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The Current Transcript for January 31, 2017

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

How this man dead in circumstance like that? It's very very very big tragedy for us. We cannot express our sadness.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: All six victims shot in the back as they prayed. Men whose deaths have left people across this country asking many questions. Worshipers murdered in Quebec City mosque on the very weekend that people were in the streets and at airports across the US protesting against what they called Islamophobic and intolerant new orders signed by their new president. While on this side of the border, Canadians are confronting our own attitudes around immigration. Race, religion, tolerance. Can we connect political words to murderous deeds? We are in a world of political disruption. Anger, change, protest, defiance. But how do we process all of this? In a moment, we go into wider focus with Payam Akhavan to ask what we are not seeing. And in half an hour, we zoom in on Canadian politics in a time of Trump.

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FAREED ZAKARIA: The reaction was fast and often furious to President Trump’s travel and immigration ban. Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted, “diversity is our strength #WelcometoCanada.”

AMT: Should our government be reacting and creating policy based on the actions of the Trump administration? A panel of parliamentarians weighs in on that. And then, a different story. An unlikely and uncharted journey that starts with a shocking confession.

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He knocked on the door and said I'd really like to talk with someone about the missing women. And it stunned everybody, and out came hours and hours and hours of confession.

Kendall Francois was a serial killer from small town America. Claudia Rowe was a journalist with a fascination for dark subjects. They began to correspond, to meet even. But the more she tried to learn about him, the more she was forced to confront about herself. The spider and the fly, in an hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, this is The Current.

Back To Top »

Quebec mosque attack symptom of 'populist hatred spreading,' says law prof

Guests: Payam Akhavan

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Muslim prayer]

[French speaking language]

VOICE 1: Khaled Belkaceni, 60 ans. Boubaker Thabti, 44 ans. Azzeddine Soufiane, 57 ans. Ibrahima Barry, 39 ans.

[Sound: Muslim prayer]

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: The names of the dead read out at last night's vigil in Quebec City, where thousands gathered to mourn the six men killed as they prayed at their mosque. People gathered in a show of emotion and support across the country yesterday. And the accused, 27-year-old Alexandre Bissonette, a Laval University student with a history of far-right postings online, stands charged with six counts of first degree murder, five counts of attempted murder. But so many questions linger. Why such a tragedy? Why here? Why now? And inevitably, the question of whether what has happened in Quebec is connected somehow to the larger story of chaos and fear enveloping people around the globe, following US President Donald Trump's actions banning entry to those from several predominantly Muslim countries. Payam Akhavan has been giving all of this a lot of thought. And he joins me now to help try to make sense of the past few days’ events. He is a Professor of International Law at McGill University. He's a former UN war crimes prosecutor at The Hague. And Payam Akhavan is in our Montreal studio. Good morning.

PAYAM AKHAVAN: Good morning Anna Maria.

AMT: What were your initial thoughts when you learned that people had been shot at that mosque in Quebec City?

PAYAM AKHAVAN: Well, Anna Maria, it said that the Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers, it began with words. And we've now had, for some time, this poison of populist hatred spreading in the political space in Europe and now in North America. And I think it would be naive to imagine that the normalization and mainstreaming of anti-Islamic hatred and scapegoatism wouldn't eventually spill over into violence. There are always going to be isolated instances of violence. There are people who are mentally unstable, there are people who are extremists. But when political figures, let alone the president of the United States, makes it acceptable to hate people merely on the grounds of their identity, we should not be surprised that this will encourage elements, that otherwise would be at the margins of society, to come forward. And I think it's tempting to see this as an isolated incident, but it's best to see it as the symptom of a wider disease that is spreading in our midst.

AMT: You draw a very clear line between the words that are spoken and the actions that are taken.

PAYAM AKHAVAN: Well, I spent about a decade of my life working with the United Nations in the former Yugoslavia, in Rwanda, in conflict zones around the world. And one thing I've realized is that civilization is very fragile. That we can only put so much faith in our democratic institutions to keep the peace. And ultimately, it's our culture, it's our communities, it's our sense of empathy and engagement that prevents a small minority of extremists from whipping up hysteria. It is said that all it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. And it's very disturbing to see what is happening, for example, in Europe, with the UKIP in Britain, with the possible election of Marine Le Pen as the next president of France. We have to take very seriously what is happening in the West. And what I find extraordinary, as someone who fled Iran, my country of origin, because of religious persecution, are the similarities, the profound similarities between Islamic extremism and now this sort of white supremacist Christian nationalism.

AMT: How so?

PAYAM AKHAVAN: Well, for one thing, scapegoatism, creation of scapegoats. You know, Jean-Paul Sartre famously said about anti-Semitism that, you know, the Jew exists in the mind of the anti-Semites. If he didn't exist, the anti-Semite would invent him. So we have to understand that this sort of hate, and its expression through violence, is about the needs of the perpetrator to find a scapegoat for his own misery, for his own misfortune. And we need to bear in mind that it's not just that we have hatred, but it's also that the liberal elites have failed. The liberal elites have failed to connect with the masses. And there is popular anger. We have an economy, which has through globalization, technological innovation, enriched the few at the expense of the many. One out of three children in the United States live under the poverty line. So the ordinary suffering and anger of people is something which, if it is left unaddressed by political, intellectual, and other liberal elites, is going to be tapped into by populist demagogues. So I think that this isn’t just a case of condemning hatred on the part of extremists, but also understanding how the liberal establishment has failed to connect with the real woes of ordinary people.

AMT: So where do you see moments of missed opportunity in the last little while, on that front?

PAYAM AKHAVAN: Well, perhaps if I can give a bit of a historical overview. I remember when I graduated from law school, it was, you know, the end of the Cold War. The Berlin Wall has collapsed and President Bush was talking about the new world order. There was an incredible opportunity to really refashion the world, to create a strengthened United Nations based on recognition of the interdependence of the interests of all nations. It was an opportunity to create a just economic system that did not enrich the few at the expense of the many. And I think that this arrogance, triumphalism, the spread of neoliberal market economics, of consumerist culture. I mean, all of these have now come back to haunt us. So we can't look at these problems as if they haven't been a long time in the making. They didn't just suddenly, you know, appear. They've been a long time in the making. So I would say that the recent past, we have lost opportunities to, both in our societies, move away from the sort of social and economic circumstances that are perfect breeding grounds for the rise of populism. In the United Kingdom in the past 20 years, the cost of housing has doubled, if not tripled. Ordinary people are struggling. And the elites simply could not understand how British voters would vote against their own economic interests in wanting to leave the EU.

AMT: But of course, it wasn't, they weren't getting an economic interest. That was the point.

PAYAM AKHAVAN: Well, that's exactly the point. What have you got to lose? So I think that we need to bear in mind that it's very easy for liberal elites to pay lip service to politically correct platitudes, but it's another thing to really have empathy and engagement and moral leadership. And to create a society that doesn't fall victim over time to these sort of centrifugal extremist forces.

AMT: Well, it's interesting, because you're talking about the end of the Cold War, the fall of the wall, new freedoms, the very thing hailed as a marker of freedom, and the ability for people to move forward economically, is the very thing that, what, that over time, drags everybody down or into a place they didn't expect to be.

PAYAM AKHAVAN: Well, it was interesting. There were two responses, I remember, at the end of the Cold War. There was Francis Fukuyama's End of History. That Western liberalism will sweep the planets and we will have a market economy throughout the world, and everybody will hold hands and sing Kumbaya. And that was a gross misjudgment, a gross misjudgment about the consequences of a materialistic ideology that glorifies greed. I think it doesn't take much imagination to realize that that sort of conception of society is not going to end well. And then on the other hand, we had Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations, which imagined that in the post-Cold War era, we will replace the ideological fault lines between communism and capitalism with the ideological fault lines of Islam and the West, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It was a myth that repeated enough times became a political reality. So I think there is a lack of imagination to find a third way. A third way which understands that we live in a global village, not just in some romantic sense, but there is an inescapable reality to our interdependence as humankind. And that what keeps civilization together is not material consumption, but is deeply held values. And that's why I'm saying that even our democratic institutions cannot be a substitute for the values that we hold as ordinary people in our communities, in our places of work, in our family relations. That is really the moral and spiritual foundation for a civilization that is not fragile, but has deep roots in terms of the values that it espouses.

AMT: And so what do you make of the conversation that is going on in Canada right now? You saw people out in cities across the country yesterday, showing their emotion, showing their support for the families of those people who just lost loved ones.

PAYAM AKHAVAN: Well, it's heartwarming to see that there is this outpouring of empathy. And I think that given what is happening to our neighbours to the south and in Europe, I think this is a very important historic moment for Canada to exercise moral leadership on the world stage. To show that the values of multiculturalism and tolerance, even when put to the test, will survive.

AMT: And at the same time, you know, this very mosque was targeted, you know, there was a pig's head left on its door last June. We know Jewish centres and schools have been targeted in Quebec. Some communities in BC have received KKK flyers, even in the last couple of weeks. There is this undercurrent of something going on in this country that prides itself in tolerance and multiculturalism.

PAYAM AKHAVAN: Yes Anna Maria, I agree with you. I don't think we should just be going out in the streets and expressing our solidarity only because people have been murdered. And this is why I said at the beginning that, you know, terrible things happen with simple words and simple gestures. So we need to confront the disease of hatred before it metastasizes into this kind of horrific violence. We need to take very seriously the use of scapegoating and populist hatred by our politicians, by media figures. And as I said, these horrible, hateful currents have been a long time in the making. We've had, in recent years, the use of all sorts of imagery, you know, the whole hijab issue in the recent elections, for example, to me is absurd. And I say this as someone who is a victim of Islamic extremism. That, you know, the fact that, I don't know, two out of several hundred thousand Canadians that took the oath of citizenship with a head covering, the fact that that becomes a big election issue really says a lot about our collective psychology. So I think we need to have an honest conversation, beyond reacting to these incidents. Because we are going to unfortunately witness more and more of such incidents.

AMT: And how do we do that, given the polarization that is just over the border, and the amount of attention we pay, both through the media and just, you know, regular people pay what's going on in the States? Given the populist language that economically finds support but that comes with that other baggage. How do we do what you're suggesting we do?

PAYAM AKHAVAN: Well, there are many different ways of fighting against hatred and intolerance. But I think that beyond looking to political intellectual leaders, I think ordinary people have to assume responsibility. What's incredible in the United States is, you know, what I think is the beginning of a popular uprising, especially by young people. The Women's March, the thousands that have congregated at the airports in solidarity with refugees and migrants. I think that we need, really, a cultural revolution. And in the same way in Canada, we need not simply to have reactive gestures to tragedy, such as the killing in that mosque in Quebec City. But we need ordinary people in their places of work, in their communities, in their families to have those conversations that create a society in which human rights principles have deep roots. Otherwise, we're going to have masses who are apathetic or indifferent, and who will very easily fall prey to populist hatred or they, as people of goodwill, will wake up one day and realize that extremist forces have taken over and it's a bit too late. And this is exactly what's happening in the United States. The election of President Trump and what we're witnessing today is a wakeup call, a wakeup call. And if one good thing comes out of it, it's that young people will no longer take for granted, take for granted the values of liberalism and human rights that they've assumed will always be there.

AMT: And I hear what you're saying. But you call it a wakeup call and yet a good portion of that US population supported what Mr. Trump did on Friday with his signing, out of fear, out of for whatever — they supported it. Even though statistically there was nothing to support the assumptions behind the stroke of that pen.

PAYAM AKHAVAN: Well, certainly there is a significant proportion of the population that believes in the political leadership, that places its trust in the hands of the institution of the presidency and Congress and so on and so forth. Whether that is a minority or a majority is a different question. My own take of what happened in the last elections is that a lot of people were disillusioned and they simply didn't bother to vote because they didn't believe in either candidate. They were not given, in their view, meaningful choices. That's a whole other discussion. But I think that we have to understand that the idea of a democracy, when it's decoupled from human rights principles, can very easily descend into fascist demagoguery. And all populist movements, including the Nazi party, came to power riding a Democratic wave. Meaning to say that they managed to whip up enough hysteria to get the majority of people to support them, and once in power, they began to do all sorts of terrible things. So we shouldn't have this idea that the voters will always get it right. No, the voters will not always get it right. If we don't have fundamental principles of human rights and tolerance, we can get it terribly wrong. And that's exactly why we have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada. That's why we have fundamental principles that are not subject to majority rule, a tyranny of the majority so to say.

AMT: And so given all of that, what do you make of the news just overnight that the head of the Justice Department refused, told her told her staff not to defend Mr. Trump's orders in court. She's just been fired. But the fact that someone in a position that high would publicly go against the president. How did you react to that?

PAYAM AKHAVAN: I think it's brilliant. That is what I call moral leadership. Acting against your own political interests to do what is right. And we need more political figures to do exactly that. I, of course, have been involved in human rights struggles across the world and I see this happening all the time. People who stand up, speak truth to power, and they end up in prison, let alone being fired. And it's an example of civil disobedience, nonviolent resistance, and that's exactly what we have to have in mind rather than, you know, sheepishly following whatever we're told by those in power, we really have to think about right and wrong.

AMT: Payam Akhavan, we have to leave it there. We are out of time. But it is very interesting to hear what you have to say. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us today.

PAYAM AKHAVAN: My pleasure Anna Maria. He's a Professor of International Law at McGill University. He's a former UN war crimes prosecutor at the Hague. He joined us from Montreal. As you listen to him, let us know what you're thinking. You can tweet us, we are @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook, go to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. And if you just joined us partway through, you can hear that right on the website. Stay with us. The news is next. And we're talking about our parliamentarians in a time of Trump when we return. This is The Current.

[Music: Extro]

Back To Top »

Is Canada obliged to stand up to the Trump White House?

Guests: Michelle Rempel, Jenny Kwan, Andrew Leslie

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come, a true crime story with a twist. Journalist Claudia Rowe joins me to talk about a gruesome case she once covered in upstate New York. What started as basic reporting, turned into an obsession with a serial killer that forever changed her life. My conversation with Claudia Rowe in half an hour. But first, facing up to Mr. Trump.

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AMT: Well, it's been a dizzying first ten days of the Donald Trump administration. From approving the Keystone XL pipeline to going full steam ahead on plans to build a Mexican wall, moving to repeal Obamacare, and the chaos-inducing executive order on visa suspensions and refugees. All that and more in just over a week. And now world leaders are calibrating their responses to Mr. Trump's actions and the values they represent. Yesterday in the House of Commons, NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair asked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau just what he will do.

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THOMAS MULCAIR: Mr. Speaker, the American president has implemented a ban on all individuals from a number of Muslim countries. Does the prime minister agree that this targeting of people based on their religion or place of birth, is an affront to our shared values as Canadians and supporters of human rights across the world?

[crowd clapping]

SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: The Honourable prime minister.

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: I will always stand to defend Canadian values of openness, of diversity that we cherish so much, that we understand are essential, not just to our success in the past, but our success in the future. We are a strong united people that are generous and open, because we’ve seen how much openness to the world and diversity not only makes us more prosperous but more safe as a country and as communities. I will continue to stand for Canadian values any chance I get in this house and elsewhere.

AMT: Well, today we're asking whether Canada has an obligation to stand up to the Trump White House, both in policies and tone, whether it should provide a counterpoint to the new US president. Three parliamentarians are standing by with their thoughts on all of this. Michelle Rempel is a Conservative MP for Calgary Nose Hill. She's the party's immigration critic. Jenny Kwan is the NDP MP for Vancouver East. She is the New Democrat’s immigration critic. And retired Lieutenant General Andrew Leslie is the Liberal MP for Orleans, and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with special responsibilities for the American file. Hello everyone welcome.

JENNY KWAN: Good morning.

MICHELLE REMPEL: Good morning.

ANDREW LESLIE: Good morning.

AMT: I want to start by discussing the temporary ban on refugees, as well as the suspension of visas to people from seven predominantly Muslim countries that Mr. Trump has brought in in the United States. Jenny Kwan what kind of response are you looking for from the Canadian government?

JENNY KWAN: Well, I think going forward, we need to come up with a plan to see how we're going to address this situation. From coast to coast, I've been hearing from Canadians who's been emailing me, who's been texting me, phoning my office, and they're saying that this is simply intolerable. For a democratic country, our closest ally ,our neighbour no less, to issue a ban based on people's race, their religion and place of birth is simply unacceptable. And the implications of this are enormous. And for Canadians, for others in the international community, for families, women, children who are fleeing persecution. And so Canada needs to take our position and to come forward with a plan. And that's why I’ve called for the emergency debate. And I'm so delighted that the speaker has granted that debate and that will take place today. And so that we can hear from all the parliamentarians about what the plan should look like to address this situation.

AMT: OK. And just for clarification, in a nutshell, what do you want?

JENNY KWAN: Well, yesterday I've asked the government as a first step, to immediately lift the 1,000 cap on privately sponsored refugees. We know that the ban from the Trump administration will impact people accessing the United States as a safe haven. And so with that coming forward, we need to step up and to say and hold true to the words that the prime minister had offered over the weekend via his tweet, to say that Canada would welcome those who are faced with persecution.

AMT: Michelle Rempel, how do you respond to what is happening and what the NDP is asking for?

MICHELLE REMPEL: Well, in the very short term, the government needs to stay in contact with their American counterparts and ensure formally, I'd love to see written assurances that Canadian citizens who may have dual citizenship or be dual nationals with the countries that are affected, will not be affected by this travel ban, and ensure that they have the resources that they need to understand what their travel plans look like. And then, certainly providing assistance to people who are coming to the United States via Canada who might be affected and stranded in our airports. I know that the immigration minister has already expressed the fact that Canada will be assisting people in that situation. I think that's a very positive step. In terms of a way forward, I think that there's a lot of concrete action that we can take. I share Ms. Kwan’s sentiment with regard to the private sponsored refugee program. For your listeners who might not know what that is, it's a program it's somewhat unique to Canada. Wherein private Canadian citizens can raise money to support refugees and sponsor them into the country. The government has effectively, you know, capped that and stopped that program this year. And I think that there's over 45,000 applications in the queue right now. I don't understand why we wouldn't just sort of let loose the generosity of Canadians. If a Canadian family is willing to take, or you know, a private sponsorship group is willing to take the responsibility of supporting a refugee’s integration into the country, that is such a wonderfully Canadian thing. I think we should be pushing that forward.

AMT: So that's been happening with Syrian refugees.

MICHELLE REMPEL: That’s right.

AMT: But that also happens with families.

MICHELLE REMPEL: That's right.

AMT: And that's what's been capped.

MICHELLE REMPEL: That's right. And I certainly think that we need to, you know, that's a nonpartisan issue. And then there's other things I'd like to see. You know, the Prime Minister's tweet this weekend welcome refugees. We had a motion in the House of Commons to support Yazidi victims of genocide that have been affected by the terrorist group ISIS. I'd love to see the government actually follow through with that. They've brought no refugees through that program yet. And then I'd like to see a more comprehensive plan put forward to support Syrian refugees who have been brought to Canada through the government assisted programs. How are we putting together a framework to support those people and how are we talking to the Canadian public about the cost, and, you know, getting that long term social license to show that Canadians want refugees and sort of depoliticize and depolarize the discussion around immigration policy. So that's what I'd like to see. I think there's a lot of concrete action that the government can take in a short period of time that frankly, I think, they've sort of sat on their heels on.

AMT: Andrew Leslie. Where do you believe, do you believe the government should be changing its policies or shifting its policies in the wake of the Trump orders?

ANDREW LESLIE: Well, in part I agree with Michelle and Jenny. There's a couple of nuances though, which is not surprising. Now, we all know that a government's main role is to protect our interests, which includes security and of course, all our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the fallen and those who were wounded in Quebec. And notice my use of terminology because this was an attack. So they are fallen Canadians and they are wounded. The second, perhaps most important interest we have is trade. And there's a certain degree of uncertainty about what's happening right now with trade. And we as well will defend our values. But one of the best ways we can defend our values is to talk about us. Talk about what we're doing. Not necessarily use it as a comparator with others, especially in these sensitive times. With regards to the thousand person cap. I mean, Jenny mentioned that we should be coming up with a plan to see how we can better incorporate, and quite frankly as a nation, seek to offer, you know, great places to live for those who have specific skills or the Yazidis, like Michelle got it. But the whole idea is to come up with a plan. And we can do that in relatively quick terms, but internationally we've seen what happens when a variety of directors are issued where perhaps all the details weren't planned out. And so we don't want to replicate that.

AMT: And over the weekend, when these bans came into effect, Mr. Trudeau tweeted, quote, “to those fleeing persecution, terror, and war, Canadians will welcome you regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength.” That's the quote. It wasn't a direct reference to Donald Trump's immigration ban, but of course the timing made it very clear. I want you to hear the opinion of a political columnist, John Ivison, with The National Post. This is what he has to say about these reactions at this time.

SOUNDCLIP

Well I thought that the tweet was a mistake. I think that the timing of it firstly, when it when it came out on the Saturday, just as the news was heading around the world about this ban on travelers from these seven countries, I think it looked like Trudeau was in the vanguard of opposition to Trump. That was certainly how it was represented by people like the BBC, Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Al-Jazeera. And I think for any kind of Canadian prime minister, staying on side with the American president is one of the major tasks of the job. Justin Trudeau has done a very good job so far in dealing with Donald Trump, which is obviously not an easy task. But I think that with a man as temperamentally unfit to be president as Donald Trump, a bully who’s win-lose philosophy means that you're either for him or against America. I think it was dangerously close to threatening that relationship.

AMT: OK. I want to get your opinions on this. He talks about Canada appearing to be at the vanguard of opposition to Mr. Trump. Jenny Kwan is that the role of a Canadian prime minister?

JENNY KWAN: Well, I think it's really important first off, for Canada to represent the values in the interests of Canadians. I think that if you talk to Canadians after the ban has been announced, that people reacted swiftly and loudly to say that this is not acceptable. And so we need to stand up to that. And so with the tweet that came from the prime minister, the issue now then is going forward. How do we make true those words and put it into reality? My colleague Mr. Leslie just mentioned about the Yazidis file. The Yazidis file, let's be clear, was something that parliamentarians dealt with last summer. We had an emergency debate in the committee, came up with a series of action and the government have been very slow in moving forward. And to date, there’s not one Yazidis that has been brought to this country out of that initiative. We don't even know what the plan is, speaking of plans, from the government with respect to that. So we do need to move forward on it, and that's on a situation where a group of people is faced with genocide. And so that was pre-Trump, and now post-Trump with his executive order with a ban based on race, religion, and your place of birth. What is our action? So I do think that we need to move forward. And so with action, the Yazidis file is one important piece and that happened before the executive order, and that needs to continue in terms of our action.

AMT: OK. And the overall.

JENNY KWAN: And going forward, what else will we do?

AMT: Well, does Canada have an obligation to be opposition to Donald Trump, is what I'm asking you, Jenny Kwan?

JENNY KWAN: Well, I think Canada has an obligation to stand up and stand strong with Canadian values. And to say clearly that we are staunch defenders of human rights and that we will work with the international community in the face of a edict that came from the Trump administration. And that we will have a plan in going forward to work with the international community to say that we have a different point of view.

AMT: Michelle Rempel, as you know, within your own party with the Conservative leadership race, the idea of Canadian values is actually a point to be debated. Where is Canada's obligation? Does Canada have an obligation? What role does our prime minister play?Should he be, like, at the vanguard of what you heard John Ivison talking about.

MICHELLE REMPEL: Well, first I'll talk about the prime minister's response, you know, to the immigration ban. I thought that the tweet was pretty facile. I think, that to Jenny's point, what I've been saying all along is it's one thing to send out a tweet like in that, it's another thing to show in action how Canada contrasts in policy. And that to me is what needs to be our response. For people that are listening that don't know anything about the Yazidi population, this is a group, a persecuted ethnic and religious group, primarily in Iraq, that have been the subject of genocide. The UN has called this. We had a motion in the House of Commons that I put forward, that was unanimously supported. That's four months ago and the government has brought zero into Canada. You know, the reason why both of us are bringing this up this morning is that if you're going to tweet something out in contrast to an order that's, you know, with one of our major trading partners to the south, you better show through action that Canada is actually contrasting in this. And I really think that that's where this government has failed. Now, you raised--

ANDREW LESLIE: [interposing] Michelle, I think you’ll agree with the minister of immigration.

MICHELLE REMPEL: No, Andrew, let me finish. Thank you very much.

ANDREW LESLIE: [crosstalk] Is working hard on this.

AMT: OK. Let’s just, go ahead Michelle.

MICHELLE REMPEL: Thank you for letting me finish.

AMT: Go ahead Michelle Rempel, briefly so that Andrew Leslie can weigh in.

MICHELLE REMPEL: You know what, if Andrew is going to jump in and say that the minister of immigration is working on this, it’s four months and there's been no people brought in through this program. You know, that's ridiculous. It's angering. And so to me, you know, if we're going to stand up and say, you know, we're so much different than the US, then where's the proof? Where’s the beef on this?

AMT: OK. And that’s what I’m asking you Michelle. Let me ask you the question again.

MICHELLE REMPEL: Sure.

AMT: Does Canadian government policy need to shift in order to counter Donald Trump, Michelle Rempel? Should that be, that's what we're talking about in the wider issue today. What's your view on the wider issue?

MICHELLE REMPEL: You know, that's the preview of the debate tonight. I think that there's a lot of things that the Canadian government can be doing and you know what for people that are listening to me this morning going well, you know, what about your party? Where are you guys at? What about your leadership race? I think there's a lot of things that we could have done differently as well too. But the fact remains is that Canada is not perfect. There's a lot of things that we need to do. We need to support the refugees that are in Canada much more adequately. We need to have a less puerile discussion about how immigration policy works. It can't be shut the doors or open it wide open. Where's the middle ground on this? What's prudent policy? And I think that that's what we're going to be talking about tonight. This government is not perfect. We have not heard answers to a lot of questions over the last 18 months. And a simple tweet like that, that, you know, I thought it was very facile.

AMT: [crosstalk] OK. But how do you deal with Canadian values? Because in your own party Canadian values are different.

MICHELLE REMPEL: Well, you know, that's a question for our leadership our leadership candidates. I'll give you my opinion. I think that Canadians support immigration with two caveats. The first one is that we have a strong system of screening people when they come into the country for security reasons. Which I do believe we have a very strong system right now. And the second thing is that we have strong programming which supports integration into the Canadian economy and into our social fabric. Things like language training services, and that's where I've been asking questions of the government around the Syrian refugee cohort.

AMT: OK. OK.

MICHELLE REMPEL: We need to be transparent and show that it's costed. And the government doesn't have a plan to that effect.

AMT: Andrew Leslie, you have a responsibility for the American file What does that mean?

ANDREW LESLIE: First and foremost, let me go back to an example.

AMT: Well, I'll let you. Yeah, but can you be brief because I do want to talk about your American files, so we can talk about the wider issue. Go ahead.

ANDREW LESLIE: I was kind of hoping to do that as well so OK. Just give me a second though to place some context. Over the weekend, there was an issue as, you know, with the travel ban. Based on relationships that we've developed over the last two and a half months and redirecting assets, mainly people who have lots of contact in the United States, the ambassador was hold of the State Department in minutes. Our NSA called the White House NSA. The senior advisers in the government of Canada and elected officials were talking to their counterparts. And literally within hours, there was clarification that the ban does not impact on those Canadians who have a valid Canadian passport. Now, that was the way that business should be done. The Americans, as we know so well, are our closest friend and biggest ally. The temptation may be there to criticize them publicly but that's not what friends do. If you've got differences, you resolve them quietly, you resolve them person to person based on longstanding relationships. And I think we're on track to do that. Essentially, I think the best way to deal with these issues is to articulate what we're doing, much exactly as the prime minister did and let people draw their own inferences.

JENNY KWAN: I wonder if I could jump in here. And one of the questions that my colleague Hélène Laverdière asked yesterday in the House of Commons is this, “has Canada, as friends with the United States, expressed clearly to them about our concerns and disappointment with the travel ban and the implications that can fall out of it?” I know that--

AMT: OK. Well, let's answer that, Andrew Leslie?

ANDREW LESLIE: A variety of discussions happened. I wasn't privy to all of them of course. But concerns were articulated of course, concerns, you know, essentially posed in the form of asking a series of detailed questions. And we got an early resolution and very quick answers. Now, some issues will come up over the next couple of weeks, months, and years which are going to be even more complicated than the ones we've been dealing with over the last week.

AMT: OK. So Andrew Leslie, does Canada have an obligation to change its policies based on Trump administration policies, as Canada moves forward in this Canada-US relationship? That's the question today.

ANDREW LESLIE: Alright. It's a very short question, but as you know so well Anna Maria, there's a whole bunch of complex answers behind sort of each facet of it. For trade, if the United States does X then we will have to respond. As you know, 70 per cent of our trade goes down to the United States, 20 per cent of our gross domestic product. We've got to be wary of that. We've got to stay on top of it. We've got to be able to react. But when we do react, it will be based on detailed conversations with our American friends and allies. We will make sure that we have all the facts and we come up with coherent plans. I would suggest one of the worst things we can do right now is to either overreact or underreact. It’s that fine line in between. An adage of keep calm and carry on, or another one is, you know, ice water in the veins, until such time as clarity is provided, either by us or by interaction with the Americans. I think that's the wisest course.

AMT: Michelle Rempel, you want to jump in.

MICHELLE REMPEL: Yeah, that's such a strange answer.

AMT: Why?

MICHELLE REMPEL: Because it sort of negates the fact that, it doesn't look at the fact that Canada is a sovereign nation, a very powerful sovereign nation, where we can take our own positions and actions. And, you know, in doing so show that Canada can be a world leader and best practice on things like immigration policy. So--

AMT: So you're saying that Canada should change its policies in opposition to Trump?

MICHELLE REMPEL: In a way, I think that Canada can get our own house in order and then show the world what a debate around immigration policy looks like that's not polarized. And, you know--

AMT: What about other issues?

MICHELLE REMPEL: Well, there's other, I mean, there's lots of things that we can talk about. You know, you raised a bunch of them on the front end of this segment. And I think that there's so many things that Canada does so well that we can just point to in terms of what we're doing. But I mean, that response was just so weird. It almost sounded like appeasement.

ANDREW LESLIE: Why Michelle? I mean, I think we’re agreeing.

MICHELLE REMPEL: You know, no, I actually think that--

ANDREW LESLIE: We have to stick to our own messaging.

MICHELLE REMPEL: Because--

ANDREW LESLIE: Articulate that which we do best. But let’s not engage in essentially--

MICHELLE REMPEL: [crosstalk] Here’s why. OK, let me say this. There’s nothing that is stopping the prime minister from coming out and saying I disagree with a lot of the positions that the American president has. I disagree. I probably could have disagreed with his predecessors positions as well. Here's what Canada is doing on these issues. Here's how we are showing the world what we're doing. And you know, what Jenny and I have been saying this morning is we have some work to do here at home on some of these issues. And just to say--

ANDREW LESLIE: [crosstalk] Michelle, are you suggesting the prime minister should be in opposition?

MICHAEL LEWIS: Just to say that oh, we have to kowtow to everything that’s happening in the US, I think is the wrong response.

AMT: OK. Let’s let Mr. Leslie in here. Are you saying you kowtow? Or are you saying you wait to let this play out? What are you saying Andrew Leslie?

ANDREW LESLIE: Well, I'm not in the habit of kowtowing to anybody and neither is the government of Canada, [unintelligible] now about that. But the whole idea of being able to articulate a message quietly behind closed doors, as good friends do amongst themselves, is probably much more valuable than what perhaps Michelle’s implying. And by the way Michelle, correct me if I'm wrong with this, are you suggesting that the Canadian government should be in opposition to the US government?

MICHELLE REMPEL: Well, that's a question for you Andrew. I think a lot of people are listening--

ANDREW LESLIE: Well I’m saying definitely not.

MICHELLE REMPEL: To the show this morning and saying, you know, being quietly.

AMT: [crosstalk] Well, Michelle Rempel, I am asking that. Should the Canadian government change its policies as, you know, actively in opposition to the US government?

MICHELLE REMPEL: Well in what regard? I mean, that's a very broad question. I think--

AMT: Well, you're calling for changes in immigration law right after Donald Trump, so that’s my question.

MICHELLE REMPEL: [crosstalk] OK. So on policy changes that I would like to see right now from the government on immigration policy. I would like to see the response around capping the privately sponsored refugee program when we have 45,000 applications in the queue changed. That was a very bad reaction on the part of the government.

ANDREW LESLIE: [crosstalk] But Michelle, that’s not in response to the US government.

MICHELLE REMPEL: I’d like them to respond to the Yazidi motion. I would like them to bring Yazidi victims of genocide to Canada. I would like them to ensure that they have adequate programming for Syrian refugees. To stop using it just as numbers, so there--

AMT: Michelle Rempel, I’m asking you about wider issues.

MICHELLE REMPEL: There’s policies there.

AMT: I’m asking you about wider issues. In principle, do you want to see this government become more of an opposition to Donald Trump?

MICHELLE REMPEL: I have just given you three concrete policy areas in immigration that this government can change to show the world that we are a leader in immigration policy. Those are, so yes, there you go. On those fronts.

AMT: OK.

JENNY KWAN: Well I wonder if I can jump in here--

AMT: Briefly, briefly, you have 20 seconds.

JENNY KWAN: Well, on immigration policies. The short answer is yes.

AMT: On other policies?

JENNY KWAN: In light of the bans, we need to make adjustments. Now, on other policies, on trade the Liberals seems to be ready to start trade talks on NAFTA for example. But they're not telling Canadians where they stand and what they're willing to put on the table. That's not only a bad position to begin negotiations, it's also not at all transparent when changes to NAFTA could have impact on many Canadian industries.

AMT: [interposing] OK. I'm going to stop you Jenny Kwan.

JENNY KWAN: So we need to provide that information.

AMT: I'm going to stop you because Andrew Leslie gets exactly ten seconds to respond to the trade and then we have to go. Andrew Leslie, go ahead.

ANDREW LESLIE: Prudent, calm, thoughtful fact finding is important for us. We have to stay focused on security, we have to stay focused on trade, and yes we will protect our values. Those are--

AMT: OK. We have to leave it there. We have to leave it there. I'm sorry we're out of time. [laughs]

JENNY KWAN: Thank you. [chuckles]

AMT: Thank you everyone. Michelle Rempel, Conservative MP and party immigration critic. Jenny Kwan, NDP immigration critic. Retired Lieutenant General Andrew Leslie, Liberal Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs with special responsibilities for the American file. They were all in Ottawa today. Stay with us. This is The Current on CBC Radio One.

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How a serial killer taught a reporter the complicated meaning of evil

Guests: Claudia Rowe

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music: ominous organs]

VOICE 1: Will you walk into my parlor? Said the spider to the fly. Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did spy. The way into my parlor is up a winding stair, and I have a many curious things to show when you are there.

VOICE 2: Oh no no, said the little fly. To ask me is in vain. For who goes up your winding stair can ne’er come down again.

VOICE 1: I'm sure you must be weary dear, with soaring up so high. Will you rest upon my little bed? Said the spider to the fly. There are pretty curtains drawn around. The sheets are fine and thin and if you’d like to rest awhile I'll snugly tuck you in.

VOICE 2: Oh no no, said the little fly. for I've often heard it said they never never wake again who sleep upon your bed.

AMT: The spider on the fly. That uncomfortable cautionary tale in Mary Howitt’s classic poem. It's also the title of a new book about a series of very real and grisly murders, written by Claudia Rowe. Who was a reporter working in upstate New York, when local women began to vanish one by one. Their murders changed life in the town of Poughkeepsie in the 1990s. And Claudia Rowe’s investigation into them changed her life as well. It led her to forge an uncomfortable connection to a serial killer, and it forced her to confront demons of her own. The full title of her book is The Spider and the Fly: A Reporter, a Serial Killer, and the Meaning of Murder. And I will warn you, we're going to deal with some disturbing material in this conversation. Claudia Rowe joins me from Seattle. Hello.

CLAUDIA ROWE: Hi.

AMT: What did you think of that poem?

CLAUDIA ROWE: I love that poem. I think it's so eerily relevant to the connection between myself and Kendall Francois, and what I try to examine in this book. I'm glad you played it.

AMT: Well, let's begin at the beginning. This began as a news story for you.

CLAUDIA ROWE: Exactly. I was a stringer for The New York Times in the late 1990s. I was living in the Poughkeepsie area. And I had known that a number of women were missing, but I didn't really know if it was a story. Nobody did, because there was no actual proof that a crime, or crimes, had been committed. There were no crime scenes. People just knew that women were missing and I told my editors at The New York Times something strange seemed to be going on but I wasn't sure what. And they said start making phone calls and I did. Very shortly after that Kendall Francois confessed. Just in a coincidence of timing.

AMT: So what can you tell me about the women who disappeared?

CLAUDIA ROWE: They were all quite similar in some ways. They all were drug users, most of them pretty severe drug addicts, they were crack addicts mostly. They all walked a small strip of Main Street in downtown Poughkeepsie, New York. Essentially just walking in the street to support their habits. They were prostitutes, but they were also mothers and daughters and they had hopes and they had dreams. And Kendall Francois really crushed out any hope of change for them.

AMT: So Kendall Francois, 27 at the time, is arrested not on a murder charge and he confesses.

CLAUDIA ROWE: It surprised everyone. He had once been a suspect and he had been questioned and he had been polygraphed, and he passed the polygraph. This was quite a while before the final night. And there were other reasons that police may have slightly discounted him. But in any case, he was brought in for questioning on a rape and assault, to which he immediately confessed. And then when the police said they were going to leave him alone in a room for a little bit and get a warrant to get the shirt he was wearing during this rape, they just let him sit there and they proceeded with their paperwork. And he knocked on the door and said I'd really like to talk with someone about the missing women. And it stunned everybody. And out came hours and hours and hours of confession.

AMT: Confession to the killing of eight women?

CLAUDIA ROWE: Correct. All of whom were stored in his home. Their bodies were in the home where he lived with his mom, dad, and teenage sister.

AMT: Well this is the part that just boggles me. So the police go to his house. Describe what they find.

CLAUDIA ROWE: They found a scene unlike any that they had ever encountered. I had detectives with 30 years on the job say they had never ever seen anything like what they found in the Francois home. Feces and rot and maggots dropping from the ceiling, paperwork and clothes and used underwear, and just everything everywhere. No order to the home at all. They were hoarders for sure, but they were in many cases hoarders of garbage and rot. The family did not know, or at least they were never charged with any crime with aiding and abetting or anything like that. They lived in a, apparently, a state of such denial such of eight corpses in their home and such denial of the reality of the home itself.

AMT: So who was in that home at the time with him?

CLAUDIA ROWE: Kendall Francois’ mother, who was a psychiatric nurse. Kendall Francois’ father, who worked for DuPont. And Kendall Francois’ younger sister who had just graduated high school when this all came out.

AMT: And they knew nothing? They didn't smell anything?

CLAUDIA ROWE: They did, they did smell something. And apparently, Kendall Francois’ mother asked him what is that smell coming from the attic? He told her it was a family of dead raccoons, which struck me as a very curious image. And that was it. And she apparently accepted explanations that no more demanding or incisive parent would accept. It's very hard to know really exactly what the family dynamics were, but perhaps they were frightened of him or perhaps they were frightened to simply ask the next question and this really speaks to a profound psychological disconnect and deep denial.

AMT: Mm. So the police swarm in. I mean, it's like a hazardous waste site.

CLAUDIA ROWE: Right.

AMT: And there are eight bodies in there, some in the attic, some in the crawl space in the basement.

CLAUDIA ROWE: Correct. None of them very well concealed I should add. The basement had three bodies and they were sort of shoved into a hole in the wall, but in the attic they were just sort of there.

AMT: Over what period of time had he killed these women?

CLAUDIA ROWE: This was two years, between 1996 and 1998.

AMT: And the family lived with that in denial?

CLAUDIA ROWE: All the time.

AMT: Yeah. What sentence did he get?

CLAUDIA ROWE: Kendall Francois got eight life terms in exchange, this was a deal made with the prosecuting attorney's office. If he would plead guilty to eight counts of first degree murder, he would escape the chance of a death penalty trial and that is what happened.

AMT: Mm. And of course, because there wasn't a trial a lot of these questions about the family and what they knew, they just never came out.

CLAUDIA ROWE: Correct. Almost nothing came out, nothing was made public because there was no trial.

AMT: So tell me how you made contact with him?

CLAUDIA ROWE: I covered the story straight for The New York Times as a stringer on the scene, just simply about the arrest and the sentencing and the agreement. Really basic kind of court procedural stuff. I, however, could not get this story out of my head. It rang a lot of bells for me personally and I sort of ruminated over it over the course of a year, and finally about a year after Kendall's arrest, I wrote to him where he was staying in the county jail.

AMT: It rang a lot of bells for you personally. Like what?

CLAUDIA ROWE: Well, the story of Kendall Francois from the beginning struck me as a story of denial. The city of Poughkeepsie really never sort of confronted the reality of what was happening down on Main Street. And I had been a local reporter for the small town, The Poughkeepsie Journal, the local paper. You would never, reading the local paper, you would never know what Poughkeepsie was, how downtrodden, what kind of deep social problems were existing there. There was sort of a relentless boosterism to the town, which is understandable of course. It's also in an area pretty heavily invested in tourism. So this issue of community denial had long been grinding at me and I had always intended to write something about that. And then came this story in the middle of it, of a family living in such profound denial. So that seemed another ring echoing the same theme. And then, the longer I began corresponding with Kendall Francois, I had to reckon with levels of denial in my own life and in the way I had grown up as well.

AMT: And I want to ask more about that. But let's talk a little bit more about the back and forth. You'd always been fascinated by serial killers.

CLAUDIA ROWE: As a younger person, I was really drawn and I did not understand why, but really drawn to crime narratives any kind of crime. Mysteries, I read Agatha Christie when I was eight. I was [chuckles] really really quite mesmerized by crime stories, fiction and nonfiction. And I did not completely understand why, but I had the sense that having grown up a pretty fearful kid, and there was a fair amount of rage in my family home growing up, and a certain amount of emotional violence. I was kind of paralyzed by that growing up. And, as I say, terribly frightened. And I think my attraction to crime narratives was as a way to try to understand those impulses, that motivation, the action toward cruelty, the mechanism behind explosive rage and explosive violence. I think I was trying to understand that as a way to leach it of some of its mystery and then some of its power. And that's initially how I came to the Kendall Francois case.

AMT: And you grew up affluent in Manhattan.

CLAUDIA ROWE: Comparatively affluent, yeah.

AMT: So again, that's sort of what the world might see versus what's going on underneath.

CLAUDIA ROWE: Absolutely.

AMT: That in a little place like Poughkeepsie, which has all this affluence that surrounds it, and the degradation of the community. That again was a kind of a parallel to what you were thinking.

CLAUDIA ROWE: The reality of the way people present to the world outside. Kendall Francois’ family for instance, they went to regular jobs. He was a college student, as was his younger sister. They were churchgoers. They had sort of a public face that was so profoundly different from the reality within their home. And at a much different scale, there was some of that in my own home. A public face that was quite different from the reality inside.

AMT: So he tried to impose rules on your correspondents? What were they?

CLAUDIA ROWE: Kendall Francois was really taken up with games, he had been since childhood. He kind of saw the world through the lens of a game structure. So he loved video games and card games and role playing games. He loved Magic the Gathering, all of those kinds of sort of fantasy role playing games. And he imposed that kind of structure, at least initially, on our correspondence. And he said if you want to know me, I'm going to have to know you too. And here's how it's going to go. You're going to tell me everything and then I'll answer your questions for me. Now, [chuckles] this is pretty simplistic rules and that's not in fact what happened. But that's how we began our correspondence.

AMT: He had actually told you that he wanted, like, ten typed pages of all sorts of detail about your life, your sexual life, your feelings and in exchange, he'd answer for questions.

CLAUDIA ROWE: Right. It didn't seem a very fair trade, if that's what you're getting at. [chuckles]

AMT: And you ignored that and he kept writing.

CLAUDIA ROWE: That was the thing that I began to learn about Kendall Francois. Yeah, I ignored that and he stayed hooked in to this back and forth, because really what he wanted was connection. He could not really sustain connection in any kind of healthy or normal way, but he had a grasping need for some kind of sense of connection.

AMT: How long into writing back and forth did you meet with him the first time?

CLAUDIA ROWE: The first time was about a year after we had begun corresponding. We started, I got my first letter from him, I think, in November of 1999. And then in, I believe it was September of 2000, maybe August of 2000, was the first meeting. And that was Kendall Francois and myself at the Dutchess County jail. So there was a barrier between us in that first meeting, like a window of plexiglas. But I was still terrified.

AMT: And how did it go? What did you talk about?

CLAUDIA ROWE: The first thing Kendall Francois did after this year of correspondence with me and a number of phone calls, but he had never seen me, he didn't know what I looked like. He kept asking for a photograph, which I refused to give him. When he saw me, first thing he did was laugh, he laughed at me. He said that I was smaller than he had pictured. I was not as young. I didn't have hair as long and I was tinier than he imagined. And I said, well, OK, and he said but, you know, most of the people on the planet looked small to me. He was of course an enormous person physically, but that comment most of the people on the planet looked small to me, seemed to go to other areas of his psyche I thought.

AMT: Enormous, he was like 300 or more pounds.

CLAUDIA ROWE: He was over 300 pounds and he was at least 6’4, maybe taller.

AMT: And as this correspondence goes on with him, what kind of emotions did all of this stir up in you?

CLAUDIA ROWE: Very complicated emotions. That's what kept me hooked in for so long. I think it wouldn't have been true for every single serial killer that exists. It was Kendall Francois himself who began to become quite an intriguing figure to me because while people described him as a monster and as evil, and he surely committed monstrous and evil acts, he also had elements in him that were recognizable to me. He had certain threads of a trace of a previous humanity maybe and that did keep me hooked in. So he made many comments about Dutchess County that I could not completely disagree with. He spoke frequently about the hypocrisy of the world around him. He had this sense of goofball humour and a sense of beauty and a sense of, twisted sense, but a sense of loyalty. He had a sense of outrage at historic or societal injustices. These were all things that really resonated for me. So they evoked a lot of confused emotion in me. I was terrified of him, but I was also pained by what he might have once been, who we could have been. And also his victims, who they might have been as well, and how he had crushed that hope. He was in my head. And what I felt was a kind of compulsion to, even despite my fear, I could not stop and that was one of the most perplexing things about it. I just was not going to stop until I understood what was behind those words, evil and monster, which to me sounded like cut outs, like fairy tales, like magic. They didn't give me any sense of what are we talking about when we're talking about monster? Right. But this is a person who interacted with the world and who had friendships. And while he had no capacity for empathy or a true bond, he had elements that made me wonder about what we mean by these words evil. And I just felt a deep deep need to understand it at a more complex level. It also of course, helped me understand my own background a little bit. Not that there was evil to that degree in any way in my growing up. However, trying to understand Kendall Francois from a more 360 vantage point did allow me, finally, and in a strange and unexpected way, to come to a much better understanding of those in my own life who had hurt me and it helped me to understand that we are all the sum of powerful forces growing up. And that motivation is complicated. And within evil, there can be little strands or ghosts of something we would call humanity, and within good people that can be a capacity for terrible damage.

AMT: And I want to talk a little bit more about your family. Because you write, even as a teenager living in New York, you would end up, as you say, you stepping into strangers cars and allowing them to wonder if I'm for sale. What were you going through as a teenager?

CLAUDIA ROWE: Those were rough rough years. Things were not great at home. I was terribly angry, terribly alienated, and deeply self-destructive. Like Kendall Francois, I had a fair amount of self-loathing. And I think I was, you know, at the time it seemed to me that what was going on in my inside of our home was so different from what we presented, and it seemed to me that violence and criminality those things were real. Though they were dark and ugly, they were real. And this kind of elevated or sort of upper crust life seemed not real. It was not true, at least not emotionally. And as a young person it seemed to me that the only thing that was honest was darkness.

AMT: And of course, Kendall Francois was all about darkness.

CLAUDIA ROWE: And I was terribly afraid of the dark as a kid, just as kids are, though that lasted deep into adulthood. And Kendall Francois came to represent for me all of that. He came to represent darkness for me. He came to represent all the ghosts of my childhood, a sort of incessant criticism. He was kind of battering in some ways verbally. He was constantly critical of me and in some ways that sounded very familiar.

AMT: Did you ever get the answers you were seeking?

CLAUDIA ROWE: You know, at the beginning I thought that Kendall Francois would provide for me, this was entirely my invention, but I imagined that he would provide for me kind of a map of cruelty or a diagram of the mechanism behind it. That's what I thought I wanted at the beginning. This happened to me and then it makes me do this and then I do that, you know, like an algebraic equation. That is not in any way what I got. But what I did get was a sense of the complexity of evil, the texture of a person who is so torn up. I think that we think about serial murderers largely in the Hollywood idea, of this kind of dashing highly sophisticated, very eloquent, fully in control sociopath. The Hannibal Lecter model. And that is not in any way who Kendall Francois was. So what I did get was an answer about the misery within cruelty. He was a miserable person. And I got, in the end, a sense of more compassion, not for him or what he did, but for the child he might have been. And for his victims who are also people we looked away from, I did as well. So did all of Poughkeepsie, they were troubling to look at. And I got a much deeper sense of we must look with more compassion at people who trouble us and much much earlier, much earlier, way before it gets to this level of terrible destruction. And I believe that if somebody had seen the ten-year-old Kendall, you know, he was enormous but he was never seen. If somebody had seen this child and seen the kind of conditions he was living in, maybe some of this could have been headed off.

AMT: He died a few years ago. What did you think when you heard that?

CLAUDIA ROWE: When Kendall Francois died in 2014, it provoked in me a very confusing reaction. A very strange mix of relief and regret. Not regret for his death, but again, regret for the person he might have been. I don't believe he was destined to be a serial murderer. I learned during the reporting, that he had once been this very fat lonely kid, a fifth grader who wouldn't speak. He wouldn't fight, he just wouldn't speak, he wouldn't open a book. He wouldn't respond to his teachers. He was locked, frozen, paralyzed. Go to class wouldn't speak. What is a kid who doesn't speak? So when he died, I felt this terrible regret for the waste that is embodied in that story, the waste of the eight women who might have had a chance to be something else. And the waste of a child who also could have been something else instead of a serial killer.

AMT: So who was the spider and who was the fly?

CLAUDIA ROWE: I really think that that is up to each reader to determine for themselves.

AMT: But I want to know how you feel because it was your choice of a title. And you describe this intricate back and forth with a serial killer. Who was winding the thread around whom?

CLAUDIA ROWE: At the beginning, I think it was he. He often drew pictures for me where there was a spider waving, and yet Kendall Francois was mortally terrified of spiders. This enormous man would leap onto his jail cot quaking and screaming when he saw a spider in his cell. I think at the beginning, he was the spider. But I think in truth, always it is the writer who has the power to tell the story. And in the end we know who died and who survived.

AMT: Well that's a raw and honest and disturbing story, but it's some it's very thought provoking. Thank you for talking to me today.

CLAUDIA ROWE: Thank you for having me on. It's been a pleasure.

AMT: Claudia Rowe’s book is The Spider and the Fly: A Reporter, a Serial Killer, and the Meaning of Murder. She joined us from Seattle, Washington. That's our program for today. A reminder to tune into The Current tomorrow, we are airing our latest forum on missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. We recorded it before an audience in Vancouver. This one focuses on the media, from journalism to arts, and how the stories of the women are told. We will also follow that program with a live web chat at 1:00 pm Eastern, 10:00 am Pacific. Check out the details on our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. We're going to leave you today with a message about the Quebec terror attack. Prime minister Justin Trudeau rose yesterday in the House of Commons to speak about the Quebec City mosque shootings. And he concluded his remarks with a direct address to Canadian Muslims. We’ll leave you with that. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, thank you for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: To the more than one million Canadians who profess the Muslim faith, I want to say directly, we are with you. 36 million hearts are breaking with yours. And know that we value you. You enrich our shared country in immeasurable ways. It is your home. Last night's horrible crime against the Muslim community was an act of terror committed against Canada and against all Canadians. We will grieve with you. We will defend you. We will love you. And we will stand with you. Over the coming days, take solace in one another. We will mourn this devastating attack and we will heal together as one community, as one country and as one family. Canadians will not be intimidated. We will not meet violence with more violence. We will meet fear and hatred with love and compassion. Always. Merci Monsieur Speaker.

[crowd clapping]

[Music: Extro]

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January 31, 2017 full episode transcript

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