explanation for the disappearances. The officers left and she went back to sleep.
3:20 Speaker 03 That morning, she phoned her husband Jim in Halifax to tell him what happened, but urged him to stay there. "No need to return home to the farm," she said. That's how certain she was that this was all some big misunderstanding. After all, David had told them his friend was from a very wealthy family. They lived in a mansion by the Jersey Shore. They had a housekeeper, and maids, and a driver. It was the week after the American Fourth of July holiday, 1982. Alice Curtis thought that maybe the parents just took the boys on a nice trip or something.
4:03 Speaker 03 The following day, the RCMP called Alice Curtis again. This time, the news was dire. Alfred and Rosemary Podgis, the people their son David had been staying with in New Jersey, were dead. A couple of hikers had found their bodies in a random state park in Pennsylvania, about five hours away from their home. An autopsy was being conducted. Alice was informed that the two 18-year-olds were still missing: her son David and his friend Scott Franz. Now, the alarm bells went off.
4:44 Speaker 03 She called her husband again, and this time Jim Curtis made a beeline to the Halifax RCMP detachment to find out what the hell was going on in New Jersey. They gave him the number of Rosemary Podgis's adult daughter Barbara, who lived in a nearby town. And when Jim Curtis called and spoke to her, he found her to be friendly and helpful, given the circumstances. Barbara knew that her youngest brother Scott had invited a house guest from Canada to stay, but she asked Jim strange questions about his son, like what kind of kid David was, and whether he had any experience with guns.
5:28 Speaker 03 Jim Curtis assured Barbara that his son was a good kid, a great student, someone who never did drugs or drank alcohol. And though they did have some guns on the farm in Nova Scotia, he told Barbara that David had never touched them. The 18-year-old didn't even know how to drive. After that, Jim and Alice Curtis could do nothing except wait for news about their son and his friend, and hope they hadn't met the same fate as Alfred and Rosemary Podgis. A deep sense of dread crept in with each new day.
6:09 Speaker 03 This became the before-and-after moment for the Curtis family. There was life before their son went off to New Jersey to visit his friend, and life after they got the news that he was missing.
6:25 Speaker 03 But the real turning point had actually happened two years earlier, when David Curtis started attending a private boarding school and met a new friend.
6:39 Speaker 03 Tall, slim and bookish with large eyeglasses, David Curtis was known to be sensitive, a thinker, someone who would rather free a housefly than swatted dead. He photographed wildlife on the family's 750-acre farm near the town of Middleton in Nova Scotia. He read philosophical Russian literature and dark Gothic poetry. He was also an avid writer, filling notebooks and diaries with his own poems and short stories in a similar style to his favourite authors, nihilistic and dripping with existential teenage angst.
7:21 Speaker 03 David got straight As at school and had dreams of becoming an astrophysicist. He was also close to his two older sisters, who were both academics as well. But David Curtis was painfully shy and introverted, so after he finished Grade 10, his parents, Alison and Jim, decided to send him to a private boarding school in Windsor, Nova Scotia, about an hour drive away from their farm. Established in the 1700s, King's Edge Hill School is the oldest private school in all of North America, and the Curtis's hoped their son would develop better social skills there.
8:05 Speaker 03 At first, David seemed a little removed, maybe even a little snobby, as introverts sometimes appear, but he eventually started making some friends. The lanky teenager was the resident JRR token expert and even made the debate team that appeared on CBC's Reach for the Top, a trivia-based game show for high school students. This TV appearance gave David some minor celebrity around campus, and the fact that he also scored three top academic honours that year reassured his parents that they'd made the right decision to send him to King's Edge Hill.
8:49 Speaker 03 It was a love of computers and board games that eventually brought David Curtis and Scott Franz together. Scott had been an international student at King's Edge Hill School for a couple of years by the time David started. He spoke with an exaggerated New Jersey accent and seemed to be popular and well-liked. They both loved Backgammon and a strategy game called Diplomacy, and their marathon sessions soon evolved into all-night tournaments. Eventually, the pair became inseparable. Scott told David his stepfather back in the US was a wealthy entrepreneur who owned a string of hotels.
9:34 Speaker 03 He showed him a couple of pictures of his home on the Jersey Shore. It looked like an impressive mansion. Parked out front was a limo with a driver Scott said was named Jimmy. David Curtis and Scott Franz graduated from Grade 12 in June of 1982. The pair said their goodbyes and returned to their respective families, Scott to New Jersey and David back to his family farm in Nova Scotia. They continued to speak frequently on the phone over the next few weeks. Then Scott had an idea.
10:13 Speaker 03 He urged David to book a flight to the US around the 4th of July long weekend and stay with him at his family home in Lock Arbor, a village on the Jersey Shore. From the photos, it looked as though David would be very comfortable there, but the 18-year-old had some anxiety about the trip. He told his mother it was too far away and too complicated to get there. He was reluctant to go, but Alice thought the trip would be good for her son and would make a great graduation present. She convinced him to go for 10 days.
10:53 Speaker 03 The Curtis's in Nova Scotia knew nothing about Scott Franz's family in New Jersey. They'd never even met or spoken to Alfred or Rosemary Podgis's, but they weren't worried. They assumed the family were solid, upstanding citizens. After all, they clearly had the means to send their child to a private boarding school in Canada.
11:18 Speaker 03 It would turn out to be something Alice Curtis would regret for the rest of her life.
11:29 Speaker 03 David's trip to New Jersey got off to a very bad start. His plane was more than an hour late and there was no limo to pick him up. Just Scott and his stepfather, who was clearly very angry about it. Alfred Poggeus complained about the extra airport parking fees he'd racked up waiting for the flight to arrive. And worse, it caused him to miss an important appointment. The 58-year-old was an avid collector of coins and baseball cards, with a personal collection reportedly worth $20,000. And that day, he was supposed to meet up with a fellow baseball card trader,
12:14 Speaker 03 but that plan had been completely derailed because of David's late flight. And Alfred Poggeus was furious. He swore and yelled at his stepson. This was all Scott's fault for inviting his Canadian friend to stay in the first place. David's trip to New Jersey had already started off on a sour note, and he hadn't even arrived at Scott's family mansion yet. But when they pulled into the driveway, David suddenly realised that Scott had been lying to him.
12:55 Speaker 03 Scott Franz had always been a bit of a problem kid. Originally from Ohio, his father died when he was young, leaving his mother, Rosemary, a widow with six children. It wasn't long before she met and married Alfred Poggeus, a gruff, stocky divorcee with grown children of his own. Scott was only four years old at the time, and he never got along with his stepfather. None of Rosemary's kids did. And the Poggeuses were far from being wealthy. They were very much working class. Both had jobs at the local Lockarbor post office.
13:38 Speaker 03 In fact, Rosemary's adult daughter Barbara was their supervisor there.
13:44 Speaker 03 Alfred and Rosemary Podgis had been living in the same home for over fourteen years, and the local police knew it well. They'd been called there dozens of times. Sometimes it was after the neighbours complained about noise, the family's German shepherd barking too much. Other times, police were called to deal with domestic disputes, often involving Scott's older brother Mark Franz, who was said to be quite troubled. He regularly hung out with petty criminals and drifters at the New Jersey Boardwalk and reportedly stole money from his parents. As a teenager, Mark Franz got into a lot of trouble with
14:28 Speaker 03 the law and had been charged with grand larceny, selling drugs, breaking and entering, and possession of stolen property. So when the bodies of Alfred and Rosemary Podgis were found, Mark was one of the first suspects police started eyeing off. Scott Franz, the youngest of Rosemary's six children, had been troubled as well. In fact, that's how he ended up at a private boarding school in Canada. When he first started high school, Scott was a known runaway and a shoplifter. He stole the family car and drove it without a licence. At one point, he was sent away to live with his older sister
15:13 Speaker 03 Barbara for a while, but she too grew sick of the drama. He was sent back to live with his mother and stepfather in Lockarbor. It isn't clear how the Poggeses heard about King's Edge Hill School in Nova Scotia, or how they could afford to pay for it. Back then, in the early 1980s, it cost as much as eight thousand Canadian dollars a year to study there, the equivalent of about twenty five thousand dollars today. Although, it should be noted that international students today are actually paying more than seventy two thousand dollars a year to attend King's Edge Hill, or their parents are.
15:59 Speaker 03 Alfred and Rosemary Pogge spent a lot of money on Scott, money they didn't have, according to Alfred's older children from his first marriage. But according to Rosemary's children, she was the one who saved the money from her own employment to pay her son's school fees. Regardless, they both thought the expense was worth it and hoped sending Scott to school in Canada might bring some peace to their home. Scott Fran seemed to thrive at the regimented private school and soon made friends. Fellow students found him charming with his exaggerated New Jersey accent
16:41 Speaker 03 and his many stories of life back home in his family's mansion, complete with staff and a driver. Some students were under the impression that Scott's stepfather got his wealth from owning hotels, but others would report that Scott told them Alfred Pogge was in the Mafia or the CIA. Scott was also known to be a bit of a ladies' man. He was fun to be around, he listened to their problems and seemed to care. Some of the stories he told didn't seem to add up, but they liked him so much that they were willing to overlook it as a minor character flaw. Scott's girlfriend Heather, at the time,
17:24 Speaker 03 would later tell author David Hayes that, quote, "The only thing wrong was that he told a lot of stories that everybody suspected weren't true. It's hard to explain, but people knew that and accepted it. I accepted it because he was a nice guy and a nice companion. I mean, I wouldn't have continued to go out with him if I didn't think he was honest and sincere most of the time. He used to tell me he had problems with his father, that they didn't get along. He said his father had beaten him when he was younger. He had a bad past and I assumed he was trying to make something of himself." When David Curtis started at King's Edge Hill School at the start of grade 11,
18:09 Speaker 03 it was good timing for Scott Franz. The friendships he'd cultivated in his three years there had begun to sour on him. His once entertaining stories were becoming a bit annoying. The last straw for his girlfriend Heather was when she discovered he told lies about her and their relationship to others. She broke up with him. But that only pushed Scott more towards David Curtis, the squeaky clean newcomer who shared his interest in computers and board games. David seemed to be blissfully unaware about Scott's reputation for playing fast and loose with the truth.
18:52 Speaker 03 And as they spent more time together, he seemed to absorb the worst of Scott's personality. It was Scott who reportedly encouraged David to get drunk for the first time. And over time, teachers noticed that the once studious David had started to rebel against school rules and refused to participate in gym class. His grades suffered. One teacher said that he displayed a newfound contempt for authority. Fellow students noticed a change too. David went from being a shy, introverted nerd to an increasingly arrogant jerk.
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21:17 Speaker 03 At King's Edge Hill School, David Curtis and Scott Franz started causing trouble together. And at first, it seemed fairly harmless, like the incident where David's sleeping roommate felt water dripping on his face and woke up to find David hovering over him with Scott, chanting something. The pair insisted they were just conducting some kind of experiment. But David also admitted to his roommate that the school's recent screening of "The Exorcist" had captivated him. After that, Scott was banned from their room.
21:56 Speaker 03 Almost all of their fellow students pointed to Scott Franz's influence as the reason why David Curtis changed for the worse. The only one who didn't agree was Scott's ex-girlfriend, Heather, who thought David was the bad influence, that Scott had some problems, but he was never like that until he started hanging around David. Then, there was the time a teaching assistant stumbled upon two figures fleeing the school lab. It was dark and hard to make out who they were, but the assistant said one was lanky like David Curtis and the other, shorter, like Scott Franz.
22:39 Speaker 03 And the shorter one was wearing the same light-coloured painters' pants that Scott was known to wear. Nothing seemed to be missing from the lab, but the fact that Scott started showing up to parties with a jar of chloroform indicated otherwise. He called it Franz's mystical mindfuck and let his friends sniff and get high on it. Not long after that, there was another strange incident. The pair asked one of their younger teachers to take them to the Dairy Queen in town. While she waited in the car with David, Scott went in and ordered milkshakes for them all.
23:22 Speaker 03 The teacher thought hers tasted a little bit funny and she was sick the whole next day. Then, shortly before graduation, two fellow students at King's Edge Hill got really sick after drinking sodas, so sick they had to go to the hospital. They became convinced that when they stepped out of the room, Scott Franz and David Curtis had poisoned their drinks. The school called the RCMP to test the sodas and found they contained a nicotine-based pesticide like the one stored in the school lab.
24:02 Speaker 03 Circumstantial evidence pointed to Scott Franz and David Curtis as the culprits, but they denied the allegations and no formal complaints were ever filed.
24:17 Speaker 03 When David Curtis arrived at the Pogess house after his late flight from Nova Scotia, he saw that it was fairly big, but it was most definitely not a luxurious mansion. The Lock Harbour, New Jersey house was run down, a blight on the neighbourhood, according to the Toronto Star. Inside was no different. It was messy, unkempt, and there were a lot of holes in the walls. Rosemary Pogess did her best to make her son's Canadian friend feel welcome, but David felt a strange tension in the home.
24:58 Speaker 03 He would say it was in stark contrast to the peace and tranquility of his own home life. Scott warned him at the start that his stepfather was in one of his so-called "hypermoods". He explained that when Alfred Pogess got like that, he was dangerous. He'd get red-faced and stomp around the house, yelling at whoever got in his way. He was scary and unpredictable. And over the course of David's visit, Alfred's anger and tantrums would only get worse. After a couple of days, Scott confessed the full, ugly truth about his family.
25:41 Speaker 03 He told David his stepfather was a physically violent man who regularly beat him and his mother, and before that, his other siblings as well. David believed what Scott was telling him. He'd seen enough with his own eyes. Alfred had been on a continuous rampage since he'd arrived, throwing tantrums, yelling and stomping around the house. Even Scott's older sister Barbara didn't much like their stepfather. She would say that the reason she left home long ago was because of Alfred's violence. The last straw for her was when he overturned the kitchen table in a rage.
26:25 Speaker 03 Barbara still supervised Alfred and Rosemary at the local post office where they worked, but at least she didn't have to live with him. The police had reportedly been called to the Lock Harbour property more than 140 times to respond to domestic disputes. Some reports put it closer to 200 times. And after the bodies of Alfred and Rosemary Podgis were found, police immediately suspected Scott's troubled older brother, Mark Franz, because he'd been involved in many of those disputes. But they soon learned Mark had an airtight alibi.
27:06 Speaker 03 He was already in prison in Texas, serving time for another offence. Besides, Mark Franz was not the common denominator in those domestic disputes. Alfred Podgis was, a man described as large-boned and imposing, at more than six feet tall. Sometimes the incidents involved Alfred and his wife Rosemary, sometimes Alfred and Scott or one of his other stepchildren, but always Alfred. In later interviews with author David Hayes, Mark Franz described his stepfather as having
27:46 Speaker 03 a forceful personality, someone who was very quick to anger and known for his fury. Quote, "He used to get mad real quick and real seriously. They'd be more than just yelling, he'd smack you around. He used to hit me like I was his size, like I was a full-grown man. He used to hit me with a force that would knock my brain silly. On numerous occasions, he used to hit me so hard he'd knock me out. Every day we'd get into it. Twice, he tied me up in a chair and beat me. One time I'd been out late, I came home and he chased me and the girl I was with out the back door with a gun and he fired at me.
28:31 Speaker 03 The man was crazy." As it turned out, coins and baseball cards weren't the only things Alfred Poggeus collected. He also had a large cache of firearms stashed around the house, many of them collector's items, and he didn't hesitate to pick one up during these domestic disputes. That's why there were so many holes in the walls. Many of them, upstairs, were bullet holes from Alfred Poggeus firing at the wall in a rage. After Scott Franz laid out the truth about his family, David Curtis realised his trip
29:14 Speaker 03 to New Jersey was not going to get any better. He would later describe the whole situation as crazy. The things happening in the house and the way the family lived, it was madness. And yet, he stayed, because he felt pity for Scott, who didn't seem to have any other friends in the neighbourhood. David didn't want to abandon his friend. He felt that he could stick this out for the next few days until his return flight home, at least for Scott's sake. David would say he became entirely focused on helping his friend any way he could.
29:56 Speaker 03 The teenagers decided it was best for everyone if they tried to avoid Alfred Poggeus altogether. They would leave the house early in the morning, spending all day on the New Jersey boardwalk, eating at fast food restaurants and wandering shopping malls. On nights when they arrived home and Alfred was still awake, they would sleep outside in the family's camper to avoid him. Sometimes, he even locked them out of the house preemptively. Scott's mother Rosemary helped when she could. Sometimes, she took the teenagers out for a burger, or sent them on errands, anything
30:37 Speaker 03 to keep them from being at home, where they could potentially set Alfred off. About a week into David's visit, he and Scott saw Alfred stash four rifles in the back of his post office mail truck as they were mowing the lawns. They weren't sure why he was putting them there, but the danger felt very real and close.
31:04 Speaker 03 Then it started raining heavily and Alfred was still at home, so the teens headed down to the boardwalk again, soggy and miserable. When they got back to the house that evening, the doors were locked and it was still raining, so they took shelter under the porch. Inside, they could hear Alfred screaming at Rosemary that he never should have married her and that her children were nothing but trouble, especially Scott. They heard him yelling, quote, "I'll kill that kid if I ever get my hands on him." David would later say he believed Alfred would.
31:46 Speaker 03 He'd seen many of his guns stashed around the house. He and Scott remained huddled under the porch, soaking wet, as the argument escalated. They had to listen to Rosemary's cries as Alfred physically assaulted her.
32:08 Speaker 03 That was when the pair hatched an escape plan. They decided they were going to take the family van and high-tail it to Nova Scotia the next day. They would drive northeast through New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine, crossing the border over to New Brunswick and then Nova Scotia. They would bring the family dog, a female German Shepherd named Sam, as well. The road trip would take about fifteen hours if they did it all in one stint. And once they got to the Curtis Family Farm, the plan was for Scott to stay there for the rest of the summer at least.
32:51 Speaker 03 He and David only had to spend one more night in New Jersey, sleeping in the camper behind the garage.
33:03 Speaker 03 The next morning was Sunday, July the 4th, time to escape. Early that morning, Scott snuck upstairs to grab David's bag and some other items, and pack a bag for himself. According to the statement he would later give investigators, he heard a noise coming from his parents' bedroom and assumed it was his mother waking up. He wanted to say goodbye to her. As he approached their bedroom, Scott peeked through the opening in the doorjamb. There was a loud crack, it was a gunshot. Scott believed his stepfather was making good on his threats to kill him from the night before.
33:47 Speaker 03 Beyond terrified, the teenager grabbed his friend's bag and bolted down the stairs and outside. He told David that Alfred had shot at him from the bedroom and missed. He thought the bullet hit the doorjamb, but next time he might not be so lucky. The pair had wanted to leave in the van straight away, but Scott didn't have a chance to grab all their things. So they decided to stash David's bag in the bushes beside the house and head to the boardwalk to regroup and figure out what to do next. They killed more hours there, at one point watching some fireworks on the beach.
34:30 Speaker 03 Later that evening, they returned to the house and Scott's mother Rosemary met them out on the porch. According to the statement Scott later gave to investigators, he told his mother he'd had enough. Alfred had tried to kill him that morning, and he believed he would again if given the chance. He told her that he and David were leaving and she should too. Rosemary tried to assure her son that his stepfather was only trying to scare him, that Alfred was trying to teach him a lesson and actually missed him on purpose. She convinced them to sleep one more night downstairs on the fold-out couch,
35:14 Speaker 03 and the next morning, they would all sort things out over breakfast. The teens reluctantly agreed to stay one more night, but this time, Scott wanted some protection. So after Rosemary went to bed, he and David went outside and broke into Alfred's post office mail truck, taking two of the four rifles they'd seen him stash there when they were mowing the lawn. They were both 30-caliber rifles, and Scott would tell investigators that one of them was loaded and the other, empty. He unloaded some of the ammunition from one rifle to put in the other, so they were both now loaded.
35:58 Speaker 03 "David clearly had no idea how to use a rifle," he said.
36:05 Speaker 03 That night, the teens tried to sleep on the fold-out couch in the downstairs living room, the two loaded 30-caliber rifles nestled between them. One more night. Surely, things could not get any worse.
36:24 Speaker 03 Next morning was Monday, and Rosemary woke up early. She came down to the living room where Scott and David had been sleeping and urged Scott to smooth things over with Alfred. Then, she headed to the kitchen to make them breakfast. Scott had no plans to make up with his stepfather. He wanted to leave as soon as possible, but he still needed to grab his things, and he also wanted to take a quick shower. He grabbed one of the two loaded rifles before he headed upstairs, telling David that he was prepared to shoot back if his stepfather tried to shoot him again. He then told him,
37:08 Speaker 03 "If you have to go out of the house shooting, go ahead." He snuck upstairs and leaned the loaded rifle against the towel rack in the bathroom near his bedroom. But then, he realised his hair conditioner was in the other bathroom down the hall, closer to his mother and stepfather's bedroom. As Scott crept over to that bathroom, he caught a glimpse of Alfred in the bed, holding a rifle, and he looked like he was about to raise it. Panicked, Scott said he ran back to the first bathroom to grab his own loaded rifle, resting against the towel rack.
37:51 Speaker 03 When he returned to the bedroom with it, he saw his stepfather, armed and about to get out of the bed. Alfred Poggeus was clutching a 22-calibre rifle, typically used for target or recreational shooting, and hunting small game like squirrels and rabbits. When he saw that his stepson had one of the 30-calibre rifles he'd locked in the mail truck, a rifle typically used for hunting large game like deer or moose, he started swearing. Scott warned him, "Don't even try it, because that will only give me a limp, but this will finish you."
38:34 Speaker 03 According to Scott, his stepfather then started ranting and accusing him of stealing, and then, "He fired a shot in my direction. I freaked out and something fell on the mirror, and as he looked, I ran toward the door and fired. I went into the hallway, and when I looked back, I saw blood spattered on the wall." Scott said the sight of the blood and gore made him wretch. He ran down the hall and threw up in a sink. But then, as he was standing there, he heard another gunshot, and this time, it came from downstairs.
39:25 Speaker 03 That morning, David Curtis had been lying on the fold-out couch in the living room with a loaded 30-caliber rifle beside him for protection. Scott had just gone upstairs to have a shower and get the rest of his things. Then, they would take the van and get the hell out of there. But suddenly, he heard several gunshots upstairs. David was terrified and he panicked. He had to get out of that house. He grabbed the loaded rifle and made a run for the back door, the rifle pointing downwards as he ran. But the big, rambling house had an odd layout.
40:07 Speaker 03 To get to the back door, you had to go through the dining room, through another back room, then double back through the kitchen. David would later tell his lawyer that as he rounded the corner of the back room, rifle in hand, he ran smack into an equally terrified Rosemary Pogge, who was fleeing from the kitchen where she'd been making French toast and bacon. In his fright, he pulled the rifle back suddenly, his hand tensed on the trigger. The next sound he heard was his gun going off. Rosemary Pogge screamed as her body slumped to the floor.
40:49 Speaker 03 Her son, Scott Franz, heard the crack from upstairs and was now hurtling down. There, he found his friend, David, standing over his mother's dead body. Scott yelled, "What happened?" David replied, "I shot your mother. What are we going to do?"
41:13 Speaker 03 At first, Scott said he had no idea what they should do. But according to the statement he would later give police, he soon made a decision. He told David, "We've got to get rid of the bodies." Scott would also tell police what came next.
41:33 Speaker 03 A little while later, David and I brought my dark blue trunk upstairs, lifted the mattress and got my stepfather in the trunk. David wiped the walls in my stepfather's room. We went downstairs and I told David to take my mother's rings off. He washed them off and I put them on the buffet in the dining room, so one of the family could have them. Then David put my mother in a sleeping bag.
42:04 Speaker 03 They loaded the bodies of Alfred and Rosemary Podgis into the van, took the dog Sam and sped off.
42:15 Speaker 03 Scott, Franz and David Curtis were now on the run, the latest in a series of bad decisions after they shot Alfred and Rosemary Podgis. They drove west, across state lines and into the heart of Pennsylvania.
42:34 Speaker 03 After about five hours on the road, they stopped at a state park ravine, pushed the bodies out of the back of the van and drove off. Although their original plan was to drive up to Nova Scotia, they decided to drive back to Lock Arbor. Both Scott and David would later say the new plan was to tell Scott's sister Barbara everything. She knew how violent Alfred was. She'd understand why her brother and his friend did what they did. And it was important to David that he personally apologized to Barbara for accidentally killing her mother. That was their thinking anyway.
43:19 Speaker 03 Once they arrived back in New Jersey, they stopped the van behind a hotel about 15 minutes' drive from the Podgus' home in Lock Harbor. They dumped the two .30 caliber rifles, the murder weapons, in a storm drain and threw the cartridges out of the window as they continued driving.
43:40 Speaker 03 Before they went to speak with Barbara, they decided to head back to the Podgus' house to do some more cleaning. But as they approached, they spotted a police cruiser in the driveway. They sped off again.
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45:24 Speaker 03 For all of the unpredictable chaos at the Poggers' home, there was one thing you could count on. Alfred and Rosemary never missed work at the local post office in Lock Harbour. And of course, Rosemary's daughter Barbara was their supervisor. So that morning of Monday, July 5th, when her mother and stepfather were no shows at work, she didn't hesitate to call the police. Officers obviously knew the Poggers' home well, and knew that Alfred had guns. They also knew that only the youngest son, Scott, still lived at home, that is, when he wasn't away at school. Barbara had also informed the police
46:10 Speaker 03 that her brother had a school friend visiting from Canada, although she couldn't remember his name. Two officers arrived at the Lock Harbour home before 9am. They had to jimmy-open a window to get inside, where they conducted what they called a "surface check". Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. It was the usual mess, stuff everywhere, the furniture askew and no beds made. They could smell bacon in the house and found a bowl of batter in the kitchen, along with a big pile of dirty dishes. The officers called Barbara back at the post office and told her they'd entered the home and all appeared normal.
46:54 Speaker 03 Normal for this family, anyway. But later that day, when Rosemary and Alfred still hadn't arrived to work, Barbara called the police again. "This was definitely not normal", she said. She pressed them to do a more thorough check. The officers returned to the residence, and this time they looked inside the closets and under furniture. They went to the basement where they found piles of dog faeces and even more clutter. Then they headed upstairs and entered the primary bedroom. One of the officers decided to turn over the mattress and made a grisly discovery.
47:38 Speaker 03 A shocking amount of blood had seeped through the mattress and the box spring, and was pooling on the floor below the bed. That's where they also found a loaded 22 caliber rifle. Barbara's gut instinct had been right. Something very bad had clearly happened in this house. And there was more evidence of foul play. Someone had tried to clean blood off the walls behind the bed, and police found blood-soaked pillows and blankets stuffed in the cellar behind the furnace. But there was no one in the house, alive or dead. A nationwide alert was put out.
48:23 Speaker 03 Two adults in their mid-50s, two 18-year-olds, and a German shepherd were missing from Lock Harbor, New Jersey. Rosemary Pogge's wallet was also missing from the house, so an alert was placed on her credit cards in case anyone tried to use them.
48:45 Speaker 03 When police searched around the house, they found a backpack outside in the grass, filled with clothes, books, and other personal items. There was also a diary, filled with pages and pages of written entries. One of them read, in part, quote:
49:05 Speaker 03 "I have no mouth and I must scream. I really wish I had been there. I could have saved her. Too late, everybody got to go. Swirling into madness, whirling, twisting, to the sight of demons robed in black. Revenge is very necessary."
49:26 Speaker 03 When Scott Franz and David Curtis saw the police at the Podgis home, they realised they couldn't go to Barbara and tell her everything like they planned. Scott would later tell investigators that he convinced David they should now drive all the way to Texas, where Scott's other sister Rosie lived, and tell her what happened. She would know what to do. The drive from New Jersey southwest to Texas would have been about 26 hours in total, but they made several detours. First, to Atlantic City, then Washington DC, where they went on a tour of the capital.
50:08 Speaker 03 In Knoxville, Tennessee, they attended the 1982 World's Fair and even bought souvenirs.
50:18 Speaker 03 After a total of five days on the run, David Curtis and Scott Franz finally reached the outskirts of Dallas, Texas, and checked into a hotel with Sam the German Shepherd. They decided they'd reach out to Scott's sister Rosie in the morning. For now, they were tired and very hungry, so they left Sam in the hotel room and ducked out for a quick bite to eat. When they returned, Scott had barely stuck the key in the door when they suddenly found themselves surrounded by police. They had no idea that when they used Rosemary's credit card to pay for the hotel room, the bank alerted the police with their whereabouts.
51:04 Speaker 03 The teenagers did not put up a fight, though the police were worried that the dog was dangerous, according to author David Hayes in his book Blood Knot. But those fears were quickly alleviated as Sam eagerly wagged her tail while police arrested and handcuffed the young men. Fortunately, Scott's sister Rosie would take Sam in.
51:33 Speaker 03 The whole time this drama was unfolding in the United States, Alice and Jim Curtis remained glued by their phone in Nova Scotia. After that first visit from the RCMP, the news just got darker and darker every time the phone rang. First, their son and his hosts were missing. Then they got a call that the bodies of Alfred and Rosemary Poggeus had been found in a state park in Pennsylvania. But even then, it didn't cross Alice's mind that her son had anything to do with what had happened to them. Surely, a gang must have kidnapped all four of them. She only hoped that David and his friend had escaped unharmed.
52:20 Speaker 03 Then, the phone rang again. It was Scott's sister Barbara letting them know the teens had been found in Texas. But Alice's relief was instantly replaced by shock when Barbara said they'd both been arrested and were now facing murder charges.
52:40 Speaker 03 While Alice took in the news, her husband Jim leapt into action and called the Canadian consulate in Dallas, Texas. When he was informed that David was going to be sent back to New Jersey to be arraigned, he contacted the consulate in New York, which had jurisdiction. Then, Jim sent a telegram to his son David in Dallas County Jail. It read, quote,
53:08 Speaker 03 "Heard where you are from Scott's sister Barbara. Have contacted Canadian consul in Dallas, a Mrs. Black. Contact us through her if you need anything. We'll see you in New Jersey. Am arranging legal counsel. James Curtis." It was a strange and heart-wrenching few days for the Curtis family. The whole time, they held on to the idea that there was some kind of sane explanation for all this madness. Now, they had to consider a more grim reality.
53:44 Speaker 03 When they finally got to speak to David on the phone, he seemed to be in denial too. He reassured his parents that the whole situation was ridiculous, that it would be easily resolved, and that they'd be able to bring him home soon.
54:01 Speaker 03 For a moment, Alice allowed herself to believe it too.
54:12 Speaker 03 After the pair were arrested in Texas, Scott Franz gave a statement to investigators taking full responsibility for the events leading up to the killings. He told the police that he shot his stepfather Alfred Poggeus in self-defense after a week of violent behaviour and threats. And unfortunately, his mother Rosemary was shot accidentally by David Curtis, who he said was scared. Scott acknowledged that he was the one who made sure that both of the 30-calibre rifles were loaded because his Canadian friend didn't know how. He also told police that it was his idea to load the bodies into the van and leave
54:57 Speaker 03 New Jersey, and told them where they could find the storm drain where he and David dumped the murder weapons on the way back. As for David Curtis, he froze and would not say a word until he had a lawyer.
55:15 Speaker 03 From the get-go, the police in New Jersey were convinced that Scott Franz was guilty of first-degree murder, and his Canadian friend might well be too. It wasn't just the evidence from the crime scene that convinced them the killings were planned and executed in cold blood. It was what happened afterwards. Even by Scott's own version of events, which is all that the police had, the decisions he made after the killings was strange, and some of the details didn't add up. If it was true that Scott killed his stepfather in self-defense after years of abuse, and
55:55 Speaker 03 that David had shot his friend's mother Rosemary accidentally, why would they scrub the walls and hide the evidence as though they were guilty of intentional murder? And why would they travel one state over to Pennsylvania to dump the bodies in a state park ravine and the murder weapons in a storm drain?
56:16 Speaker 03 Other details bothered the police as well. According to Scott's statement, they broke into Alfred's post office mail truck the night before the killings and took two 30 caliber rifles from it for self-protection. Scott said he unloaded some ammunition from one and loaded it into the other to make sure both rifles were loaded. But inside the house, the police had found a receipt from Woolco, a discount department store, for the purchase of a box of 30 caliber ammunition four days before Alfred and Rosemary Podgis were shot. And it was Scott Franz who made that purchase, according to the store manager.
57:02 Speaker 03 Scott told the police it was one of the errands his mother had sent him on that week. Rosemary had asked him to purchase that ammunition for his stepfather, he said. But to investigators, it seemed extremely unlikely that a mother would ask her teenage son to buy ammunition for her abusive, gun-collecting husband when it was clear he was in a highly volatile mood. And unfortunately, Rosemary Podgis wasn't alive to give her side of the story. And there was more. According to Scott's statement to police, he took those two rifles from the mail truck
57:43 Speaker 03 after Alfred tried to kill him that morning, firing at him from the bedroom. It hit the doorjamb instead, but Scott said he believed his stepfather would try to kill him again if given the chance. Investigators had located a bullet lodged in that doorjamb, exactly as Scott had described. So they also expected it would match to the 22 caliber rifle found near Alfred's bed. But it didn't. It was a 30 caliber bullet, and it came from the same rifle that Scott used to kill his stepfather the next morning, Monday. If this were a movie, it would be a major logistical plot hole.
58:27 Speaker 03 The police wondered, did Scott Franz shoot at the doorjamb himself to make it look like his stepdad shot at him? And could he have been trying to justify a claim of self-defense after the fact?
58:43 Speaker 03 That begged another question. The next Monday morning, just minutes before all hell broke loose, why did Scott need to shower and wash his hair so badly that he was willing to risk going near his stepfather's bedroom, where he claimed he'd been shot at the day before, just to grab a bottle of hair conditioner? The 18-year-old stuck to his story, for now. But as the investigation continued and the autopsy report came in, stories would change, evidence would change, and David Curtis would once again find himself in the middle of it all.
59:31 Speaker 03 Thanks for listening. Part Two will be available to everyone in a week. And if you're subscribed to one of our premium feeds, it's available right now without the ads. As a reminder, some names have been changed. And if you happen to know or know of anyone involved with this story, please respect their privacy. This series was pieced together from extensive news archives from both Canada and the US, a court document, and the book titled Blood Not by journalist David Hayes, originally published in Canada under the title No Easy Answers. For the full list of resources and anything you want to know about the podcast,
1:00:13 Speaker 03 visit canadiantruecrime.ca. As always, we'll be posting some of the clippings and photos mentioned in this series on the Canadian True Crime Facebook and Instagram pages. Canadian True Crime donates monthly to those facing injustice. This month, we have donated to the Canadian Mental Health Association, who advocates and provides resources for the one in five people in Canada who have a mental illness. For more info, visit cmha.ca.
1:00:46 Speaker 03 Lisa Gabriel researched and wrote this episode. Additional research and writing was by me. Audio editing was by Crosby Audio and Eric Crosby voiced the disclaimer. Our senior producer is Lindsay Eldridge and Carol Weinberg is our script consultant. Narration and sound design was by me and the theme song was composed by We Talk of Dreams. I'll be back soon with another Canadian true crime episode. See you then.
1:01:34 Speaker 03 Hi, it's me again. Just before we go, I wanted to quickly give a pretty cryptic shout out to Deanna from Newfoundland. She'll know why. Deanna, I know you're in good hands with your daughters, Megan and Laura. On behalf of Canadian True Crime, thank you so much for listening and please know we're thinking of you.
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