What Happened to the Harrisons? | 6. Easy Ways to Kill and Get Away With It

It looks like the Harrisons might finally get justice. But as the trial approaches, key evidence is tossed out. And a strong motive comes to light. 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.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  The Binge.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  After Melissa and Chris were arrested, police charged them both with a third count of murder for Bill's death. A key piece of evidence behind that charge was the airport wiretap, the one you heard last episode, where Melissa seemed confused about which murders Chris had confessed to. Bridget and Bill, or Bridget and Caleb? So now, a mother of six and her second husband were accused of killing her ex and his entire family, years apart, in the same house.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  Chris had admitted to killing Caleb and Bridget, but afterward, he recanted. He'd say that he falsely confessed after a grueling police interrogation because he believed he was making a deal that would save his family.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  Melissa was a tougher case. The Crown had no direct evidence tying her to the killings. And Chris had told police she had nothing to do with it. Police believed Melissa was the brains behind the murder plot. The question was, would a jury believe that? After a preliminary inquiry, a judge ruled there wasn't enough evidence to try Melissa for Bill's murder. It was the first crack in the case police had built against her. One of the strongest pieces of evidence police had against Melissa was discovered after Chris's confession.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  Remember the storage trailer that charitable Sue helped them out with? Well, inside the trailer, among the boxes of kids' toys and kitchen gear, police found a laptop, a family computer, used by both Melissa and Chris. And there was a mountain of evidence in the hard drive, a long internet search history the couple hadn't bothered to delete. Some of the searches dated back to before Bridget's death.

• 4:04Speaker 02

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

• 4:10Speaker 01

  This is retired Peel Region Prosecutor Steve Sheriff again, reading the searches that caught his eye. I called him to talk through the laptop evidence.

• 4:20Speaker 02

  How long does it take to die from being choked? Now, the timing of this one is the first day of April 2010. How does that fit into the timeline for Bridget's death?

• 4:34Speaker 03

  That is just a few weeks before she died.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  So this is a pretty damning internet search.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  Damning for Melissa and Chris, but also for the police. Because this internet search history would have been there for detectives to find in 2010 if they dug deeper and gathered enough evidence to get a warrant. Sheriff continues.

• 5:05Speaker 02

  Next one is pretty explicit. Easy ways to kill and get away with it.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  It was typed in the years between Bridget's death and her son's. That one has stayed with me. There's a strange irony to it. A criminal reckless enough to ask the internet how to get away with murder. And yet, for years, that's exactly what happened. The searches go on and on. How long does it take for a person being strangled to pass out? And can you taste rat poison? This kind of evidence is a prosecutor's dream. Testimony can be disputed or contradicted.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Memories are fallible, but internet search records, they're solid.

• 5:56Speaker 02

  If you're convinced of the guilt of your defendants, this is manna from heaven dropped in your lap. This is powerful, strong, meaningful evidence.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  But in this case, the jury would never get to see this evidence. The police tried to figure out who typed the searches, Melissa or Chris? And that's where things would start to go sideways.

• 6:29Speaker 02

  It's a very serious matter to have the truth excluded from a triple homicide case. Very, very serious matter.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  At trial, the jury would be presented with two versions of Melissa. Was she a master manipulator who convinced her big lug of a boyfriend to kill for her, then helped him cover it up? Or was she guilty of nothing more than helping Chris after the fact? Once it was already too late.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  From Sony Music Entertainment, this is What Happened to the Harrisons. I'm Amy Dempsey-Raven. This is episode six. Easy Ways to Kill and Get Away with It.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  After the third death in the Harrison family, relatives and close friends formed what they called the inner circle. This time, they wouldn't let the authorities off the hook. They wanted justice. A week after Caleb's murder, the group met with senior members of the Peel Police Homicide Bureau at Liz's house in Mississauga. Two officers sat in the living room and faced 20 people staring daggers at them. One of the cops told me it was scary. The Harrisons asked pointed questions, and they made one thing absolutely clear. Here's Bridget's brother Doug.

• 8:11Speaker 04

  You know we're not going to go away. You know we're right here. You know we're going to be right on your tail. This is not going to be put on anybody's back burner anymore.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  The family needed to put someone in charge, to field questions from the police, to figure out how to get answers. That person was Wanda Jamison.

• 8:35Speaker 05

  I felt so angry that all of this had happened on our watch. We are all bright people, articulate people, who saw this happening, and yet somehow were disempowered.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  Wanda is a management consultant, a person who gets things done. Her husband, Mike Harrington, grew up with Bridget. She and Mike had been suspicious all along, but they had also trusted the authorities. They believed that if there'd been a crime, investigators would have found evidence.

• 9:17Speaker 05

  I put my faith in the police service, in the coroner's office, and then this happens, you know? Wow.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  So after Caleb's murder, Wanda threw herself into figuring out how everything went off the rails.

• 9:37Speaker 05

  I felt all of a sudden, I'm on a mission.

• 9:42Speaker 01

  The Harrisons had been there for Wanda and Mike when they faced a family tragedy years earlier. Afterward, Bridget and Bill helped the family pick up the pieces.

• 9:53Speaker 06

  These were the finest people I've ever known, finest people. They showed us, they trained us how to be elders.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  Now, it was Wanda and Mike's turn to be good elders. After Melissa and Chris were charged, they decided they would see the case through, no matter how long it took.

• 10:13Speaker 05

  I think we felt it was important that someone bear witness to everything.

• 10:17Speaker 06

  That was exactly my, that's what my answer would have been as well.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  And to support Liz, the family matriarch. For months at a time, Mike and Wanda would drive four hours to court for the pretrial hearings and stay with Liz for the week. They did this for years, until finally, it was time for Melissa and Chris to face a jury.

• 10:47Speaker 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

• 11:31Speaker 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.

• 11:47Speaker 07

  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.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  The trial began in September 2017 at a big, modern courthouse in Brampton, another suburban city in Peel region. I was there, sitting in one of the wooden spectator benches a few rows from the front. The trial would last three and a half months. It was the longest one I'd ever been to. There were two accused killers, five charges, four defense lawyers, two prosecutors, a judge, and the jury. Before proving who murdered the Harrisons, prosecutors had to prove they were actually murdered.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  The defense lawyers would argue the original causes of death—a heart arrhythmia and a fall down the stairs—were correct. By then, I was a new mom, and things about the case would hit harder for me than they had before. The trial started the day after I went back to work from maternity leave. Bridget's brother Doug wasn't allowed in the courtroom that first week because he was going to be called as a witness, so he paced the halls.

• 13:34Speaker 04

  At the beginning, I thought, for sure, this is a done deal. I mean, they just have to lay it out. And then after I saw things going along, I was thinking, you know what? Vittori is cooked, but Melissa, maybe not so much, because it's, what did she know? And how can we prove what she knew?

• 14:00Speaker 01

  Four years had passed since Caleb died. The house on Pitch Pine Crescent had been sold. The relatives and friends who used to gather there now came together in court. Bill's sister Liz was a steady presence. She walked into the courtroom slowly, with a cane, and sat near the front. She would be there nearly every day. She wore a court-issued headset hearing aid and took notes constantly. Melissa's father Mike was sitting on the defense side, with his arms crossed over his chest.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  After Caleb's murder, police had taken a close look at Mike. They placed him under surveillance, seized garbage from his home, and got search warrants for his vehicles. But detectives found no evidence he was involved in the Harrison family deaths. Every time I write about the Harrisons, someone asks, "Wasn't Mike Merritt a police officer? Could Melissa have escaped scrutiny because police were protecting one of their own?" But I found no evidence that Mike influenced the investigation, or had any sway with Peel police at all. He'd worked for a different police force in Toronto.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  Throughout the trial, Melissa and Chris sat together in a prisoner's box with high plexiglass walls in the center of the room. She was 37 now. He was 39. If Melissa hadn't been in the box, I wouldn't have recognized her. She looked half the size she'd been when she was arrested. Her highlights had grown out, and now she had dark hair that hung to her lower back. She stood and cried as she whispered her plea: "Not guilty." Chris looked like he'd had a glow-up. He wore a dark suit with a purple dress shirt and tie, and glasses with thick, dark frames that made him look sort of bookish.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  Throughout the trial, he took a ton of notes, like he was part of the legal team. Chris also pled not guilty to all three murder charges, despite his confession and the DNA evidence. The prosecution's opening statement connected the dots between the child custody battle and the deaths of all three Harrisons in a way that made it difficult to imagine how the earlier police investigations went nowhere. It was frustrating for the family to hear how obvious it all sounded in hindsight.

• 16:44Speaker 04

  I think there was a long simmering—what took you so fucking long to get here? When I heard that they hadn't bothered to follow up on the alibis after Bridget's death, how flipping basic can you be? You don't even have to watch CSI to figure that stuff out.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  The case was argued by two senior Crown attorneys. That's what we call them in Canada, Crown attorneys. It basically means "the state." Anyway, Crown Brian McGuire was tall, with wavy copper hair, and he was known as a bit of a hothead. His partner Eric Taylor was shorter and bald. He was the calmer one. The Crown's office declined my request to speak with McGuire and Taylor, so you won't hear from them. The two prosecutors argued that Melissa and Chris plotted together to kill Caleb and Bridget. Chris was the muscle, the person who actually killed them.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  But Melissa helped plan and cover it up. Prosecutors said she was equally responsible. The prosecutors also argued that the couple believed they would inherit millions from the Harrison estate. There's something I thought about a lot during the trial and after. Early on, a court services officer warned Liz and the family that they weren't allowed to show emotion in the courtroom. An outburst could sway the jury, maybe even cause a mistrial. But imagine sitting there for months, looking at crime scene photos on a big screen, steps

• 18:39Speaker 01

  away from the people accused of killing your loved ones, hearing testimony that makes you seethe, and having to stay calm. Liz sat through it all. Doug, too, coped as best he could. But a few moments still haunt him.

• 18:58Speaker 04

  When I saw the picture of the side of my sister's head, my stomach convulsed. When I saw Vittori say—or show—the interviewing detective how he ripped my sister's head, that made me want to vomit. But other than those two situations, I thought, "You're caught. Squirm all you want, you're caught."

• 19:32Speaker 01

  Hearing Chris describe how he killed Bridget made Doug look back at the police investigation with fresh rage.

• 19:40Speaker 04

  What they missed or must have missed just boggles my mind. He didn't leave a trace behind. He literally mauled her to death. And you're telling me there wasn't a hair or a fiber? I'm just saying, how could they not find anything?

• 20:05Speaker 01

  When Chris got on the witness stand, he said he lied about committing two first-degree murders because he believed he was making a deal so Melissa could get out of jail and be with their kids. He admitted to killing Caleb, but said he only meant to rough him up, to get a few extra days with the children. I studied the faces of the jury members as Chris spoke. Some of them looked, to me, visibly annoyed. I thought, they are not buying this story. Honestly, I wasn't either. Prosecutors jumped on the flaws in his tale. If he wasn't planning to kill Caleb,

• 20:50Speaker 01

  why would he need gloves and throwaway sneakers? And why didn't he bring a mask to hide his identity?

• 21:00Speaker 01

  Chris's testimony only made Doug more confident he'd be convicted.

• 21:06Speaker 04

  It's the actions of a guilty person. It's not like a kid's game. There are no take backs.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  But Chris had only confessed to two of the three charges against him. He was also charged with the second-degree murder of Bill. Police and prosecutors knew that charge was going to be the hardest to prove, a real long shot. Because the original investigation failed to treat his death as a homicide, they were left with massive gaps in evidence. So at trial, prosecutors built their case another way, by arguing that Bill's death looked too much like Bridget's and Caleb's to be a coincidence. Bill had died at a key moment in the custody battle, just like his wife and son.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  And the injuries fit a pattern, too. Bill had a fractured breast bone, like Caleb, who'd been struck in the chest with a baseball bat. He also had neck abrasions, like both Caleb and Bridget, who were ultimately found to have been strangled. A key witness for the Crown was Ontario's chief forensic pathologist, Dr. Michael Pallanen, the guy who had wanted to exhume Bill's body after Bridget died.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  At trial, Dr. Pallanen testified that he believed Bill was assaulted before he died, that he was struck in the head and chest. But Dr. Pallanen couldn't say exactly how Bill died because the original pathologist hadn't done a proper forensic autopsy.

• 22:50Speaker 07

  The problems with the autopsy are well documented in that there was limited documentation and no photographs.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  That's Dr. Christopher Milroy again. You heard from him in our first episode. He's the forensic pathologist based in Ottawa, who reviewed the case but wasn't directly involved.

• 23:09Speaker 07

  I appreciate that times change and standards develop and we've become more rigorous. But it wasn't difficult to photograph things in 2009.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Dr. Pallanen told the jury he couldn't exclude neck compression. In other words, Bill might have been strangled, but no one can ever know for sure. Defense lawyers said the pathologists were engaging in revisionist history. Bill wasn't murdered, they argued. The original conclusion, a heart arrhythmia, was the right one. Dr. Milroy doesn't agree.

• 23:53Speaker 07

  It's clearly not a natural death, based upon the fact you've got injuries and trauma and you don't have an obvious natural disease to account for the death.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  That leaves two real possibilities: accident or homicide. Prosecutors walked the jury through Bill's final hours. Since the trial, I've been able to piece together an even fuller picture of what his day looked like with the help of case files.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  The day Bill died, he went into work around 6:00 a.m. and ran into a colleague, a man who lived in the same townhouse complex as Melissa. The colleague told Bill that Melissa and Chris had packed up their house and were planning to leave. Bill was shocked. When Bridget last spoke to Bill, after his shift around 2:30 that afternoon, he didn't tell her what he'd learned. At trial, prosecutors said Bill was a peacemaker and would have tried to handle it calmly. Because, as Crown attorney McGuire put it, if you tell Bridget, she's going to push the alarm button. That afternoon,

• 25:10Speaker 01

  Bill showed up at the kids' school unexpectedly, even though it wasn't his day with them. But his secretary told him Melissa had picked them up early. Around 3:00 p.m., Bill swiped his card at the YMCA gym. We don't know when he left, but at some point, he picked up dinner from a Portuguese chicken restaurant around the corner from Pitch Pine and went home. Just after 9:00 p.m., Bridget found him in the bathroom. His body was stiff. He'd been dead for a while. So where were Melissa and Chris in the hours after Bill left the gym? Banking records showed that Melissa's debit card

• 25:53Speaker 01

  was used to buy gas in Mississauga around 8:00 p.m. That transaction placed the couple in the city less than an hour before Bridget called 911.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  By 7:30 the next morning, Melissa's debit card pinged again, this time in a town 280 miles away. These banking records suggested that Melissa and Chris didn't just leave Mississauga the same day Bill died. They left in the hours after.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  During the trial, prosecutors acknowledged there would always be unanswered questions about Bill's death. But their theory was that Bill must have spoken to or confronted Chris about what he'd learned. And Chris killed him before he and Melissa left Mississauga.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  The defense pointed to the airport wiretap and argued it showed something very different, that Melissa and Chris didn't even seem to know when Bill died.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  Here, Melissa says, "They're trying to get us on Bill's." And Chris replies, "We weren't here when Bill died." Prosecutors said Melissa and Chris were just repeating lines from a story they cooked up. "Remember? We weren't here when Bill died." Wink, wink. Crown attorney McGuire wrapped up this part of the case with a challenge to the jury. "Police never connected Bill's death to the abduction," he said. "But you can."

• 27:50Speaker 01

  When Chris first took the witness stand, everyone was wondering the same thing. Would he turn on Melissa? Prosecutors grilled him, trying to get him to admit she was in on the murders. But he stuck to his story that Melissa had nothing to do with it. So the Crown attorneys sought to prove her guilt without Chris by pointing to her motive. The custody battle, they argued, was Melissa's fight. She wanted control of the children. And she wanted the Harrisons out of their lives. Letters Melissa had written to her in-laws and ex became evidence.

• 28:36Speaker 05

  If Caleb isn't caring for the children, no one other than myself should be. I find it amazing how you can take court orders and apply them to best suit your desires. Anything to keep the children from me.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  Prosecutors argued that each death happened at a time when it would benefit Melissa, when a member of the Harrison family was standing in the way of her control of the kids. They believed Melissa was the mastermind. That's what the family believed, too.

• 29:09Speaker 04

  In our mind, by that stage, she's the evil person. She is the person who lied. Chris was worried his life isn't made better by Caleb being dead unless you look at the money.

• 29:24Speaker 04

  So it's only her. Do I think that she's a killer? Absolutely. There's no doubt in my mind that, you know, she just pointed the thug and he pulled the trigger.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Crown attorney McGuire argued it made no sense for Chris to kill the father of Melissa's children unless she was 100% on board. It was too risky. Chris needed an alibi ready and had too much to lose if Melissa learned what he'd done and freaked out. And to pull off the killings, he would need insider information only Melissa could give him. Melissa's defense lawyer, Joel Hector, said the evidence showed that Melissa was, at most, an accessory after the fact. She only learned what Chris had done after Caleb was dead.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  The Crown's case didn't just have holes, Hector argued. It was all holes. Prosecutors had no DNA tying her to the scenes, no confession, no eyewitnesses. The case was entirely circumstantial. Hector was a character, a young lawyer who looked like he came from another century, with a long beard, a handlebar mustache, and suspenders under his court robes. Hector told me he doesn't speak to the press, so you won't hear from him in this show, which is too bad. He was a strong advocate for Melissa, and I wanted to have his perspective. Melissa and her family also declined to speak with us.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  In court, Hector said Melissa and Chris would have to be criminal masterminds to pull off what the prosecutors were alleging. If the Crown was right, he said, Chris had somehow managed to hide his involvement in two murders for years from highly-trained investigators who looked at him with considerable suspicion. If the jury did believe Chris committed the murders, Hector argued, the evidence showed he was capable of acting alone.

• 31:42Speaker 05

  Observe the North American Dad. 50s, great polo collection. He enters his vehicle information on Carvana. An offer appears in minutes. Remarkable. He squints, reads it again, smiles and says, dang, that's a good offer. The highest form of approval. No haggling, no hassle. No one called him "boss." He's still on the couch. Astonishing. Sell your car today on carvana.com. Pickup fees may apply.

• 32:12Speaker 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,

• 32:57Speaker 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.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  The case against Melissa came down to a few pieces of evidence. First, the murder sneakers. Melissa had predicted, accurately, that the Walmart shoes Chris wore the night he killed Caleb were going to be a problem for her.

• 33:32Speaker 05

  You should not have seen the shoes?

• 33:37Speaker 01

  At trial, prosecutors argued that Melissa knew Chris went into the Walmart to buy the murder sneakers that night. And she intentionally left the Walmart stop out of her police statement as part of a rehearsed alibi to cover up the crime. Melissa's lawyer argued there was no evidence she knew about the shoes before Caleb was dead. Then there was the 4:00 AM alibi. Melissa and Chris had both told police nearly identical stories about the night of Caleb's murder. Chris was at home, in bed, when Melissa woke up to feed the baby. Prosecutors argued that Melissa said they slept close,

• 34:19Speaker 01

  and there was no way Chris could have gotten out of bed without her knowing. Hector, Melissa's lawyer, accused the Crown of overstating this evidence. He argued that Melissa never said there was no way Chris could have left without her knowing, only that she likely would have noticed. Here's Melissa's police interview.

• 34:43Speaker 06

  So it's possible that Chris may not have been there, but you're pretty sure that if he gets out of bed, you would know?

• 34:49Speaker 05

  I'm pretty sure, because Chris and I usually sleep touching some part of our body. There's all the times where we're not. But the majority of the time, someone is usually touching the other person.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  This is where Hector's showmanship came in. He said if they were going to cook up an alibi, you'd think they'd have come up with something better, something that covered the whole night, like a case of explosive diarrhea. Prosecutor McGuire clapped back in his closing argument. He said, "Ladies and gentlemen, the art of a false alibi might be in its subtlety." The wiretaps were another major battleground. The Crown argued that the recordings showed Melissa didn't sound like a woman learning the details about a murder for the first time. She sounded like someone who'd been in on it from the get-go.

• 35:44Speaker 01

  I thought about this a lot while I was in court. At no point in the wiretap conversations did we hear Melissa say, "I still can't believe you did this. You need to get me out of this mess you made." If Chris had secretly killed Melissa's ex and his parents and put her whole life at risk, wouldn't you expect lingering anger? The defense lawyers argued that the wiretaps were unreliable, that the transcripts prepared by police contained errors that, when corrected, changed the meaning of what was said. In one wiretap, the police transcript had Chris saying about Caleb,

• 36:29Speaker 01

  "I killed him fucking perfect." The defense argued that Chris actually said, "I killed him fucking prove it." I killed him fucking prove it.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  Can you hear what that says? I can't.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  This part of the trial was frustrating for everyone. After all the work police had put into planting the wiretaps, this is how the tape sounded? The airport wiretap was a little easier to hear and probably the most important piece of evidence against Melissa. This was the conversation between the couple recorded when they believed they'd been accidentally placed in the same room. Prosecutors argued that the way they spoke showed they were two co-conspirators trying to get their story straight. Melissa tells Chris, "You shouldn't have said anything to the police." And Chris says, I was thinking about you and the children.

• 37:35Speaker 01

  "I was thinking about you and the children." Then Melissa says something that would end up being a key piece of evidence against her at trial. I think the audio tapes would have fucked us anyway. It's hard to hear the first few words. Police transcribed the clear part as, "The audio tapes would have fucked us anyways." They believed Melissa was saying, "You shouldn't have confessed, but oh, well, the audio tapes," meaning the wiretaps, "would have fucked us anyways." Prosecutors argued that Melissa said, "I think the audio tapes would have fucked us anyways."

• 38:20Speaker 01

  In their view, Melissa was acknowledging that the wiretaps incriminated both her and Chris. Melissa's lawyer said the words were "they think," as in, "The police think the audio tapes would have fucked them." In the defense view, Melissa wasn't admitting anything. She was just talking about what the police believed. That one word, "they" or "I," would be debated in court, not just in this criminal trial, but for many years after.

• 39:05Speaker 01

  There was another piece of evidence against Melissa that the jury never got to see: the internet searches from the old laptop. Here's what went wrong.

• 39:19Speaker 01

  The couple shared the computer, so investigators tried to match the searches to activity in their email accounts, to see if they could prove who was using the laptop when the searches were typed. But while doing that, officers made a bunch of unauthorized searches that breached Melissa and Chris's rights under Canadian law, and the defense filed a motion to exclude the evidence. The lawyers argued that the police not only messed up, but tried to cover up their mistakes, and worse, lied about it in court. The Crown said these were honest errors by officers dealing with a huge, complicated

• 40:02Speaker 01

  investigation and evolving rules around digital evidence. But the judge sided with the defense. He found evidence of disreputable, misleading, and negligent police conduct. The judge said the internet searches were reliable data. He even said the grandparent custody search was important to the case against Melissa. But he ruled the jury couldn't hear the evidence. Here's former prosecutor Steve Sheriff again.

• 40:34Speaker 02

  It's painful to justice, to see the truth excluded. I think this could have put her over the finish line for her.

• 40:43Speaker 01

  I've often wondered how jury members feel when they learn later about evidence they weren't allowed to hear due to police screw-ups. Would it have made a difference? We'll never know. In Canada, jurors are barred from talking publicly about what happened during deliberations.

• 41:01Speaker 04

  If the jury had heard those searches, they would have been, no doubt.

• 41:10Speaker 01

  This trial was so complex that the judge's instructions to the jury took four days to read in court. It was more than 400 pages. As the trial came to an end, it seemed to me that the case against Chris was pretty solid. He'd likely go to prison. Melissa's case was harder to read. She'd spent four years in jail, waiting for her day in court, her chance to be reunited with her kids. To me, she looked confident. She looked like a person who believed she was about to get her freedom.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  The verdict came on a cold, snowy day in January 2018. That morning, I got in my car at 7:00 a.m. and drove from the east end of Toronto to Mississauga. The courthouse was closed for the weekend, but a staff member was letting people in. Everyone waited in the hallway outside the courtroom. Liz and her daughter, Doug and his wife, Wanda and Mike.

• 42:33Speaker 05

  It was empty.

• 42:35Speaker 06

  We're all sitting in the hallway.

• 42:36Speaker 05

  And we're all in the hallway. You know, we're waiting, and then we go in and we get the verdict.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  The courtroom was packed. I took one of the last seats, near Melissa's father. Everyone waited for the jury to be brought in. Chris and Melissa were in the box with the tall plexiglass walls. Chris looked nervous. He took off his glasses, wiped them, and put them back on. Melissa laughed quietly with her lawyer. She seemed pretty relaxed. After 10 minutes, the jury filed in, and the foreman stood to read the verdicts.

• 43:16Speaker 05

  The foreman was very soft-spoken. I remember that, and it's like, are we actually hearing what we're hearing?

• 43:25Speaker 01

  Wanda was sitting next to one of Doug's daughters.

• 43:27Speaker 05

  I remember I just had her hand. I think everybody had somebody's hand.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  Everyone leaned forward, straining to hear. At one point, I heard Melissa's father mutter, "I can't hear a fucking thing." I felt kind of bad for him. His daughter might be going to prison for life. He just wanted to understand what was happening. Chris was found guilty of killing Caleb and Bridget. It turned out the jury didn't buy his story about the false confession. But he was found not guilty of killing Bill.

• 44:15Speaker 01

  This was a disappointment for Liz, though everyone knew getting a conviction for Bill's death would be a long shot. The verdict everyone was holding their breath for was Melissa's. On her charge in Bridget's death, the jury couldn't reach a unanimous verdict. So the judge declared a mistrial on that one charge. But for the death of her ex, Melissa was found guilty. The courtroom spectators were under strict orders not to react.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  No shouting, no cheers, no crying. But there was an audible intake of breath, and then an exhale.

• 45:15Speaker 05

  Not a slam dunk in terms of all three, but it was a feeling of relief.

• 45:24Speaker 01

  Melissa hung her head and cried. Her father sat with his arms crossed. His eyes were wet. I had a feeling the Merritt family was surprised by the verdict. I wondered if Mike believed his daughter was innocent, or if it even mattered, if you would support your child no matter what. A few days later, everyone returned to court for the sentencing hearing. Members of the jury showed up, this time as spectators. They didn't have to be there, but they wanted to. They looked shaken. Some of them cried as relatives read their victim impact statements. When it was Liz's turn to read hers, she walked slowly across the courtroom with her

• 46:09Speaker 01

  cane and sat in the witness box. She looked so small, but spoke powerfully. We can't broadcast court recordings in Ontario, so I asked Liz to read her statement for me later.

• 46:26Speaker 06

  I cannot fathom how people who love their family, love their friends, love their community so greatly could have been dealt such an injustice. We have all suffered from recurring violent nightmares of our loved ones' last moments, and we will never forget the terror that plagued us for years, not knowing which family member might die under suspicious circumstances next or when.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  Wanda read a statement for one of Doug's daughters that captured the bitter irony of the outcome.

• 47:05Speaker 05

  Chris Vettori, Melissa Merritt, I hope that one day you realize that you destroyed an innocent family at the cost of your own.

• 47:15Speaker 01

  Melissa and Chris did not react to any of this. Melissa had been convicted of killing her ex to secure unfettered access to their children. But now, because of her actions, the family she built had been torn apart. Melissa and Chris were sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. Chris actually got two life sentences, one for Caleb and one for Bridget. But the judge didn't have the power to stack the sentences back to back. He had to run them at the same time. So in practical terms, Chris got the same sentence as Melissa.

• 48:00Speaker 01

  The earliest they could apply for parole would be 2039. Every member of the Harrison family stood shoulder to shoulder as the couple were led out of the courtroom in handcuffs. No one moved until they were gone. It felt final, settled, like the last act in a senseless chain of loss. But Melissa's story was far from over. Her sentencing would not be her last day in court. Next time on What Happened to the Harrisons.

• 48:45Speaker 01

  Melissa gets a new shot at freedom.

• 48:47Speaker 05

  Is she gonna get out now? It's like, do we have to start locking our doors triply as of, you know, 4 o'clock today? Nobody knew really what the situation was going to be.

• 48:59Speaker 01

  The case for her innocence.

• 49:01Speaker 02

  And I do believe that she didn't have anything to do with the planning of it.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  And how the authorities bungled two death investigations.

• 49:11Speaker 05

  And it isn't over yet. It isn't over yet. Oh, Lord.

• 49:27Speaker 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-est 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?

• 50:09Speaker 01

  Head to GetTheBinge.com to subscribe directly. 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-Kolazny and Ashley-Anne Craigbaum. Fact-checking by Fendel Fulton. Additional production support by Myron Kaplan.

• 50:53Speaker 01

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

• 51:21Speaker 01

  When fall comes back around, there's a sense of a reset. And new pieces from Lululemon's fall drop are an inspiration to push your goals and elevate your routines. As your calendar fills, easy-to-layer styles meet the demands of your day. And as you challenge yourself to try even more, versatile sets transition with you. The Lululemon fall lineup brings new levels of comfort and confidence, whether you're starting something fresh or starting something over. Check out the latest arrivals in store and on lululemon.com now.