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 2024

Crime Story Episode 56: David Ridgen

Host: Kathleen Goldhar

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Hi, everyone. Kathleen, here. You're about to hear my interview with David Ridgen, the journalist behind the podcast Someone Knows Something. He's got a new story about to come out. Season 9: The Christine Harron Case. The first episode of SKS Season 9 is available now on CBC True Crime Premium on Apple Podcasts. Just look for the Crime Story feed. Or you can find it on CBC Podcasts' YouTube page. Links to all of this are in our show notes. And the whole season of SKS will be available this Wednesday, November the 6th, ad-free, on CBC True Crime Premium. And just a heads up, my interview with David contains spoilers. Here's our conversation.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: According to a national RCMP database, there are more than 2500 missing people in Canada. And when a person goes missing, left behind are the worried, panicked families, imagining the worst while still hoping for answers at the same time. For the last 20 years, David Ridgen has found himself drawn to these cases, even when other reporters, and sometimes even the police, have lost interest. On the most recent season of his hit podcast Someone Knows Something, David Ridgen investigates the disappearance of Christine Harron, a 15-year-old girl who left for school one day back in 1993, and never came home. And this time, David doesn't just look into Christine's case, he becomes a part of it. I'm Kathleen Goldhar, and this is Crime Story.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: David, welcome to the show.

DAVID RIDGEN: Well, thanks for having me.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: It's nice to have you. I can't believe it's our first time.

DAVID RIDGEN: Nice to see you. Yeah.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: What drew you to this case? I mean, there really are, like I said, thousands of missing people all over this country.

DAVID RIDGEN: A lot of things draw me to cases. And in this case in particular, because there was a viable suspect or somebody who was very clearly a suspect in the case, it became instantly interesting to me. It was an Ontario case. It was close to Toronto -- Hanover, Ontario -- and it was something that I knew I could tackle. So, the next thing I had to do was try to find the parents and see if they would talk to me and went from there. But it was basically because of the suspect who had made themselves apparent in the case, not through police investigation, but because they came forward and confessed to actually doing the murder.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And we'll get to that. But there is like a moment early on in your podcast where you talk about attending a memorial service for Christine. And you talk about sort of your connection to her picture even. So, tell me about her and tell me about how you sort of felt there was something about that face that drew you in.

DAVID RIDGEN: Christine was kind of a rebellious character, rebellious person, and I knew that from talking to her mother. And just when I was at the memorial service you could tell that the way that she was spoken about and the music that was played and everybody around the sort of presentation of who she was. [KATHLEEN: Yeah.] And that, that was interesting to me. She definitely-- I remember coming out with the associate producer who was working with me at the time and saying, I wish I had met her. I wish I'd been able to meet her. She sounds like somebody that I would have been able to get along with or has some similarities to the way I felt that I was when I was that age. And I think that that helped to draw me to the case.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah. So what happened in May 1993? What happened to Christine?

DAVID RIDGEN: May 18th, 1993. Christine. Chrissy. I'll call her Chrissy because that's what her parents called her, her mother called her. She had an argument with Mary Ann, her mother, in the small town of Hanover, Ontario, which used to be this furniture production place, but at the time was kind of rundown and had kind of seen better days as a town. So in 1993, she didn't want to go to school. She wasn't feeling very well, and Mary Ann was wanting her to go to school. And they had an argument. And basically Christine left and said, I'm going to school. Slam, the door slammed. Mary Ann looked out the door, saw her walking down the street, turn the corner, and that was the last time she ever saw her.

DAVID RIDGEN: So after that, nobody knew what happened to Christine. And that was 1993. And it wasn't till 2004 that really anything new happened in the case. There were police investigations. The Hanover Police was a local department at the time when she disappeared and couldn't come up with anything. Then the OPP took over the case from Hanover and reinvestigated, re-interviewed a lot of people, all the particulars, and tried their best to sort of crack it. They didn't come up with anything either. So nobody really knew what happened to Christine.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Until... somebody said something. [laughter]

DAVID RIDGEN: Yeah. Until somebody said something, yeah. And in 2004, August 2004, a fellow comes forward at a party. He's been at a party all night long with his family and gets into some kind of a dispute with somebody or with himself. Something happened in him, triggering him, and he decided to come forward and tell everybody at the party that would listen that he killed Christine Harron. Anthony Edward Ringel is the fellow's name. He called the police. He called 911 from the party, then hung up. But the police came anyway. And he confessed to police, too, when they came to pick him up. And he held out his hands as if to have his hands cuffed and said, I did it. I killed her. I can show you where I buried her. [KATHLEEN: Yeah.] And you'd think, okay, so...

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Open and shut.

DAVID RIDGEN: Open and shut. [KATHLEEN: Yeah.] Right? Anthony's taken to the station...

SOUNDCLIP

DETECTIVE: Anthony, give us your full name.

ANTHONY RINGEL: Anthony Edward Ringel.

DETECTIVE: Okay. Listen to me very carefully.

DAVID RIDGEN: Interviewed...

SOUNDCLIP

DETECTIVE: What we would like to do, and if you know where Chrissy is, we would like to get Chrissy away from there and I think she deserves that. And only you can help us with that.

DAVID RIDGEN: He at some point takes them to a place where he says he put Christine, and he tells them details of what happened. And there's a court case in 2006, and the case falls apart. Police weren't conducting the investigation properly. The judge threw out a lot of evidence that they had gathered, and the case went nowhere.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: So why was the case thrown out? Can you specifically help us understand why the case got thrown out?

DAVID RIDGEN: The case was thrown out because police did not caution Anthony properly when they first took him to the police station. It was felt that since there were so many, there were so many delays that-- without his lawyer, they didn't caution him properly...

SOUNDCLIP

DETECTIVE: And as a matter of fact, you've spoken to duty counsel three different times today, right?

ANTHONY RINGEL: Yeah. They told me that I'm supposed to go get a lawyer.

DETECTIVE: Okay.

ANTHONY RINGEL: They told me not to talk [indistinct]--

DETECTIVE: Okay. And you appreciate that that's the advice they give you, but you can choose as to whether or not you're going to take that advice, right?

DAVID RIDGEN: The judge felt that it would fall apart in court. So, he disallowed it. And the prosecution felt that they couldn't proceed, because if it falls apart, they can never come back again, right. So they decided to stay the case. And then after the stay is up, nothing happened again. And then 2009, I started working on the case with Mary Ann, so that was three years later.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And you're working for The National on CBC TV at this point.

DAVID RIDGEN: That's right. Yeah, I was working for The National at the time, which is a CBC television news program.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Which is where you really started, right?

DAVID RIDGEN: That's right. Yeah, in documentary, television documentaries, yeah.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And early on, you were drawn to these kinds of cases.

DAVID RIDGEN: Yeah. I mean, I would say I fell into it, kind of, you know, when I was working at CBC Sunday, which is a current affairs news show here at the time. And worked on a case in Mississippi. Two different cases, actually. And then fell into learning about the Dee and Moore case and the Klan murders of the two African American guys, and worked with the family to get a Klansman in jail kind of thing. [KATHLEEN: Yeah.] So it was, it was a great case.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: You're being modest, but it was like a big deal.

DAVID RIDGEN: It was a big deal case. It was a great first foray into investigative... It wasn't really the first investigative thing I'd done, but the first cold case investigation. [KATHLEEN: Yeah.] Which was incredibly successful. And that kind of... people just kept asking me to do more and I kept doing it, you know. And at some point it kind of got to me and I had to get out of this situation. And then I got pulled back in, like, what is it? Godfather, you know. I keep getting pulled back in. So I was pulled back in. CBC wanted me to develop a podcast, Someone Knows Something, which I did. And here we are.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Here we are. Nine seasons later, right? This is season nine?

DAVID RIDGEN: Ninth season. This is the ninth season we're talking about, yeah.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Wow.

[music]

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: What made you feel as though there was something in what you could do that could maybe push this case forward?

DAVID RIDGEN: Um... I don't know. I mean, I just... Like, I think that when we see cases that have viable suspects and that have somebody that's available to be confronted, I mean, that's a-- I'm pretty good at doing that.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah. Yeah. You are really good at approaching people. And so often, that's kind of what I look forward to when I'm listening to your podcast. 'Cause part of it is like just having you wait in your car and waiting for the guy to show up and then you making that approach.

DAVID RIDGEN: Yeah.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Talk about approaching him.

DAVID RIDGEN: Well, when I approach anybody, I do a lot of scoping out. So I want to know that the person lives there, I want to know that they're going to be there when I get there. I want to know that the person at the other end of the phone is the person I'm looking for. So there's a lot of preamble, and that's not just Anthony Ringel. So with Anthony, Mary Ann actually came with me, Chrissy's mother, the first time to try to talk to him. And he was actually home at his sister's house.

SOUNDCLIP

MARY ANN: Hi. Is Anthony home?

ANTHONY'S SISTER: Uh, he's still sleeping.

MARY ANN: Is he? Could, could you wake him? I just wanted to talk to him.

ANTHONY'S SISTER: Okay. Can I... Who are you?

MARY ANN: It's Mary Ann.

ANTHONY'S SISTER: Mary Ann...?

MARY ANN: Russwurm.

DAVID RIDGEN: And then I try to see Anthony again in person because I find out where he lives. It's a trailer park, so I scope out the trailer park. I try to figure out which trailer it is. That took a long time. And then sometimes you just have to keep trying. And, you know, on one of the occasions he happened to be there and I knew he was there. So, I always do everything on my own. You know, I'm running the cameras and stuff myself. So I taped a few cameras down to the floor in this van and face them in a direction that I thought I would be walking in. I had my phone on, my recorder going, and I had another recorder in my pocket and I had another recorder in the van sticking out the window. And I walked up and knocked on the door. And then the door opens and blocks all the views so you can't see anything. [chuckles] You can't see Anthony. [Kathleen laughs] You can see me talking to a door. But, but I did get him on the phone shot.

SOUNDCLIP

DAVID RIDGEN: I'm Dave Ridgen, I work for CBC. I wanted to ask you about your confession regarding the murder of Christine Harron in August 2004. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Why you, why you confessed to that murder?

DAVID RIDGEN: And we talked for a while and I was surprised at how much he wanted to kind of... actually seemed like he wanted to talk. Like he wanted to talk about what happened, too, I think. Like he kind of had this, you could feel this need in him.

SOUNDCLIP

DAVID RIDGEN: I'm just wondering if you could talk to me a little bit about your experience with that. ...No?

ANTHONY RINGEL: No. I'm just kind of putting that all behind me.

DAVID RIDGEN: Did you know Christine?

ANTHONY RINGEL: No, I don't.

DAVID RIDGEN: You didn't know her? Did you kill Christine?

DAVID RIDGEN: So we talked for a long time. And that's almost, I think, the full interview with him is in the podcast. And the really weird thing is that no other journalist had attempted to even talk to him. Like, nobody had ever tried to talk to this guy since 2004. And that was 2009 or 2010 when I went to talk to him. So, I found it really strange that I'm the first person who was able to approach him.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: To approach him and ask. Yeah.

DAVID RIDGEN: So, yeah. I found it... it was interesting. And after I left, he actually got on his bike and tried to follow me a bit. And I tried to talk to him again but he wasn't buying...

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: He wasn't buying it.

DAVID RIDGEN: ...what I wanted to sell, so.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: You mentioned the first time you went to try to see him was with Chrissy's mother.

DAVID RIDGEN: Yes.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: She really is, like, I don't know if I could have done that.

DAVID RIDGEN: Yeah, she's a pretty, pretty brave person. And I was lucky to have met her and been able to work with her. And she's not feeling great these days. Her health is failing somewhat, even since the podcast material was gathered for this recent stuff. But she was great. And she was... She wanted to know what happened. She wanted to know what happened to her daughter, where her daughter was, you know. And I think it was less about let's get somebody in jail and it's more about, for victims' family members, where, like, where are they?

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah.

DAVID RIDGEN: Where are they now? That's what I want to know.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah, I can't imagine the anxiety. I mean, you've had to deal with that a lot. Like, do you see a process parents go through or family members go through? Because so much of your stuff is, like, unresolved, even sometimes there's not a body. [DAVID: Yeah.] So I'm just like, how do you see families and stuff reacting to that?

DAVID RIDGEN: Well, there's incredible guilt. So when someone disappears, there's incredible guilt in family members. Why wasn't I there? I could have helped her. I could have protected her. Why didn't I drive her? Why did I argue with her? You know, in Mary Ann's case, there's incredible guilt about this argument she had with Chrissy that day when she disappeared. So it's often about over-- trying to overcome that and allow themselves to live again. Because a lot of the family members I've worked with will not allow themselves to enjoy themselves because it's, because it's not something... they don't deserve it. They don't deserve to enjoy themselves. So, the thing is with victims' family members, like... and I don't want to put them on a podium, because we all deal with trauma. Everybody has people that die. We all die, right? [KATHLEEN: Yeah.] We're all going to die.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Thanks, David.

DAVID RIDGEN: We all have people that die-- You're welcome. [Kathleen laughs] Everybody has people that die in their lives and it sucks. Their dog dies, it sucks, you know. But there's the suddenness of the crimes, and it brings a specific kind of guilt and a specific kind of sort of process and mode of operation. So family members orient their whole lives around trying to solve the case. That's what-- that's their vocation. They become the person who's trying to solve that case till they die, basically. It changes their life completely. You know, when my dad dies or my sister dies or whatever, I don't, I'm not going to reorient my life about she died because of a heart attack or something. Like, it's a totally different situation, so. In general, though, with crimes like missing persons or murders, it's always that guilt that has to be overcome and pushing people away because of it. So, when I first start working with people, they're like, they have this kind of... they don't trust me, they don't trust themselves. They don't want to enjoy themselves. But by the end of it -- and it sounds very protracted here -- but by the end of it, it's perfect! [Kathleen chuckles] And everything's amazing. No. But by the end of it, I can-- I notice a change and they often tell me about the change. And they'll come back to me a few years later and tell me about the changes sometimes and say thank you or whatever. So it's a process that works. It's like confronting, confronting the thing that's bothering you the most. I mean, it's like throwing the guy in the elevator that's afraid of elevators. So the process is-- really, SKS is about that process.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah. So is there almost, like... you always involve the family, or often in your podcast, right?

DAVID RIDGEN: Always.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: So is that...

DAVID RIDGEN: With one exception. But always, yeah.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: So that process is important to you beyond being the good journalist. Like, there's something else going on in your process about [DAVID: Yeah.] why you're engaging them.

DAVID RIDGEN: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I believe that you, when you engage in these cases, you have to work with the family members. But also, well, because it's sort of proof against exploitation, first of all.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah.

DAVID RIDGEN: But also, I just think that that's... the benefit is... that's where the benefit is. To have the family doing it, doing the work with you. It is true that I don't share everything with family members, though. Like, I don't seed the case with information. I don't tell them everything people are telling me because that's wrong. That's just journalistically wrong, but it's also just wrong investigatively. You don't want to tell people what you're learning or else you'll start learning it from other people in town because it's been getting around through the people you're telling. So you're getting confirmation bias from the people who are getting your shit, right? So I don't tell people the most important stuff, usually, including family members. And they know that. Going in, I tell them that and they know that I'm going to keep stuff from them. Which I haven't actually ever spoken about that before in an interview. But it's important to know that. Like, I'm not, we don't sit there and look at all the transcripts together and decide what the edits are, you know.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Of course.

DAVID RIDGEN: But we work together on confronting the information. What do you think I should do? Where do you think we should go? And then sometimes I work on my own and sometimes I work with family, and...

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah.

DAVID RIDGEN: You know, depending on what they decide.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And there is a point, and I don't want to talk about it yet because I want to get there, where you... Mary Ann has to look at some pretty disturbing things that you uncover in the process of this, and you show it to her. But I'm going to get there. But before we get there, we have to talk about you, again, because it is you. [DAVID: Shit.] And I know no one likes to be the journalist that's part of the story, but it is very clear...

DAVID RIDGEN: Well, I'm used to it.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: ...that the work you did on this, on the documentary that you put out for CBC television at the time, impacted the investigation. So can you talk a little bit about how that happened?

DAVID RIDGEN: Well, I like to let people sort of hear that from others, that stuff. But I will, for the purposes of this interview, tell you some information that will help. First of all, I just want to say, I have a hard time staying still, as you probably noticed. I really can't. If I had a microphone in my hand and I was interviewing you, I would be rock still for four hours. I would not move. Because I am David Ridgen without the mic in my hand and I don't have that protection, I am a freak on wheels [Kathleen laughs] when it comes to sitting still.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Well, as long as we're picking up your sound, I think-- I don't care.

DAVID RIDGEN: But anyway, the question is, how did the work help the investigation?

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah. Like you had a documentary that came out on CBC television and [DAVID: Yeah.] it elicited a lot of information. So talk about that.

DAVID RIDGEN: The documentary that I produced for CBC television was under 20 minutes.

SOUNDCLIP

CBC HOST: Tonight, investigative filmmaker David Ridgen shows us what happened, and confronts the man who once made a confession to murder.

DAVID RIDGEN: And in that documentary was a pack of information that had never been heard before about what happened in the police investigation. The documentary tells about police malfeasance. It's embarrassing for police. They made embarrassing mistakes.

SOUNDCLIP

DAVID RIDGEN: [narrating] Probably the most egregious error is when the OPP, led by Mark Wright, takes Ringel to Hanover to look for Christine's body, after Ringel repeatedly tells them that a lawyer has advised him not to go because, as he says, it'll hurt him more.

DAVID RIDGEN: The documentary talks about the timeline of Christine, the timeline of her day and the timeline of Anthony Edward Ringel coming forward. It talks about information that he gave police at the time. Basically, it tells everything we know about the case up to the point of the case being stayed and Anthony going free.

SOUNDCLIP

DAVID RIDGEN: [narrating] The case against Ringel crumbles to nothing, as if it never happened. And the questions remain around Ringel. Did he actually do what he said he did?

DAVID RIDGEN: So the case is shown in the film. The film comes out, and within a couple of months, the police begin an undercover operation. After the broadcast, at the trailer park where-- at the same trailer park where I saw Anthony. And that investigation continues till 2013, February 2013, I think. And then Anthony is arrested coming out of that investigation.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Okay, so let's slow that down. I mean, first of all, it was a long investigation, a long undercover. Tell what happens. A cop befriends him, basically.

DAVID RIDGEN: Yeah. I mean, it's kind of like what they call a Mr. Big.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah.

DAVID RIDGEN: It's not quite, though, because there's no Mr. Big. The police undertake dramatic scenarios in which they involve a victim, the target -- which is Anthony Ringel at this time -- in these scenarios in order to gain his trust. So they try to pretend to be certain people in order to befriend Anthony in this case. Try to get him to talk about the case, talk about the day that Christine went missing. Talk about anything that will help them understand what happened to Christine. So they work on this for many, many months, trying to get Anthony to talk using various methods.

SOUNDCLIP

ANTHONY RINGEL: I was down in London for a good three months. [indistinct].

UC OFFICER 1: Wow.

ANTHONY RINGEL: They tried to charge me on attempted murder.

UC OFFICER 1: It was like a bar fight or something, or...?

ANTHONY RINGEL: Well, some chick went missing and they tried to pin it on me.

UC OFFICER 1: Wow.

DAVID RIDGEN: To try to get him to talk, they take him on fishing trips, they go to strip clubs with him. They go to malls. And all the time he's talking about horrifying things, but nothing to do with Christine, per se. Or certainly nothing to do with Christine in the way they want.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: He's talking about violence against women, though, a lot.

DAVID RIDGEN: He's talking about violence against women, yes.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Not a nice dude.

DAVID RIDGEN: He's not, he's not the kind of person that you... Well, he might be the kind of person you suspect he is, actually. [KATHLEEN: Yeah.] But in a lot of these scenarios, Anthony will be attracted to the younger girls in the scene. He'll talk about them in horrible ways.

SOUNDCLIP

ANTHONY RINGEL: And like, up here, it was like, nothing on her arms.

UC OFFICER 1: Nice.

ANTHONY RINGEL: And you could see the bra strap at the back. Because it went like this. It looped down.

DAVID RIDGEN: Police officers will have to kind of engage with him about that.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah, like you include, just so people understand, you include these undercover tapes. And I reacted pretty strongly when I heard him in that, I think he's in a truck, right? Talking about it.

DAVID RIDGEN: There's a couple of scenarios. One is in a truck, and there's some where he's just getting in after being in the mall.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah. It's gross. I mean, it's really, really disturbing. And I have a daughter and I was like, that is horrendous.

DAVID RIDGEN: It's very disturbing. And reading the documents and knowing what I know, and this is the same with every case, and I've had to deal with this stuff in a way that's very personal, but it's disturbing. And there's a lot of stuff that is not included in the doc that I did not share, again, with the family members or with Mary Ann in particular, which I found really hard to take. Because this is a guy who is talking about what he really did. Like, we really know he did this. [KATHLEEN: Yeah.] And when you get to those situations, when you get somebody basically confessing what they did in the details that he did, it's very tough. It's hard to-- It's not just like a movie. It's not like you're in a movie. It's like there's something that actually at your core kills you when you read this shit.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: I found that, of course, the details hard, but the way he justifies his actions almost harder. Because there is actual justification within [DAVID: Yes.] this person that he had a right to be that way. That there was something that they did that encouraged it. Like, that justification was the worst thing for me.

DAVID RIDGEN: Yeah, I mean, there's some despicable sort of justifications or rationalizations he uses that you'll hear in the podcast, which I will not go through right now because...

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: No. We don't have to.

DAVID RIDGEN: ...I just, they're too disturbing to even go through. And--

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: But they're very telling. The justifications to me are very telling.

DAVID RIDGEN: They are. And these... People who listen to the podcast and who have children, these people exist. Like, they are out there.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah.

DAVID RIDGEN: So, the police undercover officers -- men and women -- try to get Anthony to emote about the case. They can't get him to say anything. And this is, I don't know, many months later. Someone comes up with the idea to show Anthony the documentary that went to air. And as soon as they show it to him-- it goes for four hours. They rewind it, they go forward, they play it back. But as soon as they start showing it to him, he starts confessing about killing Christine Harron.

SOUNDCLIP

ANTHONY RINGEL: It's a documentary on the river.

UC OFFICER 2: Yeah. On her and on the river.

ANTHONY RINGEL: But they're not actually showing where we crossed or fucking bah bah bah bah.

DAVID RIDGEN: So the police used the documentary as a tool to get Anthony to start talking. It's the right moment, the right time. They've gained his trust. They can't get him to talk. But it's the work that gets him to talk. It's the documentary.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: How did that feel?

DAVID RIDGEN: Well, it felt good, but, I mean, I... I'm not surprised. I mean, I don't know how that sounds, but I'm not surprised it got him to talk.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Why? Tell me why.

DAVID RIDGEN: Well, because it's exactly... He's probably watched it many, many times, right? He's probably-- he probably knows it. And it's this, he wants to talk. He wants to fill the space that they want him to fill, but they just need to trigger him properly and that was the way to do it. It just... Because it has the details. [KATHLEEN: Right.] And he's able to either say, oh, that's right or wrong, right. When as soon as you're confronted with those details, you, it's going to pull it out of him, [KATHLEEN: Yeah.] so. Anyway, it did. It pulled it out of him. And after that, shortly after that evening, I think it was like two different, two days after that, they arrested him.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah.

DAVID RIDGEN: Then there was a trial in 2016. So they arrested him 2013; trial in 2016. They tried to throw out the information. The defense tries to throw out the documentary, the CBC-- my CBC documentary. The judge disallows it, and says it's clear that the documentary is what led him to confess.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah.

DAVID RIDGEN: And he's convicted and he's in jail.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Was he any help in finding Christine? Has anybody found her?

DAVID RIDGEN: Well, he told them where he put her, but this is how many years later. It's 1993, and this is 2016. And, you know, or 2013 would have been the timing when he finally was able to tell them. But it's always been oblique angles. Like, he's never really sat down, I don't think, and taken them back there. I think it's only been in the confession that he tells them. And they try to get it, they try to get it from him again. But we're pretty sure where she was left in a floodplain. So part of the ending of the series is going back there and trying to find her.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah. Yeah.

DAVID RIDGEN: And we're going to go back again.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And you, the thing that I mentioned earlier that I wanted to bring up now, is that you share the undercover tape with -- parts of it -- with Chrissy's mother.

DAVID RIDGEN: Yes. Under consultation with many people, I decided that that was a good idea. I don't know. Maybe I'll hear from fans and listeners that it wasn't. But I decided to ask Christine's mother, Mary Ann, if she would like to see this stuff. [KATHLEEN: Yeah.] Because she's never had the answers. She's never heard what happened. She's never been privy to it, never been given it by the police. And I wanted to make sure she had the... had that offer on the table. Was available for her to, to look at that or listen to it. So I made sort of a file, I guess, of cuts based on what I chose for her to see. Which that's the pooch, right? Because I chose what she gets to see. Once again, I've edited what she gets to see, but it just... Once you hear a lot of, once you hear those moments, you can't unhear them or unsee them. And do I want to redo, do I want a redo of the trauma that she's already experienced? So, I'll take the hit on that. And she knew. She knew that I had done that. It wasn't like I was... This is everything that's, [KATHLEEN: Yeah.] this is everything. She knew that and she was ready for it. And I think she appreciated it. And she told me she did, so.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And she had such grace I found.

DAVID RIDGEN: She does. Yeah, she's very direct and she's got a grace that I appreciate, and great person to work with, let alone just a strong family member.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah.

DAVID RIDGEN: Yeah.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: You gave, with your work and with the police work, and with the undercover work -- I'm not going to give you full credit, ha. There is a, there is an ending to this, and at least he's in prison, and maybe there's a sense of where her daughter might be. You were saying that when they don't have these answers, it's so hard. How is she now knowing that she has a few of the answers?

DAVID RIDGEN: I think it's always a process, and it's a continuum. People talk about closure. She thinks closure's bullshit, [KATHLEEN: Yeah.] as do I.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: I think so, too.

DAVID RIDGEN: And I just think it's not really about that final-- finality, it's about how you are able to survive.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah.

DAVID RIDGEN: How are... Sorry.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: It's okay.

DAVID RIDGEN: How are you able to survive these situations? And get through them, uh, when you choke up. And how do you get through them when you have to live with the murder of your child that disappeared the day you argued with her? And it's the process of getting through those day-to-days that I think are made easier with the knowledge and the experience of having undertaken the case, so. It never goes away, though. I mean, it never goes away. He's in jail. To some extent, almost big deal, right? It's like, where's my daughter? Where's my daughter? And that's what we're going to keep trying to find for her. So, I mean, I don't go away, unfortunately for them. But we'll keep trying.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: How do you survive? This is a lot.

DAVID RIDGEN: Well, I have a family that's fairly supportive and also doesn't give a shit about listening to my podcasts, which is great. And -- Because they're completely disconnected from that, and we have different lives together, which is important to me. And I have other ways of dealing with, with whatever, you know, may come up, and it always comes up later. Always comes up, like, months later.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah.

DAVID RIDGEN: And it's not ever at the time. It's like, what are they talking about? This is really easy to get through the shit. And then it comes. So the Piper always has to be paid. And one other method is just to keep working, right? So eventually... I'm pushing it all downstream, but eventually there's going to be a big blockage at the end of that friggin stream.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Maybe you'll die just like you told us. [laughs]

DAVID RIDGEN: Maybe I'll die before then. That's great. Yeah, that's how I deal with it, Kathleen. [cross-talk]

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: That's how you'll deal with it, you just die.

DAVID RIDGEN: I just die before it happens. Yeah, I die before I have to deal with it.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Fair.

DAVID RIDGEN: There you go.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: That is very healthy, David.

DAVID RIDGEN: Yeah, David Ridgen's health lesson. There you go. Die before you deal. Die before deal, yeah.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: That's your next podcast title. Okay. Thanks, David. I appreciate it so much.

DAVID RIDGEN: [laughs] Thanks, yeah. Thanks a lot, yeah. Okay. I enjoyed it. Thanks very much.

[Music: Closing theme]

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: You've been listening to Crime Story from CBC Podcasts. We release a new episode every Monday, so please remember to follow the show in your podcast app. You can get our next episode a week early on CBC Podcasts' YouTube channel, or by subscribing to CBC Podcasts' True Crime channel on Apple Podcasts. In addition to early access, subscribers to our True Crime channel also listen ad-free. Crime Story is hosted by me, Kathleen Goldhar. Our producers are Nikky Manfredi and Mitchell Stuart. Sound design by Julian Uzielli and Mitchell Stuart. Our senior producer is Geoff Turner. Our video producer is Evan Aagaard and our YouTube producer is Jon Lee. Executive producers are Cesil Fernandes and Chris Oke. Tanya Springer is the Senior Manager of CBC Podcasts and Arif Noorani is the Director of CBC Podcasts.

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

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

Transcript: Crime Story, Episode 56

More Stories Like This