What Happened to the Harrisons? | 4. Haunted House

Caleb has turned his life around. Then, one morning, he doesn't show up for work. When police arrive at the Harrison home for the third time in four years, they can no longer call it a coincidence. 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.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  After his mother's death, Caleb stayed in the house on Pitch Pine Crescent. But he took precautions. He changed the locks, made a will, and got a dog, a German shepherd named Daisy. Caleb had a dark sense of humor, and he sometimes joked that he'd be the next one to end up dead. But he didn't have time to dwell on his fears. He was a single dad now, with sole custody. Melissa had supervised visitation, but Caleb was in charge. Something shifted in him after Bridget died. He stepped up. He coached his kids' sports teams.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  He hired a piano teacher and a tutor because he knew it would have made his parents proud. He also had a girlfriend with two kids of her own, and she was planning to move in soon. All those years of conflict with his mom, and she never got to see the version of him that finally found his way.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  One morning in August 2013, a little over two years after Bridget died, Caleb didn't show up for work. His coworkers were concerned. One of them, a guy named Paolo Zaffino, drove to Pitch Pine Crescent to check on him. Paolo knocked on the door around noon, and a cleaning lady answered. She'd been there for three hours, scrubbing and vacuuming the main floor. She hadn't gone upstairs. Paolo went up to check on his friend. The room was dark, and Caleb was in bed, with the blankets pulled up to his chin.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  He had an eye mask on and a pillow over his forehead. He looked like he'd been tucked in to sleep. Paolo approached the bed, calling his name, but Caleb didn't answer. Paolo pressed two fingers to his friend's neck. It was ice cold.

• 3:51Speaker 02

  Officers went door to door in Mississauga today, looking for information about Caleb Harrison. The father of two was found dead inside his home this weekend.

• 3:59Speaker 03

  Police are now investigating if Harrison's death and his mother's are connected.

• 4:04Speaker 04

  We haven't linked anything. However, everything is on the table.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  For the third time in just over four years, Pitch Pine Crescent had become a spectacle. One of the paramedics who arrived at the house felt an eerie sense of dread. He said to his partner, "I've been here before." He'd been called to the scene when Bridget died. The flashing lights of police cars on Pitch Pine Crescent brought neighbors outside. The commotion set off a chain reaction of telephone calls. One neighbor phoned a friend, who phoned Pam Main.

• 4:47Speaker 05

  She said, "I just heard a rumor that Caleb died, and I was angry." Because after all that had gone on, I said, "You need to either squelch the rumor or figure out if it's true." So I said, "I'm calling Liz right away."

• 5:04Speaker 01

  Caleb's aunt.

• 5:06Speaker 05

  So I call Liz, and she's waiting for a cab to go visit her daughter in New York. And I'm beating around the bush, trying to... Obviously, she didn't know. Finally, she said to me, "Is everything all right?" And I said, "Well, I don't think so. I think Caleb has died." I said, "Here's what I've heard." So she immediately drove over to Pitch Pine and phoned me and said, "Yes."

• 5:41Speaker 01

  Three death scenes, and Liz had been to all of them. She'd been here with Bridget when Bill died. She'd been with Caleb after Bridget died. Now, there was no one left.

• 5:54Speaker 06

  I was in tears and in a mess.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  Imagine living with suspicion for years, and then the thing you think you're being paranoid about happens again.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  Liz was with another relative of Caleb's, Aunt Carol.

• 6:18Speaker 06

  We went over to the driveway, and they said we couldn't go in. And we had to explain who we were, you know, relatives, friends.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  Standing in front of the house, Carol screamed at the officers. "How could you let this happen?" By now, it was obvious police had messed up. Bridget's friend Pam arrived at the scene and saw the commotion.

• 6:47Speaker 05

  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, "Peele has finally had the light bulb go off, that three murders in one house might not be normal."

• 7:13Speaker 01

  Inside the house, a coroner examined Caleb's body and found suspicious injuries, abrasions and bruising on his neck, swollen knuckles, and scratches on his chest. The autopsy results left no doubts. Caleb had been murdered.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  It appeared that he'd been struck hard in the chest. And then, he'd been strangled. Injuries hauntingly similar to the ones his parents had suffered. This time, the police were going to catch a killer.

• 7:57Speaker 01

  From Sony Music Entertainment, this is What Happened to the Harrisons. I'm Amy Dempsey-Raven. Episode four, Haunted House.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  In August 2013, I was a reporter at the Toronto Star. My editors came to me one morning and said, "There's something weird happening at this house in Mississauga. Can you head out there?" They gave me the address, 3635 Pitch Pine Crescent. When I turned my car down the street, I was struck by how beautiful it was. The homes had lush gardens, old leafy trees lined the sidewalks, creating a sort of dreamy canopy overhead. The Harrison residence was still wrapped in yellow crime scene tape. Neighbors had placed flowers against a tree in the front yard.

• 8:56Speaker 01

  A police forensic van was parked outside, and I watched as officers carried evidence bags out of the house. People I spoke with that day were horrified, and some were angry. Everyone was asking the same question. What happened to the Harrisons?

• 9:17Speaker 07

  You don't have anybody who's more anxious to know what's going on than our immediate family.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  This is Caleb's uncle Doug, giving a police interview a few days after his nephew's murder.

• 9:30Speaker 07

  It was just such a grinding shock to see it the third time in the same house. Think back in the history. Think back to my sister. Think back to my brother-in-law. And understand that nobody, nobody is thinking, you know, "Well, it was just a bad accident." There's nobody who will buy that story. Not once, not twice, but... Yeah, three times. So we're all anxious to know.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  The police officer wanted to speak to Doug about Caleb's past. They started with the years since his mom died. Doug said he worried how Caleb would cope without his parents, whether he'd be able to take care of the house and manage the money he'd inherited. So Doug became a sort of advisor.

• 10:20Speaker 07

  One of the things I was adamant about with Caleb was that he had to have a will. Because as I said to him, you know, if anything happens to you, the money will go to your ex-wife. And, you know, we kept saying, you know, you're the only warm body between the estate and the control of the children.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  The Harrison estate was worth more than a million dollars. Plus, Doug said, there was a separate stash of money for the kids, survivor benefits from Bridgette's teacher's pension, money that Doug and Caleb had decided to keep secret.

• 11:02Speaker 07

  Again, I'm paranoid, but I'm saying these deaths have not been random or chance. And I said, you know, we don't want to be hanging a pork chop around these kids' necks or yours.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  Doug thought the money might make the kids a target.

• 11:22Speaker 07

  Enemies. Who would his enemies be? Well, you know, here we go.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  I've known Doug for years, and it's not in his nature to point fingers without proof. But now a third member of his family was dead. So he laid out what he and others were thinking.

• 11:41Speaker 07

  The Harrison family, the Black Hills included, have had nothing but an antagonistic relationship with his ex-wife's family. So does he have enemies? I think his wife is an enemy. But I don't think she's physically capable of doing any of the things that have taken place.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  Doug had someone else in mind.

• 12:09Speaker 07

  Who would be your number one suspect in this case? Melissa's father.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  Mike Merritt.

• 12:16Speaker 07

  Or her current husband. But I, because you have to be physically tough, strong to do, to kill Caleb. The only people who have a mad on against Caleb is that crew. And I'm thinking that it's it's financially driven as well.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  I need to pause for a moment here. Remember when I told you about Melissa and Chris's wedding in 2007? He wore a kilt and she wore a white dress over her baby bum? Well, it wasn't exactly legit. Melissa explained this in a police interview.

• 12:57Speaker 05

  Basically, I made a mistake when I thought that after two years of separation, that you were automatically divorced. By the time I realized that I wasn't actually going to have a divorce certificate, everything was already booked and all that stuff. So we went through with the wedding, but it wasn't a real wedding.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  This odd detail matters because Melissa was still legally married to Caleb. And Doug believed that Melissa or the people close to her might be after his money.

• 13:32Speaker 07

  I think that because they've never been formally divorced, that her belief is that because she will control the kids and she is the widow, that all the estate will come to her? Melissa is a very strange lady. And you will have spoken to a lot of people, and they will tell you that this lady is remarkably different.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  At this moment, Doug believes that the first two police investigations were thorough. He thinks that if Bill and Bridgette were murdered, the killer had to be someone with the skills and knowledge to evade police. Someone like a former police officer.

• 14:19Speaker 07

  I would look at Mike first. I really would. Because I think he has the abilities to be this son.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  And if that first instinct is wrong?

• 14:33Speaker 07

  Then I would go with Melissa's current spouse.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  Chris Fatoré.

• 14:42Speaker 07

  He's a big, strong fellow. But, and another thing is that Melissa talked him into running away. I don't think your spouse or my spouse could have talked me into doing something that stupid. So because of his size and because of the influence that I believe his wife has over him, he would be my next choice. And I suspect that the only people you're ever going to be able to point a finger at is the Merritt family.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  What Doug didn't know at the time was police were looking into the Merritts. In fact, they'd already spoken to Mike.

• 15:25Speaker 03

  Okay, today is the Sunday, the 25th of August, 2013. It's 1:28 PM. I am Derek Rice with Peel Regional Police.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  Detective Rice and his partner are walking toward the Merritt family home. It's a boxy white bungalow with blue shutters backing onto a ravine. Detective Rice is with the homicide bureau, and he takes on a sort of clueless cop persona in this interview, friendly, a little rambling, and non-confrontational.

• 15:54Speaker 03

  I'm just hoping maybe you can fill in a bit of the background. They're married. They had the two children. Okay, and the kids are 10 and 12?

• 16:05Speaker 01

  Mike says that early on, he got along well with his son-in-law. But that was before, in Mike's words,

• 16:12Speaker 03

  Everything went for the shits.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  The way Mike talked about the domestic assault that ended Melissa and Caleb's marriage really surprised me. He said that it was Caleb's mother, Bridgette, who decided that night that the marriage was over.

• 16:30Speaker 03

  Basically, she said, well, I guess that's it. That's it, it's done. And I went, well, this is a little severe.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Mike thought there might be a chance to work things out.

• 16:41Speaker 03

  But it was. From then on, it was done. And then she was always a very controlling person in his life.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  Mike made two stunning revelations in this interview. First, he brought up the home invasion, the incident Melissa reported after she and Caleb separated. The one where she said a masked intruder attacked her then fled. Melissa's father told Detective Rice that the police officers who investigated the home invasion

• 17:14Speaker 03

  Came to me and suggested that it was made up by her.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  Mike was saying that the detectives who investigated the home invasion believed there was no home invasion. I can't tell if he's complaining about this conclusion or admitting that Melissa lied. Later, the homicide cops would speak to the home invasion investigators, and one would say, I'm 100% convinced she was making up the whole story. Detective Rice wanted to know more about the abduction. Mike said he had no idea Melissa was planning to leave.

• 17:55Speaker 03

  My wife called me in hysterics. They're gone. They're gone where? We're texting and phoning and paging and everything else that you can possibly do, saying, what are you doing? Get back here.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  All this time, people thought Melissa had left town the day before Bill's death. Mike revealed that wasn't true.

• 18:22Speaker 03

  Melissa left in April of 2009 with the kids. The day she left, the actual day that she left Mississauga was the day that his mother found the father dead in the

• 18:43Speaker 01

  On the exact same day.

• 18:45Speaker 07

  The same day that he left, while he was found dead in the house.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  This must have landed as a giant exclamation mark for Detective Rice, but he didn't show it. Because this meant that Melissa and Chris were in town the day Bill was found lifeless, that they could theoretically have confronted Bill or killed him, then took off for Nova Scotia.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  A few days after Mike's police interview, I walked up to the white bungalow with the blue shutters. I had been to the courthouse to pull records, and I'd learned about Caleb's history. The car crash, the domestic assault, the abduction. It was my job to try to speak with the people connected to Caleb if they were willing. So I headed to the address on Melissa's court records to see if she'd talk. It turned out to be her parents' house. At the time, I had no idea the police were investigating the Maritz. Mike answered the door. He was an imposing guy, middle-aged with thick arms and a mustache. I'm looking for Melissa. I'm a reporter from the Toronto Star.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  Mike listened calmly. I can't play his part of the recording, but I can tell you what he said. He told me, "It's not gonna happen. There's no reason for her to be involved in this." Writing a story about his life and about his history. You know, they were married. There's the history with the abduction charge and custody stuff. He said, "I don't know what bringing up the abduction charge has to do with Caleb's death. What does that have to do with it, other than to badmouth my daughter?" It's about the family's history. Then Mike got angry,

• 20:49Speaker 01

  and he said something to me about the Harrisons that would piss off a lot of people. He said, "The family has a shitty history, and it's all in the paper already." I walked away thinking, "Whoa, what the hell was that?" On the one hand, he was a father sticking up for his daughter, whose marriage had ended in a domestic assault. But also, what a strange thing to say about a family that now appeared to have been murdered. I thought, "What is going on with the Maritz?"

• 21:32Speaker 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",

• 22:16Speaker 00

  while your neighbor 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.

• 22:33Speaker 05

  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.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  Caleb's death forced the Peel Police to take a closer look at the earlier deaths on Pitch Pine Crescent. And right away, they began to uncover things they'd dismissed or missed entirely.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  Bill, Bridgette, and Caleb had all died at key moments in the custody battle. Investigators pulled banking records that confirmed what Melissa's father had told Detective Rice. She and Chris had left Ontario the same day Bill died. Then Bridgette died the day before she was supposed to give a victim impact statement at Melissa's sentencing, after her mission to track the kids down led to Melissa's arrest, and at a time when she had sole custody.

• 23:54Speaker 07

  Well, who knew that was gonna make her a target? Soon as she gets custody, she's dead. My sister had no enemies. She had thousands of friends, but no enemies.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  Except for the Maritz. A little over two years after his mother's death, Caleb had sole custody of his children, and Melissa only had visitation. But for the summer of 2013, he agreed to a temporary 50/50 schedule: a week with Mom, a week with Dad. Melissa wanted him to make that arrangement permanent, but he said no. And he died the exact day the 50/50 arrangement was to end.

• 24:46Speaker 02

  I had learned over many years that not to be much of a believer in coincidence.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  This is Steve Sheriff, a former big-deal prosecutor in Peel Region.

• 24:57Speaker 02

  We've got two people dead for falling, right? In their own home. You shouldn't just say, "Oh, isn't that strange, you know, a coincidence?" It's not a coincidence.

• 25:07Speaker 01

  Sheriff is kind of a legend. He worked on homicide cases for 30 years and was embedded with the Peel Police for a long time.

• 25:15Speaker 02

  I chose deliberately the toughest ones, the whodunnits. I think it was just my nature.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  Sheriff has an unusual connection to the Harrison family. He was almost retired when troubling things started happening on Pitch Pine Crescent. He lived in Mississauga, and his brother and sister-in-law lived just down the street from the Harrisons. They came to him worried after the second death.

• 25:44Speaker 02

  They said to me, "Steve, this is awful strange. There was a lady that we knew in the house, Bridgette was her name, and she was found dead recently. And her husband was found dead the year before. And there was this custody problem going on with the kids."

• 26:05Speaker 01

  Sheriff still had contacts at the homicide bureau. So in 2010, soon after Bridgette died, he went down to speak with the inspector.

• 26:14Speaker 02

  Are you sure there's nothing to this death? Because it's coupled up with this custody dispute. And isn't she the one, I'd learned, that abducted the kids and took them down to Nova Scotia?

• 26:27Speaker 01

  Someone had told him about the strange timing of Bill's death.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  I said, "That is absolutely wild. So have you had a good look at this? Like, you know, this seems a bit much to me." The then-inspector assured me that they'd had a very good look at this and that this was an accident. You know, that the lady looked like she'd just fallen down the stairs.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  Sheriff told me in an earlier conversation that the police inspector said...

• 27:00Speaker 07

  He was getting accidental vibes from the pathologist.

• 27:05Speaker 02

  At that time, I accepted that and let it be. On the assurance that this had been thoroughly thought of, I regret that.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  Three years later, when Sheriff heard about Caleb's death, he was furious.

• 27:21Speaker 02

  My reaction was, "This has to be..." Homicide. I said to myself, okay, these first two, you know, they're connected. It didn't take long to connect the dots. The dots were obvious.

• 27:35Speaker 01

  He was so incensed that he muscled his way into the police investigation.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  I inserted myself.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  Basically, he started being a huge pain in the ass. Prosecutors don't typically nose their way into investigations, but Sheriff was on a mission. First, he took his concerns to a senior Peel Police official.

• 27:58Speaker 02

  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.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  Sheriff went all over town with this haunted house line. He showed up at case conferences, he phoned the detectives. Sheriff told me that until he stepped in, police weren't going to reopen Bridget and Bill's death investigations.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  They only wanted to do a murder investigation for the easy one.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  Now, police sources I spoke with dispute Sheriff's account. One actually said, and I quote, "He's absolutely full of shit." They said it was a push from inside the force that made the higher-ups reopen Bridget and Bill's cases. But it couldn't have hurt to have someone like Sheriff going around town in a fury, ranting about haunted houses. What matters here is that a few weeks after Caleb's murder, police made a decision. They would investigate all three deaths as homicides. This was now a triple murder investigation. Police were acknowledging they had failed to uncover two homicides, and they might

• 29:13Speaker 01

  be looking for a serial killer. When the homicide detectives looked at Bridget's autopsy, they were disturbed. There was clear evidence of strangulation. How could their own police force have possibly come to the conclusion that there was no evidence of foul play? Then, the detectives looked back at the statements Melissa and Chris had given after Bridget's death and realized something else. They didn't have alibis. The divisional officers had said they'd firmed up the couple's movements, but they hadn't. Melissa and Chris had alibied each other, and there were large windows of time they

• 29:58Speaker 01

  hadn't accounted for. It was time to take a closer look at Melissa and Chris. When the police started doing a deep dive on the couple, they uncovered a new layer of the story, a troubling incident that would give them reason to believe Melissa and Chris were willing to go to extreme lengths to get what they wanted. A year and a half before Caleb's death, Melissa and Chris had moved to a farmhouse in St. Mary's, Ontario, nearly two hours outside of Mississauga.

• 30:34Speaker 03

  They were a young couple, a young family, and were in the street, um, living in the country and taking care of the lawn and the property.

• 30:45Speaker 01

  This is Dan Colthard, a local farmer. Melissa and Chris rented the house from him.

• 30:51Speaker 03

  They had references. I called them, and they said, yeah, they were the best people in the world, and great people, and always paid their bills.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  They moved in the fall of 2011 and started blogging about life in the country. They had two pot-bellied pigs, Priscilla and Wilbur, and a bunch of other pets, dogs, a cat, a guinea pig, a rabbit. Melissa was crafty. She knitted hats and bookmarks and sold them on Etsy. Chris got a job at a chicken hatchery. That winter, Melissa wrote about a flu that had struck the family.

• 31:29Speaker 03

  We did nothing but whine and complain to each other, comparing who felt worse. I still say it was me because, sick or not, mommy still needs to take care of everyone, cook and clean, not to mention be the only one who couldn't take any medication due to pregnancy.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  Melissa was expecting her sixth child. Then, a few weeks after they came down with the flu, their simple life in the country went up in flames. It was 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning, Dan got in his truck and drove to the house.

• 32:05Speaker 03

  The fire was shooting right out through the roof.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  Melissa, Chris, and their three young kids were safe at a neighbor's house. Melissa's older children were with their dad. Melissa wrote about the incident on her blog.

• 32:19Speaker 03

  Fire is the scariest thing I have ever been through. It will be hard for a long time, but the main thing is we have each other.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  The morning after, Dan went back to the farm. The house was burned out, and the property was crawling with police, serious investigators wearing suits.

• 32:40Speaker 03

  They got ahold of me and wanted to interview me. They were kind of asking me all these, you know, questions about why I had this insurance and why I had that insurance and where was I.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  Turns out, the police were investigating the fire as a possible arson.

• 33:01Speaker 03

  They pinpointed right where the fire had started, and it was just down in the basement, like, not by the electrical or anything, like, it was just, it was down in a corner.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  Soon, though, the police turned their suspicions from the landlord to the tenants. The fire investigators later told Peel Police that Melissa had taken out renters' insurance twice in the few weeks before the fire. First, she got a $25,000 policy. Then she upped it to $50,000. And the story Chris had told about the fire, it didn't add up. He said he woke to the sound of his bedroom door rattling and saw thick, black smoke in the hall when he opened it. He said he got the kids out but couldn't save the pets.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  The fire investigators told Peel Police that if the blaze had been as Chris described, it's unlikely he would have been able to get the kids. Afterward, Melissa and Chris started a GoFundMe for themselves. The couple posed in front of the burnt-out farmhouse for a story in the local paper. They were soliciting furniture and clothing donations and made about $4,500 bucks. Dan said the fire investigators told him they believed his tenants had burnt the house down for the insurance money, but he said they swore him to secrecy.

• 34:30Speaker 03

  Is there any part of you that thinks it could have been an accident? Oh, 100%, no. Yeah, I don't have a doubt in my mind. You know, they just didn't have any money.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  To be clear, they were never charged with arson. I couldn't ask Melissa and Chris about the fire or anything else because they declined our interview requests. After the fire, their money problems continued. They spent six months living in hotels with the kids, then moved back to Mississauga to a rental house. They were both unemployed for the next year and a half. They lived off welfare payments and a monthly government baby bonus. Chris had even borrowed cash from his elderly nona and an uncle. Melissa borrowed money from her parents. They were waiting for their insurance payment from the fire, but it would take years.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  In the months before Caleb's death, money became another battleground in the custody dispute. Melissa wanted more time with the kids, but Caleb wasn't willing to make the 50/50 summer arrangement permanent unless she paid child support. Weeks before he died, Melissa filed a motion in family court. She wrote that her ex had a penchant for control and domination.

• 35:53Speaker 03

  Caleb has been unwilling to entertain any increase in time, contrary to the children's best interest, unless I agree to his child support demands.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  She said Caleb wanted $500 a month and wouldn't give her more time with the kids until she paid. Melissa was unemployed, broke. Caleb didn't see that as his problem. Melissa had made him pay child support while he was unemployed. Melissa offered $200 a month, but Caleb said no. She accused him of blackmail. Her family court motion included a copy of an email Caleb had sent to her.

• 36:33Speaker 02

  If you're not going to pay me 500 to 600, don't pay at all, but don't expect to see the kids any extra either. As far as how I talk to the kids, I have sole custody, so I raise them how I want. Keep your nose out of my business.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  The police now had a possible motive for murder, an acrimonious custody battle, and financial gain. They needed to talk to Melissa.

• 37:08Speaker 02

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• 37:31Speaker 00

  Still haven't started? Hey, better late than ever. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pickup fees may apply. 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.

• 38:13Speaker 00

  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, "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.

• 38:41Speaker 05

  I was asking what day it was this morning.

• 38:42Speaker 02

  It's 9:25 a.m. We're at 180 Dairy Road East in Mississauga. This is the homicide bureau office. And we, the Peel Regional Police, are investigating a murder.

• 38:56Speaker 01

  This is Detective Rice again, the cop who interviewed Melissa's father. He's now in a room with Melissa.

• 39:02Speaker 02

  You're here voluntarily. You're not a suspect. You're not under arrest. You're free to go at any time. But obviously, you know, given your history with him, that we would like to speak to you. Hopefully, from the information we get from you, will be able to lead us to who's responsible for his death.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  It's three days after Caleb was found dead. Melissa is wearing a black hoodie and leggings, and her hair is pulled back in a messy ponytail. Her eyebrows are tweezed into high peaks. She looks like a tired mom you'd run into at the playground. This is just the beginning of a six-hour interview that covers the entire history of Melissa's relationship with the Harrisons. We're going to look at a few key parts. First, how Melissa learned about Caleb's death, and how she explained it to her kids. Melissa said she'd been getting ready to take the children back to their father's house that afternoon, when a police officer phoned her, told her to stay put, and then showed up at her house.

• 40:10Speaker 05

  She told me that Caleb had earlier that day been found dead in his home. So that kind of hits you like a Mack truck. I was at a loss. I didn't know what to do. Of course, started asking the questions: how, why, when? And she ultimately had no information to give me at the time.

• 40:30Speaker 01

  Afterward, Melissa took her two older children aside to tell them about their dad.

• 40:35Speaker 05

  Well, I just told them that he had passed away, and someone found him in his house. They obviously were in a state of shock, didn't know what to do, didn't know what to say, just kind of staring at me, mouth half-open.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  Melissa tried to console them by saying it could have been a freak accident, or a natural death.

• 40:55Speaker 05

  We said, "Who knows? You know, he could have been drinking, fell down, bumped his head, not thought anything of it, gone to bed." You know, just trying to give them ideas of natural ways that he could have passed away.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  But her kids?

• 41:08Speaker 05

  They automatically thought the worst. They thought someone did something to him. And at the time, we didn't know it was a homicide.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  They were terrified.

• 41:17Speaker 05

  They were convinced that someone was coming to kill them next. They thought that they were going to come into our house, into their bedrooms, and do something to them.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  I'm not surprised the children felt this way after everything they'd been through. What I do find strange is that Melissa herself isn't worried about their safety. Three members of their immediate family have died in the house they lived in, one after the other. Wouldn't you be asking the police, "What the hell is happening? Are my kids in danger?"

• 41:52Speaker 05

  I was like, "I can 99.9% guarantee you, no one is coming here."

• 41:58Speaker 01

  Then, Melissa told Detective Rice that after learning Caleb had, in fact, been murdered, she sat the kids down and told them they were right.

• 42:08Speaker 05

  I said, "Someone took Caleb's life. Someone killed him." And they were just like, "Who?" Right away. And I was like, "That's what? We don't know." They're trying now to find out who did this. And I was like, "We all need to know who did this." So they, of course, as children, say, "Okay, so when are they going to find out?" And so, I was just like, "I don't know." And I told them, "There's a possibility that you guys may never really find out." Like, "Some things don't get solved." I explained that to them.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  "Some things don't get solved?" It's a strange thing to say, two days into a murder investigation.

• 42:51Speaker 05

  I said, "But most of the time, you guys can do it." And when you find the person, they will be arrested, they will go to jail, and that's where they will stay for a long time.

• 43:04Speaker 01

  There was one crucial thing police needed to get out of this interview and a separate interview with Chris. They needed to know their whereabouts the night Caleb was killed. Police believed the couple may have been the last people to see Caleb alive at his daughter's softball game. So Melissa walked Detective Rice through that night in careful detail. Caleb had been helping coach the team. It was a warm, late-summer night. Melissa said he threw the girls' grounders to warm them up and then cheered them on from second base. She saw Caleb leave the field around 8:30, alone. She and Chris left with the kids around the same time and stopped for food.

• 43:47Speaker 05

  Just up, further on Mississauga Road, past our house, there's a plaza with a Walmart.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  Both described that stop at the Walmart Plaza in detail. The timing, who went to Pita Pit or Subway. But neither mentioned going into Walmart. That omission would matter later.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  They went home and put the kids to bed. The rest of the night, as Melissa told it, was uneventful. She and Chris went to sleep. A few hours later, the baby woke, and Melissa opened her computer to check the time.

• 44:25Speaker 05

  Noticed it was shortly after 4:00 in the morning.

• 44:28Speaker 01

  She fed the baby and went back to sleep.

• 44:31Speaker 05

  Chris doesn't wake up for any baby crying, which I've been working on, but it's still not working after all these kids. So he was out cold in the bed.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  Chris told the same story in his interview, almost word-for-word.

• 44:45Speaker 04

  I saw the light open. I guess she opened the computer, see what time it was.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  Melissa said they slept close, usually touching, and that if he'd gotten out of bed, she probably would have felt it. Chris said the same.

• 44:59Speaker 04

  We're either like, laying with an arm around each other, or like, we're always kind of like, touchy-feely, so we always know where each other are.

• 45:08Speaker 01

  The question investigators kept coming back to was simple. Could Chris have gotten up and left the house without Melissa knowing? She said she didn't think so.

• 45:21Speaker 05

  At no point did I know he'd left with us.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  After the interviews, Melissa and Chris went home and carried on with family life. Thursday was garbage day in their neighborhood, and that morning, a truck came to a rumbling stop at the foot of the driveway. On it were two undercover police officers, posing as city workers. The officers seized the trash bags and brought them back to the homicide bureau, where officers picked through the mess. Inside, they found a pair of black latex gloves and men's size 12 sneakers from Walmart.

• 46:05Speaker 01

  The shoes appeared to be brand-new, yet someone had wrapped them in a shopping bag and tossed them out. Police sent the items for DNA analysis. The gloves had two profiles. On the inside was Chris's DNA, and on the outside was Caleb's.

• 46:35Speaker 01

  Detectives pulled surveillance tape from the Walmart where Melissa and Chris had stopped the night before Caleb was killed. And around 9:15 p.m., there was Chris, heading into the store, then leaving with a shopping bag. His purchase? Sneakers. This was a huge break in the case, but the police weren't ready to make an arrest yet. Caleb wasn't the only victim, and Chris wasn't the only suspect. They needed more evidence. Melissa and Chris soon grew tired of the suspicion on them. They wanted to escape Mississauga.

• 47:18Speaker 01

  Two weeks after Caleb's murder, Melissa went back to family court to ask for full custody of her kids. In an affidavit, she wrote that the children's father had died.

• 47:30Speaker 03

  This news was, and is tragic, and very shocking.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  She attached one of my newspaper articles as proof of her ex's death. Melissa then got what she'd always wanted: sole custody. Soon after, she and Chris packed up, loaded the six kids into their van, and headed east again to Nova Scotia. But this time, the police were watching their every move.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  Next time on What Happened to the Harrisons? The walls close in, and the evidence stacks up.

• 48:11Speaker 02

  Those gloves, pardon the pun, those gloves are kill tree. They put you in a real tight...

• 48:26Speaker 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? Head to GetTheBinge.com to subscribe directly.

• 49:19Speaker 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

• 50:02Speaker 01

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

• 50:20Speaker 03

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