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Speaker 3: Are now listening to True Murder The most Shocking Killers
Speaker 3: in True crime History and the authors that have written
Speaker 3: about him Gasey Bundy Dahmer, The Knightstalker VTK Every week
Speaker 3: another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous
Speaker 3: killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host
Speaker 3: journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 5: Good Evening, a former United Church minister massacres his family.
Speaker 5: What led to this act of femicide and why were
Speaker 5: his victims forgotten? On May second, nineteen sixty three, Robert Killen's,
Speaker 5: a former United Church minister, slaughtered every woman in his
Speaker 5: family but one. She and her brother lived to tell
Speaker 5: the story of what motivated a talented man who had
Speaker 5: been widely admired a scholar and graduate from Queen's University
Speaker 5: to stalk and terrorize the women in his family for
Speaker 5: almost twenty years and then murder them. Through extensive oral histories,
Speaker 5: Cook and Carson painstakingly traced the causes of a femicide
Speaker 5: in which four women and two unborn babies were murdered
Speaker 5: over the course of one bloody evening. While they situate
Speaker 5: this murderous rampage in the literature on domestic abuse and
Speaker 5: mass murders. They also explore how the two traumatized child
Speaker 5: survivors found their way back to health and happiness. Told
Speaker 5: through vivid first person accounts, this family memoir explores how
Speaker 5: a murderer was created. The book that we're featuring this
Speaker 5: evening is the Castleton Massacre Survivors' Stories of the Killin's
Speaker 5: Femicide with my special guests, authors Sharon Ann Cook and
Speaker 5: Margaret Carson. Welcome to the program, and thank you so
Speaker 5: much for this interview. Sharon Anna Cook and Margaret Carson,
Speaker 5: Thank you, thank you, thank you so much, and congratulations
Speaker 5: on this incredibly personal and important book. Let's first talk. Sharon,
Speaker 5: you write the prologue, how you became involved, how you
Speaker 5: learned about this incredible case and these murders, and then
Speaker 5: tell us about the genesis of this book together the
Speaker 5: letters that were part of that tell us how this
Speaker 5: book evolved.
Speaker 4: Well, thanks very much for this, Dan. I should say
Speaker 4: first of all that in order to maintain voice in
Speaker 4: the book, I am the writer of the book, but
Speaker 4: there would have been no book at all had Margaret
Speaker 4: not been there. Every step of the way researching with
Speaker 4: me and gathering oral histories from herself and from her brother.
Speaker 4: So the genesis of this book came, I think from
Speaker 4: two sources. One is that Margaret and I were raised
Speaker 4: again from the time that she was twelve when she
Speaker 4: was orphaned by this massacre. She was raised by my
Speaker 4: parents in our family, and we began talking about this
Speaker 4: terrible event in her life and in Brian's life, her brother.
Speaker 4: The first day that she was with our family, we
Speaker 4: shared a bedroom, and so we would often talk about
Speaker 4: this before going to sleep at night, and I think
Speaker 4: very early on it occurred to both of us that
Speaker 4: we should write this down, we should somehow get this
Speaker 4: into book form. But of course this was a traumatic event,
Speaker 4: and it was many years, almost sixty years before we
Speaker 4: did that because of the depth of sadness trauma that
Speaker 4: both children experienced. The second source for it was my son,
Speaker 4: who was an historian and a writer, and he felt
Speaker 4: very strongly that this was something that we needed to
Speaker 4: do at this point before anybody else died. In that
Speaker 4: most of the books was based on oral testimony oral
Speaker 4: history from either those who are participated or those who
Speaker 4: were very close to the event. Through his urging and
Speaker 4: his wife's urging as well. We took this up as
Speaker 4: a kind of COVID project. Some of the work was
Speaker 4: done prior to COVID, but a lot of it occurred
Speaker 4: during COVID as well. So that's where the where the
Speaker 4: genesis came from. I would say, Peg, would you like
Speaker 4: to throw in on that?
Speaker 6: I think it is. The book is something that we
Speaker 6: have thought about for a long time. It took me
Speaker 6: though a while before I decided that I was all in.
Speaker 6: As you know, I had to wait for my brother
Speaker 6: to be all in. Also, this was something that was
Speaker 6: so shrouded with secrecy and silence that it wasn't until
Speaker 6: relatively recent years that we had the words to describe
Speaker 6: what happened. These words would be stalking, femicide, and I
Speaker 6: would say women's shelters. Suddenly, as these words developed in
Speaker 6: recent years, we had words to use to describe what
Speaker 6: happened to us. And I don't think we had the
Speaker 6: proper words as children. We knew what had happened, but
Speaker 6: we couldn't put it into any kind of perspective. We
Speaker 6: were still dealing with the grief for decades. For decades,
Speaker 6: you don't give that up. And yes, speaking about it
Speaker 6: over those years helped to clarify and put into place
Speaker 6: the pieces of the puzzle that added up to us
Speaker 6: somewhat understanding what happened within my family dynamics. And as
Speaker 6: you know Dan after reading this, it wasn't simply straightforward.
Speaker 6: It was complicated with many avenues, and it took a
Speaker 6: lot of discussion to get there. And guests, does that
Speaker 6: help Sharon.
Speaker 4: Yes, that's very helpful. Pig. As always, I would second
Speaker 4: everything that you said there, and I do want to
Speaker 4: underscore the centrality of Braan's involvement in the process of
Speaker 4: research and in writing as well. Brian was a ten
Speaker 4: year old child when this occurred, and he was not
Speaker 4: as centrally placed in the family structure in terms of
Speaker 4: the lead up to the massacre as you were Margaret.
Speaker 4: I've said in the book that Margaret was really a
Speaker 4: lynch pin. She was present and participated in every major
Speaker 4: event that occurred in the lead up to the killings,
Speaker 4: and she therefore had a very important perspective, better I
Speaker 4: think than almost anyone else's. And she was trusted by
Speaker 4: both the perpetrator and by her mother, so that she
Speaker 4: was given a great deal of authority as a twelve
Speaker 4: year old child to try to bring peace to a
Speaker 4: situation when Robert was beating up her sister, for example,
Speaker 4: when Robert was threatening her mother. She was involved in
Speaker 4: all of these. So I want to emphasize how important
Speaker 4: Margaret was, But I also it is important to remember
Speaker 4: how central to the period after both Margaret and Brian
Speaker 4: joined my family in nineteen sixty three, how important Brian
Speaker 4: was in the process. Brian became a medical doctor and
Speaker 4: so he has a very particular view of what happened
Speaker 4: from his adult perspective. He's now retired from that, but
Speaker 4: he is a very capable family doctor, and he looked
Speaker 4: at this from a perspective that neither Margaret nor I did.
Speaker 4: His oral histories are arresting and in the moment as well,
Speaker 4: which is a pretty extraordinary thing sixty years afterwards for
Speaker 4: a child to be able to remember as accurately as
Speaker 4: he did the emotional import of events and also what
Speaker 4: he was thinking. This was true both during the mascer
Speaker 4: itself and in the period following that. So I do
Speaker 4: I want to underscore Brian's role and his support throughout
Speaker 4: this process. He has not chosen to be a co
Speaker 4: author in it couldn't have done this project without Brian's involvement.
Speaker 5: Now let's get to the murderer himself. He was born
Speaker 5: in nineteen seven, Robert Ivan, And so tell us about
Speaker 5: his family life and his siblings.
Speaker 4: Do you want me to start with this and Margaret
Speaker 4: doing okay?
Speaker 6: His early family life, his early family life, yes, yes.
Speaker 4: So Robert was born into a typical Ontario farm family
Speaker 4: for the period, a relatively poor family. He had two siblings,
Speaker 4: an older sister and a younger brother, and his younger
Speaker 4: brother was my father. So we need to say right
Speaker 4: from the start that I was related to Robert through
Speaker 4: my father, while Margaret was not related. She lived under
Speaker 4: his shadow for the first twelve years of her life,
Speaker 4: and very much so during the period of the massacre,
Speaker 4: a tremendous shadow that overcasts the next few years of
Speaker 4: her life. He wasn't related to him. He was not
Speaker 4: her father, as is often thought and was often reported
Speaker 4: in the newspapers of the time. So Robert with his family,
Speaker 4: the family moved west and homesteaded, as many families did
Speaker 4: in that period, to get free land, to work that land,
Speaker 4: and then to sell it for a profit. And that
Speaker 4: was exactly what his father did. His father continued doing
Speaker 4: that through the rest of his adult life, buying farms,
Speaker 4: improving the farms, selling them, very much as people do
Speaker 4: today in flipping houses, but in his case it was
Speaker 4: improving the land. So Robert had a typical farm based childhood.
Speaker 4: He was a talented child from the beginning, and he
Speaker 4: was really the star of the family. He was the
Speaker 4: child that his parents expected would change the world, and
Speaker 4: as a result, he came to think of himself as
Speaker 4: changing the world. The mother definitely favored Robert over the
Speaker 4: other children, and we talk about this at considerable length
Speaker 4: because it helps to explain the shadow under which my
Speaker 4: own father, who was the youngest child in that family,
Speaker 4: lived As a child, he couldn't compete with his older brother,
Speaker 4: and he didn't try to compete. He admired him tremendously
Speaker 4: and loved him dearly, And it helps to explain one
Speaker 4: of the main reasons why I became involved in the
Speaker 4: project myself, which was to help to explain to myself
Speaker 4: why my father reacted as he did to his older
Speaker 4: brother's massacre and was never able really to blame him
Speaker 4: for what he did. This hey, in this act the
Speaker 4: family prospered as homesteaders. It set them up for a
Speaker 4: solid middle class life once they were back in Ontario.
Speaker 4: The older sister, Gladys, became a noted water colorist as
Speaker 4: she was an art teacher, maybe the worst teacher ever.
Speaker 4: She seems to have loathed children and the other teachers
Speaker 4: of whom she worked. Very frustrated woman, but a very
Speaker 4: talented woman. Robert was, about any doubt as well talented.
Speaker 4: He began university in nineteen twenty four. He won scholarships
Speaker 4: at university the almost He also almost failed out in
Speaker 4: his first year, so he had some difficulty adapting. And
Speaker 4: the third child, my father, was also a talented student
Speaker 4: and also university educated, which is very unusual in the
Speaker 4: nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties, Margaret, do you want to
Speaker 4: add to that his background, the family orientation.
Speaker 6: Well, when my mother married him, he was well into
Speaker 6: his thirties and she had just turned eighteen, so she
Speaker 6: was very young, and I'm sure this seemed quite romantic
Speaker 6: to her. She had a mind of her own and
Speaker 6: she loved life, and she was a very happy person,
Speaker 6: so I think he was very attracted to her at
Speaker 6: the time. I know that these that she did not
Speaker 6: know what she was getting into it, as is often
Speaker 6: the story, off in the case, and spent a few
Speaker 6: years i'm sure sorting it out as he failed at
Speaker 6: being a minister for the United Church and eventually quit
Speaker 6: that before she left him with their first child, their
Speaker 6: only child, and that would be Pearl, and he decided
Speaker 6: I think he decided to isolate her by moving her
Speaker 6: to homestead places, as was done when he was growing up,
Speaker 6: the homestead idea of moving out west and finding land
Speaker 6: to develop. But he did isolate her at the time
Speaker 6: and cut her off from her family and friends. Again,
Speaker 6: that's a typical story, isn't it to have power over
Speaker 6: someone to isolate them. So back to Robert would say
Speaker 6: that he became obsessed first with my mother, and she
Speaker 6: tried to get away from him for years. I don't
Speaker 6: know where his obsession came from, but I liken it
Speaker 6: to what what Sharon just said, his ability to have
Speaker 6: a kind of charisma over people, his brother, his sister,
Speaker 6: people that he met, and my mother, but it became
Speaker 6: a really negative, malevolent kind of charisma after a while,
Speaker 6: and that kind of power, you know, I was thinking
Speaker 6: about this. I don't think that I have personally met
Speaker 6: another person and I'm over seventy in my life that
Speaker 6: compares to him with that kind of malevolent power and charisma.
Speaker 6: Have you shared.
Speaker 4: I don't know, but but neither you nor I have
Speaker 4: concerted with other mass murderers have ways all. But I
Speaker 4: think you make a very important point in saying that
Speaker 4: there was something very attractive about this man he was.
Speaker 4: One of the things that we describe in the book
Speaker 4: are the ways in which he was similar to other
Speaker 4: mass murders and the ways in which he was different.
Speaker 4: And I'm struck by his difference given what you've just
Speaker 4: said there, Margaret, with regards to the fact that people
Speaker 4: were deeply impressed by he was a well spoken man.
Speaker 4: He was a well read man, as you would expect
Speaker 4: for somebody who had been to university. And he had
Speaker 4: this dark charisma that you have described. He especially had
Speaker 4: that in the rural districts where he lived, where he
Speaker 4: chose to live, And the point you make about his
Speaker 4: isolating Florence, his young, very attractive young wife, is I
Speaker 4: think important to remember that he chose settings in which
Speaker 4: to live. First as a United Church minister, he lived
Speaker 4: in four different parishes, thrived in. None of them left
Speaker 4: in the middle of the night. For most of them,
Speaker 4: spend his time arguing with people demanding more money in
Speaker 4: the depth of the Great Depression. So he lived there
Speaker 4: in rural settings, but then he chose rural settings also
Speaker 4: after he had left the ministry. The other thing that
Speaker 4: occurs to me from what you were just saying, is
Speaker 4: that we can trace some of his characteristics that I
Speaker 4: think make him common with other mass murderers right from
Speaker 4: those early years in university. He appears to have suffered
Speaker 4: from depression for his entire adult life. We don't know
Speaker 4: why that was. We don't know what the sources of that.
Speaker 4: I mean, he was never assessed. You would never ask
Speaker 4: the United Church minister to be assessed for depression, but
Speaker 4: he acted as if he had been depressed. Part of
Speaker 4: this were the enormous, outsized expectations of this man that
Speaker 4: his mother and family had placed upon him, and other
Speaker 4: people as well. But it had also to do with
Speaker 4: the fact that he made poor choices, and once he'd
Speaker 4: made one poor choice, he would make a whole series
Speaker 4: of other poor choices, and that of course resulted in
Speaker 4: a lot of frustration for him. He was a very
Speaker 4: frustrated person and that feeds depression, so we know that
Speaker 4: that was a characteristic as well. The isolation that he
Speaker 4: exposed Florence to was characteristic for him as well. He
Speaker 4: was an isolated individual, and he was isolated, we think
Speaker 4: conscious in order to not have authorities checking the kinds
Speaker 4: of things that he was doing, the kinds of abuse
Speaker 4: that he was meeting out, especially to Florence and to Pearl.
Speaker 4: And part of it also was one of those self
Speaker 4: fulfilling prophecies that when you become a kind of strange person,
Speaker 4: you are isolated, not many people do want to interact
Speaker 4: with you. And it was quite clear to us that
Speaker 4: he frightened people in a very similar way to what
Speaker 4: we now are reading about the Nova Scotia murderer killing
Speaker 4: the twenty two innocent people. This was a frightening man,
Speaker 4: and so was Robert a frightening them. So a number
Speaker 4: of the characteristics were quite common, and they were deeply
Speaker 4: rooted in his personal psyche, but also in the family
Speaker 4: and dynamics. One point I would just make in passing
Speaker 4: that I think makes the book unusual is that we
Speaker 4: do a deep die into what that formative period in
Speaker 4: his life was like, this is rarely possible with mass
Speaker 4: murderers because most of those people have covered their tracks.
Speaker 4: They you don't know what things were like for them.
Speaker 4: We do know, and we know that his early years,
Speaker 4: including his university years, were not years of privation. They
Speaker 4: were not years during which he had a good excuse
Speaker 4: for being depressed or for you know, being angry with people,
Speaker 4: his developing anger. It was his personal psychology that caused
Speaker 4: him the misery that he imposed on others and that
Speaker 4: he lived through himself. This was not a man whose
Speaker 4: family background would explain why he became a mass murderer.
Speaker 5: You right that he treated Florence like a child. When
Speaker 5: they first were married, he was much more educated and
Speaker 5: she was in experience. But as time went on, many
Speaker 5: years went on, Florence eventually gained assertiveness and confidence, and
Speaker 5: also that she was refusing and rejecting many of the
Speaker 5: things that Robert had to say. Let's talk about Pearl
Speaker 5: and his relationship with Pearl.
Speaker 6: Yes, his relationship with Pearl was I would say it
Speaker 6: was so pressured. He wanted to exert his power and
Speaker 6: his influence over Pearl every minute of her life, in
Speaker 6: everything that she did. He would sit down with her
Speaker 6: in the early years to help her do her homework,
Speaker 6: but she had to be perfect, and as a younger child,
Speaker 6: often I would watch this. He was simply not interested
Speaker 6: in whatever I was doing, because it made it more
Speaker 6: stark that I was watching him ask her to do
Speaker 6: her homework so that she made no mistakes. She could
Speaker 6: make no mistakes, So he was obsessed with Pearl. Looking
Speaker 6: back now, as a mother and I have children and grandchildren,
Speaker 6: I can't imagine what she was feeling throughout those years.
Speaker 6: To have her father, who she loved and she wanted
Speaker 6: to impress, and she wanted to make him happy, to
Speaker 6: have this pressure on her all the time, and we
Speaker 6: see what happened. She couldn't leave fast enough when she
Speaker 6: became a teenager. We see what the result was that
Speaker 6: when she could assert her own power and an attempt
Speaker 6: to leave. I'm sure that with children you never stop
Speaker 6: wanting to get the approval of a parent, But for her,
Speaker 6: when she decided to date, her life just became a nightmare.
Speaker 6: It became a nightmare for her. And I can't explain
Speaker 6: his obsession with her, because I think that he transferred
Speaker 6: his obsession about my mother to his daughter and you
Speaker 6: asked the question. I think before or someone commented about
Speaker 6: him living outside our door. Remember that this was a
Speaker 6: very well spoken man who could talk his way into anything.
Speaker 4: If he wanted to.
Speaker 6: And I'm sure that he said, Look, I'll just live
Speaker 6: nearby and I'll help raise pearl, I'll help drive the
Speaker 6: kids to school, I'll help with things until it wasn't
Speaker 6: help until.
Speaker 4: It was violence.
Speaker 6: Did that help?
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Speaker 4: Could I just break in here for a moment and
Speaker 4: I just want to say that maybe we should clarify
Speaker 4: the family structures here just for a moment.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 4: So Robert and Florence had one child, and that was Pearl.
Speaker 4: Florence managed to escape from Robert when they lived in BC.
Speaker 4: She took the train across Canada. She ended up in Colburn, Ontario,
Speaker 4: and very soon after arriving there, she met the local lawyer,
Speaker 4: Ad Hall and they began living together. Ady Hall was
Speaker 4: then Margaret and Brian and Patsy's father. So that's why
Speaker 4: I said at the beginning that Margaret is in no
Speaker 4: way related to Robert. She was not his child. And
Speaker 4: one of the results was this of this was that
Speaker 4: Robert was seemingly quite comfortable with both Margaret and Brian,
Speaker 4: and probably eventually he would have been comfortable with Patsy too,
Speaker 4: had she been a little bit older. And that's one
Speaker 4: of the reasons that Margaret is such an important eye
Speaker 4: witness for almost everything that happened. Everything is significant that
Speaker 4: happened in the relationship with Robert during the murders, et cetera.
Speaker 4: Because she and Brian, who were kind of a tag team,
Speaker 4: Margaret leading the leading the troop and Brian behind her
Speaker 4: and backing her up. The two of them were the
Speaker 4: great observers of this. They were children they were involved
Speaker 4: in a number of the fracases, but Robert at times
Speaker 4: seemed not to care what they thought about things. He
Speaker 4: would take them on trips with him. They were kind
Speaker 4: of a buffer zone between himself and the world. And
Speaker 4: the result of that, as I say, is that you've
Speaker 4: got two now adults, senior citizens now who saw virtually
Speaker 4: everything that was going on, and who saw it more clearly,
Speaker 4: very likely than the participants did.
Speaker 6: It was an odd kind of relationship. I'll just add
Speaker 6: that I think he was both disinterested in how we
Speaker 6: would turn out, but we were used as ponds to
Speaker 6: keep his connection with my mother and my older sister,
Speaker 6: and he didn't for the most part. He did mistreat
Speaker 6: us a little bit when he had us working, but
Speaker 6: he was a little bit more disinterested in whether we
Speaker 6: were academically successful. But I'm really looking back now and
Speaker 6: understanding as a grandmother, we were definitely used as ponds
Speaker 6: because the minute he had us post by, then he
Speaker 6: knew that our mother or our sister would also be
Speaker 6: post by. He would also ask us questions about what
Speaker 6: they were doing. So we were his inadvertent spies, if
Speaker 6: you want to put it that way.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you demonstrate or you you right about that. To
Speaker 5: demonstrate this guy's Robert's power is that he would refuse
Speaker 5: to divorce Florence, and yet she had this relationship with
Speaker 5: ad Hall. The stalking and the intimidation and the threat
Speaker 5: of violence was so bad that they moved to a
Speaker 5: law office for two years, you say, and lived in
Speaker 5: crap quarters just to get away, so that this guy
Speaker 5: couldn't build a shack nearby and stalk and intrude on
Speaker 5: their lives. Just to demonstrate how serious this guy's stalking
Speaker 5: and intimidation was.
Speaker 6: And Sharon, you had mentioned to me what it took
Speaker 6: to have a divorce.
Speaker 4: Yes, it was extremely difficult, it was expensive. It's active
Speaker 4: parliament to have a divorce, that's right, So this not
Speaker 4: likely going to occur. I think so that Florence was
Speaker 4: held within his grip to a degree, and as years
Speaker 4: wore on. I think it's important to remember that Florence
Speaker 4: was without financial resources, partly because he would not give
Speaker 4: her that divorce. He was on welfare and he gave
Speaker 4: her little bits of money here and there. And this
Speaker 4: is after A. D Hall had died. So Margaret's father, A. D.
Speaker 4: Hall was quite a bit older and he died of
Speaker 4: a heart attack heart disease in nineteen sixty two, the
Speaker 4: year prior to the massacre. And when we talk about
Speaker 4: those factors that made the massacre not a certainty, but
Speaker 4: certainly pushed the record forward, a d. Hall's death was
Speaker 4: a very important marker, not just because it meant that
Speaker 4: Florence was now destitute and she had to go back
Speaker 4: to Robert in order to have food for her three
Speaker 4: still dependent children, but also the factor of ad Hall
Speaker 4: having been a great peacemaker. He was a remarkable man,
Speaker 4: and I think if anything helped to hold off the
Speaker 4: massacre for those almost twenty years, yes, twenty years, it
Speaker 4: was Adie Hall's negotiating with him. And one of the
Speaker 4: points of negotiation, of course, was Robert's insistence that he
Speaker 4: would build a shack close to the family so that
Speaker 4: he could maintain his relationship with peerl.
Speaker 5: What about Robert's health, How much of an influence and
Speaker 5: a factor was that, and what was his health specifically
Speaker 5: like at that time or in those declining years before
Speaker 5: this massacre.
Speaker 6: I'll just mention, and then you can add to this
Speaker 6: that he hated doctors. They were evil, they were ignorant.
Speaker 6: He called them quacks. He hated doctors, so he refused
Speaker 6: to go, even though I think for a number of
Speaker 6: years he knew that he was ill going down that
Speaker 6: road of probably a diabetic condition, but he refused to
Speaker 6: go until he was literally carried out on a stretcher
Speaker 6: and unconscious. He refused to see a doctor. And that
Speaker 6: was I remember my mother and ad wanting him to
Speaker 6: see a doctor when he became ill. I'm sure that
Speaker 6: they understood how serious it was, but until he was
Speaker 6: carried out unconscious, he refused to get help. And Sharon,
Speaker 6: I'll let you take over what sure.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm just I'm glad you mentioned that because it
Speaker 4: reminds us that another one of Robert's characteristics, which put
Speaker 4: him in good company with those who carry out massacres,
Speaker 4: is that he was anti authoritarian. He did not believe
Speaker 4: that doctor's training gave them any special knowledge about him
Speaker 4: or his body, and so his first and he was
Speaker 4: that way generally with people who who were traditional authorities
Speaker 4: in the society that I think doesn't take too much
Speaker 4: to realize that he himself had lost his position of authority,
Speaker 4: and so he was prepared to level every other person
Speaker 4: who presented themselves as an authority. So he was a diabetic.
Speaker 4: He was a serious diabetic. He had come by it genetically.
Speaker 4: His own mother had been a diabetic and had died
Speaker 4: of diabetes. In the end, Robert Party died from diabetes.
Speaker 4: It was certainly contributing factor. He refused because of his
Speaker 4: relationship with doctors that Margaret's just surveyed. He refused to
Speaker 4: regularly take insulin, and the result was a body that
Speaker 4: was just racked I'm sure with pain, but certainly difficulties
Speaker 4: with his extremities, as is very common with diabetes. He
Speaker 4: got to the stage where he could not wear shoes.
Speaker 4: He could only wear slippers that were inside galoshes, and
Speaker 4: the galoshes had buckles on them that jingled as he walked.
Speaker 4: So this is somebody who was kind of musical as
Speaker 4: he walked around. He developed carbuncles, terrible boils on his
Speaker 4: body that he would force his estranged wife to dress.
Speaker 4: And he fell into a coma two junctures I believe right, Margaret,
Speaker 4: and was hospitalized. He was expected to die, and he
Speaker 4: did not. While he was in hospital, his strange wife's
Speaker 4: parents were visiting, trying to help with the children, and
Speaker 4: they burned his shack to the ground, which further enraged him,
Speaker 4: and one would imagine what happened the result of that
Speaker 4: was kind of permanent rage that he was in. It
Speaker 4: was beyond anger at that point for about the last
Speaker 4: year of his life, and that was the year during
Speaker 4: which the family was destitute because Ady Hall had died,
Speaker 4: was not in a position to leave anything to Florence
Speaker 4: because of the lack of their having not been married,
Speaker 4: and where the family came closer and closer into Robert's orbit.
Speaker 5: Let's use this as an opportunity Sharon and Margaret to
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Speaker 5: way to hire Now. Sharon and Margaret, we were talking
Speaker 5: about the last year leading up to this massacre in
Speaker 5: nineteen sixty three in May, what happens with this living
Speaker 5: conditions of Florence. She's dependent on Robert, but tell us
Speaker 5: about further developments in her relationship and what happens in
Speaker 5: that ensuing year to ramp up the tensions, at least
Speaker 5: in Robert's mind.
Speaker 6: During that last year, after Ad died in the middle
Speaker 6: of the night, we moved back into the house that
Speaker 6: Ad had started to build for us. It was mostly completed,
Speaker 6: and we moved back to Castleton from the law office
Speaker 6: because of course we were no longer allowed to stay
Speaker 6: in the law office with ad gone. And just before,
Speaker 6: just before that time, my older sister, my mother took
Speaker 6: her out west. This was after she'd been beaten up
Speaker 6: by Robert to get her away from him. But she
Speaker 6: had a boyfriend, and you know, she had a mind
Speaker 6: of her own, so she came back on her own
Speaker 6: and eloped and rebelled. This was her form of rebellion,
Speaker 6: and she became pregnant during that time. Soon after that,
Speaker 6: we didn't see her for a while because she lived
Speaker 6: with her husband away from us. And during that time,
Speaker 6: some months later, my mother did meet someone who promised
Speaker 6: to protect us decided to move in to protect us
Speaker 6: during not He wasn't with us very long, but she'd
Speaker 6: been seeing him for a little while, and she became
Speaker 6: pregnant with his child, and my sister was pregnant. I
Speaker 6: think these two facts made some kind of impact on
Speaker 6: Robert where he was over the top with anger. I
Speaker 6: remember very loud fights where my mother would just be
Speaker 6: asking him. He didn't come into our house on a
Speaker 6: regular basis. He would come in when we were there,
Speaker 6: I believe, to look around, but not while we were
Speaker 6: there and they were fighting. She asked him to leave
Speaker 6: her alone many times. And I think that when he
Speaker 6: lost control of her life, and when he lost control
Speaker 6: of Pearl's life and she moved, she and her husband
Speaker 6: moved close by because he offered them. He offered them
Speaker 6: a house, he offered them. I think he may have
Speaker 6: offered a car if they moved close. And I'm sure
Speaker 6: that he was very persuasive, and they did move close.
Speaker 6: So that put him right in the middle of the
Speaker 6: two houses, Pearl on one side, our family on the other.
Speaker 6: And that led up to May second, nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 6: During those last few weeks of nineteen sixty three and
Speaker 6: the last part of that puzzle, my aunt latys Killins
Speaker 6: lived up north near Orangeville, if I have that right,
Speaker 6: and she and my mother were writing letters back and forth.
Speaker 6: She came, she came to talk to my mother, and
Speaker 6: so she was in one of the empty cabins that
Speaker 6: was on the property for probably only one day. Came
Speaker 6: on May first, and then the tragedy happened on May second.
Speaker 6: That does that help.
Speaker 4: Explain what led up to it? Yeah, can I just
Speaker 4: throw in there another couple of factors. So, as Margaret says,
Speaker 4: Florence began a new relationship with a very fine man who,
Speaker 4: when push came to shove during the massacre, was amongst
Speaker 4: the most heroic of the people who stepped forward to
Speaker 4: try to protect the family. Florence and Tom Major his name,
Speaker 4: had decided they were going to move to Sudbury, and
Speaker 4: that move we think was a precipitating factor as well
Speaker 4: in convincing Robert that the time had come when he
Speaker 4: had to end all of this. There was one other
Speaker 4: factor too that we have found fascinating as we've tracked this.
Speaker 4: At the inquest after Robert's death and the deaths of
Speaker 4: the family as well, the medical examiner found that Robert
Speaker 4: had a considerable amount of poison in his system. Strychnin.
Speaker 4: In particular, strychnan had been used traditionally by athletes when
Speaker 4: they were attempting to better their time. It goes back
Speaker 4: to the time of ancient Greece, and Robert had read
Speaker 4: about this and knew that, or knew had the notion
Speaker 4: that small amounts of poison would give him added energy,
Speaker 4: so he was taking small amounts which eventually collected in
Speaker 4: the system, and it was a considerable amount. It was
Speaker 4: found after death, and this might very well have fired
Speaker 4: his anger even further. It operates something like a steroid
Speaker 4: before it kills you, and he continued to do this
Speaker 4: and during the actual massacre, during which he showed a
Speaker 4: superhuman ability to keep on going, even after his part
Speaker 4: of his skull was carved in with a hammer that
Speaker 4: Tom Major wielded to try to protect the family, he
Speaker 4: was still able to keep going. And some of that
Speaker 4: we are speculating was due to the fact that he
Speaker 4: had taken poison and while on the one hand it
Speaker 4: gave him energy, on the other hand, it fired his
Speaker 4: fury beyond where it already stood. So there were a
Speaker 4: number of factors that were short term that and I
Speaker 4: think the most important of those was his recognition that
Speaker 4: he was about to lose Florence to a physical move
Speaker 4: and also the three children she was going to take.
Speaker 4: Of course, her children, but he was also about to
Speaker 4: lose Pearl, and it already lost her to a degree
Speaker 4: because she was about ready to give birth to her baby.
Speaker 4: She was going to be a new mother, and he
Speaker 4: would be increasingly out of the picture.
Speaker 5: Margaret, let's talk about the massacre itself. You go from
Speaker 5: the timeline of three in the afternoon to nine forty
Speaker 5: seven ninety eight, as uncomfortable as it is, can as
Speaker 5: you do in the book, can you take us through
Speaker 5: that horrible day?
Speaker 6: Well, yes, I mean, my brother and I have often
Speaker 6: spoken about this because it's I won't go over every hour,
Speaker 6: but it's it's so clear in our minds, and we
Speaker 6: realized in writing this book that that timeline was only
Speaker 6: clear in our minds, in no one else's. And as
Speaker 6: we sat down with Sharon, I think it took a
Speaker 6: few sit downs, right, Sharon, to get this time line straight.
Speaker 6: The afternoon did start with me taking letters between Gladys
Speaker 6: and my mother. I mean, who knows what we're in
Speaker 6: the letters? We never saw them, No one ever found them.
Speaker 6: If they found them, they burnt them. I'm not sure
Speaker 6: what happened to them. And I'm sure they were speaking
Speaker 6: about Robert's behavior, his erratic behavior, and the fear of
Speaker 6: him and what he was going to do. As in
Speaker 6: the book, it shows that there were four houses on
Speaker 6: the property, and it was quite a large piece of property.
Speaker 6: So I was running from one house to the other
Speaker 6: I would visit my older sister in one house and
Speaker 6: help her with the dishes and have supper. Then i'd
Speaker 6: come back to my house, maybe grab a letter take
Speaker 6: it to Gladys, who was in a different house. So
Speaker 6: you have to think that these were houses based on
Speaker 6: I don't know what, maybe an acre of land, and
Speaker 6: that particular evening when I went back, I didn't know
Speaker 6: when I went into my bedroom after saying good night
Speaker 6: that the sound I heard was a gunshot. I don't
Speaker 6: think I realized that. I hear people who speak of
Speaker 6: this now. I thought something dropped. I thought something very
Speaker 6: heavy had dropped, so I wasn't sure, but I did
Speaker 6: hear my mother scream, so I knew it wasn't good,
Speaker 6: and when I ran out, it was obvious to me
Speaker 6: that my mother had been shot. Even at the time
Speaker 6: I saw the guns and ran to my sister's for help.
Speaker 6: That was my first instinct, was to run and get
Speaker 6: help to my sister and her husband, and I wasn't
Speaker 6: there too long. She comforted me and took me into
Speaker 6: the bedroom, where we sat for a long time until
Speaker 6: we heard speaking, and I recognized Robert's voice and knew
Speaker 6: he had come to that house. There was a bit
Speaker 6: of a blur in the next I don't know how long,
Speaker 6: maybe an hour, maybe two hours, and an awful lot
Speaker 6: of gunshots. And as it says in the book, I
Speaker 6: got myself under the bed, and who knows how long
Speaker 6: I was under there, And I'll just mention one thing.
Speaker 6: At a certain point during that time, Robert fell within
Speaker 6: a foot of my face, his facing my face, and
Speaker 6: his eyes were open, and he was looking straight ahead.
Speaker 6: But he did not see me. He had tripped or
Speaker 6: he'd fallen. What I did see was the gun and
Speaker 6: his face. I don't think he registered that he was
Speaker 6: looking at anyone underneath that bed. I don't remember much
Speaker 6: after that for quite a while, and as Sharon says
Speaker 6: in the book, perhaps i'd passed out. I don't know
Speaker 6: if that word was in my terminology at twelve years old,
Speaker 6: but I survived.
Speaker 4: Good. Do you want me to keep going? I think
Speaker 4: that's enough to put you through peg.
Speaker 5: Okay, Sharon, can you continue with this rampage and its result?
Speaker 4: Well? I will say this fairly briefly. I think this
Speaker 4: needs to be read in order to understand. Quite frankly,
Speaker 4: it moves very quickly. It involves not only Peg, who
Speaker 4: has a very dramatic experience being trapped under that bed
Speaker 4: and facing Robert, but it involves also Tom Major, whom
Speaker 4: I mentioned earlier, who had wrestled with Robert in order
Speaker 4: to get the two handguns out of his hands, and
Speaker 4: in the process of doing so, fired the handguns at
Speaker 4: him and neither worked. They had worked once to kill
Speaker 4: Florence and to shoot Tom Major, but they didn't work
Speaker 4: a second time, and the result was that Tom Major
Speaker 4: used the only weapon he had at hand, which is
Speaker 4: a hammer, and it was though it was those hammer
Speaker 4: blows to Robert's head that eventually killed him, but it
Speaker 4: took until the next day. In the process, Brian was
Speaker 4: shot very close ranged by a shotgun and thought he
Speaker 4: had been killed. There is a very moving account in
Speaker 4: the book from Brian as to what that feels like
Speaker 4: to be fired at short range as a child, and
Speaker 4: I will let him speak for that. Pearl was murdered
Speaker 4: and left in a closet. Peg did not know this
Speaker 4: at the time. Various other people ran for their lives,
Speaker 4: they didn't attempt to help. Where As I say, Tom
Speaker 4: Major is one of the heroes of this story. The
Speaker 4: second hero was Brian's teacher, Peter Miller, who lives in
Speaker 4: Toronto now has had a very successful life after his
Speaker 4: first year of teaching. This is his first year of
Speaker 4: teaching in a little country school, and he came running
Speaker 4: to try to help as well, and he was the
Speaker 4: most seriously wounded of any It took him a year
Speaker 4: to recover from his wounds. He went back to teach
Speaker 4: show one more year, got a university degree, and then
Speaker 4: carried on with publishing and as I say, had a
Speaker 4: good life. So there is heroism in this story. There
Speaker 4: is cowardice in the story, and there is a lot
Speaker 4: of blood and the result of that was, of course,
Speaker 4: to traumatize these two children to the point where they
Speaker 4: needed to and a good deal of time as they
Speaker 4: were growing into teenagers once they joined my family in Calgary.
Speaker 4: And so the last third of the book addresses how
Speaker 4: they emerged from the fog, which is characteristic of trauma,
Speaker 4: that the sort of trauma they had experienced, into living
Speaker 4: a relatively normal life, happy life, and in the end,
Speaker 4: very productive lives. They both raised wonderful families and both
Speaker 4: have a bevy of grandchildren. Now, I think Peg is
Speaker 4: ahead of the game here in the grandchildren territory, but.
Speaker 6: Are seven grandchildren. I guess I think grand might have
Speaker 6: seven grandchildren also, Okay.
Speaker 4: I thought he was at six all right. Well, never
Speaker 4: wanted to be bested by our younger brother. In any event,
Speaker 4: they both had happy, productive lives and have been very
Speaker 4: productive members of society. And so that period of trauma,
Speaker 4: which we investigate quite closely in the period after they
Speaker 4: came to live in Calgary, was one that was extraordinarily
Speaker 4: painful for both of them, painful for my parents as well,
Speaker 4: who were doing what they could to help the situation.
Speaker 4: I had run away by that point to university in Edmonton,
Speaker 4: and so one of the other things that we look
Speaker 4: at is that the result was a reconstituted family. It
Speaker 4: became a second family to my parents with the two children,
Speaker 4: and these two quite senior people at that point they
Speaker 4: were what were they paid their well into their fifties.
Speaker 4: My father was looking at retirement and so it had
Speaker 4: put that off a bit. But they ended up having
Speaker 4: a very warm relationship, and my parents lived to be
Speaker 4: old and they were just terribly proud of both Margaret
Speaker 4: and Brian as they came to visit them often and
Speaker 4: helped let's.
Speaker 5: Us as an opportunity to stop for a second for
Speaker 5: these messages.
Speaker 1: Lucky Land Casino, asking people what's the weirdest place you've
Speaker 1: gotten lucky?
Speaker 2: Lucky in line at the Delhi I guess.
Speaker 1: Ah, in my dentist's office more than once.
Speaker 4: Actually do I have to say?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: You do?
Speaker 4: In the car before my kid's PTA meeting?
Speaker 1: Really? Yes, excuse me? What's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky?
Speaker 2: I never win?
Speaker 3: And tell well, there you have it.
Speaker 1: You could get lucky anywhere playing at lucky landslots dot
Speaker 1: com play for free right now? Are you feeling lucky? No,
Speaker 1: we're not necessary for my long eighteen plus terms conditions
Speaker 1: to plus see what's every details?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 5: You talk about how important the survivor's stories are and
Speaker 5: for people that are reading want to know how on
Speaker 5: earth you could recover from something like this, and especially
Speaker 5: when you write about there was no diagnosis of PTSD,
Speaker 5: no understanding of any kind of recovery strategies, any kind
Speaker 5: of techniques to be able to help these people. But
Speaker 5: you also talk about very interesting that decision was that
Speaker 5: your father, Sharon and mother decided to take Brian and
Speaker 5: Margaret into their home and then we're able to have
Speaker 5: an environment in which Margaret and Brian were able to heal.
Speaker 5: Tell us about this healing situation, this family unit reconstructed.
Speaker 6: I think, I mean, every child is different, so the
Speaker 6: story is going to be different for any child of
Speaker 6: such a tragedy. Brian and I, if I were to
Speaker 6: boil down to two words, it would be time and space.
Speaker 6: We were given the time and space to heal, but
Speaker 6: we also had I think within us the foundation of
Speaker 6: people who saw our strengths. And it doesn't take many
Speaker 6: people in a child's life for a role model to
Speaker 6: say you are strong enough to do this. So I
Speaker 6: think any child that has least one person to say
Speaker 6: to see in them their own strengths to carry on.
Speaker 6: Because for us the foundation was my mother and Ad
Speaker 6: us very much and they gave us that foundation. I
Speaker 6: know my mother was a strong person. I knew ad
Speaker 6: was a kind, calm, wonderful man. I had that foundation.
Speaker 6: You can't take that away through this kind of track.
Speaker 6: You can't take that foundation away. That wasn't stripped from us.
Speaker 6: What was taken from us was we were silenced for
Speaker 6: a long time and writing this book, and so are
Speaker 6: the women silenced. But writing this book has I would say,
Speaker 6: given us back some kind of voice and control, even
Speaker 6: more so than we had in the last number of years.
Speaker 6: It's returning the control to us that was taken. And
Speaker 6: perhaps that's what femicide is is to silence women and
Speaker 6: whoever stands in your way and to gain control. And
Speaker 6: maybe that was in board in us that we had
Speaker 6: that kind of strength to begin with, to overcome this.
Speaker 6: For the sake of the people that we lost, we
Speaker 6: wanted them to be proud of us. We wanted those
Speaker 6: my mother, my sisters, we wanted them to be proud
Speaker 6: of us. And even though we didn't verbalize that, I
Speaker 6: think that was always inside us that we have to
Speaker 6: represent them, we have to succeed, and we have to win.
Speaker 4: So I I think that is absolutely right, Margaret, in
Speaker 4: the way in which you've phrased that. I think it's
Speaker 4: really important in this story of overcoming trauma to recognize
Speaker 4: that these were not maimed children when they joined my
Speaker 4: family in Calgary. They were strong, sturdy, much loved children,
Speaker 4: and my parents recognize that that they had tremendous capacity,
Speaker 4: both of them, very bright, able to deal with a
Speaker 4: huge cultural change as well as a personal domestic change
Speaker 4: in coming to Calgary, so that this makes this situation different.
Speaker 4: As you say, Margaret, every situation is different, But I
Speaker 4: think the classification is important for me that children who
Speaker 4: have been abused for their lives, who would experience something
Speaker 4: like this, are going to react very differently from the
Speaker 4: way that you and Brian reacted. Not having been abused,
Speaker 4: you had periods of fright of living close to Robert
Speaker 4: when he would engage you in one of his crazy
Speaker 4: schemes and use you as forced labor, et cetera. But
Speaker 4: that's different, as you point out, from being an abused child.
Speaker 4: You weren't an abused child. You were part of a
Speaker 4: very loving family. So it provided you both with a
Speaker 4: strong basis and, as you say, confidence that you could
Speaker 4: you could move forward. From my parents point of view,
Speaker 4: you know they had no training in something like this.
Speaker 4: My mother was a nurse, but you'd never dealt with
Speaker 4: anything of this magnitude. My father was an animal nutritionist,
Speaker 4: What did he know about any of this? The two
Speaker 4: of them kind of flailing around, but moving forward and
Speaker 4: with a strong sense that there was a terrible wrong
Speaker 4: that had to be righted and the only way it
Speaker 4: could be righted was by giving these children a chance,
Speaker 4: a new chance at a life.
Speaker 6: And to add to that, we had each other. Brian
Speaker 6: and I were two survivors, not one, two survivors. I
Speaker 6: think that that definitely helped us also, and also Sharon,
Speaker 6: when I moved there, having you there just as a
Speaker 6: sister to talk to, that helped me. Brian, it was
Speaker 6: it was far more difficult, and I understand that fully
Speaker 6: and took a little bit longer, but we're still very close,
Speaker 6: the two of us. We share this background that probably
Speaker 6: only we understand, even though most of it's in the book.
Speaker 6: There's so much that we understand of each other that
Speaker 6: we don't need to even say aloud.
Speaker 5: What's very very interesting, especially when you talk about comparing
Speaker 5: when people wonder how someone can turn out so bad
Speaker 5: and other people in the family turn out so good.
Speaker 5: You talk about Harold's your father, Sharon's demeanor, his behavior,
Speaker 5: his mentality was so much different than Robert, but also
Speaker 5: Gladys engaged in some of the same kinds of behavior,
Speaker 5: had the same kind of temperament as Robert. They argued
Speaker 5: very and screamed at each other, and she didn't get
Speaker 5: along with very many people outside of her family as well,
Speaker 5: But Harold presented a completely different philosophy through his whole
Speaker 5: life in comparison, not cynical, optimistic, and that you write
Speaker 5: was even though he looked very much like Robert, which
Speaker 5: must have been very eerie that it was much It
Speaker 5: was presented as a much different family life than you
Speaker 5: had ever grown up with the presence of Robert nearby.
Speaker 4: Yes, I think one of the things that this writing
Speaker 4: this book reminded me about, because we've all seen this
Speaker 4: over the course of our lives. But what I was
Speaker 4: reminded of was how very differently siblings can turn out
Speaker 4: within the same family structure, right And as you point out,
Speaker 4: so just taking my father and Robert and Gladys as
Speaker 4: a case in point, and I've often thought that there's
Speaker 4: a real advantage to being considered the weak link in
Speaker 4: a given family unit, as Harold was. My father was
Speaker 4: the last born child. He was a slow poke as
Speaker 4: a little guy. He didn't impress his mother and maybe
Speaker 4: his father, I don't know. A relationship seems to have
Speaker 4: been warmer with his father, but he certainly did not
Speaker 4: impress his mother as having any ability of any sort,
Speaker 4: and in fact, he was more successful at university than
Speaker 4: Robert was. But what it left him with was a
Speaker 4: strong sense of humility that no, maybe he wasn't hot stuff,
Speaker 4: and he was going to have to work very hard
Speaker 4: and get along with people in order to be successful
Speaker 4: in life. And that made the difference. That seems to
Speaker 4: have made the difference. The other two seem to have
Speaker 4: been very correct me if I'm wrong in this peg,
Speaker 4: but a haughty haughty in the sense that they had
Speaker 4: both they both had a strong sense of their own superiority,
Speaker 4: and I think Harold had no sense of his own
Speaker 4: superiority at all. He thought of himself as mister inferiority,
Speaker 4: and the result was that he would he spent his
Speaker 4: life bucking up everybody else. So as a child, my
Speaker 4: childhood and my brother's childhood, and then when Peggy, when
Speaker 4: Margaret and Brian came to join the family, all of
Speaker 4: us were. He spent time telling us how terrific we were,
Speaker 4: not how terrific he was, how terrific we were.
Speaker 6: That's right, And he told us that too, how terrific
Speaker 6: we were all the time, which was, like I said,
Speaker 6: time and space. They gave us time and space. They
Speaker 6: didn't let the other shoe drop. We were always waiting
Speaker 6: for the other shoe to drop and there to be
Speaker 6: some kind of violence or anger or arguments. Never happened
Speaker 6: ever in the house in Calgary. No.
Speaker 5: Now with this book, what has this? I mean, it's
Speaker 5: just going to be released. It's just been released. Tell
Speaker 5: us what this book and the writing has done for you, Well.
Speaker 6: Just mention this that for me, it has given me
Speaker 6: back my voice to be able to talk about something
Speaker 6: to my children and my grandchildren. I just had a
Speaker 6: conversation with my son yesterday who said, I just finished
Speaker 6: the book. He said, it explained so much. He said,
Speaker 6: I don't know how you could have told me all
Speaker 6: that in sitting down in a conversation. He was so grateful.
Speaker 6: And that's the ultimate for me compliment and reward for
Speaker 6: sitting with Sharon telling her all of this information going
Speaker 6: through this is that one of my kids said to me,
Speaker 6: thank you for putting this into perspective. I kind of
Speaker 6: know who you are now, and I thought, that's amazing,
Speaker 6: that's amazing. But I also feel like I'm giving back
Speaker 6: the voice to my mother, my sister's, my aunt who
Speaker 6: completely disappeared out of existence, and the comments in the
Speaker 6: last year or two or three, is that, gosh, I'd
Speaker 6: never heard about this tragedy. I didn't hear about this femicide.
Speaker 6: I didn't know that happened. We've heard that over and
Speaker 6: over again, meaning those people have been lost. And if
Speaker 6: you looked it up online you'd see Robert Killen's the perpetrator,
Speaker 6: but you would not read much about my mother and
Speaker 6: my sisters and my aunt and to bring them back,
Speaker 6: to understand them, and I've spoken to people who've known them,
Speaker 6: especially my older sister, has been That has been a
Speaker 6: reward in and of itself. Also to have someone say
Speaker 6: to me, Gosh, I went to high school with your
Speaker 6: sister and this is what she was like. And that's
Speaker 6: also a reward for me. Sharon, I'll let you add
Speaker 6: to that well.
Speaker 4: I want to support everything you've said. Like you, part
Speaker 4: of the effect of writing this book has been personal.
Speaker 4: In my case, it was to know more about these
Speaker 4: four women who were murdered unjustly, but it was also
Speaker 4: to understand my own father better. I will admit that
Speaker 4: I was angry with my father's inability to acknowledge his
Speaker 4: brother's heinous crime. I understand now much better. Why that
Speaker 4: was so, and I am grateful for that, But like you,
Speaker 4: I also have a broader societal result of having written this,
Speaker 4: and it is to have made it clearer to me
Speaker 4: the scourge that femicide still represent in our society. Yes,
Speaker 4: we think we've made tremendous progress. We've we've made some progress,
Speaker 4: for sure, but we are a long way from addressing
Speaker 4: this reasonably as a society. As the Renfrew County in
Speaker 4: Quest just completed what ten days ago, shows that women
Speaker 4: who find themselves in this position, especially women in rural districts,
Speaker 4: are on their own. They're on their own and they
Speaker 4: live in terror. That is something we've we've got to correct.
Speaker 4: And the sixteen recommendations of that in quest I think
Speaker 4: are well worth looking at. They're they're well considered, well considered,
Speaker 4: and we have a responsibility as a society to do
Speaker 4: something about the situation before it becomes another case of
Speaker 4: femicide where women are murdered. I guess I would. I
Speaker 4: would mention also in the press recently we've seen fair
Speaker 4: analysis about the Nova Scotia shooter, and I mentioned this earlier.
Speaker 4: The woman who was at the abused woman who was
Speaker 4: at the heart of that instance, held off a violent,
Speaker 4: malicious man for nineteen years. Margaret's mother, Florence, held off
Speaker 4: a malicious, violent man for sixteen years. Yes, I have
Speaker 4: to say I find that amazing. That's just amazing. We
Speaker 4: think of these women as being victims. What they were
Speaker 4: was resilient and smart. Somehow they're able to get through
Speaker 4: a situation with somebody who has got a hair trigger
Speaker 4: temper and who is quite happy to murder people, and
Speaker 4: they keep the show going for years and years. I
Speaker 4: think that's astonishing, And that is one thing that became
Speaker 4: clear to me in writing this, just what an achievement
Speaker 4: that was on the part of those women, and what
Speaker 4: an achievement it still is on the part of many
Speaker 4: other women who faced violence all the time in the
Speaker 4: domestic sphere. And not all of these women are murdered.
Speaker 4: They're living this life right now. They're holding off these people.
Speaker 4: They may not get murdered, but think of how many
Speaker 4: women are doing this as we speak, holding these men off.
Speaker 5: It's shocking that it still occurs, obviously, but it is
Speaker 5: really This book really shows the societal norms at that
Speaker 5: time were shocking. To go back that many years, it
Speaker 5: seems like a history that I had no idea of,
Speaker 5: even though I'm sixty three years of age. So I
Speaker 5: want to thank you both Margaret Carson and Sharon Anne
Speaker 5: Cook for talking about the Castleton Massacre of Survivors' stories
Speaker 5: of the Killin's Femicide. It's been a fascinating interview. Can
Speaker 5: you tell our audience where this book was published and
Speaker 5: when it is officially going to be released. Tell us
Speaker 5: a little bit more about people might find out about
Speaker 5: this book.
Speaker 4: Published by Dunder and Press out of Toronto. It is
Speaker 4: available everywhere now in independent bookshops at Chapters one. For
Speaker 4: some reason or other, the printing done earlier than we
Speaker 4: expected and it's been available since about the middle of June.
Speaker 4: So we are delighted to say that one can find
Speaker 4: this book at any bookseller.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, thank you so much the Castleton Massacre Survivors' Stories
Speaker 5: of the Killans Femicide, Sharon Ann Cook and Margaret Carson,
Speaker 5: thank you so much for this interview. Congratulations on the book,
Speaker 5: and good night.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Thank you Dan, thank you