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Speaker 4: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 4: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about them Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every
Speaker 4: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 4: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 4: journalist and author Dan Zufanski, Good Evening. When forty year
Speaker 4: old Esther Castellani died a slow, in agonizing death in
Speaker 4: nineteen sixty five, the official cause was at first undetermined.
Speaker 4: The day after Ester's funeral, her husband, Renee, packed up
Speaker 4: his girlfriend Lallie, his daughter Jeanine, and Lolly's son Dawn
Speaker 4: in the company car and took off for Disneyland. If
Speaker 4: not for the doggedness of the doctor who treated Esther, Renee,
Speaker 4: then a charismatic and handsome radio personality, would have been
Speaker 4: free to marry Lawley, who was the station's pretty twenty
Speaker 4: somethings receptionist. Instead, Renee was charged with capital murder for
Speaker 4: poisoning his wife with arsenic laced milkshakes. Murder by Milkshake
Speaker 4: is the compelling story of the Castellanis and of their daughter, Jeanine,
Speaker 4: who was eleven at the time of her mother's murder
Speaker 4: and who clung to her father's innocence, even committing perjury
Speaker 4: during his trial. Rigorously researched and based on dozens of
Speaker 4: interviews with family, friends, and co workers, Murdered by Milkshake
Speaker 4: documents the sensational case that kept the city spellbound while
Speaker 4: providing a snapshot of the man mad men s, social
Speaker 4: and political realities of the sixties. The book that we're
Speaker 4: featuring this evening is Murdered by Milkshake, an astonishing true
Speaker 4: story of adultery, arsenic and a charismatic killer, with my
Speaker 4: special guest journalists, an author and crime historian Eve Lazareth.
Speaker 4: Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for
Speaker 4: agreeing to this interview. Eve Lazareth, thanks so much for
Speaker 4: having me. Thank you very much. But first off, tell
Speaker 4: us a little bit about your work as a crime historian,
Speaker 4: a journalist and an author that puts you in a
Speaker 4: position to write about this case. Initially, originally before you've
Speaker 4: decided to write this book. So tell us a little
Speaker 4: bit about your background and how you came in a
Speaker 4: position to be able to write this book. Tell us
Speaker 4: about the crime Museum and your blog, and tell us
Speaker 4: all about that background, please sure.
Speaker 5: I first heard about this case at the Vancouver Police Museum,
Speaker 5: and that would have been back in the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 5: and it was a true kind display that it was
Speaker 5: mainly at that stage focused on reading Castellani the Murderer,
Speaker 5: and I thought, you know, it was kind of a
Speaker 5: really interesting, obviously bizarre case, and I'd written about it
Speaker 5: in my first book, at Home with History, and the
Speaker 5: idea behind that book was a house has a history
Speaker 5: or a genealogy like a person's, and I was telling
Speaker 5: stories that happened in the house, filtered through the house.
Speaker 5: And I told the story of the Castellini murder filtered
Speaker 5: through that Carrisdale, Vancouver duplex where most of the poisoning
Speaker 5: took place. And it's been written about several times as
Speaker 5: a chapter in different people's books. And you know, it's
Speaker 5: quite a well known or actually not as well known
Speaker 5: as I thought after the book came out, but fairly
Speaker 5: well known. Murder case were called in Vancouver and Petty
Speaker 5: never thought about doing a book, but I did, right.
Speaker 5: I have a blog called every Place Has a Story,
Speaker 5: and several years ago I'd written up the story on
Speaker 5: my blog again filtered through the duplex where the poisoning
Speaker 5: took place, and fortunately for me, I made a mistake.
Speaker 5: I said that Lolly Reni's mistress had a six year
Speaker 5: old daughter. And a little while later I got this
Speaker 5: note from a woman named Debbie Miller, and she said,
Speaker 5: you're wrong. Lolly had a son and he's my husband,
Speaker 5: Don and he's been looking for Janine, the Castellani daughter
Speaker 5: for almost fifty years. Do you know where she is?
Speaker 5: And Janine was eleven when her father murdered her mother,
Speaker 5: and I'd always wondered what had happened to Janine, you know,
Speaker 5: what is someone's life like after something that awful happens?
Speaker 5: And didn't again, didn't think much more about it. And
Speaker 5: then book called Blood, Sweat and Fear in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 5: and I had the book launch back at the bank
Speaker 5: as the Police Museum, and Janine came to my book
Speaker 5: launch and introduced herself. So I'd sort of met Janine
Speaker 5: and I'd said to her, oh my god, I got,
Speaker 5: you know, an email from Debbie Mello Don's husband saying
Speaker 5: that he's been looking for you, and she got really
Speaker 5: emotional and she said, well, I've been looking for him
Speaker 5: for nearly fifty years as well. And I just got
Speaker 5: so intrigued by this story. I really wanted to tell
Speaker 5: the story from Janine's point of view and really, as
Speaker 5: much as possible, try to give Esther back a voice
Speaker 5: in this whole story. And Janine and she has two
Speaker 5: daughters now, and we met, oh many, many many times,
Speaker 5: and she had a lot of the family album, you know,
Speaker 5: photos that you can see throughout the book. And I'd
Speaker 5: managed to get the testimotive is at the Capital murder trial,
Speaker 5: and so the story it's a bit different. It touches
Speaker 5: on the history of Vancouver in the sixties. It's definitely
Speaker 5: Janine's story, and in some ways that the murder became
Speaker 5: the least interesting part of writing this book for me.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about the outline of the crime itself in
Speaker 4: July nineteen sixty five, and can go back to previous
Speaker 4: about Esther's health, but take us back to the actual event,
Speaker 4: and let's talk about just previous to that, the living situation.
Speaker 4: You talk about Renee working at c K and W
Speaker 4: of Radio Popular radio station tell us about their family
Speaker 4: situation that Janine with her father and her mother esther
Speaker 4: she was living at that time in nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 5: Sure well, Rennie was kind of a a celebrity. He
Speaker 5: was a radio personality with c K and W out
Speaker 5: here in Vancouver and he did all the promotions and
Speaker 5: back then probably the more sober Now, ratings were just huge,
Speaker 5: and these stations would just do anything, you know, they
Speaker 5: kept dreaming out the most outrageous promotions possible, and he
Speaker 5: was well known for doing some of these crazy stunts.
Speaker 5: He was known as a dizzy dialer. It was kind
Speaker 5: of a like a radio version of Canadad Camera where
Speaker 5: you'd call up someone and basically punk them on the air,
Speaker 5: and he was known as a dizzy dialer. He did
Speaker 5: an outrageous promotion as the Maharaja of Ali Baba where
Speaker 5: the opposition station had brought up the guy that hosts
Speaker 5: whose name I can't remember right now, but he did
Speaker 5: a show called who Wants to Be a Millionaire and
Speaker 5: they brought him up from the States. He handed out,
Speaker 5: you know, wads of cash to people and he came
Speaker 5: w were desperate to come up with something, and they
Speaker 5: came up with this Mari Maharaja of Ali Baba, where
Speaker 5: they dressed up Reni in these sheikh's robes and said
Speaker 5: he'd come to buy the province. And it was so
Speaker 5: convincing that people came out with signs saying, you know,
Speaker 5: keep DC British as it was in those days nineteen
Speaker 5: in the early sixties, and so he was getting quite
Speaker 5: a name for himself. He was before that, he had
Speaker 5: bounced around from job to job. He prepared, so he
Speaker 5: was in the Wars radio operator in Second World War.
Speaker 5: He looked after washing machines. He was a maintenance guy.
Speaker 5: He had run a hotel up in Campbell River, Northern
Speaker 5: BC in the early sixties for a while, and they'd
Speaker 5: moved from house to house. It was a pretty unstable
Speaker 5: sort of life, but a fairly happy one, according to
Speaker 5: Janine in the early years, and so they were bouncing
Speaker 5: around from sort of house to house. He'd finally got
Speaker 5: hired on after the Maharaja success, so he was working
Speaker 5: full time and Esther was working as a manager at
Speaker 5: a children's boutique in Kristylist where they lived, and Janine
Speaker 5: was going to the little flour Academy. It was a
Speaker 5: Catholic boarding schools, so life was getting pretty good for them.
Speaker 5: And then Reenie met and fell in love with Lolly
Speaker 5: the twenty something I think she was twenty five at
Speaker 5: that point. She was a young widow, beautiful woman, had
Speaker 5: been lefts some money from her constance's earlier death, and
Speaker 5: I guess for Reenie it looked like, you know, something
Speaker 5: that he could down upgrades a younger wife, a younger, beautiful,
Speaker 5: rich wife, and he looked at how he could get
Speaker 5: rid of Esther and found Arsnext. She loved milkshakes, apparently,
Speaker 5: especially once from White Spot Vanilla milkshakes, and talking to
Speaker 5: various scientists, apparently milk and milkshakes in particular a fantastic
Speaker 5: delivery system for arsenic because you can't taste it or
Speaker 5: see it, and it's a diabolically clever murder weapon. When
Speaker 5: it's given in small doses, it mimics natural causes like
Speaker 5: the flu or viruses, which is what they thought it was.
Speaker 5: For many, many months, Esther had started getting sick when
Speaker 5: she'd found a letter in Renie's wallet signed Love Lilly,
Speaker 5: and confronted him about this, and he denied having an affair,
Speaker 5: but pretty soon after that started poisoning her. Do you
Speaker 5: want to keep going?
Speaker 4: Well, the thing is you talk about this poisoning. What
Speaker 4: was you write in the book about her doctor Sector
Speaker 4: and his assessment of what was happening during that time
Speaker 4: of the poisoning. So tell us what he thought and
Speaker 4: what she thought was she did she suspect that there
Speaker 4: was anything a file? And what did the doctor suspect?
Speaker 4: What was his treatment?
Speaker 5: Actually, I'm very angry at doctor Sector, who's long dead
Speaker 5: now that he was incredibly patronizing here. She was really suffering,
Speaker 5: and she would go see him. I think she saw
Speaker 5: him seven times, and each time he'd kind of pat
Speaker 5: her on the head and say, well, you're a bit plump,
Speaker 5: aren't she Probably, you know, improve your diet, and he'd
Speaker 5: give her an antacid and sort of commiserate with her
Speaker 5: long suffering husband, and off she'd go, thinking it was
Speaker 5: her own fault that she was getting sick. And as
Speaker 5: she got sicker and sick of her family was so
Speaker 5: worried for her that they got another doctor, a specialist,
Speaker 5: to have a look at her, and he immediately put
Speaker 5: her into Vancouver General Hospital, where she was for seven
Speaker 5: weeks before her death. She had over one hundred and
Speaker 5: twenty different tests and was seen by several specialists and
Speaker 5: no one could figure out what was wrong with her.
Speaker 4: At this time. He wrote, and this is part of
Speaker 4: the incredible story that this guy that would do anything
Speaker 4: for a promotional, man that would do anything for a
Speaker 4: radio stunt to promote the radio station while his wife
Speaker 4: was in the hospital. He cooked up an especially sensational
Speaker 4: promotional scheme. Tell us about this promotional.
Speaker 5: And that also did him in in the end, which
Speaker 5: was quite interesting. Yeah. One of the promotions was one
Speaker 5: of the clients for c kW was a car dealership
Speaker 5: with Broadway here in Vancouver, and it was Bomack and
Speaker 5: Jimmy Patterson, who's caught a zillionaire and owns Huff Canada,
Speaker 5: was originally working at this car dealership. He was a
Speaker 5: manager of it in nineteen fifty nine and he had
Speaker 5: this Neon sign built and it was the biggest freestanding
Speaker 5: Neon sign in North America at that time, and it
Speaker 5: was all lit up with these huge ladders. It's still there,
Speaker 5: unfortunately now it's covered by a Toys r Us sign,
Speaker 5: but it's still there and huge, huge, but much bigger
Speaker 5: back then when building for very small, and the stunt
Speaker 5: was that Reni would climb to the top and live
Speaker 5: in a car until every last car on the dealership
Speaker 5: was sold. And they built scaffolding up next to the
Speaker 5: sign and it was about, I guess forty foot high,
Speaker 5: and he would live in this car and there was
Speaker 5: a sort of port a potty or something put up there,
Speaker 5: and they'd get his food up there, hoisted up and
Speaker 5: people would wave and honk their horns and their encouraged seams,
Speaker 5: so it was highly visible up on this sign. He
Speaker 5: was up there for a total of nine days. And
Speaker 5: while he was up there, Esther was in the hospital
Speaker 5: and she got better and better, and the day after
Speaker 5: he came down, she got really, really sick and died
Speaker 5: not long after that. And after he was caught and
Speaker 5: everything came out and they were able to chart the
Speaker 5: amount of arsenic through her nails and through her hair
Speaker 5: that she'd ingested in a rough timeline of when she
Speaker 5: took it. And you know, surprise a prize, it coincided
Speaker 5: with the time that he was up on top of
Speaker 5: the Bomac sign.
Speaker 4: Yeah, now tell us about her death. And then we
Speaker 4: talked about the darkness of this. Doctor Moskovich tell us
Speaker 4: how he recognizes that there's something a foul and what
Speaker 4: does he do as a result, and tell us about
Speaker 4: her actual death and sixty.
Speaker 5: Five, Well, doctor Moskovitch was a specialist that was brought
Speaker 5: in after doctor Sector failed her miserably, and he'd had
Speaker 5: a put into a hospital and had done that, as
Speaker 5: I mentioned, one hundred and twenty tests and called in
Speaker 5: a whole bunch of different specialists to try and find
Speaker 5: out what was wrong with her, and to no avail,
Speaker 5: obviously because she died. But he really liked esther and
Speaker 5: it just drove in nuts and he couldn't figure out
Speaker 5: what was wrong. And she'd had a hospital autopsy done
Speaker 5: just after her death, and that still didn't bring out
Speaker 5: a cause of guests, and he just couldn't let it go,
Speaker 5: and he went back over everything, all the case notes, everything,
Speaker 5: and then he suddenly realized, aha, arsenik could cause these symptoms.
Speaker 5: And then as now you have to be tested specifically
Speaker 5: for arsenith. It just doesn't come up with any other tests.
Speaker 5: And why would you write it? Was you know, a
Speaker 5: popular way to offer someone in seventeen and eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 5: But it's virtually unheard of last century, and it was.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 5: Anyway, he sent off from the sorry from the autopsy
Speaker 5: that had some of her organs still, and he'd sent
Speaker 5: those off to the city analysts to have them tested,
Speaker 5: and it came back that she'd had fifteen hundred times
Speaker 5: for normal amount of arsnik in her organs that were
Speaker 5: found in the human body. And so they had their
Speaker 5: sort of cause of death. And so you asked when
Speaker 5: she died. She died in July nineteen sixty five, after
Speaker 5: spending seven weeks in hospital.
Speaker 4: Now right away, of course, investigations might be different today,
Speaker 4: and certainly they were different then. But you write this
Speaker 4: incredible part of the story where he packs up his
Speaker 4: girlfriend Lally, his die Janine, and her son Don and
Speaker 4: in the company car. And you write in the book
Speaker 4: too that he had prepared the radio station saying that
Speaker 4: he was going to use the company car for a
Speaker 4: family outing, certainly not what he ended up doing. So,
Speaker 4: and in this company car he took off for Disneyland
Speaker 4: one day after the funeral. Tell us more about the
Speaker 4: suspicion that is aroused by this, and what does the
Speaker 4: police do. You talk about a particularly again dogged detective
Speaker 4: that suspects him early on, tell us what happens.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was the day after the funeral. As you mentioned,
Speaker 5: he'd got the company car and he had told the
Speaker 5: station and he told the family that he was taking
Speaker 5: Janine away. He was taking her to Disneyland and to
Speaker 5: get away and make a fresh start of it, and
Speaker 5: they were quite encouraging. They loaned him the car for that,
Speaker 5: and the family gave him cash to you know, take
Speaker 5: away on the holiday. But of course he didn't tell
Speaker 5: anyone that he was also taking his mistress and her
Speaker 5: six year old son. And the other really bizarre thing
Speaker 5: that he did was no one before this, no one
Speaker 5: suspected him. He was a loving husband, he played the
Speaker 5: role really well. And the other had he got her cremated,
Speaker 5: by the way, everything would have gone away, he would
Speaker 5: have got away with murder. But he didn't have a
Speaker 5: cremated for whatever reason. I think he just got really
Speaker 5: arrogant that he'd got away with the poisoning for so
Speaker 5: long and thought all the specialists and I imagine that
Speaker 5: he just felt invincible by this point and so could
Speaker 5: just do anything. And one of the other done things
Speaker 5: he did a couple of weeks before Esther died, was
Speaker 5: he and Lolly went and took out a mortgage for
Speaker 5: a house in their new married names, right, and then
Speaker 5: a couple when the police found out about Gidney Land
Speaker 5: and said hello, he's got a mistress, and then found
Speaker 5: out about the mortgage, then they really centered their investigation
Speaker 5: on him. And by this time they were all living together,
Speaker 5: he and Lolly and the two kids in a house
Speaker 5: just outside Vancouver proper, And so that was all going along.
Speaker 4: Right, you talk about that. He eventually agrees to a
Speaker 4: search of the home and what do police find under
Speaker 4: the sink?
Speaker 5: Yeah, The police by this time, when they found out
Speaker 5: about all this, were really looking at him quite closely,
Speaker 5: and turned out one day and asked him if they
Speaker 5: could look inside his house, and another stupid thing he
Speaker 5: did would say come on in. And they got really
Speaker 5: excited when they looked under the kitchen sink and found
Speaker 5: a can of also trial Also trials is about ninety
Speaker 5: percent arsenic, and it was a popular weed killer and
Speaker 5: a rat killer back then. Arsnik was used for both.
Speaker 5: And they looked around the garden and saw that Rennie
Speaker 5: wasn't a gardener, and Janine's confirmed that her mother didn't
Speaker 5: a garden either, So they got the can of also
Speaker 5: trials and had it analyzed, and it was missing about
Speaker 5: the same amount that would have been needed to kill esther. Now, again,
Speaker 5: all of this is circumstantial evidence. They had no actual proof,
Speaker 5: but the circumstantial evidence was building rapidly.
Speaker 4: Now from there, what is their break, what is their
Speaker 4: impetus to be able to arrest Renee for the murder
Speaker 4: of his wife?
Speaker 5: Well, they were, as mentioned, they were living together as
Speaker 5: a family then and did so for the next several months,
Speaker 5: and then Rene and Lolly took out a marriage license
Speaker 5: and the police swooped because they knew that if they
Speaker 5: were married that they couldn't force Lolly to testify against
Speaker 5: her husband. So he was arrested straight away. They'd put
Speaker 5: off arresting him, I'm told because they were hoping that
Speaker 5: he would do something really dumb and lead them to
Speaker 5: real evidence that they could charge him with. But he
Speaker 5: never did that.
Speaker 4: What type of information did police believe that Lollie might
Speaker 4: have and what did Lollie tell them if anything about
Speaker 4: Renee and his plans did get from that?
Speaker 5: Not much that She never did testify at the court
Speaker 5: trials and I'm not sure why that was, but she
Speaker 5: did testify at the inquest and pretty well lied. She
Speaker 5: was the problem for me, I believe if she's still alive,
Speaker 5: but I couldn't find her, and I really don't know
Speaker 5: whether she was another victim of his or whether she
Speaker 5: was complicit in the murder. I get the sense that
Speaker 5: he probably he told everyone he was getting the divorced
Speaker 5: except for his wife, and I suspect he originally told
Speaker 5: her the same thing, but after he was arrested. I mean,
Speaker 5: she must have known that he was responsible, you know,
Speaker 5: when they found out that Esther was murdered through Arsnek
Speaker 5: and she still stuck by him, and she then Jeanine
Speaker 5: after he went to jail, Jeanine stayed with her and
Speaker 5: Don for the next five years.
Speaker 4: Now you talk about that stay with her, and you
Speaker 4: write in the book because of course he had this
Speaker 4: incredible access with the meeting with Jeanine, how did Lolly
Speaker 4: treat her and what was the home life like with
Speaker 4: Don and herself, but also what was the situation with
Speaker 4: Renee in prison and Janine's relationship with Esther's parents, her grandparents,
Speaker 4: what did they say to her ab both them and
Speaker 4: in real terms. What was the relationship with her grandparents
Speaker 4: after this?
Speaker 5: Yeah, that was really awful. Actually, she had a close
Speaker 5: relationship with her grandparents esther's mom and dad before all this,
Speaker 5: and while her mother was alive, and after Renee was
Speaker 5: convicted of capital murder, which at that point came into
Speaker 5: death penalty, he still had custody of Jeanine and he'd
Speaker 5: put over his custody to Jeanine to Lolly, so Lolly
Speaker 5: actually had custody of Jeanine's and so that was really bizarre.
Speaker 5: And he wouldn't let her see her grandparents, and he
Speaker 5: told Janine that they were going to kidnap, that they
Speaker 5: were horrible people, that if she went anywhere near them,
Speaker 5: that she'd never see him again. And he had her
Speaker 5: basically manipulated and brainwashed into being really frightened dolphin, And
Speaker 5: so she wasn't allowed to see them and didn't for
Speaker 5: the next five years, and Lolly and Don became her
Speaker 5: only family. Don she's the babysit a light and they
Speaker 5: were really close, and I was really interested about how
Speaker 5: Lolly treated her. I had a certain amount of sympathy
Speaker 5: for this woman. She was only twenty six, she had
Speaker 5: a six year old son. She was a widow. She'd
Speaker 5: been fired from c KMW for having an affair with
Speaker 5: a senior manager while he kept his job, which I
Speaker 5: just find outrageous. And then she was financially responsible for
Speaker 5: this thirteen year old by that point, which can't have
Speaker 5: been great. But Janine never remembers her being mean to her.
Speaker 5: She said Lolly was very strict, but she was never mean.
Speaker 5: Threw a party at one point, and yet Don, her
Speaker 5: son is estranged from his mother, so she's evil and
Speaker 5: believed she had something to do with it. So I
Speaker 5: had really mixed feelings about Lolly and Janine stayed there
Speaker 5: for almost five years until Lolly dumped her father and
Speaker 5: found another man, and Janine was kind of taken and
Speaker 5: dropped off at Rennie's sisters, had a name changed and
Speaker 5: told never to talk about it again.
Speaker 4: Before that, before she was told never to talk about
Speaker 4: it again. What information did she have? What was she
Speaker 4: told in that ensuing five years or even in ensuing
Speaker 4: two years before she went to trial and testified. What
Speaker 4: did she know above the story itself? What was she told?
Speaker 4: Was she encouraged to get information? What did she actually know?
Speaker 5: She completely believed her father was innocent, and she didn't
Speaker 5: see him for two years after he was rested and
Speaker 5: put in jail, and he went through one trial and
Speaker 5: was convicted and given the death penalty, and they had
Speaker 5: no defense. They put on no defense. He didn't take
Speaker 5: the stand and didn't have any defense witnesses. And the
Speaker 5: second trial he did take the stand, and so did Jeanine.
Speaker 5: Jeanine was only thirteen at that time, and she was
Speaker 5: basically told what to say. She was she committed perdurance.
Speaker 5: When I got the transcripts, I was reading them back
Speaker 5: to her when I was doing the book, and I said,
Speaker 5: was this true? With this part true? And she'd say no.
Speaker 5: I was told to say that, you know, things like,
Speaker 5: you know, we're Lolly and Rene sleeping together when you
Speaker 5: went to Disneyland, and they were, and she was told
Speaker 5: to say, no, they weren't, and you know, awful stuff
Speaker 5: to do to a child. And I think she, you know, well,
Speaker 5: I know that she's really bitter about that now. But
Speaker 5: she believed her father was innocent, and you know, she
Speaker 5: had no one else, she'd been cut off from the family,
Speaker 5: living with Lolly and Dome, hugging that her father would
Speaker 5: you know, get out of jail. And this was also
Speaker 5: the fifth time that she'd seen him in two years,
Speaker 5: So it's just really awful.
Speaker 4: She was the only you write that incredibly, she was
Speaker 4: the only defense witness at the trial for her father
Speaker 4: and thirteen years of age. And you said that when
Speaker 4: you got the trial transcripts then and she hadn't seen it,
Speaker 4: you asked her questions and like that, she told you that, well,
Speaker 4: the police told her to say that, no, my my
Speaker 4: dad was when went.
Speaker 6: To yeah, pardon me, her lawyers, yeah, yeah, now this
Speaker 6: what else was she.
Speaker 4: Course to say on that stand? And from your experience
Speaker 4: dealing with her, how traumatic was that experience for her
Speaker 4: among all the other traumatic experiences.
Speaker 5: Well, I think I just mentioned that it was incredibly traumatic.
Speaker 5: She's steel very bitter about that step.
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Speaker 4: Right now with this living arrangement, you say that five
Speaker 4: years later she is living with her dad's sister and
Speaker 4: she is does not see and does have no contact
Speaker 4: with Dawn anymore or Lolly after that period of time,
Speaker 4: I'm correct. What I found the most one of the
Speaker 4: most fascinating parts of this book is the when you
Speaker 4: talk about the society at that time and the death penalty.
Speaker 4: When was he tell us how close it was that
Speaker 4: he would have been hung for his crimes, and then
Speaker 4: what happens afterwards, which is again diametrically opposed to the
Speaker 4: death penalty.
Speaker 5: Yeah, fascinating. Actually, that was one of my most interesting
Speaker 5: parts of the book as well. When he was sentenced
Speaker 5: the second time to hang, the death penalty was commuted
Speaker 5: two weeks before he was actually scheduled to hang, So
Speaker 5: he was incredibly lucky, and he got even luckier. You know,
Speaker 5: his sentence was obviously giving life in prison, and he
Speaker 5: was sent to Masqui, which was a brand new prison
Speaker 5: out in outpast Abbotstorade here in BC, and it was
Speaker 5: mainly for drug addicts and drug pushes, and he was
Speaker 5: one of the few that wasn't incultivated because of drugs,
Speaker 5: and he was given just a huge amount of latitude.
Speaker 5: He was quickly. They had this grading system where he
Speaker 5: went through different grades, and when you got to grade
Speaker 5: four you were given certain liberties like you could leave
Speaker 5: cell door unlocked, you could go to the library yourself,
Speaker 5: and you could get out into the community. And so
Speaker 5: within a couple of years, this guy's gone from getting
Speaker 5: the death penalty to life in prison in this very
Speaker 5: you know o'kala prison, which is a very tough jail,
Speaker 5: to this pretty lax it was meeting security that compared
Speaker 5: to the others, it was a fairly nice place where
Speaker 5: they could actually see their family and Jane could visit
Speaker 5: him and you know, hug him and stuff like that.
Speaker 5: It wasn't glass in between them. And then he could
Speaker 5: actually go out to the community. So within a couple
Speaker 5: of years he'd got a volunteer job full time with
Speaker 5: Community Services and Abbotsfeid, which meant he'd leaves for work
Speaker 5: every day and then come back to jail that night,
Speaker 5: and he had full access to the community. I talked
Speaker 5: to people that knew him in those days, and he
Speaker 5: would be arranged. He was a very smart man and
Speaker 5: very good at promotions, and he did a lot of
Speaker 5: things for people, and it was incredibly popular and well liked,
Speaker 5: and within probably five to seven years, he was getting
Speaker 5: weekend passes and Jeanine remembers him bringing a different woman
Speaker 5: around on weekends or being asked to come and visit
Speaker 5: him at a different woman's place, and it was almost
Speaker 5: like his women were checking him out of jails for
Speaker 5: the weekend. Within ten years he was working for an
Speaker 5: Abbotsford radio station and he was fully paroled, remarried, moved
Speaker 5: to Nanaimo where he worked for another radio start up stations.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 5: Laver for his rest of his life, which unfortunately wasn't
Speaker 5: very long.
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Speaker 4: about this incredible lax and lenient sentence. When he would
Speaker 4: have been a man hung for his crimes. He is
Speaker 4: now working with this again. In Canada we call a
Speaker 4: mandatory life sentence. He is working in the community on
Speaker 4: this temporary absence programs. Two years into his sentence and
Speaker 4: as you write, ten years, he is fully paroled. You
Speaker 4: write about in the book though there is a car
Speaker 4: accident that Ginginine is involved in, and then settlement and
Speaker 4: then a visit with her fiance. Say in prison, tell
Speaker 4: us about this whole event that happens that she's come
Speaker 4: into some money and what the father has plans for
Speaker 4: that money and his relationship with her new fiance.
Speaker 6: Later her husband right.
Speaker 5: At the second trial on the night that he was
Speaker 5: convicted for capital murder and given the death sentence. Janine
Speaker 5: of course, is living with Lolly, and she'd gone out
Speaker 5: that night and she was crossing the road with a
Speaker 5: couple of friends and it was a rainy, dark night
Speaker 5: and she was hit by a police car and thrown
Speaker 5: into the air and almost killed. She had her right
Speaker 5: eyelid ripped off and she had you know, she was
Speaker 5: in hospital for a month and had to learn to
Speaker 5: walk again. It was just it was a tragic accident.
Speaker 5: It was a police can't chasing someone and he wasn't
Speaker 5: particularly speeding or anything, and just really awful around. But
Speaker 5: she did get a settlement from the city and was
Speaker 5: eligible when she turned twenty one. Well, RENI for some
Speaker 5: reason thought that he deserved part of his settlement and
Speaker 5: was just starting to harass her for the money. And
Speaker 5: I can't remember exactly how much it was. I think
Speaker 5: about twenty thousand or something like. It wasn't a huge
Speaker 5: fortune by any means, but she'd at this time met
Speaker 5: her fiance Dale, and Dale had been driven her out
Speaker 5: a few times to visit a father because she was
Speaker 5: still going regularly. She still believed he was innocent, and
Speaker 5: Reenie was starting to have work for the money, and
Speaker 5: Dale was starting to say, no, no, you're not going
Speaker 5: to give him any money. He doesn't deserve any money.
Speaker 5: And Renie was starting to really worry them both. He
Speaker 5: was going to send her a threatening letter. At one point,
Speaker 5: he'd asked her to sort of put his put her
Speaker 5: arms around his waist when she was visiting, and pull
Speaker 5: on this string. And she got this note out, and
Speaker 5: when she got home, this note was all about how
Speaker 5: she was, you know, just turned into a pub crawler
Speaker 5: and that's sort of no good. And he was that
Speaker 5: fiance was awful and all of this stuff. And he
Speaker 5: would get out for on the weekend pass and come
Speaker 5: by their house, and she was so really afraid that
Speaker 5: he would, you know, put a bomb or something in
Speaker 5: the car. It was really bizarre, and she started to
Speaker 5: really she went back and started to read all the
Speaker 5: articles about the trial and talk to people, talk to
Speaker 5: her family, and then she realized, oh my god, he
Speaker 5: really did murder my mother, and she cut off all
Speaker 5: contact she actually never saw in the game.
Speaker 4: Right now, from this, from this incredible research that you've done,
Speaker 4: you've had to trial transcripts. Tell us how it seems
Speaker 4: unusual that you would have access to the police reports
Speaker 4: in what is considered still an unsolved crime.
Speaker 5: Please explain that, Oh, it's definitely not an unsolved crime.
Speaker 5: It's definitely a solved crime. I wouldn't been able to
Speaker 5: get unsolved. So because it was a capital murder case
Speaker 5: and went with the death penalty, all the transcripts are
Speaker 5: in Ottawa, complete with the police investigations, so that was
Speaker 5: really useful. And a woman named Colin Hardwick was going
Speaker 5: to do a movie never eventuated that had got all
Speaker 5: of this from Ottawa twenty five years or so ago
Speaker 5: and very generously loaned them all to me. So that
Speaker 5: was great. So I had access to all the transcripts,
Speaker 5: and I ordered up the inquest for Victorian from bcar
Speaker 5: Clives here. And the inquest always has an incredible amount
Speaker 5: of information and hear say information is allowed and stuff
Speaker 5: that's just not allowed at the trial. So that was brilliant.
Speaker 5: And that's like two inches six So I was able
Speaker 5: to get a lot of the dialogue from the friends
Speaker 5: at new esther and Renie's own words and things from that,
Speaker 5: which I think sort of made it a bit more
Speaker 5: lively and interesting.
Speaker 4: Was what was the reason for the inquest?
Speaker 5: Well, they us your back then anyway, they would always
Speaker 5: have an inquest. It was suspicious, it was at that point.
Speaker 5: It was, you know, just to discover her cause of
Speaker 5: death and whether someone was responsible for it, not who
Speaker 5: was responsible, but you know whether it was murder, suicidal
Speaker 5: or natural causes. And it's a coroner's inquest that was
Speaker 5: held actually in the old police where the police museum
Speaker 5: is today with the old Coigner's Court, and that's also
Speaker 5: where her body was brought when it was exhumed.
Speaker 4: You rate above the research used that You spoke to
Speaker 4: many people, co workers, people that worked with Renie before
Speaker 4: he was arrested, and then people that worked with him
Speaker 4: like a radio station at in Abbersford afterwards. Tell us
Speaker 4: what they all said about his character and what they
Speaker 4: all said, weirdly enough, about his guilt.
Speaker 5: Everyone I talked to really liked him. Everyone told me
Speaker 5: how smart he was, how never, how much funny was
Speaker 5: to work for And in every case I had stated them, well,
Speaker 5: do you think he did it, and every time everyone said,
Speaker 5: oh yeah, everyone thought this guy did it, but they
Speaker 5: liked him anyway. It's done that fascinating. And there are
Speaker 5: a couple of things that I just couldn't answer, a
Speaker 5: couple of disconnects and things like that about why he
Speaker 5: did what he did and what he was like. And
Speaker 5: I had a woman named Heather Burke, and she's a
Speaker 5: forensic psychologist and she was kind enough to go over
Speaker 5: the first draft and really look at him, and she said, wow,
Speaker 5: you know, he picks off every box on the psychopath checklist.
Speaker 5: His charismatic, he's smart, he was manipulative, just everything that
Speaker 5: on that list. And so I've just done that really interesting.
Speaker 5: And as she said, you know, psychopaths are just quite
Speaker 5: fine until you get in their way. And of course
Speaker 5: Esa got in his way, and later Jeanine did as well.
Speaker 4: You talk about that. He addressed the jury and made
Speaker 4: a speech to them that would be memorable. What did
Speaker 4: he say to the jury at the after end of
Speaker 4: the second trial.
Speaker 5: Right the judge had gone through the spiel about you know,
Speaker 5: may God had mercy on your soul, and he turned
Speaker 5: around and looked at the jury and really said that
Speaker 5: back to them. I can't remember the exact words off hand.
Speaker 5: Do you have it best?
Speaker 4: He said to just have mercy, that God would have
Speaker 4: mercy on their souls the jury.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so he was pretty boldy.
Speaker 4: Yes, you talk about the effort that he does and
Speaker 4: seems to be successful in rebuilding his life and reputation.
Speaker 4: I find this especially interesting that he went from hanging
Speaker 4: to out in the community and being accepted in this
Speaker 4: same community, even though this crime was very high profile.
Speaker 4: And you say maybe not as many people knew about it,
Speaker 4: but at the time as this was well known, I
Speaker 4: find this odd that he was able to rehabilitate his
Speaker 4: reputation and his career. Tell us what you found.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I talked to the guy. Bob Singleton was the
Speaker 5: manager of the Abbot Said radio station that hide him.
Speaker 5: He was also on the board for Masquig Prisons, so
Speaker 5: he knew him from Masquene. He knew his reputation, and
Speaker 5: he hired him anyway, hided him while he was still
Speaker 5: in jail. After community services, he went to the radio
Speaker 5: station where he went he was known as Renee the
Speaker 5: road Runner, and he did all the traffic reports for
Speaker 5: the station. There's also a bit of a maintenance guy,
Speaker 5: as while he was good at fixing things, but Bob
Speaker 5: had said he really liked him. He had no qualms.
Speaker 5: He did a great job apparently, but he said he
Speaker 5: did keep under the radar, like he didn't use his
Speaker 5: last name. He was an attitude, which is, you know,
Speaker 5: fair way out of Vancouver. I remember George Garrett, who
Speaker 5: was a reporter with c K and W for over
Speaker 5: forty years, and you Renie annually actually, and he's still
Speaker 5: very much around. And George told me that he was.
Speaker 5: It was a sister station apparently, this Abstrad radio station
Speaker 5: to c K and W. I mean he was out
Speaker 5: there one day and I guess it was around the
Speaker 5: early nineteen seventies. He said, I couldn't believe that. When
Speaker 5: Renee came around the corner and said, Hi, George, how
Speaker 5: are you, he said, you know, he really fainted because
Speaker 5: he had no idea he was out of jail. So
Speaker 5: I suspect that most people didn't know.
Speaker 4: You write about Janine finding out after the altercation with
Speaker 4: her father and the threats to her fiance and her
Speaker 4: being criticized by him, and she started doing reading for
Speaker 4: the first time. You say family and friends, family, but
Speaker 4: friends had especially kept a lot of this information, and
Speaker 4: one way or another, she didn't know much and she
Speaker 4: started to look at his guilt. What was in talking
Speaker 4: to her and in this book? What was the process
Speaker 4: like for her to realize that the father had betrayed her,
Speaker 4: had deceived her, and that she had to move on?
Speaker 4: How did she do that? How was she able to
Speaker 4: cope with that reality?
Speaker 5: Well, I think what she would say is that she
Speaker 5: didn't cope very well until this book. It was hugely
Speaker 5: important for her to have this story out. I remember
Speaker 5: when I'd finished the first draft of the book and
Speaker 5: sent it to her, and I was really worried, you know,
Speaker 5: because she didn't hold anything back for the book. Everything's
Speaker 5: in there, and some of it's pretty awful stuff, you know,
Speaker 5: including the time that she was riped. But she's really
Speaker 5: she was told to forget about it, did not talk
Speaker 5: about it, and she didn't. And I think that's been
Speaker 5: festering for almost fifty years and when the book. Going
Speaker 5: through this process with me with the book has been
Speaker 5: cathartics for her, and I think it's really helped her
Speaker 5: with a greeting process and to be able to acknowledge
Speaker 5: what's has been done to her and go through it,
Speaker 5: and her two daughters have been incredibly supportive as well
Speaker 5: as have a bunch of friends. When we had the
Speaker 5: book launch, we must have had two hundred and fifty
Speaker 5: people at the launch, and many of them were there
Speaker 5: to support Jeanine. And Janine got up on stage with
Speaker 5: me and she never talked publicly before about it, and
Speaker 5: this was the first time, and she was amazing. We
Speaker 5: just sat in sort of like two women talking on
Speaker 5: stage and just talking about what had meant to her
Speaker 5: and wanted to be done to her. It's pretty powerful.
Speaker 4: You right about too. And it was anti climatic in
Speaker 4: the end, but it was very interesting that Janine picked it.
Speaker 4: Was hesitant to tell her children about her past, but
Speaker 4: then what prompted her was again the Police Museum exhibit.
Speaker 4: Tell us what she did with the police exhibit in
Speaker 4: terms of sheltering her children, and then what she eventually
Speaker 4: that event where she eventually told her children about her past.
Speaker 5: Right when her oldest daughter, Lindsay was twelve, the school
Speaker 5: were going to a visit to the Police Museum and
Speaker 5: Janina had never been there and had no idea that
Speaker 5: the true Crime exhibit was there. And a friend had
Speaker 5: sort of phoned her and said and told her about this,
Speaker 5: and after she was aware of it, and Janine thought,
Speaker 5: oh god, it's tomorrow. Any really need to tell that
Speaker 5: kids if I don't want them to fighting out that
Speaker 5: way because they knew, you know, that her parents' names
Speaker 5: and they think photos of Vesta and she was, you know,
Speaker 5: of course knew that they would recognize it straight away.
Speaker 5: So she called the curator of the museum and asked
Speaker 5: he he'd cover it, which he did reluctantly, apparently not
Speaker 5: sure why. And anyway, so they went to the museum
Speaker 5: and when they came home, she take the kids aside
Speaker 5: and just told them the story. And you know, they
Speaker 5: was incredibly supportive, even as really young children, and said, well,
Speaker 5: why would you be worried about this moment had nothing
Speaker 5: to do with you, And they've remained incredibly supportive. I
Speaker 5: think that's been huge for her.
Speaker 4: You write about the trial as well, that the prosecution
Speaker 4: didn't just roll over. They tried to introduce things as
Speaker 4: ridiculous as that as He's sister might have had an
Speaker 4: affair with Renie at some point. They did put on
Speaker 4: a very vigorous defense, didn't he.
Speaker 5: The prosecution. Yeah, the defense wasn't particularly rigorous, but yeah,
Speaker 5: the prosecution certainly were coming out with all guns blazing
Speaker 5: because I knew it was circumstantial at best, and it's
Speaker 5: quite possible. Actually, I got tapes of an interview or
Speaker 5: several interviews that had done with guest as sister Gloria
Speaker 5: by a letter called Susan McNichols. She was going to
Speaker 5: write a book about fifteen years ago and ill health
Speaker 5: prevented her, and she incredibly generously gave me these tapes
Speaker 5: which had Esther's sister's voice on them. And Gloria does
Speaker 5: say that she was called into the prosecution's office actually
Speaker 5: and asked if she'd had an affair with reading. So
Speaker 5: the prosecution thought that that may have come up, and
Speaker 5: so the defense, I guess had been trying to use
Speaker 5: as an example, and she denied that. They also tried
Speaker 5: es the sister Gloria had a lot of problems. She
Speaker 5: had been physically abused by his family. Esther had as well.
Speaker 5: She'd been physically and sexually abused by her stepfather. So
Speaker 5: they had a lot of awful things happened to them
Speaker 5: in their young life. And Gloria was going through a
Speaker 5: divorce and was pretty messed up and tried to kill
Speaker 5: herself a few times, and I guess the defense thought
Speaker 5: that she'd make a great Patsy, and they tried to
Speaker 5: insinuate that she had tried to poison her sister, I
Speaker 5: guess because she was in love with Reenie and she'd
Speaker 5: been also out of the country for a long time
Speaker 5: while the poisoning was taken in a place, so that
Speaker 5: just sort of fell apart completely. But Janine was coaxed
Speaker 5: to say that she'd seen her aunt come round and
Speaker 5: make joo for a mother in the kitchen and shut
Speaker 5: the doors and stuff like that. So it was pretty
Speaker 5: insidious what they did.
Speaker 4: You rate that it didn't take long for the jury
Speaker 4: to deliberate and come back with the guilty conviction.
Speaker 5: Did it, No, not long at all, And there was
Speaker 5: no recommendation for Mercyly one of the jurors told a
Speaker 5: reporter that they looked at it really closely, because you know,
Speaker 5: no one wanted to give some of the death penalty,
Speaker 5: but they couldn't find any thing that would make them
Speaker 5: go easy on him.
Speaker 4: How big a case was this in the media, Oh.
Speaker 5: God, it was huge. It was front page every day.
Speaker 5: It was insane, like people with just you know, everyone
Speaker 5: was talking about it around the water coolers, and it
Speaker 5: was just incredible gossip. I mean, it was so scandalous
Speaker 5: and had so many elements in it, you know, the
Speaker 5: actual method of cause of guests and Reenie who was
Speaker 5: so well known, and you know, the beautiful mistress and
Speaker 5: all of that. Yeah, it was really kittilating for Vancouver.
Speaker 5: And it was also one of the fascinating things for
Speaker 5: me about writing a book was the time that it
Speaker 5: took place. It was the sixties, so you've got Vancouver
Speaker 5: in nineteen sixties five, still living in nineteen fifty sensibilities
Speaker 5: right where you know, drinking it happened, and women wore
Speaker 5: fox and everyone went to church and it was all
Speaker 5: very nice and all of that. But you're also seeing
Speaker 5: by the trial sixty six sixty seven, when the two
Speaker 5: trials took place, this huge change where hippies are coming
Speaker 5: up and draft dodgers from the States, and there's spin
Speaker 5: and there's free love and this whole catafly, you know,
Speaker 5: just complete seismic shift in sensibility. So it was interested
Speaker 5: in sort of following that, and a lot of people
Speaker 5: think that because it was nineteen sixty five and still
Speaker 5: not quite you know, still in this kind of fifties
Speaker 5: sort of thing, that he was convicted because of his
Speaker 5: affairs rather than you know, any evidence. And aiden now,
Speaker 5: when I talked to lawyers today saying well, what do
Speaker 5: you think would happen if it's happened now, it's still
Speaker 5: a tough up whether he'd be convicted or not.
Speaker 4: Really interesting. What what was the reaction when he was
Speaker 4: I mean, obviously was known when he was released after
Speaker 4: a couple of years. Was there any blowback from that
Speaker 4: from the media? Was there any criticism of that decision?
Speaker 5: Nothing? I didn't find a thing, and that might be
Speaker 5: because I just didn't know.
Speaker 4: Wow, yeah, this could be true. Now with this you
Speaker 4: you write about and I know that Janine has made
Speaker 4: their first public appearance at one of your book signings,
Speaker 4: you interview her. What about the relationship that was severed
Speaker 4: years ago for forty year, fifty years Don Miller and herself, Janine?
Speaker 4: What was that reconciliation Lake and what does it look
Speaker 4: like today?
Speaker 5: That was one of the greatest things about writing the
Speaker 5: books for me, that they got back together and it's
Speaker 5: you know, it's just been really incredible. They've become really close,
Speaker 5: their families are really close. They think of each other
Speaker 5: as you know, long lost brother and sister. Janine's daughter
Speaker 5: just got married a couple of weekends ago, and Don
Speaker 5: and Debbie were there at the wedding and either at
Speaker 5: the book launch, and they've been incredibly supportive as well. So, yeah,
Speaker 5: that was one of the really nice things to come out.
Speaker 5: And I think when you you know, I've been to
Speaker 5: lunch with them and stuff like that, and when you
Speaker 5: hear them talk about the horrors that they went through
Speaker 5: and Don's life wasn't particularly nice either, that you sort
Speaker 5: of look at them and think, oh my god, they
Speaker 5: turned out to be such nice, warm, wonderful peace with
Speaker 5: great jobs and great families, and you know, so that
Speaker 5: was a nice thing to at least find that out
Speaker 5: that their lives had turned out okay.
Speaker 4: To spite all this, when did Renee Castellani pass away?
Speaker 4: And what were the circumstances?
Speaker 5: He as karma? Karma got him in the end, he
Speaker 5: got pancreatic cancer not long after he'd moved, remarried and
Speaker 5: moved to Absford and died of cancer in nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 5: He was fifty six years old.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's pretty young. M What has this book? You
Speaker 4: talk about that public appearance with Janine? What was that
Speaker 4: like you talk about you know it was overused word
Speaker 4: cathartic event, But what has this done for her in
Speaker 4: terms of people knowing this story? You say that one
Speaker 4: of the attentions was to give her mother a voice.
Speaker 4: What does she think of this book? You did put
Speaker 4: the transcripts to her and then waited for her response.
Speaker 4: You say that was a nervous bit of time. Well,
Speaker 4: what is this book done for her? And what has
Speaker 4: it done for her? It's allowed to grieve her mother finally,
Speaker 4: and that's obviously very important.
Speaker 5: Oh my god, it's been huge. I think it's been
Speaker 5: life changing.
Speaker 4: And was there was it important too to also? I mean,
Speaker 4: you talk about giving the mother a voice, but you
Speaker 4: do write in a book and we didn't talk so
Speaker 4: much about it, but you talk about her being brave
Speaker 4: and courageous and also a unique woman, being a businesswoman
Speaker 4: in success at that time in the sixties, So she
Speaker 4: was a remarkable woman. This Esther, and this is part
Speaker 4: of what this book does is to talk about Esther
Speaker 4: and who she was at that time and not again,
Speaker 4: so much as it been to focus on this charismatic
Speaker 4: killer husband.
Speaker 5: Right, And you know, that was one of the struggles
Speaker 5: that I had writing the book because I had Janine's
Speaker 5: perspective of her mother, but she was eleven years old
Speaker 5: when she died, so you know, it's from a small child.
Speaker 5: Most of the people I could esther sister, Gloria, is
Speaker 5: still alive, but not in good shape, and I couldn't
Speaker 5: talk to her, and she's still really upset about the
Speaker 5: whole thing, so it's not an easy subject for her.
Speaker 5: I couldn't find any of her colleagues or friends that
Speaker 5: were still alive that could sort of help round her
Speaker 5: out as an adult, so that was hard, and I
Speaker 5: had to rely a lot on the transcripts and police
Speaker 5: reports of these people that were giving evidence. It's about her,
Speaker 5: and I'm talking about what she told them and things
Speaker 5: like that to try to keep her a voice there.
Speaker 4: Now with this you met Janine at the Blood, Sweat
Speaker 4: and Fear book signing that you were talking about this book,
Speaker 4: and you met her at the Police Museum. I wanted
Speaker 4: to ask you about all of the things that you're
Speaker 4: doing now. I had read that you were planning a
Speaker 4: series of podcasts. Maybe you can explain it better than
Speaker 4: I about what your plans are for a murder by
Speaker 4: Milkshake with a podcast series that you've done previously, with
Speaker 4: other work that you've done, tell us a little bit
Speaker 4: about that and tell us about that.
Speaker 5: Sure, I've started a podcast a couple of months ago
Speaker 5: based on my book, Blood, Sweat and Fear, and the
Speaker 5: book was about inspective dance. He was a first forensic scientist,
Speaker 5: really one of the earliest in North America, and he
Speaker 5: works for the Bank of the Police Department out of
Speaker 5: the building which is now the Vancouver Police Museums, and
Speaker 5: a lot of his lab is still intact. It's amazing.
Speaker 5: He retired in nineteen forty nine, so you know, it's
Speaker 5: a pretty incredible feat and it's part of that. When
Speaker 5: I was doing the research, I found a lot of
Speaker 5: his grandchildren he died in sixty five. Uncovered these boxes
Speaker 5: that he'd packed up when he retired and was full
Speaker 5: of crimes and information and even his diary. So it
Speaker 5: became a fascinating book to write. And each chapter follows
Speaker 5: a different case, mainly murders that Vance worked on. So
Speaker 5: it became a sort of a natural for a podcast,
Speaker 5: and I published seven episodes of that Blood, Sweat and
Speaker 5: See are now and that's been a lot of fun.
Speaker 5: But as you know, there's a huge learning curve when
Speaker 5: you haven't done this before and I'm hosting, I'm producing.
Speaker 5: I had to learn all the editing software and all
Speaker 5: of that. So I'm just starting now to introduce interviews
Speaker 5: with lawyers and police officials and things like that, and
Speaker 5: I'm just having so much fun with it. It's been amazing.
Speaker 5: And yeah, I'd like to another book I wrote with
Speaker 5: Cold Case Vancouver. It's all about unsolved murders in Vancouver,
Speaker 5: so that'll be my next one. And I'd like to
Speaker 5: work up to Murder by Milkshake. I think it would
Speaker 5: make you know with Janine to do that with her
Speaker 5: would make an incredible podcast as well. The book has
Speaker 5: been optioned for a movie on TV rights and documentary,
Speaker 5: So thank you so much here. So I also don't
Speaker 5: want to do anything though to negatively affect that.
Speaker 4: M hmm. Absolutely. I want to thank you for coming
Speaker 4: on and talking about your book Murder by a Milkshake
Speaker 4: and astonishing true story of adultery, arsenic and a charismatic killer.
Speaker 4: For those that might want to take a look at
Speaker 4: your other work, your blog, this podcast that we talked about.
Speaker 4: Do you have a website Facebook page? Tell us about that.
Speaker 5: Please, yes, all through my name Evelazarus dot com. That's
Speaker 5: e V E l A z a r us. My
Speaker 5: blog every place has a story which is I kind
Speaker 5: of call it heritage, history and murder. And my podcast
Speaker 5: is all through. That podcast is on podbeam that can
Speaker 5: be accessed through that and through Apple and all the
Speaker 5: usual podcatches.
Speaker 4: Yes, absolutely, and Michael thank you as well. Well. Thank
Speaker 4: you that's great. Thank you very much for coming on
Speaker 4: and talking about murder, my milkshake. It has been a pleasure.
Speaker 4: Thank you very much. Eve Lazarus my pleasure, my pleasure.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much, thank you, good night, hye byee