What Happened to the Harrisons? | 1. Sudden Death

In April 2009, Bridget Harrison comes home to find her husband of 40 years dead behind a locked bathroom door. Bill had been alone in the house. Police say he died naturally. But for his family, something's not adding up. Want the full story? Binge every episode of What Happened to the Harrisons? ad-free now by subscribing to The Binge+. You’ll unlock over 60 true crime series instantly, get early access to drops on the first of every month, and hear exclusive bonus episodes. Search for the channel on Apple Podcasts or head to GetTheBinge.com. For behind-the-scenes details, join our free newsletter at Patreon.com/TheBinge. What Happened to the Harrisons? is a production of Sony Music Entertainment. Follow @sonypodcasts and discover more at sonymusic.com/podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices at podcastchoices.com/adchoices. The Binge — feed your true crime obsession. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Hey, everyone. This is Jonathan Van Ness from Getting Better. You know what you believe. Maybe your faith is at the center of your life. Maybe you're still figuring it out. Maybe religion just isn't your thing. Those choices are personal, and in America, they should stay personal. That's why Americans United for Separation of Church and State is fighting for something that affects all of us. The freedom to live as yourself and believe as you choose, so long as you don't harm others. Because religious freedom isn't just about protecting your right to practice or not. And it surely isn't about having one forced, government-sanctioned religion. It's about protecting your right to say, "This is what I believe," while your neighbor

• 0:44Speaker 00

  says, "I believe something completely different." And honestly, that's the whole point. If that sounds like the kind of America you want, learn more at au.org/gettingbetter. Because your beliefs are yours, and theirs are theirs.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Listen to every episode of What Happened to the Harrisons ad-free right now when you subscribe to The Binge. You'll hear the entire series before anyone else. Get exclusive bonus episodes and unlock more than 60 other true crime podcasts. Just head to The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts and tap Subscribe, or visit getthebinge.com to listen wherever you are.

• 1:38Speaker 02

  Are you in the room for ten minutes, please? My husband, I just came home from work and I found him collapsed on the bathroom floor. I say, what city do you live in, ma'am, sir? I beg your pardon? What city? Mississauga. What's the address? 3635 Pitch Pine Crescent.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  It's after dark on April 16, 2009, and Bridgette Harrison has just arrived home from a meeting. Bridgette is 62, a slight woman with green eyes and a graying pixie cut. She works a lot in education, and her husband, Bill, usually has dinner ready when she gets home.

• 2:18Speaker 02

  Okay, is your husband awake? No, he's not. Is he able to speak for you, ma'am? No, he's not.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  Bridgette and Bill have been together since they were teens. People say they operate in tandem, like two parts of the same person. Bridgette is passionate and intense. Bill is calm. He keeps her grounded.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  Is he breathing normally? I don't know. I just opened the door and found him here.

• 2:46Speaker 01

  That night, she expects to find Bill waiting for her.

• 2:51Speaker 03

  She came home and the door was... There were no lights on in the house or outside.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Right away, Bridgette knows. Something is wrong. She gets out of her car. She walks across the stone pathway to the front door of the house where they've lived for 35 years. It's a beautiful place, an elegant mid-century home with a dramatic roofline that slopes downward from a high peak.

• 3:23Speaker 01

  Bridgette opens the front door and steps inside. The foyer is dim. The only sound is the low hum of the television in the living room. On the coffee table, she sees a half-eaten takeout meal from the Portuguese restaurant around the corner.

• 3:42Speaker 03

  She started calling his name, and she went and looked everywhere.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  Bill doesn't answer.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  Back on the main floor, something catches her eye. The door to the small bathroom just off the foyer is closed. She tries the knob. It won't open.

• 4:06Speaker 03

  She had to go and get something to unlock the door.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  She works a piece of wire into the lock. It clicks, and the door opens.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Inside, Bill is lying motionless on the floor.

• 4:25Speaker 03

  I realized it was too late. It was stiff. And pushed into the corner next to the toilet.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  On the 911 call, you can hear Bridgette struggling to move him. He's a tall, athletic man, and it's a small room. His body feels rigid.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  He's not breathing. Okay. I can tell. He's not breathing? He's not breathing. Okay. Oh, my God.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Police and paramedics arrive, and they confirm what Bridgette already knows. Her husband of 40 years is gone. Bill's sister, Elizabeth Galant, was at home that night when Bridgette called.

• 5:15Speaker 03

  She said, "Gone."

• 5:18Speaker 03

  "Are you sitting down?" And I said, "No." And she said, "Well, maybe you should." And I said, "Why?" You know? And she said, "Well, Bill's dead." Like, I didn't accept it right away. I just thought, "Oh, something's wrong."

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Liz is a retired labor and delivery nurse, so she's good in a crisis. She calmly got in her car and drove the familiar 10-minute route to Pitch Pine. Her brother's place was a second home to Liz and her daughter, and now it was wrapped in police tape.

• 5:56Speaker 03

  I saw the police cars, the ambulance. Everything was there.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  The police let Liz into the house, and Bridgette took her to see Bill.

• 6:05Speaker 03

  He was on the far side of the toilet. The wall's here, the toilet's here. He was right between it.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  Almost right away, police and the coroner call this a natural death. Likely a heart issue. Bill was 64. Police found no signs of forced entry or a struggle. He was found home alone with no obvious traumatic injury, like a gunshot or a stab wound. Police see this kind of thing all the time, and often, it is a natural death. But in this case, certain things didn't add up. Why would a man home alone lock the bathroom door? Why were all the lights out?

• 6:50Speaker 01

  And how does a fit and active guy like Bill, a man who looked like he had decades left, suddenly drop dead?

• 7:00Speaker 01

  As Liz watched the paramedics wheel her brother's body out on a stretcher, she couldn't shake the feeling that the police were missing something.

• 7:12Speaker 03

  They brought him out into the living room area where we were standing, and I remember saying to him, "Bill, we'll find out what happened here. We don't know, but I'll find out. I'll promise you, I'll find out."

• 7:28Speaker 01

  Liz wasn't the only one who would come to question the conclusion that this was a heart issue.

• 7:35Speaker 04

  That cause of death that was given was nonsense.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  This incident, Bill's tragic death, was only the beginning of something much darker.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  I started covering this story years later as a journalist for The Toronto Star, but not because of Bill. I came to Pitch Pine Crescent after police were called to investigate another sudden death at the Harrison residence. And this death was the third in less than five years. Three sudden deaths in one house.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  Was this an unfortunate run of bad luck, or something more sinister?

• 8:22Speaker 05

  The worst investigative mess I've ever encountered.

• 8:25Speaker 06

  The long simmering, what took you so fucking long to get here?

• 8:29Speaker 07

  Why do I have this gut feeling that something is not right?

• 8:33Speaker 05

  I understand we've got a haunted house in this region. Some evil thing happened here. You're in a world of shit. This wasn't ghosts and goblins, okay? These were murders.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  As I dug into the case, it became clear that this was more than a coincidence. It wasn't just the three deaths. There had been a car crash, a mysterious house fire, a string of reported home invasions, and a missing persons investigation, all tied to the same people.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  I would come to see that this story wasn't just a family tragedy. It was something much bigger and more troubling. What happened on Pitch Pine Crescent was an unbelievable failure. The family, all along, suspected something was terribly wrong. But no one figured it out until it was too late.

• 9:34Speaker 01

  From Sony Music Entertainment, this is What Happened to the Harrisons. I'm Amy Dempsey-Raven. Episode 1, Sudden Death.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  Before the tragedies on Pitch Pine Crescent, Bridgette and Bill Harrison had, from the outside, an enviable life. A marriage people admired, a big circle of friends, a home where people gathered.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  At the center of it all was Bridgette. She stood out. Her big personality, her bold fashion choices, her sharp intelligence. She was a high school teacher and principal who was kind of a legend, someone whose students remembered long after they left her classroom.

• 10:25Speaker 06

  She was bright, she was talented, and she was the firstborn daughter. And if you're a firstborn daughter, you know that you carry the hopes and dreams of the family. And so the expectation for the bar is always way up here. And you do everything not to disappoint.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  That's Doug Blackwell, Bridgette's brother. The two of them grew up together in a blue collar neighborhood in London, Ontario, a university town. Bridgette was a local star, a gifted child actress and singer who performed in stage and television productions. At 16, she landed a summer apprenticeship at the Stratford Festival, a renowned theater company in southern Ontario, famous for its Shakespearean productions.

• 11:18Speaker 06

  That's where she met Bill.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  Bill Harrison was a catch. Tall, athletic, and incredibly handsome, with kind eyes and a great laugh. His older sister Liz adored him.

• 11:32Speaker 03

  He was a calm, cool sort of person. He was quite a gentleman and kind and patient.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  Bill and Liz grew up in Stratford, and they were one of the few black families in town. At the festival, Bill worked in the costume department. Bridgette worked backstage, calling actors to their cues.

• 11:55Speaker 06

  The two of them hit it off. They're really happy with each other. And like, they were a very impressive looking couple. I mean, Bill's what, 6'2"? Cool, very, very cool. And Bridgette's blonde and beautiful. See, that couple walked down the street and you go, "Holy crow."

• 12:23Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Hey, everyone, this is Jonathan Van Ness from Getting Better. You know what you believe. Maybe your faith is at the center of your life. Maybe you're still figuring it out. Maybe religion just isn't your thing. Those choices are personal, and in America, they should stay personal. That's why Americans United for Separation of Church and State is fighting for something that affects all of us: the freedom to live as yourself and believe as you choose, so long as you don't harm others. Because religious freedom isn't just about protecting your right to practice or not. And it surely isn't about having one forced, government-sanctioned religion. It's about protecting your right to say, "This is what I believe," while your neighbor says,

• 13:08Speaker 00

  "I believe something completely different." And honestly, that's the whole point. If that sounds like the kind of America you want, learn more at au.org/gettingbetter. Because your beliefs are yours, and theirs are theirs.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  Whenever fall comes back around, it always feels like a fresh start. This year, I've been layering in some styles from the new Lululemon fall drop, because the weather is shifting and I find I have to be ready for the entire day and not just one part of it. Lululemon's fall line has some really versatile transitional pieces, so I can just wake up, throw on a matching set, add a jacket or a fleece, and head out, knowing that I'll feel comfortable enough to go wherever the day takes me. Check out the new fall arrivals in store and online now at lululemon.com.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  But they didn't have an easy start as an interracial couple in small-town Ontario.

• 14:02Speaker 06

  I remember Bill's mom and dad trying to cool the situation, because they knew better than we knew how tough it was going to be for these two.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  Through it all, Bridgette and Bill remained committed. They married in 1969 and eventually settled in Mississauga. Back then, it was still a suburb of Toronto. Bridgette taught high school drama and English. Bill worked in sales and other office jobs. Together, they formed a circle of close friends who, over time, became family. Here's one of them, Pam Main.

• 14:38Speaker 07

  Bill was quieter and more reserved, but that was a great balance for Bridgette, because she'd be hopping in the air on stuff and he had the ability to just pull her down to the ground.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  And then, in 1975, they moved into the house on Pitch Pine Crescent, the house where, years later, Bridgette would find her husband dead and the life they knew would collapse. But before all that, the house was a magical place. It had cathedral ceilings and tall front windows that filled the main floor with light. And it became a second home for their family and friends, a place where people came together for birthday dinners, game nights, and cousin sleepovers.

• 15:31Speaker 03

  It's been like a small hotel through the years.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  Liz lived nearby and spent a lot of time on Pitch Pine as she raised her daughter, mostly on her own. Bridgette and Bill helped Liz through parenthood, and she did the same when they started a family. Bridgette and Bill couldn't have children on their own, so they decided to adopt.

• 15:52Speaker 03

  One day, she just called and said, "I'm getting a child tomorrow and I have nothing. Like, I don't know what I'm gonna do."

• 15:59Speaker 01

  He was pudgy and adorable, with dark hair and light brown skin. They named him Caleb.

• 16:07Speaker 06

  I remember Bill telling me, you know, that they were gonna adopt this little guy. Well, they adopted him out of a foster home. And he had diaper rash so badly that he was scarred.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  Child protection workers described Caleb as dull and unresponsive. But Doug watched him grow into a completely different kid, which wasn't always easy.

• 16:35Speaker 06

  Hyperactive and, you know, funny and yippy and on the go all the time.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  Caleb never stopped moving. If you have a kid like this, you know both the joy and the exhaustion.

• 16:50Speaker 06

  He was a challenge. He really was.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  At school, Caleb struggled with learning. He had Tourette's Syndrome and was bullied for it. His tics disrupted the class and got him in trouble. Liz looks a little weary when she thinks back on her nephew's childhood antics, but they had a special bond.

• 17:12Speaker 03

  Caleb was a little rascal. He'd get you going. He was rather hard to discipline. They would come to agreements on what approach they were gonna take with him.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  Bridgette loved her son, but they had a challenging relationship. She was a force in public education, known for turning around tough schools. Caleb was smart, but resistant to structure. He hated school. You can imagine how difficult that dynamic would be, a kid who struggled academically with a superstar teacher for a mom.

• 17:47Speaker 06

  Caleb could push Bridgette's buttons, no doubt about it. And so, Bill took more and more of the discipline, the raising part, the consequences, rather than Bridgette.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  When Caleb graduated from high school, his parents were equal parts proud and relieved.

• 18:12Speaker 06

  Once he got into the workforce, his weaknesses turned to strengths.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  Caleb started working in warehouses and seemed to thrive. The methodical work suited his personality. And he became kind of a ladies' man. He was quick-witted and had a knack for flirty banter.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  When he was 27, Caleb met someone while working for a collector Barbie retailer called My Favorite Doll. This younger woman, Melissa, seemed like his perfect match. She was cute and blonde and wanted to start a family. Bridgette and Bill were hopeful.

• 18:57Speaker 07

  They were happy to have him seeming like he was gonna settle down.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  Caleb and Melissa had a son. They got married, and then they had a daughter. They bought a house in Georgetown, not far from Mississauga. Caleb loved being a father.

• 19:16Speaker 06

  They were the light of his life, and Bridgette and Bill's too.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  Bridgette's brother Doug remembers Bill holding his grandson and just beaming.

• 19:27Speaker 06

  The smile on Bill's face, you can just feel the joy going from the top of his head to his feet. He just was in seventh heaven.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  Caleb's family noticed a big change in him during this time. He seemed to become more responsible. Bridgette's friend Pam remembers the relief that Bridgette and Bill felt.

• 19:50Speaker 07

  Caleb was happy. He was really settling into kind of fatherhood and familyhood. Things were looking good for a while.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  Caleb's life finally seemed to be taking shape. And on Pitch Pine Crescent, Bill and Bridgette had become the committed grandparents they were meant to be. After years of worry, it felt like the family had entered a calmer chapter. But pretty soon, all of that would change.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  In the months after Bill's death, Bridget would be consumed by grief, an ache that never really left her. But the night she discovered his body, she was in a kind of a trance. Waiting for the coroner, Bridget called her friend Pam in Toronto.

• 20:52Speaker 07

  There's some events in your life that will be forever engraved in your mind. I was lying in bed, reading a book, and the phone rings, and it's Bridget. And it was a pretty succinct statement. Bill is dead. And so if I thought I was sleepy, I was no more.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  She got in her car and drove the half hour to Mississauga.

• 21:23Speaker 07

  When I got there, there was caution tape all around Pitch Pine, and the police wouldn't let me in.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  Pam waited outside, and Bridget came out to see her.

• 21:36Speaker 07

  I had never seen anyone in shock before, but clearly she was. And it was terrible. And we just hugged each other.

• 21:47Speaker 01

  At the scene were several police officers. While waiting for the coroner to arrive, they started asking Bridget questions. You can hear some of this on the 911 tape.

• 22:01Speaker 02

  How long have you been here, ma'am?

• 22:02Speaker 07

  I don't know. I just came in from work, and I found the door was closed.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  They asked, did he have any medical problems? She said, no. Was he taking any medications? Lipitor for high cholesterol. When was the last time you spoke with him? Bridget said that afternoon, around 2:30. They'd spoken on the phone after he finished his shift at the grocery chain warehouse where he worked as an analyst. There was one thing about the scene that made Bridget uneasy.

• 22:36Speaker 07

  Who locks the bathroom door when you're home alone? None of it made sense. None of it at all.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  Bill was an athlete. He played basketball. He did martial arts. He was the kind of guy who everyone figured would live to be 100.

• 23:28Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Hey, everyone. This is Jonathan Van Ness from Getting Better. You know what you believe. Maybe your faith is at the center of your life. Maybe you're still figuring it out. Maybe religion just isn't your thing. Those choices are personal, and in America, they should stay personal. That's why Americans United for Separation of Church and State is fighting for something that affects all of us: the freedom to live as yourself and believe as you choose, so long as you don't harm others. Because religious freedom isn't just about protecting your right to practice or not. And it surely isn't about having one forced, government-sanctioned religion. It's about protecting your right to say, this is what I believe, while your neighbor says,

• 24:13Speaker 00

  I believe something completely different. And honestly, that's the whole point. If that sounds like the kind of America you want, learn more at au.org/gettingbetter. Because your beliefs are yours, and theirs are theirs.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  A coroner arrived just before 11:00 PM. Examining the body, he saw abrasions on Bill's neck, thin red marks lengthwise across the throat. The coroner thought the marks might be an imprint from the gold chain Bill was wearing. He wanted them documented, so police took photographs. Despite the locked door and the neck abrasions, investigators didn't consider the death suspicious. Bill was in his 60s, a decade when the risk for heart attack rises. There were no signs of a struggle or forced entry, no bloody wounds or obvious trauma. Liz remembers an officer sharing a theory at the scene.

• 25:19Speaker 03

  He'd had a heart attack and gone into the bathroom because he felt sick. And then he fell beside the toilet.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  She remembers someone telling her that a person having a heart attack will often feel an urge to urinate before they die. An officer at the scene wrote in his notes, "This death appears to be natural." And a later report said, "The coroner had no further concerns regarding further police investigation." In other words, nothing suspicious.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  But here's the thing. In policing, it's considered best practice to treat all sudden deaths as potential homicides until the evidence shows otherwise. You only get one real shot at a crime scene. You can't go back and collect evidence you didn't gather the first time around. What the police didn't do that day would be questioned much later. Because they didn't consider Bill's death suspicious, they didn't collect forensic evidence, like DNA swabs. They didn't canvass the neighborhood to check if anyone had seen anything. And they didn't hold the scene. Officers were in and out in under four hours.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  But because no one knew for sure how or why Bill died, the coroner sent the body for an autopsy. If there was something suspicious about his death, this was the chance to find it.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  After Bill died, Bridget remained fixated on this feeling she had, that something wasn't right.

• 27:09Speaker 07

  Bridget never for a minute thought this was a natural death. Never for a minute. Bill was a fit guy. That night, he was scheduled to go play basketball. And slim, no history of heart issues. So none of it made any sense.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  Then again, sometimes healthy people die without warning. It's an uncomfortable fact.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  The autopsy took place at the Credit Valley Hospital in Mississauga the day after Bill died. A suspicious death case would have been treated differently. The body would have gone to the coroner's office headquarters in downtown Toronto for a full autopsy with one of the region's highly-trained forensic pathologists. But no one, not the police and not the coroner, had flagged Bill's death as suspicious. And the police didn't come to the morgue to photograph the autopsy as they normally would if there had been concerns about foul play. So the pathologist approached his job with the same understanding.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  This was not a suspicious death. As he began examining Bill's body, what he found was kind of baffling. There were no heart abnormalities, no signs of disease, no evidence of natural death at all. There was no explanation for Bill's death. There were some troubling findings, though. Bill had several unexplained injuries, abrasions on his neck that had been photographed at the scene. There was a large bruise on his scalp. And the most concerning finding...

• 29:04Speaker 04

  He's got a fractured sternum.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  A fractured breastbone. That's the long, flat bone in the center of the chest.

• 29:13Speaker 04

  And then the question is, why's he got the fracture of the sternum? And why's he got an isolated fracture of a sternum?

• 29:20Speaker 01

  This is Dr. Christopher Milroy, a renowned forensic pathologist based in Ottawa. He didn't do the autopsy on Bill and wasn't involved in the case, but reviewed it years later. The original pathologist declined to walk me through the findings, so I called Dr. Milroy to get his take.

• 29:39Speaker 04

  I would be concerned about an isolated sternal fracture. You just don't see them very often.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  The breastbone is one of the strongest bones in the body, and it takes a lot of force to break it. It can fracture during CPR, but no one had done CPR on Bill.

• 29:59Speaker 04

  Certainly raises major concerns.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  The pathologist who examined Bill's body was concerned, too. So he called the coroner, who'd been at the scene, to discuss the injuries he'd found.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  The coroner told the pathologist that Bill had been wearing a thin gold chain when he died. And they discussed how this piece of jewelry might explain the neck abrasions. With the way the body was positioned, propped up against the wall, maybe the chain left an imprint. Normally, the kind of linear markings Bill had on his neck would be a big deal. They could suggest he'd been strangled. To investigate further, a forensic pathologist would perform a specialized dissection to determine whether pressure had been applied to the neck.

• 30:52Speaker 04

  When you have anything in the neck, on the skin, it's almost a default.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  This kind of layered neck dissection can reveal subtle injuries. It's the gold standard in forensic autopsies.

• 31:09Speaker 04

  You're looking for bruising in the muscles and soft tissues of the neck. And then any fractures of the hyoid bone and the voice box cartilages.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  The pathologist who performed Bill's autopsy didn't do this type of dissection. He noted the hyoid bone was intact. But still, without a layered dissection, it's possible something was missed.

• 31:41Speaker 01

  The pathologist and coroner discussed whether Bill could have injured himself at the gym, breaking his sternum that way. But it seemed unlikely.

• 31:50Speaker 04

  Sternel fractures are very painful.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  It was far-fetched to think a man in such agony would drive himself home and stop to pick up dinner on the way. The most likely scenario, the pathologist concluded, was that Bill fell against the bathroom vanity. In his report, the pathologist said that Bill might have collapsed suddenly after having an irregular heartbeat, and then struck his head and chest in the fall. Or maybe the fall came first, and the injuries caused his heart to stop. That explanation doesn't make sense to Dr. Milroy.

• 32:30Speaker 04

  Well, typically, if you're going to fall over, I mean, just, I mean, in a bathroom, tumbling over in the bathroom, you don't expect to see someone have an isolated sternal fracture.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  Despite the injuries, and despite the fact that there was no evidence to support a heart issue, the pathologist concluded that the cause of death was acute cardiac arrhythmia. And that was a problem.

• 32:58Speaker 04

  That cause of death that was given was nonsense. Acute cardiac arrhythmia is not a cause of death.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  It means that a person's heart is stopped. It doesn't explain why.

• 33:13Speaker 01

  Years later, Ontario's chief forensic pathologist would say that the broken breastbone was an astonishing finding that should have led to further investigation.

• 33:24Speaker 04

  I'd want to see the scene photos and see how big was the bathroom, what could he have fallen against. But this is not entirely adding up.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  The pathologist who performed Bill's autopsy never saw the scene photos. The police didn't send them. Bridget didn't know any of this. She wouldn't learn about Bill's unexplained injuries until months later, once the autopsy report was finalized. All she knew in the aftermath of her husband's death was that the authorities believed he'd had some kind of heart issue. When the family eventually learned about the fractured breastbone, the fall in the bathroom theory didn't make a lot of sense to them. The powder room was

• 34:13Speaker 01

  tiny, about 30 square feet. And the way Bill was found, wedged between the toilet and the wall, Bridget's brother Doug wondered, how could a person even fall that way?

• 34:27Speaker 06

  I mean, you just can't picture somebody having a heart attack and ending up in that position, behind a locked door. I've said this to lots of people. I mean, there's no way that a man is going to lock his bathroom door if he's the only person in the house.

• 34:48Speaker 01

  In the days after Bill's death, Bridget trusted that the authorities were doing a thorough investigation. She had a lot going on. She had to plan a funeral. And then came something else she hadn't counted on.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  Bridget wanted to be the one to tell her grandchildren about their papa's death. So the day after he died, she drove to their elementary school. The kids had a close bond with their grandparents. This news was going to be difficult to hear. Bridget arrived at the school and went to the office. She asked the secretary to call the children out of class. But the kids weren't there. They didn't come to school, not that day, and not the next. At first, Bridget thought their mom, Melissa, had maybe kept them home or taken

• 35:48Speaker 01

  them on a trip. She knew they weren't with Caleb. By then, he and Melissa had separated. A few days later, Doug went with his sister to Melissa's house to look for the kids.

• 36:02Speaker 06

  We drive over, and there's nobody there.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  A neighbor came out and told them something shocking. The family that lived in that house, they moved.

• 36:20Speaker 06

  So that's how Bridget finds out that the kids have gone.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  Now, not only was her husband dead, her grandchildren, Caleb's son and daughter, were missing.

• 36:37Speaker 06

  She didn't panic. She didn't go crazy. She just said, well, we got to find the kids.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  Next time on What Happened to the Harrisons, things get ugly.

• 36:53Speaker 06

  Melissa was doing everything within her control to separate Caleb from his own children.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  And a tug of war ensues.

• 37:03Speaker 00

  I am ready, willing, and able to be part of our children's lives and not just a visiting father. I'm a good mom and provide an excellent life for my children. If I don't protect

• 37:14Speaker 01

  them, who will?

• 37:21Speaker 01

  Unlock all episodes of What Happened to the Harrisons ad-free right now by subscribing to the Binge Podcast channel. And it doesn't stop at What Happened to the Harrisons. Subscribers get a binge drop of a brand new series on the first of every month. That's all episodes all at once, all ad-free. And between drops, you've got ad-free access to Crime Scene, the Binge's weekly series, plus instant access to over 60 true crime podcasts. Shows like Wild Boys, Blink, and Watching You, so you'll never be short on stories. Search for The Binge on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe. Not on Apple? Head to GetTheBinge.com to subscribe directly.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  What Happened to the Harrisons is an original production of Sony Music Entertainment. The show is hosted and reported by me, Amy Dempsey-Raven. The lead producer is Cooper Mall. The series is written by me and Cooper. From Sony Music Entertainment, our executive producers are Catherine St. Louis and Jonathan Hirsch. The series was sound designed and mixed by Scott Somerville. We use music from Epidemic Sound. Production managers are Tamika Balance-Kalasny and Ashley Ann Craigbaum. Fact checking by Fendel Fulton. Additional production support by Myron Kaplan. Our lawyer is Alison Sherry. Special thanks to The Toronto Star, where my reporting on this story began more than a decade ago. If you value local

• 38:57Speaker 01

  investigative journalism, subscribe to a newspaper where you live. Please rate and review What Happened to the Harrisons. It helps spread the word.

• 39:15Speaker 01

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