What Happened to the Harrisons? | 3. Think Dirty

A year after burying her husband, Bridget is certain his death was no accident - and she's ready to say so, out loud, in a courtroom. But she never gets the chance. 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.

• 1:00Speaker 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.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  Bridgette was on a mission to find her grandchildren.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  In the months after they went missing, she checked in with the police every few days. She had a private investigator looking for leads, and she made a missing persons poster that went out across the country. Caleb's son had spiky hair. His daughter still had her baby teeth.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  Bridgette had just lost her husband, and now this was her life. Her son was behind bars, serving time for a drunk-driving death, and she was consumed with finding her grandkids. She wrote about that time.

• 2:19Speaker 02

  It is difficult to find words to describe the agony of worry experienced every night before trying to sleep, wondering where the children were, worrying if they were all right.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  Also on the missing persons poster was a photo of Melissa and her new husband from their 2007 wedding. Melissa wore a gown that showed her baby bump. Chris had a distinct face, round and meaty with a coarse goatee. In the fall of 2009, they were discovered in Nova Scotia, renting a home under the name Russo. Chris got sloppy and paid rent with a check that had his real name on it. The landlord Googled him, found the missing persons poster, and called the police. They'd been hiding out in a tiny hamlet in the Annapolis Valley, 1,000 miles from

• 3:17Speaker 01

  Pitch Pine Crescent. Melissa had dyed the children's hair and kept them out of school. They'd been gone for seven and a half months, forever in the life of a kid.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  Here's Chris speaking to a cop about Melissa's arrest.

• 3:35Speaker 03

  The police showed up at the house. They asked if Melissa was there. At first, I said no. Yeah. They said that they had a search warrant anyways, so they said it would be my best interest if she's there to just tell them. So I told them, "The kids were freaking out. Melissa was freaking out." And then, basically, it was like a whirlwind.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  If Melissa had run because she wanted the children she had with Caleb to herself, her plan backfired spectacularly. Because soon, she wouldn't see them at all.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  She was arrested when her newborn was just two months old and brought back to Ontario to face criminal charges of parental abduction. Melissa's parents posted her bail, and she was released to live with them on the condition that she have no contact with Bridgette, Caleb, or her two eldest children. Bridgette now had sole custody, while Melissa was facing up to 10 years in prison. Her actions destroyed her credibility in family court. It would be years before she'd get custody of her kids again.

• 4:48Speaker 02

  Some things, once done, cannot be undone.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  This is Bridgette again. Well, it's her friend, Val McGivern, reading from a victim impact statement Bridgette wrote for Melissa's sentencing.

• 5:00Speaker 02

  The loss of trust as a result of this betrayal has been complete. We are required to maintain constant vigilance in order to protect the children.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  The kids had missed their grandfather's funeral. Bridgette would never forgive Melissa for that.

• 5:18Speaker 02

  Without a doubt, I can say that this was the most desperate seven and a half months of my life.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  Bridgette couldn't shake the feeling that something was deeply wrong, that she and her family were in danger. She believed that her husband's death and the abduction of her grandchildren were connected. She just didn't know how.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  But then, she got Bill's autopsy report back, and it showed no evidence of a natural death. None. She was floored. And Bridgette learned something else. Before Bill died, he'd found out from a coworker who knew Melissa that she was planning to make a midnight run with the kids. Bill had known about their plan to leave.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Here's Bridgette's friend Pam.

• 6:20Speaker 04

  Bridgette started to see things. Her suspicions were very high of Christopher and Melissa involved in this.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  Pam said Bridgette had been on alert for years. If Melissa could lie about having cancer, what else was she capable of?

• 6:39Speaker 04

  I thought a bit of it was paranoia. Her immediate reaction was hesitation on the coroner's verdict. And I just thought, "Well, we shouldn't jump to conclusions. These guys are professionals."

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Bridgette believed that Melissa had taken off with the kids before Bill died. But she was convinced that her son's ex, or someone close to her, had something to do with Bill's death.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  So a year after she lost her husband, Bridgette made a bold choice. She wrote her suspicions into her victim impact statement to read at the abduction hearing. She wrote, "Bill knew Melissa was planning to take off, and he didn't have a heart issue." She finished with what probably, to her, felt like a mic-drop moment.

• 7:36Speaker 02

  Some people believe in coincidences, some do not. Whatever one's belief, these are the facts.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  But Bridgette would never get to read her statement in court. She'd never get the satisfaction of speaking her truth. Because before the hearing, police would be called to her home on Pitch Pine Crescent for another sudden death.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  Hers.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  From Sony Music Entertainment, this is What Happened to the Harrisons. I'm Amy Dempsey-Raven. Episode 3. Think Dirty.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  Bridgette's grandchildren were six and eight when they returned to Pitch Pine Crescent a few weeks before Christmas in 2009. Snow was starting to fall in light dustings, and the smell of chimney smoke hung in the cold air. Caleb had been released from jail early on good behavior. Now he and his mother, who struggled to get along in the best of times, were raising his children together. After the kids returned, they spoke about having visitors during their time in Nova Scotia. It took Bridgette a while to realize who they were talking about. She and her brother Doug finally figured it out. It was Melissa's parents.

• 9:08Speaker 05

  They actually went to visit them down in Nova Scotia where they were hiding out.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  During the time that police were searching for their grandkids...

• 9:18Speaker 05

  Mr. Merritt, anywhere they were. He didn't help anybody find them.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  Bridget couldn't believe it. This was such a betrayal. The Merritts and the Harrisons entered a new phase of the family drama. Now, the grandparents were in a custody battle. Melissa's parents were desperate for her to see the children. But Bridget had sole custody, and Melissa had a no-contact order. The Merritts called and wrote to Bridget, begging her to allow visits at their home. Here's a friend of the show, reading their letter.

• 9:59Speaker 06

  As you can appreciate, Melissa is very important to the children, and we are sure this past week has been hard on everyone, not seeing their mom, stepdad, and two little sisters. We're asking for some supervised access time, with us both as the supervisors. We appreciate your cooperation in this very emotional matter.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  This request astounded Bridget. She reminded the Merritts that she didn't get a single phone call or letter from them while Melissa was gone. Then Bridget dropped a bombshell. She told the Merritts she knew they visited Melissa and the kids in Nova Scotia.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  Because of these facts, it would be totally inappropriate for you to supervise any access to the children. We cannot trust you at this time.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  Bridget said Melissa was a serious flight risk, and had a history of making false allegations about the Harrison family. She would agree to visitation, but only at a supervised access center, and only if a child psychologist agreed it was appropriate. Bridget's letter angered Melissa's parents.

• 11:11Speaker 06

  Given that we did not have time to attend a lawyer and have him or her write the letter for us, this letter will not be as convoluted as the one you sent us. It will be in plain English.

• 11:22Speaker 01

  The Merritts said they lost trust in Bridget after she went to court to get full custody. They denied visiting Melissa in Nova Scotia.

• 11:31Speaker 06

  We did not know where Melissa was, and we know you do not believe us. If we had any influence on her, she would never have left in the first place. She's a grown person and she makes her own decisions.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  They said this even as they argued there was absolutely no chance of flight risk with them supervising visits.

• 11:50Speaker 06

  If we knew where she was, we would have done everything to try to bring her home.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  Eventually, the Merritts filed a motion in family court seeking to have Bridget stripped of custody. They argued she was trying to punish Melissa, rather than looking out for the best interests of the kids. Bridget found the Merritts' arguments ironic. Melissa had kept the children from Caleb for four months after they separated. Now, the tables had turned. A judge denied the Merritts' motion. The courts agreed they shouldn't have custody or supervise Melissa's access to the children. They knew where she was hiding while in breach of a court order and told no one.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  It wasn't a crime, but it didn't look good. It took nearly five months to arrange the supervised access. During that time, Melissa didn't see her kids at all. On the morning of April 21, 2010, Bridget took her grandchildren to school, dropped her son off at work, then returned to her home on Pitch Pine Crescent, alone. It had been nearly a year to the day since her husband died. Bridget normally picked the kids up from school, but that afternoon, she didn't arrive at bell time. When she didn't show, the teachers let her grandson bike home on his own.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  He was eight, and allowed more freedom than his six-year-old sister, who stayed behind. Caleb's son had dark floppy hair and a big, easy grin like his father. He pedaled his bike toward Pitch Pine, through the winding streets in his suburban neighborhood. He had a key in his backpack, but when he got home, the front door was unlocked. He opened it and saw his nana on the floor, right there in the entryway. She was lying flat on her back, still and rigid. Her eyes were wide open and vacant.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  I've thought about this moment a lot since having my own kids. How deeply this memory would implant in the mind of a child. How shaken and forever changed he'd be by it.

• 14:28Speaker 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

• 15:12Speaker 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.

• 15:29Speaker 07

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• 16:03Speaker 01

  When the police arrived at the Harrison residence, they found Bridget in the front hallway, at the bottom of a carpeted staircase. Her arms were resting at her sides, her feet pointed toward the front door. Her head lay on the bottom stair, close to the rail. The location of the body presented one possible theory: a fall. But there were bright red and purple marks on her neck and chin that looked concerning. Caleb arrived home, and the uniformed officers at the scene let him look inside. His mother's body was steps away from the bathroom where she had found his father dead a year earlier.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  Caleb called me, and he said they'd found his mom dead at the bottom of the stairs. So I said, "I'll be right over." Caleb wanted his Aunt Liz there for support, and for her opinion on the injuries. I saw the body right away. Initially, you thought, "Well, if you fell down the stairs, wouldn't you fall forward?" Liz remembers taking in the scene. The framed artwork and photographs on the staircase wall were undisturbed. Bridget was wearing Crocs. If she'd fallen, Liz thought, wouldn't the pictures have been knocked down?

• 17:32Speaker 01

  Wouldn't the slip-on shoes have come off? The coroner arrived and examined the bruising and scrapes on Bridget's chin and neck. He was concerned. His notes say he ordered an autopsy to rule out a traumatic cause of death.

• 17:48Speaker 03

  Finding elderly people, or people of an older age at the bottom of a set of stairs, is not unusual. People fall down stairs.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  This is Mark Mendelson. He's retired now, but he was a Toronto police officer for 30 years.

• 18:04Speaker 03

  I spent almost 15 years as a lead investigator in the homicide squad.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  Now, he's a crime consultant and a private investigator. The Peel Regional Police Officers involved in this investigation declined to speak with me, so I asked Mendelson to review the case and share his take.

• 18:21Speaker 03

  So, you know what the police would want to be determining was, is there any forced entry? Is there any sign of violence in the home?

• 18:30Speaker 01

  At the scene, police officers noted that the home was tidy. A newspaper lay open on the kitchen table alongside an unfinished coffee. Police searched for signs of a struggle or a break-in, but found none, though the front and back doors were unlocked.

• 18:47Speaker 03

  Then, you want to look at the family dynamics. Who did this person live with?

• 18:54Speaker 06

  Is there anybody else in that family unit or secondary to the family unit where there's some animus?

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Right away, police started looking at Caleb, the son with a violent past, a criminal record, and a difficult relationship with his mom. Lately, they'd been arguing a lot. Bridget had even been thinking of asking him to move out, setting him up in a townhouse of his own. Of course, lots of people have tense relationships with their moms that never lead to violence. Caleb agreed to give a statement and to take a polygraph. He wanted to do it as soon as possible. Maybe he had a feeling people would suspect him.

• 19:41Speaker 03

  I just need to talk a little bit about your kind of daily routines. A normal day? Yeah, like what your mom's normal routine would be.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  It's just a few hours after Bridget's body was discovered.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  Caleb is sitting in an interview room under fluorescent lights, wearing a visor and a windbreaker. He looks shaken.

• 20:07Speaker 03

  She's up early, like five in the morning-ish. Kids and I get up at 7:05, then she's cleaning up and getting, she has breakfast before we get up and then, or around that time and then usually around seven.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  She drops the kids off at school, then she drops Caleb off at work. His driver's license was suspended for a few years after his drunk driving charge. Then she returns home around 8:30, where lately, Caleb says, she's been dealing with a lot of administrative work related to his father's death and the abduction of his children.

• 20:46Speaker 03

  I mean, we have a family court case on Monday. We have my, the reason the children are with me is their mother goes to court tomorrow and is pleading guilty to child abduction. So you guys, someone here was heading up that investigation.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  Caleb is talking about Melissa's sentencing hearing, the one where Bridget was planning to read her victim impact statement.

• 21:13Speaker 03

  They have that, that's her court case tomorrow.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  Caleb tells the police officer about an incident that took place less than two weeks earlier, something that freaked his mother out and made him uneasy. Caleb says he returned home after an outing with his children and saw Chris Fatore outside his house. Remember, Chris is Melissa's new husband, the guy who Caleb's children called daddy, the guy who, after one family court hearing, the Harrisons said, yelled at Caleb, "You'll pay for this, you fucking bastard."

• 21:53Speaker 03

  The van was parked here in front of the third house and her boyfriend was walking up the step when we came home.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  Melissa was in the van, which was parked on the street, but she wasn't supposed to be anywhere near them. This was a breach of her bail conditions. Chris knocked on the front door and tried to hand Bridget a letter and some photos for the kids. Bridget was spooked. She worried they were trying to snatch the children again, or worse. She believed they might harm her. She asked Chris to leave. Afterward, Bridget called the police. Melissa was arrested and spent two nights in jail.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  The video I have from the court record doesn't include the next part of Caleb's interview, but I have a full transcript, so we know what he said next. Here's a friend of the show reading it.

• 22:50Speaker 00

  I mean, I would ask where Melissa and Chris were personally, but just for the reason of, it seems weird, you know? Why do you break your bail a week before you see your children to drop off a letter to them after you haven't seen them since November? It's just weird. Weird coincidence.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  Caleb finishes his thought in nervous bursts.

• 23:20Speaker 00

  And it could be, but I mean, like I said, I wouldn't. I don't suspect them, but weird.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  On another day, Melissa's husband, Chris, is in the same interview room.

• 23:36Speaker 03

  I think the first thing that popped through my mind, if anything was wrong, was automatically Caleb, just from his background.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  He's giving a voluntary statement to help with the investigation, and he's throwing Caleb under the bus, suggesting, not so subtly, that Caleb might have killed his own mother. Chris tells the police officer that he doesn't like Caleb. He doesn't like men who hit women.

• 24:04Speaker 03

  I just thought, I was like, you know, maybe they had an argument, maybe they fought, maybe he did something, I don't know. I said, I've never trusted him. I think he's violent.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  Police officers took statements from everyone in Bridget's orbit: her son, her brother, the basement tenant, the newspaper delivery boy, and then her former daughter-in-law.

• 24:28Speaker 07

  His dad was much, I don't know, I guess easier to get along with. He, he was more like, I guess, the peacekeeper of the family.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  Melissa is talking about the Harrisons.

• 24:40Speaker 07

  Bridget would come to pick the kids up and they wouldn't want to go and let them kick and scream and, you know, she would do whatever she had to do to get them in that car and get them, you know, to go and see their dad.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  Melissa says Bill treated her with respect, but Bridget talked down to her.

• 24:58Speaker 07

  I was like, she would always be telling me what to do and what I should do and shouldn't do and how to do it.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  Melissa traced Bridget's animosity toward her to one specific night five years earlier. Melissa says that's when everything changed.

• 25:12Speaker 07

  I called the police on Caleb for assaulting me and I became the worst person in the world.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  From the Harrisons' perspective, everything changed much earlier, a year before the assault, when Melissa was nine months postpartum and they discovered she'd lied about having cancer. The police officer asks Melissa what she believes may have happened to Bridget.

• 25:35Speaker 07

  Maybe, you know, like I said, I've heard the stress killed. I've heard, you know, like it can kill you, it can just eat away at your body or whatever. I've been told that because I've been stressed out, you know, since my kids were taken from me and my doctor's like, you need to take it easy, like, because it'll kill you.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  Melissa wasn't the only one who considered a death brought on by the emotional strain of a difficult year. At first, one of Bridget's nieces wondered if she died of a broken heart, but that was before the family saw the scene photos and the extent of her injuries.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  Melissa laid out another idea carefully for the officer.

• 26:20Speaker 07

  I don't know anything that would have happened to her. I don't, I've got, you know, my worries about things, but. And what would those worries be? Well, not so much worries, just when I was with Caleb, you know, I'm not, I don't want to be like, you know, I've already been told by Detective Amaroso that fingers are being pointed.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  Melissa's talking about the lead investigator, Detective Greg Amaroso. You'll hear his name come up again. Melissa seems to be suggesting that Detective Amaroso has said people are pointing fingers at her.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  But, Melissa points out, Caleb and Bridget argued a lot.

• 27:01Speaker 07

  When I was with Caleb, he didn't have a good relationship with his mom. His dad was kind of like the one that, like I said, he was always the one that sorted things out and stuff like that.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  Melissa wonders if things got out of control without a buffer between Bridget and Caleb.

• 27:18Speaker 07

  And again, I don't know how she died. I don't know what she looked like. I don't know if she was assaulted. I don't know if she looked, I don't know anything about that. So I don't want to be making any assumptions that he beat the hell out of her and she died because I don't know.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  Melissa brings it back to the custody battle.

• 27:36Speaker 07

  But those little things pop into your head because I know my past with him and I know what he's done and what he's capable of doing. That ultimately scares me because he's got my kids.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  If Melissa really believes Caleb may have killed Bridget, then she's raising a serious concern about the safety of their kids. But if she doesn't actually believe that, then this move could be yet another strategic play in her battle for custody.

• 28:13Speaker 05

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• 28:36Speaker 05

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• 28:43Speaker 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

• 29:27Speaker 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.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  The day after she was found dead, Bridget's body was taken into an examination room at the coroner's office in downtown Toronto. Unlike her husband, she would get a full forensic autopsy.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  Dr. Michael Pickup was assigned the case. He was a trim man in his 30s with a narrow face and small rectangular glasses, a nerdy sort of fellow. As he examined the body, he found many of the classic signs of neck compression, or strangulation. She had bruising and abrasions on the skin at the front of her neck, and fractures in the cartilage of the voice box. She also had petechial hemorrhages, tiny red dots on her face and eyes, caused by burst blood vessels. It's a major warning sign for strangulation. But Bridget had other injuries, broken bones in the back of her neck, that were not usually

• 30:43Speaker 01

  seen in neck compression cases, and more typical of a fall. This was a complex case.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  Two days after the death, Dr. Pickup explained these unusual findings to a group of Peel Police officers who came to the coroner's office in Toronto for a case meeting.

• 31:03Speaker 03

  The autopsy results were, you know, essentially clear as mud.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  That's Mendelson, the retired homicide cop, summing up how the case would have looked to police. At the meeting were Detective Amaroso, the lead investigator from the local division, and an officer from the homicide unit. Homicide was just monitoring the case for now. Dr. Pickup said the pathologists had never seen this combination of injuries before. Police had come to the meeting expecting to learn whether this was a homicide or an accident. But the coroner's office wasn't ready to make that ruling. Police left confused.

• 31:46Speaker 03

  I think they were looking for a definitive answer, and they didn't get that.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  There's a reason the pathologists from the coroner's office were being so cautious.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  The investigation into Bridget's death was happening in the shadow of a major Canadian scandal. In its wake, forensic pathologists had been warned not to overstate their conclusions in suspicious death investigations. The man at the center of the scandal was Dr. Charles Smith. He led Ontario's Pediatric Forensic Pathology Unit and was widely seen as an expert. The expert. He handled the sudden deaths of children and often treated them as potential crimes from the outset.

• 32:33Speaker 03

  He was never challenged by homicide detectives. He was never, never challenged by defense counsel. He, his expertise was never challenged by judges or the triers of fact, juries. If Charlie said it's A, B, and C, then it's A, B, and C.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  But in many cases, he was wrong. It turned out that Smith had no formal training as a forensic pathologist. Canada was way behind the rest of the world in creating rules and standards for the field. Smith's false and misleading testimony led to many wrongful convictions. One man spent 12 years in prison for the death of his four-year-old niece. It turned out she died of natural causes.

• 33:24Speaker 01

  The fallout was enormous. It led to a public probe known as the Gouge Inquiry. One of its key findings was that coroners and forensic pathologists should stop thinking dirty. To think dirty means to look at a case through a lens of suspicion, to start from the assumption that a crime may have been committed, and then look for evidence to support it.

• 33:50Speaker 03

  As we got through the Charlie Smith thing, think dirty became a bad word, a bad phrase.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  The message after Gouge was clear. Follow the evidence, wherever it leads, and if the evidence doesn't give you a clear answer, don't force one.

• 34:09Speaker 03

  It changed the state of mind of pathologists who saw what happened with Smith and who realized that maybe they shouldn't be as definitive as they had been up to that point on causes of death. And I'm not talking about somebody with a gunshot wound to the head.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  He means the trickier cases, the ones that could be an accident or a homicide, the ones like the Bridget Harrison death investigation. The Gouge Inquiry taught everyone that in the face of uncertainty, it's better to say that a death is undetermined than to rule it a homicide and be wrong. After the scandal, Ontario created a new forensic pathology training program. One of the first graduates was Dr. Michael Pickup, the guy doing Bridget's autopsy. So police left that first case conference without a definitive answer.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  Then, just a few hours later, everyone was called back to the coroner's office for a second meeting. The province's chief forensic pathologist had looked at the case. He'd learned this was the second death in the same house. He told police that the findings of Bridget's autopsy were worrisome. He was concerned that her husband had died a year earlier with unexplained injuries. He wanted to exhume the body, but Bill had been cremated. Once again, the police had come to this meeting hoping to hear a firm conclusion. Accident or homicide? But they didn't get one.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  It was still early in the investigation, though. For now, the coroner's office seemed to be saying to police, "We can't say definitively Bridget's death was a homicide. It's up to you to find out through police work." And yet, the uncertainty coming out of this meeting, it led senior Peel Police officers to make a decision that would doom the investigation. Because this case was only a suspicious death and not definitively a homicide, the homicide bureau decided not to take the case.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  Instead, it stayed with the divisional officers, who didn't have the experience or the resources to handle it.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  For a while, the police investigation continued. Officers canvassed Pitch Pine Crescent, they took fingerprints at the scene, they ran background checks on Melissa's husband and father. Caleb passed his polygraph, and he turned out to have a solid alibi. He'd been with a colleague at a work event in Toronto all day. The investigative team then turned their attention to firming up Melissa and Chris's alibis.

• 37:15Speaker 03

  We had breakfast.

• 37:17Speaker 03

  I went to the grocery store. After that, I called Melissa to see if she wanted me to go to another grocery store to pick something up. And I went home.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  The couple told police they were at the daycare Melissa was running from their rental house. Chris ran some errands to pick up two-for-one steaks, to Melissa's grandmother's house to move boxes. After the interviews, police considered them alibied. Melissa and Chris refused a polygraph, and they wouldn't consent to a voluntary release of their cellphone records.

• 37:56Speaker 01

  After the interview with Melissa and Chris, the investigation stalled. I remember getting the police record years ago and seeing there were no briefing notes after May 6th. I thought, "Two weeks? That's it?" I called a police source to make sure I wasn't missing pages. I wasn't. The police investigated Bridget's death for two weeks total.

• 38:24Speaker 03

  If you look at the totality of the investigation, there were all

• 38:28Speaker 05

  A lot of things there that ought to have raised serious flags.

• 38:33Speaker 01

  A final case meeting was booked for June 10th, a month away. Two officers spent weeks preparing a PowerPoint presentation for the meeting. They wanted to show the coroner's office that all leads had been exhausted. But they didn't spend any further time actually pursuing leads. I tried to speak with both officers, but they declined. At that final case meeting, the pathologist, Dr. Pickup, laid out three possible scenarios for how Bridget got her injuries. The first was that Bridget had been strangled in an unusual way, like with a bar arm chokehold, where the forearm is

• 39:17Speaker 01

  pressed across the front of the neck. The second was a scenario he called strangulation plus, a violent attack with choking and other blunt force injuries. The third possibility was an accidental fall, either down the stairs or onto them. But Dr. Pickup presented this as the least likely scenario. And yet, the police concluded in their PowerPoint that after an exhaustive investigation, that's their word, exhaustive, they'd found no evidence of foul play.

• 40:00Speaker 05

  You're not supposed to think dirty. But in this case, how can you not think dirty?

• 40:07Speaker 05

  You're not pulling a hypothesis out of the air. You do have facts. They're both dead within the ear of each other. They have unexplained injuries.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  That wasn't the end of it, though. In the final postmortem report, Dr. Pickup laid out again, in painstaking detail, the evidence that suggested Bridget Harrison was strangled alongside the possibility that she'd fallen down the stairs. But again, strangulation was presented as the more likely scenario.

• 40:41Speaker 01

  On September 2nd, 2010, only four months after Bridget's death, and with many unanswered questions, police closed the investigation.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  The case closure note said, "After an exhaustive investigation into this matter, there has been no evidence to suggest Bridget Harrison was the victim of foul play or any other criminal act."

• 41:09Speaker 01

  When I read this for the first time, my jaw dropped. What they wrote just wasn't true. To say there was no evidence of foul play? It was an unbelievable conclusion.

• 41:27Speaker 01

  The family, Bridget's son and her brother, was never told the case had been closed. Neither was Bill's sister Liz. She remembers speaking to a police officer one day who said they were stumped and that Liz should bring forward evidence if she finds any. A grieving family asked to find evidence for the police.

• 41:51Speaker 02

  What did you think of the fact that they were asking you for proof? Well, how would we have proof, you know? Why would we have proof?

• 42:01Speaker 01

  Because the coroner's office couldn't say with certainty whether Bridget's death was an accident or a homicide, they called it undetermined. They also changed their conclusion on Bill's death from natural to undetermined.

• 42:19Speaker 01

  There were now two undetermined deaths in the same house, but the investigation was over.

• 42:29Speaker 05

  You don't know what it's like to lose a sibling until you do. I never felt more like an orphan in my life. You just take them for granted until they're not there.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  Doug has blocked all memories of his sister's funeral. He recalls being in the parking lot before the service, but that's it.

• 42:52Speaker 05

  That spot in my brain is dead. I just don't go there.

• 42:58Speaker 01

  It was a huge event. A thousand people packed into the funeral home. Organizers had to open an overflow room. A teacher friend who spoke at the service asked for people to raise their hands if Bridget had influenced their career. Half the hands went up. Beneath the sadness was a quiet undercurrent among family and friends that her death could not have been an accident, that some terrible thing had happened to Bridget.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  One year later, in April 2011, Bill's sister Liz sat down to write a letter.

• 43:36Speaker 02

  This is a personal request for surveillance at the home of my nephew Caleb Harrison at 3635 Pitch Pine Crescent, especially over the next few weeks.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  She was writing to a Peel police officer, asking him to keep an eye on the house in April, the month when both her brother and sister-in-law had died.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  Liz read the letter to me one day recently. We were in the dining room of her bungalow in Mississauga, not far from the house where her brother's family once lived. Liz is in her 80s. She's an elegant woman with very short, white, gray hair and an arresting face. She had a cup of tea balanced on her walker.

• 44:20Speaker 02

  Considering the tragic events of the last two years that took place at the above address, I personally would be relieved to know if it were possible for you to direct increased watching over my nephew and his children.

• 44:37Speaker 01

  Liz asked the officer not to tell Caleb about her request. She didn't want to overstep.

• 44:44Speaker 02

  All of us as a family and close friends have a heightened awareness of the upcoming month. While I know the pattern could change, I feel we should try not to be as naive as last year. Suggestions would be helpful, as we feel so helpless.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  Nothing happened that year or the year after. But one morning, in the summer of 2013, Liz got a phone call from a friend.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  The friend said she'd heard a terrible rumor that something was going on at the Harrison residence. Liz got in her car, drove across town, and turned down Pitch Pine Crescent. She arrived to find a nightmare repeated.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  Next time on What Happened to the Harrisons, things finally come to a head.

• 45:48Speaker 04

  There had to be 10 cop cars arrive, police cars. And they started knocking on doors, asking questions with great fury. And I said to myself, Peel has finally had the light bulb go off, that three murders in one house might not be normal.

• 46:12Speaker 01

  And one man takes it upon himself to raise hell until people start putting two and two together.

• 46:18Speaker 05

  I said to him, "I understand we have a haunted house in this region," which was my sarcastic reference to the fact that these weren't accidental deaths, right? This wasn't ghosts and goblins, okay? These were murders.

• 46:35Speaker 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?

• 47:17Speaker 01

  Head to GetTheBinge.com to subscribe directly.

• 47:27Speaker 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-Kalazny 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,

• 48:11Speaker 01

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

• 48:28Speaker 01

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