What Happened to the Harrisons? | 5. “I'm a Murderer”

Broke and starting over, Melissa and her new husband Chris find an unexpected friend in a generous stranger named Sue. But nothing about their new life is quite what it seems -- and someone is listening to their every word. 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.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  Melissa and Chris were completely broke and on their way to Nova Scotia with six children. As they drove, Melissa was emailing with a woman named Sue Andrews. Sue wrote to Melissa, saying she'd read a newspaper article about her family.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  First, let me say how sorry I am to hear about your troubled times. I just can't get it out of my mind how awful for you and your kids.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  That's a friend of the show reading for Sue. Sue said she was part of a charitable group that helped families in need. She sent Melissa gift cards for Best Buy and Toys R Us. They became sort of pen pals. And one day, Melissa wrote with a request.

• 2:29Speaker 03

  I am going to do something that is so hard for me right now. I'm coming to you for help.

• 2:35Speaker 01

  Melissa said she'd moved her family to the East Coast because her kid's father had been murdered, and they needed to get away from Ontario. Melissa and Chris had left a lot of their belongings behind in a storage trailer that was too beat up for the road trip. She told Sue they needed to get the trailer to their new home and help with rent if possible.

• 2:57Speaker 03

  The kids are so happy here, but life is difficult with nothing. Please let me know ASAP.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  Sue was a religious woman who signed her emails with Bible quotes and "God bless." She was moved by Melissa's story about her murdered ex-husband.

• 3:15Speaker 02

  Was anyone ever caught for this terrible crime? I am brokenhearted for you.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Sue said she had a nephew who ran a moving company and could deliver their stuff. She also agreed to pay three months' rent.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  Melissa, Chris, and the kids had moved to a house in the country, south of Halifax. They were back to living the simple life, raising dairy goats and chickens. Melissa used Sue as a sounding board.

• 3:46Speaker 03

  I often wonder why so much has happened to us in the past couple of years. Why my strength is always tested.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  Melissa told Sue that she sometimes felt like the worst mother in the world. Sue said God doesn't give us more than we can handle.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  In November, Sue's nephew delivered their belongings. Melissa was grateful.

• 4:10Speaker 03

  The more help you can offer right now, the better. We are on our way out of this huge hole.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  Melissa asked for more help with groceries, gas, coats for the children, Christmas gifts, homeschooling books, and more rent. Sue delivered. And in early December, she even sent the whole family on a weekend getaway to a theme park. But there was something Melissa didn't know about her new benefactor. Sue was not who she said she was. She was an undercover cop.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  The police had nicknamed her Charitable Sue. The nephew with a moving company, he was also a cop. In some of the items he brought to Nova Scotia, police had installed wiretaps. And that trip to the theme park? As soon as the family left, police entered their home and planted more wiretaps. Melissa and Chris were about to be outsmarted.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  The police already had DNA evidence tying Chris to Caleb's murder. But this was a triple homicide investigation. And there were two suspects. The police needed to figure out what Melissa did, what she knew, and when she knew it.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  They suspected that she and Chris were co-conspirators in a plot to kill her ex, his mother, and maybe even his father. But they were a long way from proving it. One thing that would really help? A confession.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  From Sony Music Entertainment, this is What Happened to the Harrisons. I'm Amy Dempsey-Raven. This is episode five.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  I'm a murderer.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  It's November 2013, three months after Caleb's murder. Melissa, Chris, and the six kids are living in a three-bedroom house in a farming community, the place good old Sue set them up in. And police are listening to everything. There are wiretaps in the kitchen, the living room, their bedroom, the minivan. But there are problems with this police operation. The first one? Melissa and Chris aren't really talking about the murders.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  With six kids aged 12 and under, there's not much alone time.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  So the police hatch a plan to get them talking. They start sending stimulation emails, fake updates on the homicide investigation. Melissa and Chris believe they've been added to a mailing list for victims' family members. These updates will send them into a panic and dry out the conversations police are hoping to hear. There was another problem with the wiretap operation that was harder to solve.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  The audio quality? Not great, especially with a baby screeching, dishes clattering, a dog barking. Plus, Melissa and Chris often whispered so the children wouldn't hear. But some of what the police heard was damning.

• 7:57Speaker 01

  Late one night in December, Melissa and Chris are in the dining room. And Melissa reads one of the fake updates from police out loud.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  The email questioned whether Melissa and Chris were telling the truth about where they went after the softball game the night Caleb died. The couple had told police they went to the Pita Pit in the subway at a Walmart Plaza near their house, but they didn't mention going into Walmart.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  The children are in bed, but Melissa speaks quietly, just in case. She reminds Chris, "They went there for the shoes." Or at least, "That's what police believe," she says. It's difficult to hear this one, and Melissa would argue later that the police transcripts could not be trusted. But as the conversation goes on, it's pretty clear they're talking about shoes from Walmart. Melissa and Chris don't know yet that police found the sneakers in their trash, along with the black gloves that had both Chris's and Caleb's DNA on them. So Chris isn't too worried.

• 9:19Speaker 04

  So we forgot to tell them about Walmart. What's happening?

• 9:25Speaker 01

  There's a child screaming in this recording, and it's really hard to hear. But police say that Melissa said, "You're the one wearing those shoes." Melissa's worried. She asks how he paid for them.

• 9:39Speaker 04

  I don't think I was stupid enough to use debit.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  "Don't think I was stupid enough to use debit," Chris says. But in fact, he did use debit, and the police already had the receipt. Melissa comes up with a plan. She says they should go back to the police and say, "We forgot, we did go to Walmart that night." She tells Chris to say he bought shoes to cut the lawn in. They didn't end up contacting the police to change their story, but days later, Melissa is still anxious. She pulls Chris aside to discuss a new plan.

• 10:18Speaker 05

  So, Jonathan, what are you thinking?

• 10:22Speaker 01

  They're in the minivan. It sounds like Melissa's cleaning it. The kids are playing outside.

• 10:27Speaker 05

  I'm thinking, because I think you didn't go back and say anything about the shoes yet.

• 10:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:33Speaker 05

  You should never speak of the shoes.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  "You should never speak of the shoes." Melissa says the sneakers could be a problem for her. In her police interview, she'd said Chris owned three pairs of footwear: cowboy boots, flip-flops, and blue running shoes. She didn't mention the Walmart sneakers. She worried the police could point to this and say she was lying. The recordings also captured Melissa and Chris coaching the children, shaping what they believed about Caleb, his family, and who they should trust if police ever came knocking. In one recording, Melissa tells her son that his father's family wants to take him and

• 11:21Speaker 01

  his sister away from her.

• 11:23Speaker 05

  They don't care. They don't care about your mom. They care about themselves. They care about getting you away from them. Why? Because they don't hate you. Why? Because Caleb hates you. Everything they do is a plot against me. Tell me right now.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  Melissa's angry because some of Caleb's relatives have access to the house on Pitch Pine Crescent, and she doesn't. She wants to get some of the kids' belongings. Melissa makes it sound like their father's family is holding their stuff hostage. She tells her son the Harrisons want their daddy, Chris, to go to jail. She says, "They're keeping your stuff so when daddy gets arrested and goes to jail, you can live with them." Melissa says Caleb's family will cast her as the bad person because she stayed with Chris, and he's a murderer.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  She's being sarcastic. She makes all of this sound like a big joke. Chris keeps this joke going. He even doubles down. He's growling "I'm a murderer" in a sort of Halloween voice. The conversation gets more disturbing. With Caleb's son in the room, Melissa and Chris discuss the Harrison deaths one by one, speaking flippantly. They talk about how it would have been impossible for Chris to kill Bill because they were in Manitoba when he died.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  This, we already know, isn't true. They were in Mississauga.

• 13:11Speaker 04

  Somehow I did it from Manitoba when we were staying, and that hotel was the huge goose up front.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  In the custody battle, Melissa had claimed she'd never said a bad word to the kids about Caleb or his family. But the recordings show Melissa was more than willing to manipulate her own children. She even tells her son that if police want to interview him about his father's murder, he should say no. She and Chris warn him that the police will twist his words.

• 13:43Speaker 05

  Because I've already told you, if you say, "I'm not sure, I don't know, I can't recall, or I don't remember," they can ask, say them an interview. Unless you compliment and say no. Saying the word no is the only way they're trying to know.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Melissa tells her son to be careful what he says to the police about the key he had to his father's house, a key he kept in his backpack. She says the police might ask him about it. They might want to know if he ever took the key to his mom's house. In another recording, she warns her son what's at stake.

• 14:23Speaker 05

  Well, you should care because if you say Walmart's key, and it's me and your daddy, I'm alive.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  I want to be free. Four months after Melissa and Chris moved out east, they were starting to believe police were closing in on them. They were right. One morning in late January, five months after Caleb's murder, more than a dozen police cars and SUVs rumbled down a country road on Nova Scotia's south shore in a sort of convoy. They pulled into the driveway of the house Melissa and Chris were renting, and police officers emerged. Chris came to the door, his hair dented from sleep.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  Melissa and Chris were arrested as the children watched, crying and screaming. They were each charged with two counts of first-degree murder, one for Caleb and one for Bridget. They were placed in separate vehicles, each with a detective who had been preparing to interview them for weeks. Only one of them would talk.

• 15:50Speaker 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

• 16:34Speaker 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.

• 16:51Speaker 06

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• 17:23Speaker 04

  This morning, Tuesday, January 28, at approximately 10:00 a.m. local time in Nova Scotia, the Peel Regional Police homicide investigators arrested and charged two people. The first, Ms. Melissa Irene Merritt, aged 33 years, and her common-law husband, Mr. Christopher Fiore Fatori, aged 36 years. They have been charged jointly with two counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Bridget and Caleb Harrison.

• 17:54Speaker 04

  All right, Chris. I want you to know a couple of things here.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  This is Detective Phil King. He's putting Chris in the backseat of a police SUV. Chris is in handcuffs, and he's having what sounds like a mild panic attack.

• 18:11Speaker 04

  Chris, I told you at the door

• 18:15Speaker 04

  that you're being arrested currently for two counts of murder.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  Detective King is wearing a suit and tie, but he looks kind of like a college football player, broad-shouldered and ruggedly handsome.

• 18:29Speaker 04

  Do you have any questions? Okay. I just want to know what's going on with my children. And I'm gonna get that to you. I don't know why I'm in this car. Okay. You tell me that I'm in this car for murder? Yes. I don't know why I'm in this car. And that's fair.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  Chris will say this over and over. "I don't know why I'm here." It's an odd kind of denial, as if the problem is the arrest, not the accusation. King reads Chris's rights and leaves the car so he can speak with a legal aid lawyer. When he returns, he makes a promise.

• 19:03Speaker 04

  I'm not gonna bullshit you today. If you have questions for me, I'm gonna give you real answers. The way I look at it here is that we can both be respectful to one another and get through this whole thing.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  Detective King was handpicked for this job. The lead investigators believed King had the best chance of connecting with Chris. King was a country boy, into football and home renovations. And he was 36, just like Chris.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  During the hour-and-a-half drive to the police station in Halifax, King gets Chris talking about guy stuff: fatherhood, bad knees, hunting and woodworking. The detective is clearly trying to earn Chris's trust. They're now settled into an interview room at a police station in Halifax. There's a small table between them.

• 19:57Speaker 04

  And he's about choices.

• 20:00Speaker 04

  And Chris, they're gonna be the hardest choices of your life today.

• 20:05Speaker 04

  But you're gonna have to make them. And it's gonna take a strong person to do that.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  On the camera, under bright fluorescent lights, Chris looks pale and shaky, but he's calm. He's wearing a snug black t-shirt with a picture of a skull on it. It's 1:30 in the afternoon. He'll spend the next 14 hours in this room. Chris tells him he's not gonna talk about the case. The lawyer said he shouldn't. But then, Chris does talk. He talks a lot.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  He starts out defensive. He tells Detective King that he and Melissa always suspected police would come for them, because the Harrison family has been pointing fingers since Bridget's death.

• 20:54Speaker 04

  Thank you, it's on the chart. As far as I know, I didn't do anything wrong. What does that mean? I had no involvement in what you're trying to say, but I did.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  Then Chris explains why he wouldn't voluntarily give his DNA to the police.

• 21:09Speaker 04

  I know for a fact that any of my hair, skin cells, or anything from me would be transferred between children, back and forth to the house. I've never stepped in the house.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  Chris doesn't know the police already have his DNA from a discarded coffee cup. They've only been asking him for it to see how he responds. He has no idea what the police have on him. But he's about to find out.

• 21:37Speaker 04

  What I can tell you is that

• 21:41Speaker 04

  even though Caleb is dead,

• 21:44Speaker 04

  he was able to tell us who murdered him. How? Because he has DNA under his fingernails, and it belongs to you. That sounds like what you have believed. It's not what I believe. That's the truth.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  They spend hours going back and forth on DNA. Detective King shows Chris the reports from the scientists who analyzed the samples from under Caleb's fingernails. But Chris says it must have gotten there another way. He says the DNA evidence is, to me, circumstantial.

• 22:16Speaker 04

  Tell me how I got there. Tell me how I got into the house. Tell me what I did. How you want me to prove the evidence to you? Want me to already bring the video of you killing?

• 22:25Speaker 01

  He brings in a laptop and starts playing the wiretaps. Chris scoffs at the sound quality.

• 22:32Speaker 04

  I hear a bunch of static on songs like "Tortilla Tomato."

• 22:36Speaker 01

  He has a point. These wiretaps will cause years of trouble and frustration for police and prosecutors in court. Detective King plays them, one after the other, and narrates what the police audio experts believe they say. He plays the one where Melissa and Chris talk about the shoes, and another where it sounds like they're talking about Caleb's murder.

• 22:59Speaker 04

  Would you be surprised about a conversation that you and Melissa may have had, where you said to her, "He did grab me by the neck"?

• 23:10Speaker 01

  And Melissa replied...

• 23:12Speaker 04

  Even if by chance, he did get you on the neck, by chance, that would be a miniscule move.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  The detective says Chris can be heard telling Melissa that he went into Caleb's bedroom and shocked him.

• 23:27Speaker 04

  I did not have those conversations, and I did not do anything to kill. I had never touched him.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  But Detective King has the tape. He plays the conversation. Chris holds a portable speaker to his ear to listen.

• 23:41Speaker 04

  Well, your experts must have really good ears, because I don't hear any of them.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  Then the detective drops a bombshell. He tells Chris about the items police seized from the garbage at his home in Mississauga: the shoes and the black gloves.

• 23:59Speaker 04

  Those gloves

• 24:02Speaker 04

  are in the hunt. Those gloves are Caleb's.

• 24:06Speaker 04

  They put you in a real tight spot. Okay.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  He tells him what police found on the gloves: Caleb's DNA on one side, Chris's DNA on the other. At this point, Chris looks freaked out, but he says nothing.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  King plays another wiretap, and then he reads Chris's words back to him.

• 24:33Speaker 04

  No jury in the world is going to convict a mother and father of six children of murder when they don't have enough information. This is the problem. It doesn't matter if there's a photo on the baby. Yes, okay, I didn't tell you. I went out for a late-night snack. But that doesn't put me in the house. You know what I mean? There's always a way around that.

• 24:58Speaker 01

  For a moment, they sit in silence.

• 25:02Speaker 04

  That's ugly. Yeah. That's ugly, right?

• 25:11Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 25:13Speaker 01

  Then Detective King tries a classic interrogation tactic. He suggests that, in the other room, Melissa is throwing Chris under the bus.

• 25:25Speaker 04

  Her father is gonna hire the best lawyer that he can afford. He's gonna say, "Melissa, it's time to cut ties. I know you love him, and I know you have four children, but it's him or you."

• 25:41Speaker 01

  This doesn't work. Chris is not going to turn on Melissa. So Detective King appeals to his sense of duty as a family man. He frames telling the truth as the thing a good father would do. Chris remains defiant.

• 25:58Speaker 04

  Nothing puts me in the house. You guys are gonna keep playing all the audio and talking about the gloves all you want. Caleb put you in the house. Caleb, when he died, with his last breaths, he put you in the house. And that's the beauty of this. Not for you, but for me.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  Detective King takes out the crime scene photos. He shows Chris the bruises and abrasions on Caleb and Bridget.

• 26:28Speaker 04

  Very, very, very similar injuries. Almost as if somebody did it once,

• 26:35Speaker 04

  got away with it, did it a second time.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  Chris doesn't react. They're nine hours in. Things are getting tense.

• 26:45Speaker 04

  I just don't understand why you can sit here and constantly be like, "You're a murderer, I'm a murderer, I'm a murderer." I'm innocent until proven guilty.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  Chris is angry and cold. He pulls on his jacket, a huge camouflage parka with a fur-lined hood that makes him look almost adolescent.

• 27:04Speaker 04

  From here on out, I'm shouting in my face, "Who's one or two talking? You're talking, underdog."

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Detective King leans back and starts narrating more wiretaps, while Chris sits in stony silence.

• 27:18Speaker 04

  I went in there, and the fucking coward didn't fucking fight me.

• 27:25Speaker 04

  That, my friend, is made-for-TV stuff right there.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  It's 10:30 PM, 12 hours since he was arrested, and it's looking like he's not going to confess. King leaves the room for a while.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  When he returns, Chris has calmed down. He asks how Melissa's doing. He's been thinking about her and his kids. He asks King to finish a sentence for him.

• 27:56Speaker 04

  Melissa walks free, huh?

• 28:01Speaker 01

  Detective King can't promise a deal, but he says that if Chris has information that exonerates Melissa, he needs to share it. If she had nothing to do with it, the truth will benefit her.

• 28:20Speaker 04

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• 28:26Speaker 07

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• 28:50Speaker 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

• 29:34Speaker 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.

• 29:53Speaker 04

  There is no one

• 29:56Speaker 04

  who can advocate on her behalf

• 30:00Speaker 04

  more than you.

• 30:03Speaker 04

  And will you love her? That's never been questioned. And will you love their kids?

• 30:11Speaker 07

  I don't want to see my children go without parents.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  He leans hard on the fatherhood stuff.

• 30:19Speaker 04

  You're a good family man, Chris.

• 30:23Speaker 04

  I, uh, I believe that, I believe that, uh, we'll heart him.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  At 1:15 a.m., King returns from another break. For four minutes, they sit together in silence. Chris is hunched over the table. It's like he's wilted. He shifts and sighs. Finally, he speaks.

• 30:51Speaker 07

  Think I understand what you said.

• 30:54Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 30:57Speaker 07

  It's a season time for us.

• 30:59Speaker 04

  What then?

• 31:02Speaker 04

  Time to choose.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  The detective says, "You've got a man up." There's another long pause before Chris speaks again. And then, it happens.

• 31:17Speaker 07

  You showed me a lot of things today.

• 31:20Speaker 07

  A lot that molded over in my head. I guess that by saying that, I don't know what Melissa Merritt has told anybody in that other room. And the truth of the fact is that Melissa had nothing to do with any of these. In fact, she knew nothing about...

• 31:44Speaker 07

  She knew nothing about the mitophers.

• 31:48Speaker 07

  Caleb was dead.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  His breath becomes shaky. He starts to cry. He tells Detective King he's sorry for lying to him.

• 32:00Speaker 07

  I didn't like Caleb Harrison. Didn't like the way you treated my kids.

• 32:05Speaker 01

  Chris says "my kids," but he's talking about Caleb's, his stepchildren.

• 32:11Speaker 07

  I didn't like hearing all the horrific stories.

• 32:16Speaker 07

  It was an awful family.

• 32:19Speaker 07

  They treated the children like shit. I and Melissa had to live with it every day, and I couldn't watch Melissa's attitude and how sorry she was for everything that was going on.

• 32:34Speaker 07

  And I'm telling you right now, that Melissa Merritt did not know anything until after it was done.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  Detective King needs him to say it.

• 32:46Speaker 04

  What did you do?

• 32:55Speaker 07

  I killed Bridgette Harrison and Caleb Harrison.

• 33:00Speaker 04

  How did you kill Bridgette?

• 33:06Speaker 07

  I knocked on her door.

• 33:10Speaker 07

  She opened the door.

• 33:16Speaker 07

  I pretended to have a letter to give to the children.

• 33:22Speaker 07

  She refused the letter. So I then forced my way into the house, and I attacked her.

• 33:29Speaker 07

  I hit her a couple times.

• 33:36Speaker 07

  I then proceeded to squeeze her neck.

• 33:44Speaker 07

  Till she stopped breathing, I laid on the floor.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  Chris buries his head in his hands and cries. He says he never meant for Melissa's son to find Bridgette dead.

• 33:59Speaker 07

  That's not the plan. That's not what I wanted. I figured that she would, someone would come home, or Caleb would come home and find her.

• 34:07Speaker 07

  And as for Caleb, I snuck out in the middle of the night.

• 34:13Speaker 07

  Melissa had no idea.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  Chris parked a few streets away from Pitch Pine Crescent. He brought the gloves, the throwaway shoes from Walmart, and a baseball bat.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  The bat belonged to one of Caleb's kids. And now, he was going to use it to kill their father. He tucked it up his sleeve and walked to the house in the dark. It was sometime after 2:00 in the morning. He let himself in with a key he stole from his stepson. "Without Melissa knowing," he says. He knew Caleb slept with a fan, so he followed the noise and found his wife's ex in bed, asleep. Chris raised the bat over his head and struck him hard in the chest. Caleb leaped out of bed.

• 35:06Speaker 07

  When he sprung up, we'd be in a struggle.

• 35:10Speaker 07

  I threw him into the shelving unit beside his bed.

• 35:20Speaker 07

  He tried to bribe me with money. I didn't speak to him.

• 35:24Speaker 07

  I just knocked him to the ground and then proceeded to choke him. He told me, he said, "Chris, stop." I didn't say anything to him.

• 35:34Speaker 07

  And he said, "If you want money, I can give you money." And it wasn't about money, none of it was ever about money. I didn't care about money. I did it to get my children home, and I did it so I could stop watching my wife

• 35:48Speaker 07

  cry and stalk around the house

• 35:53Speaker 07

  and have anxiety attacks every time the children would leave.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  Chris says Melissa didn't know he bought the shoes. He put them in the back of the van without her seeing.

• 36:06Speaker 07

  I don't want anything bad to happen to Melissa.

• 36:11Speaker 07

  When Melissa tells you she did not know anything until after Caleb, when all the questions started to arise. And I got scared, when I thought I could confide in her.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  Chris is sobbing now.

• 36:26Speaker 07

  Oh, my God.

• 36:29Speaker 01

  Detective King puts a hand on his shoulder and thanks him.

• 36:36Speaker 07

  So stupid.

• 36:47Speaker 07

  My day goes by, but I don't wish that I had done either of them.

• 36:51Speaker 04

  I know that.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  He says he killed Bridgette because he believed it would level the playing field between Melissa and Caleb in the custody battle.

• 37:01Speaker 07

  Because I knew Caleb had his convictions and had been in jail.

• 37:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:07Speaker 01

  As for Caleb, Chris says he got tired of seeing him get away with things.

• 37:12Speaker 07

  He just had a free pass. He just got through life doing whatever he wanted. It doesn't matter what the other side of his family says, because they're always going to say he was a good guy. He was a rotten, rotten person.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  There's one more thing Detective King needs to ask about. Chris isn't charged in Bill's death. The police don't have enough evidence yet. But he wants to hear what Chris has to say.

• 37:43Speaker 04

  I gotta ask you about Bill.

• 37:46Speaker 07

  Um...

• 37:48Speaker 04

  Bill, I know nothing about Bill. I will say that from the bottom of my heart.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  Chris's confession is a huge win for the police. But in the interview room down the hall, Melissa gives up nothing.

• 38:04Speaker 01

  Chris may have said Melissa had nothing to do with it, but police, they don't believe that at all.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  Inside the police task force, there's concern that the case against Melissa still leans heavily on circumstantial evidence and inferences drawn from the wiretaps.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  So the team makes a plan, a last-ditch effort to capture one more unguarded conversation.

• 38:43Speaker 01

  A few days after the arrest, Melissa and Chris are taken in separate cars to the Halifax airport. Chris is placed in a holding room to wait for his flight. But then another police officer shows up at the same room with Melissa.

• 38:58Speaker 04

  Where's what's bringing her?

• 39:02Speaker 04

  He's in here.

• 39:05Speaker 04

  Well, I got no rest to put her.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  This whole thing is a ruse. The room is wiretapped. Melissa and Chris are alone. As soon as the door closes, they begin to speak.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  Chris is asking Melissa, what did you tell the police? She says, nothing. This recording is also difficult to hear. They're whispering and speaking over each other. Chris tells Melissa what he told the police.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  He says, "I'm taking the rap for it, to get you an accessory after the fact." He says, "I told them that I told you about the murders after my August interview with the police, the one a few days after Caleb died."

• 40:13Speaker 01

  Melissa seems shocked.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  Chris says he spoke to his parents, and they were upset to hear he confessed. They blamed Melissa.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  Chris thinks he's built a good case for himself. He tells Melissa he's going to plead insanity. He says he's going to retract his confession and claim he made it under duress. He seems frantic and deeply in denial. He wants to make sure Melissa understands the timeline, so he goes through it again.

• 40:59Speaker 04

  Just don't say that. Just know. Just know what I've done. I'm not here to help. That I told them the day after I had the interview. The day after I did my videos.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  Chris corrects her. Not Bridgette and Bill.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  Police and prosecutors would seize on Melissa's statement. Bridgette and Bill. Was it a slip of the tongue? Or was she double-checking because she knew he'd committed not two, but three murders?

• 41:43Speaker 01

  Melissa was right. Police had nothing tying Chris to the scene of Bridgette's murder. No DNA, no witnesses. Chris says he didn't give them anything new.

• 41:57Speaker 04

  I know. This don't have anything.

• 42:01Speaker 01

  You admitted it, Melissa says.

• 42:10Speaker 01

  Melissa is angry, but not that angry.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  Chris tells Melissa he spent the night in solitary confinement. He asked to be placed there.

• 42:25Speaker 04

  Not a fucking criminal. They don't want me put in general population.

• 42:29Speaker 01

  Chris says his biggest concern is that his children are going to hate him. He's especially worried about his stepson. He says he feels guilty for lying to his face. Melissa says the kids will understand. She'll help them. That's why I'm guessing the kids are not. You didn't do this for your own. That might not have been the right thing.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  Chris is scared.

• 42:58Speaker 04

  I know what I did.

• 43:03Speaker 04

  I don't care. Don't be scared. I'm not hiding. I'm not hiding, buddy. I can. I know what I did.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  Melissa says she called her father after she was arrested. He's like, please tell me. Tell me something, Paulson. Please tell me this.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  Melissa told her father the police were mean to her during the interrogation. The officer who interviewed Melissa called her a bad mother and said she manipulated Chris to make him kill for her. Melissa told her father she spoke up a few times. He didn't like that. My dad yelled at me. He was like, "Don't fucking talk." Listen, you're not gonna make it better. You're all gonna be worse. I was like, Dad, they're so mean. He's like, "Paulson, this is not the fucking time to get weak."

• 43:59Speaker 01

  Melissa had a long road ahead. It would take four years to get to trial. And she would not get weak. Next time on What Happened to the Harrisons.

• 44:15Speaker 01

  With Melissa and Chris in jail, police start examining a mountain of electronic evidence. And they find something. An old laptop in the trailer that charitable Sue's nephew rescued for them. And it has a browser history with Google searches dating back to before Bridgette was murdered.

• 44:41Speaker 00

  Easy ways to kill and get away with it.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  And that's not all.

• 44:45Speaker 00

  If a grandparent has custody of children and they die, which of the parents gets the kids?

• 44:57Speaker 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.

• 45:48Speaker 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-Anne 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 investigative journalism,

• 46:33Speaker 01

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

• 46:49Speaker 07

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