Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2020

Uncover S5: Sharmini – The Crime Beat

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[Crickets chirping and footsteps]

VOICE 1: On March 20th…

VOICE 2: Run!

[Heavy breathing and running]

VOICE 1: ..only one movie experience this year will make you afraid to breathe.

VOICE 3: You won’t survive.

VOICE 2: We have to try.

VOICE 1: A Quiet Place: Part II. In theatres March 20th. Tickets on sale now.

[Music]

ANNOUNCER: This is a CBC podcast.

[Music]

MATT CRONE: I think if we go along here, we'll be...where we need to be. If we follow this path north.

Yeah. In my memory, the east side of the park was much more open. And there was more grass, which it may open up farther up here.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Yah, when you see, actually, how vast this park is, it is kind of amazing that her remains were found at all.

[Birds chirping]

MICHELLE: Matt Crone spent more than 30 years as a police officer, 12 of them with Homicide. Now that he's retired, he has time to help us out, to bring us down into this ravine and find the right spot.

[Footsteps]

MATT: I think this is it. I think this is where it was because I remember the rocks across the river, and her body was located, the gravesite was located, beside a fallen log.

MICHELLE: Not to sound corny, but sort of perversely, it is a beautiful, resting place.

MATT: It is. It's a very serene spot, very quiet spot, right beside the river here.

[Tense music]

NEWSCASTER: Toronto Police are continuing a desperate search for a missing 15-year-old girl, Sharmini Anandavel. She was last seen at Fairview Mall in North York on Saturday...

VOICE 1: Please. Please, release her. Please, release her. we will give you whatever-- we'll give you. Please, release my daughter. If somebody has abducted her or keeping her in some other place, please, release my daughter. Please, I beg you.

VOICE 2: We're just praying that she'll come back, um... Just praying every single day. And we just want her to know that we love her and we miss her.

NEWSCASTER 1: Police have now moved to a level-three search, the highest level.

NEWSCASTER 2: On the weekend, police found skeletal remains in a North York park. They matched Sharmini.

[Music]

MICHELLE: Do you have any doubt whatsoever that he did this?

MATT: No, I don't. I'm absolutely certain...this is the person who did this.

[Music]

MICHELLE: I'm Michelle Shephard, and this is Uncover: Sharmini.

Chapter One: The Crime Beat.

[Music]

MICHELLE: Back in the summer of 1999, I was a cub reporter at the Toronto Star.

I was covering crime, and that often meant talking to grieving family and friends. It was never easy. And, actually, it never really got any easier. Sharmini Anandavel's story was no exception.

NEWCSASTER 1: More than 30 officers targeted the Bayview and Finch area.

[Helicopter engine roars]

NEWSCASTER 1: Helicopters and off-road vehicles, combined with officers, trying to find clues into the disappearance of Sharmini Anandavel.

VOICE 1: We're not looking at an abduction at this particular time. There were some information and some tips and some leads that we were looking at...

MICHELLE: Sharmini was a 15-year-old grade nine student when she disappeared. Four months later, her remains were found. And someone got away with her murder.

VOICE 1: I can't believe it, it's a shocker, because I have children, you know.

VOICE 2: I'm very sorry for the people, for her parents.

MICHELLE: For nearly two years, I followed Sharmini's case and the hunt for her killer. I kept in touch with her father, and, periodically, I checked in with police. But, eventually, there wasn't anything new to write. Her case remained open, unsolved. Then came the morning of September 11th, 2001.

NEWSCASTER 1: They were deliberate. They were deadly. A series of terror attacks on the United States, the most devastating in American history, unlike anything we've ever seen...

MICHELLE: By that evening, I was standing amid the remains of the World Trade Center and began my beat as The Toronto Star's first national security correspondent. In the 18 years since, I've reported around the world, trying to understand the sick cycle of terrorism. It was often frustrating, fascinating, sometimes exciting, but most times utterly devastating. But no matter how far from home I was, every June 12th, the day Sharmini went missing, I would think about her. Her parents had given me a photo of her wearing a gold sari. There's flowers in her hair, bangles on her wrist. She's looking in the mirror, beaming. That photo is still pinned up at my desk. I'm haunted by what happened to her on that day.

No one was ever held responsible. But there was a suspect. And I met him 20 years ago.

[Music]

MICHELLE: His name is Stanley Tippett. He lived in Sharmini's building and I interviewed him a couple of weeks after she disappeared. The headline of our Toronto Star story read, "Man's life hell since teen vanished." And that story has bothered me ever since. Did we brand an innocent man a murderer?

Or did we let a guilty man defend himself? That's why we're doing this podcast and reinvestigating Sharmini's murder.

[Music]

MICHELLE: The first time I met Sharmini's parents was on June 17th, 1999, five days after Sharmini disappeared. They were bereft. I've met a lot of desperate people in this job, and I have to admit some have faded from my memory, but that apartment and the Anandavel family, my recollection is still sharp. Her mother, Vasanthamalar, just sat crying, more like wailing. It was awful. She had a long mauve dress on her lap, and she was just stroking it over and over. Sharmini was going to wear that dress to her grade-nine graduation in a couple weeks. The way her mother touched the dress was light and delicate, in contrast to her heavy, heaving sobs. Sometimes she would stop crying, she'd look up at me and give me this sad smile. She'd even take my hands. But she didn't say much. I wasn't the only reporter to be invited into their home.

NEWS REPORTER: Every second that crawls by...

MICHELLE: The family wanted media attention. They wanted Sharmini's photo to be broadcast everywhere and anywhere until she walked back in that door. So journalists, they were coming and going. Tripods were being set up, cameras flashing. I can't imagine how disorienting it would be for all of them.

NEWS REPORTER: Every time there's a knock on the door...

[Phone rings]

NEWS REPORTER: ..or the phone rings, the Anandavels hope, maybe soon now, Sharmini will come home.

[Woman wails]

MICHELLE: The apartment was hot and crowded. 1999 would go on record as the second warmest in decades.

Sharmini's little brother, Kathees, who was about 13 but looked younger, hovered not far from his mom. He seemed more perplexed than scared. There were other kids in the apartment, too, and they sat crammed on a couch, all knees and elbows and awkward angles, sipping Sprites.

It was Sharmini's older brother, Dinesh, and her father, Anandavel, who I remember best.

[Music]

MICHELLE: Her father was so gentle, so sweet, and he wanted to make sure the reporters were all comfortable, and we had what we needed. So when he wasn't consoling his wife, he kept asking his son to go back and forth to the kitchen to bring us some pop or water or juice. Their hospitality was actually heartbreaking. And so was their gratitude for us being there. I remember staying for hours, not so much for the story but because I felt bad leaving.

VOICE 1: We are praying to God, please, everybody help me to find my daughter. Please. I will thank everybody. Please. ["Please" echoes]

MICHELLE: When Sharmini's dad says, "Please," he's looking right at the camera. His eyes are filled with tears. "Please," he keeps saying in every interview. "Please."

[Music]

[Crickets chirping and footsteps]

VOICE 1: On March 20th…

VOICE 2: Run!

[Heavy breathing and running]

VOICE 1: ..only one movie experience this year will make you afraid to breathe.

VOICE 3: You won’t survive.

VOICE 2: We have to try.

VOICE 1: A Quiet Place: Part II. In theatres March 20th. Tickets on sale now.

[Music]

[Dog barks]

MICHELLE: Hey! It's nice to see you!

MATT: Yeah! How are you?!

MICHELLE: It's been ages.

MATT: Yeah, it's been a long time.

MICHELLE: Detective Matt Crone was one of the lead investigators on Sharmini's case.

It's really, probably, been 20 years.

MATT: Yeah, yeah, and you made your world tour.

MICHELLE: And you're retired!

MATT: Yeah.

MICHELLE: How are you...

MATT: I left Toronto Police in 2008. And I worked for the Ministry of the Attorney General for eight years.

MICHELLE: That's right. For eight years, okay.

MATT: Yeah.

MICHELLE: 20 years ago, Matt wouldn't say much about the case. And that's pretty customary in the early days of a homicide.

VOICE 1: Okay, Michelle, why don't you sit here?

MICHELLE: Sure.

MATT: Matt has invited us to his home in Courtice, Ontario, a small town about an hour east of Toronto. We're setting up to record in his kitchen. And I'm with producer Kathleen Goldhar.

KATHLEEN: And you can sit there, Matt. I'm going to sit here so that I can have the headphones on.

MICHELLE: Matt's home has a comfortable, country feel to it, with lace curtains, antique furniture, and a colourful table cloth. It's also a little eclectic. There's a stained glass window of a parrot, and an impressive wine fridge.

MATT: I went to night school and became a sommelier.

MICHELLE: Oh!

MATT: I went to the International Sommelier-- All I wanted was just a course on wine because I like wine. But I knew nothing about it. Like, I didn't know a cabernet from a Beaujolais. I mean, what's the difference?

MICHELLE: Matt has pulled out a file folder to show us.

MATT: This is mostly your stuff.

MICHELLE: It's got newspaper clippings about Sharmini, the poster offering a $50,000 reward...

MATT: How many rewards has the Toronto Police paid since 1957? None.

MICHELLE: These never work?

MATT: No. No.

MICHELLE: ..and a picture of her. It's her grade nine class photo.

MATT: When Sharmini actually went missing, the 33 Division folks reached out to the homicide squad.

MICHELLE: Right away?

MATT: Yeah. And they reached out...

MICHELLE: I also had my suspicions that she wasn't alive. Sharmini just didn't fit the profile of a runaway. But, really, who knew? She had told family and friends she was heading to the first day of a new job and there were a few possible sightings of her the morning she disappeared. But all that was certain was that Sharmini left her apartment sometime after 9am on June 12th, 1999. She never came back. These were some of the early stories I wrote.

[Paper rustling]

MICHELLE: June 17th, 1999. Toronto Star. "Police confirmed yesterday that they are following one report that a man who identified himself as a police officer contacted Sharmini and offered her a job answering phones. It was Saturday morning just after 9am..." June 18th. "The candles flickered, but at a vigil held for Sharmini Anandavel, missing since Saturday, the hope never wavered..." "Her grief-stricken father pleaded for his daughter's safe return." June 19th, page 8. "When the parents of Sharmini Anandavel said goodbye to their daughter at 9am last Saturday, they assumed she was going to a job." "Just before 10:30am, a friend saw the 15-year-old on a bench at Fairview Mall, at Don Mills Road and Sheppard Avenue." "A witness placed the teen alone in the Peanut Plaza, north of the mall and just across the street from her family's apartment building..." "She hasn't been seen since."

[Music]

MICHELLE: Then, in October, news broke that human remains were found in a shallow grave beside a small river.

On the front page of the Star, underneath a photo of Sharmini's crying parents, I wrote, "Four months to the day after his daughter went missing, Sharmini's father got the news he hoped he would never hear. 'I don't understand how this could happen. How could anyone do this to my daughter?' he told me. 'I would have given anything, money, anything for my daughter.'"

[Music]

MICHELLE: When was the first time you met Sharmini's parents?

MATT: It was shortly after the body was found. I can't remember exactly. It would have been on the 12th or 13th. You know, it was heartbreaking that, you know, these people, both of them working a couple of jobs trying, you know, trying to push it ahead and get their kids something in there, and the two boys were very personable and bright. You know, it's just heartbreaking.

MICHELLE: It's strange to see Matt Crone all these years later realizing that this case, that Sharmini , has stayed with both of us for two decades.

MATT: The interesting thing is, especially when you're dealing with a young person, is when you talk to the parents they describe a person for you. And you talk to the teachers, they describe a person for you. When you talk to the friends they describe a person for you. And they're three different people. But this was odd. You always got the same person with this. This is just a nice kid, hardworking, lots of fun, bright, funny, enjoyed life. There was really nothing anywhere, and just looking at the way she, uh-- you know, being in school and how she acted, there was nothing in there to indicate... So, I was out riding a motorcycle and I got a call that they had found human remains down in the, uh-- down by the Don River, East Don River Park.

MICHELLE: Matt on a motorcycle? It's not hard to picture. He's tall, over six feet. He's got big hands. Barrel chested. He's got white hair that goes to his shoulders, and a salt-and-pepper beard.

MATT: And I was right in Toronto, so I just rode over and went down to the scene and got the story of how the body was discovered and just started from there.

MICHELLE: Sharmini's remains were discovered by a father and son who were out for a walk.

There wasn't much to find.

MATT: Skull, mandible and long bones were left. And the reason they were left is you have, basically, two types of bone in your body. You have the kind of very dense, what they call "compactness bone", which is the long bones in your arms and legs and your skull. Then you have a spongy type of bone.

MICHELLE: It was because it had been a hot summer. It was four months and she was right near a coyote's den. Is that right?

MATT: Yeah, she was-- It looked like she'd been buried and then a log had been placed over the burial site, and we had it excavated by an archaeologist, forensic archaeologist, and dug down, so we got lower. We got hair. We got fingernails. But the coyotes had pulled everything else out.

MICHELLE: Sharmini was wearing blue nail polish.

MATT: Yeah, these blue fingernails. You know, they're just heartbreaking to see.

[Music]

MICHELLE: Crime scenes. They can make or break a case. It had been four months, and given the summer heat, the proximity to a coyote's den, some flooding in the ravine, police would not be able to find any DNA of the killer. The detectives needed to determine exactly what happened the day Sharmini went missing. Where was she going? Who was she meeting? Since she was found in a shallow grave, they knew they were dealing with a homicide. But was she killed in the ravine? Or somewhere else?

[Music]

MICHELLE: From the very first night Sharmini went missing, police focused on one of her neighbours, Stanley Tippett. Sharmini's parents had told me about him, too. They said it was Tippett who had offered their daughter a job. Her parents had banged on his apartment door when she didn't come home that first night, but they didn't get an answer. He had actually moved out two weeks earlier. I joined up with my Toronto Star colleague, Dale Brazao, to search for him. We knew Tippett had moved to Oshawa, 45 minutes east of Toronto, and he was living with his wife and their young family. He actually wasn't that hard to find. People tend to notice Tippett, both because he is outgoing, but also because of the way he looks. Tippett has Treacher Collins syndrome, and it affects his hearing and the bone development in his face.

MATT: Stanley suffers from the genetic condition Treacher Collins syndrome, which gives him certain deformities, facial deformities, and when kids would ask him about it, he'd say that happened when he was in the bomb squad and a bomb blew up and disfigured him.

MICHELLE: I also heard stories about Tippett pretending to be a police officer.

MATT: We got all the different stories that he had told people in the building about who he was and what he was and what his background was and he used to actually have-- he had a jacket with "Police" written on it. He had a nightstick he used to carry around as well, and he would patrol the building he was in from time to time.

MICHELLE: One day, Brazao and I were tracking Tippett when he stopped at a hardware store near his home. I followed him inside. But then he started following me. And when I got back to the car, he came right up, demanding to know who we were. Once I explained we were journalists, his demeanour quickly softened. And then he talked and talked, always maintaining his innocence. On July 1st, 1999, in a Toronto Star story, we made his name public. This is how it began. "Stanley Tippett's life has been in turmoil since 15-year-old Sharmini Anandavel went missing on her way to a job 18 days ago. Tippett, a former neighbour who used to take the grade 9 girls swimming, and was helping her find a job, says his life has been hell since police began questioning him about her disappearance." Tippett then went on to tell me he had nothing to hide. That's why he would talk. He wanted to, quote, "Set the record straight." So this is what he told me. He did not offer Sharmini a job. But he did give her an application for the North York swimming pool. He often took kids there and knew they were hiring. He gave Sharmini that application the last week in May, and that's the last time he saw her before he moved out. He also acknowledged his path and Sharmini's were almost the same that Saturday morning. But he said it was all just a coincidence. This is what Tippett said he did that day. He drove by his old apartment around 9am, the same time Sharmini left home. But he said he didn't stop his car, and he didn't see her. He was on his way to a job cutting grass, and he got to that job around 9:30. But then car troubles plagued him all day and he tried to fix the problem himself. So, at about 10:30, he went to Fairview to wash his greasy hands. Now, that places him at the mall, at the same time a witness said she saw Sharmini there. From there, he went south to Lawrence Avenue and Don Mills Road, to a gas station. That's the intersection where Sharmini told her parents she was going for her new job. "I hope they find that girl and she's safe," Tippett told me. "Like, I have a two-year-old myself, you know, and I could not imagine what the parents are going through."

[Music]

MICHELLE: Police never disclosed their theory as to what happened to Sharmini.

MATT: The narrative that was developing was that she was-- she left home in the morning to go to a job at North York Rec.

MICHELLE: Matt is revealing it now, for the first time.

MATT: That was from her parents, but her friends are saying, no, no, that wasn't the case. She was going to work as an undercover drug operative for Stanley Tippett.

MICHELLE: Since Tippett has never been charged, none of Matt's theory has been heard, or tested, in court.

MATT: Well, I think he, uh, he was grooming her with the offer of a job. And the interesting thing was that he picked a job which, in reality, would have a certain amount of secrecy attached to it. So I'm gonna give you this job as a police operative where we are going to take you, give you all the equipment you need, a radio and pad and paper, binoculars, and we're going to put you in a place and you're going to look for drug dealing. And when you see it, you call me on your radio and I'll swoop in with my team and arrest the drug dealers. But because it is this, you know, secret police investigation, you can't talk to anybody about it and you can't even tell your parents about it. So there's a certain-- certain crooked genius to that. So she goes back to her parents and says, "You know, I got a job, I'm going to be out that day." And I think he picked her up, because he was in town that day, and then probably drove her over and took her down to the site and had her sit there and wait, and he went and he cut lawns.

MICHELLE: When I interviewed Tippett 20 years ago, he was very particular about providing details, no matter how small. He strongly denied having anything to do with Sharmini's disappearance. It made me wonder if police had tunnel vision.

He told me exactly where he had been and when on the day Sharmini went missing. He offered contacts for his alibis, names and numbers of the residents where he cut grass, a receipt from the gas station where he stopped. Matt Crone says he noted that, too.

MATT: Yep. He could tell you details about what time he arrived at a place to cut the grass, how he cut the grass, like, east-west or north-south, when he had a Coke to drink, where he put his Coke, while he was still cutting grass. Like, tremendous detail.

MICHELLE: But there were a couple hours on that Saturday where Tippett's story becomes vague.

MATT: There's this period of time, this substantial period of time, where his vehicle was burning oil. So he sat in a strip mall with the hood open to let his car cool down but which is nonsensical because you'd say, well, why don't you just go to your next lawn cutting and let it sit there and cool? No explanation.

MICHELLE: According to Matt's theory, Tippett makes his way back down into the ravine. Sharmini is waiting for him in a heavily treed area, unable to be seen from the public path.

MATT: He goes down there, he kills her, does whatever else he does, and buries her. Comes back, erm, probably has a shovel, puts a shovel in the car, goes about his business. I think he cuts another lawn. Goes over to his in-laws' place, gets a bucket with bleach and water, cleans his car. I think he has his clothes washed at his in-laws as well. Erm... Then he takes the car in, gets it repaired, and they put a new engine in it and it was around a thousand bucks.

MICHELLE: But then police interrogate Tippett about Sharmini, and soon after, he gets rid of the car.

MATT: He has-- takes the car to a junkers and they give him ten bucks for it or something and they're going to crush it. But they don't. We got the car. But there's nothing in the car, except we did notice that the liner was gone in the car.

MICHELLE: Did you ever find that liner?

MATT: No.

[Music]

MICHELLE: It's true that police were never able to find any physical evidence connecting Tippett to Sharmini's death.

[Music]

MICHELLE: Is it possible the coincidences were just that? Coincidences?

That, as Tippett said, he had given her a job application, just not for the job she was going to. That Tippett just happened to be in the same area Sharmini was the day she went missing. And that he had a history of impersonating police officers and Sharmini believed she was going to be working undercover. Was it possible? For most of my career, the stories I've told are about miscarriages of justice, the abuse of power. Like many journalists, I have an inherent distrust of authority. "Comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable" is one of the reasons I got into journalism. It's easy to see Tippett as an underdog, because of the way he looks. He undoubtedly had a difficult childhood, and it's the reason why we didn't run a picture of him with our story 20 years ago. We had one, but right before the paper went to print, we called our editor. We worried publishing his image would mark him forever. The photo was pulled. And I wonder now if that was the right call.

[Music]

MICHELLE: The police did investigate Tippett, for years, around the clock surveillance, undercover operations, interrogations. But he was never charged with Sharmini's killing.

[Music]

MICHELLE: This season on Uncover: Sharmini.

[Music]

VOICE 1: To me, justice was never served for her. I think we know who did it, and I'm in no position to point the finger but I don't have to be detective to put the dots together.

VOICE 2: He was very manipulative, he was very deceptive.

VOICE 3: Don't you have to acknowledge that he's not really the perpetrator, that he's innocent?

VOICE 4: Michelle, shake your head, please. Come on now. Put yourself in that situation. It could happen to anybody.

VOICE 5: That's when they found duct tape, tie straps and all sorts of stuff that could be your abduction kit 101.

[Music]

MICHELLE: Uncover: Sharmini is written and produced by myself, Michelle Shephard, and Kathleen Goldhar. Our Associate Producer is Ilina Ghosh. Our Audio Producer is Mitchell Stuart. Our Digital Producer is Judy Ziyi Gu. Chris Oke is our Story Editor. Our Video Producer is Evan Aagard. Transcripts by Rasha Shehata, Varad Mehta and Carol Park. Our Senior Producer of CBC Podcasts is Tanya Springer, and the Executive Producer is Arif Noorani.

[Music]

ANNOUNCER: For more CBC original podcasts, go to cbc.ca/originalpodcasts

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

CBC would like to acknowledge the support of the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund.

TRANSCRIPT: UNCOVER: SHARMINI - EP 1

More Stories Like This