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Crime Story Episode 62: Jana Pruden

Host: Kathleen Goldhar

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: There is something that all audio journalists know: hearing someone's voice is very powerful.

SOUNDCLIP

AMBER TUCCARO: Where are we by?

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: We're just heading south of Beaumont. Or north to Beaumont.

AMBER TUCCARO: We're heading north to Beaumont.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: So when the Edmonton police released this audio in 2012, everyone who heard it took notice. On the tape, you hear the voice of Amber Tuccaro, a young Indigenous woman who had gone missing a year and a half before this call was released. And even more eerie, you hear the voice of the man that most people believe murdered her.

SOUNDCLIP

AMBER TUCCARO: Yo, we're not going in the city, are we?

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: [indistinct].

AMBER TUCCARO: No, we're not.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Yes, we're--

AMBER TUCCARO: Then where the fuck are these roads going to?

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: To 50th Street.

AMBER TUCCARO: 50th Street. Are you sure?

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Absolutely.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: This call and this voice, it gave Amber's family conviction that soon her killer would be found. And Globe and Mail reporter Jana Pruden felt the same way. For over 12 years, Jana has kept an eye on Amber's story, and now it's all laid bare in her podcast In Her Defence: 50th Street. I'm Kathleen Goldhar, and this is Crime Story.

[music fades in then out]

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Hi, Jana, and welcome back to the show.

JANA PRUDEN: Hello.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: So that recording, I absolutely remember when it was released. It was so jarring. Tell me about the first time you heard it.

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah, the first time I heard it was at the press conference. And I was on the cop desk of the Edmonton Journal in those days, so I went to a lot of police press conferences. And that one is so different. I remember it so vividly because none of us had ever heard anything like that before. It was so chilling, and there were two parts of it that really struck me. One was Amber and hearing her growing fear as the tape goes on. And then, of course, the second was this man, who we knew was taking her somewhere she didn't want to go. And we knew, of course, that she had never been seen again since that night. So, the voice of the person that appears to be her killer. And very, very chilling and something that's haunted me and many, many other people for many years. I know I'm not alone in this, that every time I have anything to do with 50th Street, I have a friend that lives near 50th Street. Whenever I go there, I can just hear his voice in my head: Beaumont. Absolutely. 50th Street. And I've always wondered who this man is and why he's never been caught.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: So can we break down the call a little bit? What's happening in that call?

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah, what's happening in that call is that Amber's in a car-- in a vehicle, a car or a truck, with a man that she doesn't know, and she's asking him where they are outside the city. She'd been staying in a motel near the airport, which is outside city limits of Edmonton. And it's clear that she wants to go into the city, and he's telling her that they are going into the city. But as the call goes on, it's clear that he isn't. And...

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And it's clear she's starting to realize that it isn't.

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah, you can hear... she sort of slides from, at first she's just figuring out where they are and then maybe doubtful. And then I think by the end, you can hear that she knows that she's in very serious trouble. It's from a longer call, a 15-minute phone call, and these are excerpts of it that are taken and edited together. So it's a little bit disjointed. We're hearing pieces of it that have been put together. And where this call came from and how it was recorded was something that's been a mystery for a very long time until we started working on this podcast.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah, so, and I know we're jumping ahead. We'll come back to Amber for sure. But who is Amber calling?

JANA PRUDEN: She was on the telephone with her biological brother. Amber was adopted into the Tuccaro family, but she'd been reconnecting with her birth family. And he had phoned her when she was in the car, in the vehicle. And he was in custody in jail at the time. That's why the call was recorded.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Oh, interesting. Interesting. And that was why the police were able to access it.

JANA PRUDEN: Yes.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Okay. Let's get to Amber then. Who was Amber?

JANA PRUDEN: Amber was a young woman from Fort Chipewyan. She's a member of the Mikisew Cree Nation. And, you know, as a relative of hers said, she was young. She was a young woman. She was sort of finding her place in the world. She had a baby, Jacob. Before her disappearance, she'd been living in Fort McMurray. She was taking steps to go back to school and actually had signed up for school and was going to start that in the fall. But in August of 2010, she traveled to the Edmonton area with a new friend she'd made, and that's when she disappeared.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And do we know why she was travelling to Edmonton? Do we know anything about that?

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah, Amber had been living in Fort McMurray, and she was actually staying at a women's shelter, hoping to get her own place for her and Jacob. And she met a woman there who asked her to come to Edmonton. And that's one of the questions we explore, is what they were doing here. There's a lot of people that have a lot of theories about that, and whether why they came to Edmonton was part of how she came to disappear.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And the woman that went with her is a woman named Evangeline. And she kind of becomes quite a key person in this story. So can you tell me about that? What made you, is the word suspicious or curious about Evangeline's relationship with Amber and her disappearance?

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah, I think a lot of people out there are suspicious of Evangeline because she's the last person we know of to see Amber alive. So I was really motivated to talk to her because I wanted to know more about why they went to Edmonton, what they were doing in Edmonton, even just more detail about that day, what was going on that day. And she would be a natural person [KATHLEEN: Yeah.] to want to talk to. I'm not alone in that, of course. The police eventually had that same idea, and a lot of people out in the public do have questions about Evangeline. So that was something I worked very hard on trying to talk to Evangeline.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And tell me a little bit about that, because there were some moments where it seemed like she was willing, and then, was a little bit up and down.

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah. Yeah, I would say -- I think the way that I put it in the podcast is that Evangeline is sort of all over the place. There was one night when she messaged me and said that she would speak to me if I drove her from Toronto to Cape Breton, which is about 20 hours. And there's a number of reasons why that wouldn't really be appropriate. We don't pay people for interviews. And that was, you know, considered. [cross-talk]

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Part of it. Yeah.

JANA PRUDEN: That obviously has value. And eventually she did say she would talk to me. And we were just setting up a time and then, yeah, she blocked me.

[suspenseful music]

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: You've also talked to, and a big person in this podcast and somebody you really walk away feeling impressed and kind of warm about, is Amber's mom. First, tell me about her.

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah, Tootsie is, um, had four sons. Couldn't have a daughter. And a relative of her husband, they had a baby that they had to give up, and they drove through a very cold winter night way up in northern Alberta to go get Amber. And Amber became really the light of the family in a lot of ways. The only daughter, their special baby. I think Tootsie, you know, has had a very difficult life in a lot of ways. And when her daughter disappeared, Tootsie really dedicated herself to holding the police accountable, to really forcing them to investigate.

SOUNDCLIP

TOOTSIE TUCCARO: And he said to me, well, she's probably out partying. She'll come back, he said. I was like, no. No, he said. We're not going to put her on the Missing Persons list. And we talked for a while. And then he said, okay, I will. So then I called back again. She wasn't even on the Missing Persons. He didn't put her on there.

JANA PRUDEN: And she has continued to, throughout all these years. Her and particularly her son Paul is very involved in the case. And they really are, I think, truly remarkable in how hard they have fought for Amber and for other missing and murdered Indigenous women.

SOUNDCLIP

TOOTSIE TUCCARO: And I would call throughout the day, in the evening, late at night. And the police said to me, don't call back, we'll call you. I was like, you won't call me.

JANA PRUDEN: And I think it's fair to say that the case would have been handled a lot differently and would have had a lot less investigation if the two of them hadn't pushed and advocated for Amber.

SOUNDCLIP

TOOTSIE TUCCARO: So I kept calling, fill up their voicemail. 'Cause that's, that's my baby, right? And I wasn't going to give up. Didn't matter what or who.

JANA PRUDEN: So I think -- a lot of people have told me that they feel so connected to Tootsie when they listen to her. And I think it is that love, that strength, that fight that she has brought to her life and to finding her daughter's killer.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: I mean, and I was one of them. Like you just really connect in her. I'm always so taken aback by parents and especially mothers who find some kind of strength in the middle of just the worst grief you can imagine. And at first she didn't know where her daughter ended up. So not only are you worried, your anxiety level must be just so intense. But you find some kind of strength to keep pushing. I mean, I know it all comes from the same place, but it's always something those of us who haven't had that trauma, I find it commendable, and just so incredible when women are able to kind of just fight through when I'm assuming you just want to crawl into bed and never get out again. And you just push the police, which is intimidating in its own right.

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah. It's interesting because a lot of people will say to me as a crime reporter, oh, your work must be so depressing. It must be so upsetting to cover this story. And of course, it is very upsetting. There's many aspects of it that are upsetting. But there's also aspects of it that I personally learn a lot from and that I find very inspiring. And one of those threads, which occurs in both seasons of In Her Defence, is really the strength of women, this perseverance for justice, women fighting for justice for other women, when structures and social systems fail them. And I think that's something that we really do see in Tootsie. And it has helped not only in Amber's case, but in the cases of other women as well.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah. So Tootsie is faced with the usual, your kid's an adult, she'll come back, she's out partying. Tell me about Tootsie's instinct, and her understanding of what happened to her daughter that made her believe something bad had happened. Because she believed something bad had happened long before that phone call was released.

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah, really within days. She reports Amber missing within days. And this is something, you know, Amber's case is very specific to her, but it is part of a bigger pattern that we've seen in a number of different cases, including with the serial killer Robert Pickton, with this massive rash of killings of women that was happening in Edmonton, where women who were living... you know, at the time, police would call it a high-risk lifestyle. I prefer to call it, say, preyed upon or, you know, maybe in a vulnerable circumstance, that police would tell families, oh, they're just off partying, they'll come home. But what we see again and again is that families know patterns. They know the people that they love and that they know when something's unusual. And right away, that was the case with Tootsie. That she knew that Amber wouldn't just leave her baby for a long time, that she wouldn't be out of contact like this. She just knew it was different. And she forced the police, even when they weren't taking it seriously, she did everything they could to force the police to see that as well. And it took them a very long time.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: She also has a conversation with Amber's friend Evangeline over the son. Can you tell me about what happened there?

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah, so basically Evangeline calls Tootsie and says, Amber took off, come and get Jacob.

SOUNDCLIP

TOOTSIE TUCCARO: She said, yeah, she took off in the middle of the night. She went to pick up pizza and never came back. I was like, when? You said she was sleeping. Like, when did she get up? She's like, well, she said she needed to go buy pampers. And her story kept changing.

JANA PRUDEN: Immediately, the family's trying to figure out what to do. And keeping in mind, this was in the Edmonton area. Tootsie, at the time, lived in Fort McMurray. The rest of the family was in Fort Chipewyan, so there's long distances involved. And that's how she first learns that Amber is missing.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: But Jacob is safe at this point. Tootsie does eventually get her grandson.

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah, Tootsie takes custody of Jacob and has raised him to this day.

[suspenseful music]

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Eventually, the police do look for Amber. What brings them to the point of actually releasing the tape? Because that is a very unusual move in Canada. In the United States, we hear lots of stuff. There's a huge difference between the two countries. We don't have access often to 911 calls. We don't record in the courtroom. Like, we have a lot of restrictions in what we can do, and the police are very careful with maintaining control over evidence. So, tell me a bit about the process you uncovered about why the police held this press conference and did release this tape.

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah, it's such a good point you make. I think sometimes people, even Canadians, they see a lot of American TV and they don't really realize how it works here, or Americans may not understand how closely guarded these things are. Police almost never release a mug shot unless someone's actively wanted. There's a really high bar, actually, to release mug shots. We don't just release a mug shot because someone's charged. And virtually nothing about a case comes out until it goes to court, and even then it comes out through the court. It's not being released by the police. So this was really an unprecedented move, and in really what they saw as quite an unprecedented situation. So, Amber disappears in August of 2010, and really the next fall police find this recording. One of the officers talks to us about when it was found, that you could feel this mood in the room that they had found something truly remarkable. We don't know exactly when they find it in that fall. That's a little unclear again. [chuckles] Police not releasing certain details. But in early in 2012, the police take it to the family and tell the family that they believe Amber is dead, and they have this recording, and they played the entire recording for the family. Then a lot of consideration was given about whether to release it to the public. And ultimately, they decided to do so, thinking that if we release it to the public, someone's going to recognize the voice and we're going to solve the murder. And I think it's fair to say by this point, we know there had been significant mistakes in the investigation. And that's not me making a judgment call. That's just the reality of it. Police ultimately had to issue a formal apology to the family based on those early mistakes.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And those were mostly just not taking it seriously enough, quick enough?

JANA PRUDEN: Not taking it seriously quickly, not immediately interviewing Evangeline, not going to pick up Amber's possessions that could potentially have clues in them, I guess. And then when they did get it, her suitcase of her stuff was destroyed accidentally. So, a number of serious missteps early in the investigation when she was a missing person. We do see a very clear and dramatic change when they know that she's the victim of a homicide. And, in fact, so much of a change that one of the police officers we talked to said that it's the biggest single person homicide investigation he's ever seen -- about 50,000 man-hours now at this point. But part of that is trying to make up for things that were not done early on and that obviously created really significant flaws and gaps in the investigation. Like going to get CCTV from nearby places, talking to people at the motel. Anyone else who might have been in the area or had a clue at the time, you know, are long gone within weeks, and in fact months by the time the police start to take it seriously.

[suspenseful music]

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: They haven't found Amber at this point. How do they come to believe that she was the victim of a homicide?

JANA PRUDEN: We don't exactly know that. But what we do know is that the tape is extremely ominous. [KATHLEEN: Okay.] So I think... you couldn't listen to that whole tape and think, oh, at the end of it, he drops her off in Edmonton and she goes on her way. He's clearly taking her somewhere she doesn't want to go. He's driving her away from the city. He's lying to her about where they're going. He sounds very calm. He sounds very cool. He's not panicking. And so I think at the point where the call disconnects, which is -- we can hear that in the recording. That's the actual end of the recording. You can't really imagine a situation that she leaves that unharmed and then just doesn't contact her family or go back to her baby for two years, right. I mean, that's, that just would not have happened. So I think, I don't know if there was additional evidence at that point that led them to think that she was dead, or if what they hear on the tape and her absence for two years was enough for them to make that assessment.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: In the podcast, and you say the police say it, and I remember the feeling too. It's like, oh, there he is. We're going to figure out who he is. And you talk a lot about it. And as an audio producer, you know, obviously we talk about the idea of hearing a voice and we think it's going to be recognizable. But it isn't.

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah, I mean, that is very much-- it's what the police thought, it's what I thought. When our editor-in-chief asked if I had an idea for season two, right away I thought, Amber Tuccaro. You know, if this voice, if enough people hear it, then he will be found.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah.

JANA PRUDEN: And that turns out to not be the case at all. Police spent a lot of time and a lot of effort gathering voices, gathering tape of people. They received many, many tips, hundreds of tips. And ultimately, they found that they cannot match the voice. And it's an interesting element of this. This happens to me every week. I get emails from people who recognize the voice, who are, like, 100% sure. And in many cases, they're telling me about, you know, this guy raped me, and I'm sure that it's his voice. This guy was a creep I worked with, and I'm sure that it's his voice. Some people will just hear someone in line and they think, oh, that's the voice. But as it turns out, many, many people can be very sure, but also very wrong. [KATHLEEN: Yeah.] And ultimately, if one of those people is right...

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: It's not going to be the tape that's going to... [cross-talk]

JANA PRUDEN: It's not going to be the tape.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Eventually, Amber is found. Where was she found?

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah, she is found days after they released the tape. So that's something that I always wondered about because of the timing of it. It's so unusual that two years after she disappears, they release the recording, and then three days later, her body's found by some youth horseback riders outside of Edmonton. And I always wondered, did the guy hear himself on the tape and he went and disposed of her remains? But the police say no. We talked to an officer who was at the scene who processed it forensically. He said all of the indications at the scene were that it had been there the entire time. It's on a rural property outside of Edmonton. At first I thought it was a very strange place to leave a body. It's... from the road, there's this big field, and then there's a tree line past the pasture. And it feels very open. I thought that's really unusual, that you would walk through this huge field, and it feels like the people in a farmhouse nearby would be able to see you and other people could see you from the road. The first time I went there, we didn't walk all the way into the tree line because we didn't have the permission of the landowners. And ultimately we decided to wait and not go there at that point. As one of the women that we went there with pointed out, you know, there's-- Amber's killer has never been caught, and she felt really uncomfortable to walk to that spot. I went on the anniversary of when Amber disappeared. I wanted to go the same time of year, the same time of day, and I walked into the tree line. I understood the space a lot differently when I actually went into it, and I realized after you walk through the field a little bit, you're actually totally invisible. You can't see the road. You can hear another highway, but it's not close enough that anyone would be able to hear you. And the farmer who owns the land told me that he very firmly believes that the person knows that spot and that it must have been chosen. And it does seem-- it's an unusual spot. It's a 15-minute walk from the road. It's quite into this piece of land.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And sadly, Amber is not the only woman who was found there.

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah, not in that exact spot. [KATHLEEN: Yeah.] But there's five women found within eight kilometres or five miles. And that's another, I think, really important question is, you know, is this person on the tape responsible for some or all of those other homicides?

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Do you think that the cases are connected? Could there be a serial killer?

JANA PRUDEN: We talked to one of the world's top experts in geographic profiling. He's Kim Rossmo, he worked on the Robert Pickton case. And he did see quite a strong possibility of them being connected. My personal view is that I think that at least four of them are connected. [KATHLEEN: Okay.] I believe that, yeah.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Why? Tell me.

JANA PRUDEN: I think that the chances of them being found in these unusual location-- like, it is an unusual place to leave a body. And I think that the proximity of them is, to me -- and I'm not a geographic profiler. I'm not a serial killer profiler. But I, I think that I personally do think that, yeah.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Hmm. We know that a man is involved because of the tape, obviously. But Evangeline, what do the police say about her involvement with this?

JANA PRUDEN: The police now say that she has been interviewed and was cooperative and she's been cleared of any involvement.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Okay. And she still won't talk to you, though.

JANA PRUDEN: No. [chuckles]

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: You start the podcast really explaining to us that you're hopeful you can figure this out. That you feel that there's -- which is great. [Jana chuckles] We all hope that too. But it doesn't get to that point, at least yet. Do you think it's still a solvable case?

JANA PRUDEN: You know, this fall, I covered a case where the police identified an American man as someone who'd killed four women in Calgary in the 1970s, 50 years after they were killed. And two of those were not even really fully considered homicides. So this was a major development. And I think it does prove that there are so many things changing with technology, with investigative techniques that I would never say never.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah.

JANA PRUDEN: I do think that the flaws in the early investigation obviously had a severe impact. But I think there's a lot of lessons in Amber's story that go beyond whether that single individual will be found or not, including that we keep fighting to find and hold killers accountable and hold the system accountable for the way that it treats women and the way that it treats Indigenous women. Because to this day, Indigenous women are six times more likely to be victims of homicide than non-Indigenous women. And so, you know, I didn't go into this really thinking that I was going to solve a murder. You know, I don't think any podcast really fully just solves a murder on someone's charge. I mean, that would be wonderful. [KATHLEEN: Yeah.] But I'm not a police investigator and I don't, I'm not an arm of the police. That's not my role. And I really felt like there was a lot that we can learn from Amber, a lot that her story can tell us that will benefit other women and hopefully benefit the police. You know, I think holding the police to account is a way of making sure that all of these cases, all of these lives, all of these women are treated seriously. And it's not only by the police, it's also by, in many cases, the public, in many cases, the media. And so all of that is really, I think, an important underpinning of Amber's story and of what we wanted to do in telling Amber's story.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah. Just lastly, I guess as sort of the last idea I wanted to talk to you about, because this isn't your first podcast where you engage in these kind of things. You're not an Indigenous woman, but you're talking-- this is an Indigenous woman's story. I find it so interesting, like, to have a conversation about where we, as women, journalists, storytellers, fit into the role. Like, where do we walk into this story and where do we let others tell the story, and what role do you feel you have a responsibility for?

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah, I mean, actually, I am a member of the Métis Nation of Alberta.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Oh, I'm sorry. I should change it.

JANA PRUDEN: I am a, you know, I'm a-- come from a line of a family where colonialism really worked.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Well, you know what, I'm going to change that question then. So I'm sorry, I didn't know.

JANA PRUDEN: No, I don't--

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And you don't talk about it in the podcast-- [cross-talk]

JANA PRUDEN: I don't talk about it, no.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: So I just made the terrible assumption that you weren't.

JANA PRUDEN: No, um, it's not a terrible assumption. It's a fair question. And it's, [KATHLEEN: Yeah.] I do think it's a complicated... that's a, you know, I don't have that lived experience. [KATHLEEN: Yeah.] And it's a complicated question internally. I mean, this is something that the show's producer, Kasha Mihalovic, and I talked about at some length.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah. Oh, good. So talk to me about that, yeah.

JANA PRUDEN: I didn't get my Métis card for a really long time. And when I did-- I mean, this [laughs] all goes off in like a whole other direction.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: It's okay.

JANA PRUDEN: But um...

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: That's what I love about podcasts, you can talk about stuff.

JANA PRUDEN: You know, I think one of the things to me that was really important is that I didn't really want to take up any space in that conversation. But I wanted to be able to give to, I guess, Indigenous communities in the ways that I could. It is, um, it's a really complicated thing for me. [KATHLEEN: Yeah.] And I... So at one point, I was covering a Métis story in Edmonton. And the guy that was there, Dr. Chris Anderson, who has worked in Indigenous Studies at the U of A, was like, oh, a Pruden, you must be Métis. And I was like, oh, well, yeah, but I don't claim it or anything. And he said, why? And I said, well, I mean, I would never, like, want anything. I would never want to take, you know, funding or anything. And he was like, oh, that's really sad that the first thing that you would think about is what you could take. And I said, well, also, like I've never suffered anything because of it. And he was like, oh, that's really sad that all you would think about is what you would suffer, and that you wouldn't think about what you could give.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah. Or gain.

JANA PRUDEN: Yeah. Yeah. And so I thought about that for several years, and thought about, really part of it for me was that by not claiming it, by the fact that that totally died in my family, [KATHLEEN: Yeah.] that... that those women are also forgotten. [KATHLEEN: Yeah.] And discounted. And I think not wanting to like... I mean, we talked about when-- our original press release for this, we debated whether I should say.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Identify as...

JANA PRUDEN: And Kasha was-- I was, [laughs] we were talking it through, and like, okay, but if someone, if someone wrote a story that said "a Métis journalist," I would hate to take up that space.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Ohh.

JANA PRUDEN: Um. But there is a question about going into a community that's not yours. Fort Chipewyan, whether it's an Indigenous community or a white community, um, I'm not a member. I don't live in Fort Chipewyan.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah.

JANA PRUDEN: I think the idea that only people in certain communities can tell those stories. Obviously, people within community have a certain view and it and can be, you know, a really powerful way of telling those stories. I think also it can be a lot to put the responsibility that you have to tell... okay, all these stories are for you now. That, that's a lot. [KATHLEEN: Yeah.] I do have a platform, I have an ability to tell this story. And, you know, it was really important to me to try to tell it well. One of the things that we did was we instituted Cree language, so our episode titles are in Cree. And also at the end of each episode in the credits, there's a little sort of Cree language lesson in a sense. One of the ones that I think about a lot is episode three, which is the trees hold knowledge, and that the trees that are around where Amber were killed, are witnesses. It's called What the Trees Know.

SOUNDCLIP

CREE WOMAN: What the trees know. So, [speaking Cree].

JANA PRUDEN: Okay, that one's going to be [laughs] a challenge.

CREE WOMAN: So [speaking Cree] is the "what," [speaking Cree] is "the trees." [speaking Cree], "what they know." [speaking Cree] is to know something.

JANA PRUDEN: [repeats Cree words].

CREE WOMAN: [speaking Cree]. And the trees talk to each other. And they can hear you.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Trying to tell Amber's story in what's sometimes called like a good way, tell it in a good way, meant also consulting with an elder at one point and also having... I sort of consider them my like panel of aunties, some Indigenous journalists who are also friends of mine who listened to early drafts and gave their feedback specifically in this area, was all part of, I think, trying to think about how can we do this kind of journalism differently and not be story takers.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Well, it's tangible. The work is lovely, as lovely as it can be when you're talking about something so tragic. And it's very tangible. So thank you for that.

JANA PRUDEN: Thank you.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Thanks for this.

JANA PRUDEN: Thank you.

[Music: Series closing theme intro]

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: This is the second time that Jana has been on Crime Story. And if you want to hear my earlier conversation with her, it's linked in the episode description. I spoke to her about a woman named Helen Naslund. She was found guilty of killing her husband after enduring 30 years of abuse. Here's a moment from that conversation.

SOUNDCLIP

JANA PRUDEN: I remember seeing the headline, and I just automatically was really shocked at that sentence. Like many other people across the country, I just was very shocked that this man who had perpetrated a lifetime of abuse against his wife, that she was still facing that term. And I wrote a letter to Helen four days later asking if she would consider telling her story.

[Music: Series 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. Audio sourced from In Her Defence, a podcast from The Globe and Mail. 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.

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Transcript: Crime Story, Episode 62

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