What Happened to the Harrisons? | 1. Sudden Death

0:00Hi there, it's Jonathan Beness from Getting Better with Jonathan Vaness. Americans United for Separation of Church and State has been in this fight since 1949, and honestly, 250 years into the American experiment, it's time we all decide what kind of country we actually want to be. The founding fathers got plenty wrong, but keeping Church and State separate, they got that one right. Right now, Christian nationalists are trying to erase that history. They're misusing government power to push their beliefs, rewrite what America looks like, and decide who gets to belong here. Americans United is holding a line against every bit of it. They've sued the Trump administration seven times in the past year alone, 12 times since its second term started. They're calling out officials who use our tax dollars to push their religion, defending public schools, and making sure the government actually follows the Constitution. None of that happens without people like you. If you want to be part of a community that's actually doing something about this, go to AU.org slash getting dash better. Enjoy the fight.

1:03Because when America is divided, we are Americans United. 3635 pitch pine crescent. It's after dark on April 16th, 2009, and Bridget Harrison has just arrived home from a meeting.

2:10Bridget is 62, a slight woman with green eyes and a graying pixie cut. She works a lot in education, and her husband Bill usually has dinner ready when she gets home. Okay, if your husband awaits, no, he's not. If he able to speak to you, he's not. Bridget and Bill have been together since they were teens. People say they operate in tandem, like two parts of the same person. Bridget is passionate and intense. Bill is calm. He keeps her grounded. Did they breathing normally? I don't know. I just opened the door and found him here. That night, she expects to find Bill waiting for her. She came home and the door was the light, there were no lights on in the house or outside. Right away, Bridget knows. Something is wrong. She gets out of her car.

3:12She walks across the stone pathway to the front door of the house where they've lived for 35 years. It's a beautiful place, an elegant mid-century home with a dramatic roof line that slopes downward from a high peak. Bridget opens the front door and steps inside. The foyer is dim. The only sound is the low hum of the television in the living room. On the coffee table, she sees a half-eaten take-out meal from the Portuguese restaurant around the corner. She started calling his name and she went and looked everywhere. Bill doesn't answer. Back on the main floor, something catches her eye. The door to the small bathroom just off the foyer is closed. She tries the knob. It won't open. She had to go and get something to unlock the door.

4:16She works a piece of wire into the lock. It clicks and the door opens. Inside, Bill is lying motionless on the floor. He realized it was too late. It was stiff and pushed into the corner next to the toilet. On the 911 call, you can hear Bridget struggling to move him. He's a tall, athletic man, and it's a small room. His body feels rigid. He's not breathing. Okay, I can tell. He's not breathing. He's not breathing. Oh my God. Police and paramedics arrive and they confirm what Bridget already knows. Her husband of 40 years is gone. Bill's sister Elizabeth Galand was at home that night when

5:19Bridget called. She said, gone. Are you sitting down and I said, no, she said, well maybe you should. And I said, why, you know, and she said, well, Bill's dead. Like I didn't accept it. Right, I just thought, something's wrong. Liz is a retired labor and delivery nurse, so she's good in a crisis. She calmly got in her car and drove the familiar 10 minute route to pitch pine. Her brother's place was a second home to Liz and her daughter, and now it was wrapped in police tape. I saw the police cars and the ones. Everything was there. The police let Liz into the house and Bridget took her to see Bill. He was on the far side of the toilet. The wall's here. The toilet's here. He was right between it. Almost right away, police in the corner call this a natural death.

6:24Likely a heart issue. Bill was 64. Police found no signs of forced entry or a struggle. He was found home alone with no obvious traumatic injury like a gunshot or a stab wound. Police see this kind of thing all the time and often it is a natural death. But in this case, certain things didn't add up. Why would a man home alone lock the bathroom door? Why were all the lights out? And how does a fit and active guy like Bill, a man who looked like he had decades left, suddenly dropped dead? As Liz watched the paramedics wheel her brother's body out on a stretcher, she couldn't shake the feeling that the police were missing something. They brought him out into the living room area where we were standing and I remember saying to him,

7:25Bill will find out what happened here. We don't know what I'll find out. I promise you I'll find out. Liz wasn't the only one who would come to question the conclusion that this was a heart issue. That cause of death that was given was nonsense. This incident, Bill's tragic death, was only the beginning of something much darker. I started covering this story years later as a journalist for the Toronto Star, but not because of Bill. I came to pitch Pine Cressant after police were called to investigate another sudden death at the Harrison residence. And this death was the third in less than five years, three sudden deaths in one house. Was this an unfortunate run of bad luck or something more sinister?

8:28The worst investigative mess I've ever encountered. A long simmering what took you so fucking long to get here. Why do I have this this gut feeling that something is not right? I understand we got a haunted house in this region. Some evil thing happened here. You're the world of shit. This wasn't ghosts and goblins, okay, these were murders. As I dug into the case, it became clear that this was more than a coincidence. It wasn't just the three deaths. There had been a car crash, a mysterious house fire, a string of reported home invasions, and a missing persons investigation all tied to the same people. I would come to see that this story wasn't just a family tragedy. It was something much bigger and more troubling. What happened on pitch Pine Cressant was an unbelievable failure. The family all along suspected something was terribly wrong.

9:34But no one figured it out until it was too late. From Sony Music Entertainment, this is what happened to the Harrison's. I'm Amy Dempsey-Raven, episode one, Sudden Death. Before the tragedies on pitch Pine Cressant, Bridget and Bill Harrison had, from the outside, an enviable life, a marriage people admired, a big circle of friends, a home where people gathered. At the center of it all was Bridget. She stood out. Her big personality, her bold fashion choices, her sharp intelligence. She was a high school teacher and principal who was kind of a legend. Someone who students remembered long after they left her classroom. She was bright, she was talented, and she was the first born daughter.

10:37And if you're a first born daughter, you know that you carry the hopes and dreams of the family. And so the expectation for bars always weigh up here. And you do everything not to disappoint. That's Doug Blackwell, Bridget's brother. The two of them grew up together in a blue collar neighborhood in London, Ontario, a university town. Bridget was a local star, a gifted child actress and singer who performed in stage and television productions. At 16, she landed a summer apprenticeship at the Stratford Festival, a renowned theater company in Southern Ontario, famous for its Shakespearean productions. That's where she met Bill. Bill Harrison was a catch. Tall, athletic, and incredibly handsome, with kind eyes and a great laugh. His older sister Liz adored him. He was a concubine, sort of person. He was quite a gentleman and

11:44kind and patient. Bill and Liz grew up in Stratford, and they were one of the few black families in town. At the festival, Bill worked in the costume department. Bridget worked backstage, calling actors to their cues. The two of them hit it off. They're really hopping with each other. And like they were a very impressive looking couple. I mean, Bill's one, six, two, cool, very, very cool. And Bridget's blonde, beautiful. See that couple walked down the street and you go, holy crow. Best thing that's ever happened to you financially, go. Easy. Sold my car on Carvana. Amazing offer, really? I hit 200 on the scratcher. Did the scratcher come to your house and hand you a check? No. How many scratchers did you hit to get that? I hit a button on Carvana.com

12:45once. Okay, that's fair. It's like the lottery except you always win. Not like the lottery at all, actually. Exactly, inexplicably good. Offers worth bragging about. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up Vs May Apply. Some evil thing happened here. Three people die in a quiet suburb in Mississauga, Canada. It's not a coincidence. One after the other in the same house. Is this bad luck or something more sinister? The worst investigative mess I've ever encountered. Long simmering what took you so fucking long to get here. From Sony Music Entertainment, this is what happened to the Harrison's. I'm Amy Dempsey Raven. What happened to the Harrison's is available now on the binge. Search for it wherever you get your

13:45podcasts to start listening today. Subscribers to the binge can listen to all episodes, all at once, add free. But they didn't have an easy start as an interracial couple in small town Ontario. I remember Delph's mom and dad trying to cool the situation because they knew better than we knew how tough it was going to be for these two. Through it all, Bridget and Bill remained committed. They married in 1969 and eventually settled in Mississauga back then it was still a suburb of Toronto. Bridget taught high school drama in English. Bill worked in sales and other office jobs. Together they formed a circle of close friends who over time became family. Here's one of them, Pam Maine. Bill was quieter and more reserved but that was a great balance for Bridget because she'd be

14:53hopping in the air on stuff and he had the ability to just pull her down to the ground. And then in 1975 they moved into the house on pitch pine crescent. The house where years later, Bridget would find her husband dead and the life they knew would collapse. But before all that, the house was a magical place. It had cathedral ceilings and tall front windows that filled the main floor with light and it became a second home for their family and friends. A place where people came together for birthday dinners, game nights, and cousin sleep overs. It's been like a small hotel through the years. Liz lived nearby and spent a lot of time on pitch pine as she raised her daughter, mostly on her own. Bridget and Bill helped Liz through parenthood and she did the same when they started a family.

15:53Bridget and Bill couldn't have children on their own so they decided to adopt. One day she just called and said, I'm getting a child tomorrow and I have nothing like I don't know what I'm going to do. He was pudgy and adorable with dark hair and light brown skin. They named him Caleb. I remember Bill telling me you know that they were going to adopt a system guy. Well they adopted him out of a foster home and he had diaper rash so badly that he was scarred. Child protection workers described Caleb as dull and unresponsive but Doug watched him grow into a completely different kid which wasn't always easy. Hyperactive and you know funny and yippy and you're on the grill all the time. Caleb never stopped moving. If you have a kid like this you know

16:53both the joy and the exhaustion. He was a challenge. He really was. At school Caleb struggled with learning. He had Tourette syndrome and was bullied for it. His ticks disrupted the class and got him in trouble. Liz looks a little weary when she thinks back on her nephew's childhood antics but they had a special bond. Caleb was a little arasical. He gets you going. He was very hard to discipline. They would come to agreement from what approach they were going to take with him. Bridget loved her son but they had a challenging relationship. She was a force in public education known for turning around tough schools. Caleb was smart but resistant to structure. He hated school. You can imagine how difficult that dynamic would be. A kid who struggled academically with a superstar teacher for a mom. Caleb could push Bridget's buttons. No doubt about it.

17:59And so Bill took more and more of the discipline, the raising part, the consequences rather than Bridget. When Caleb graduated from high school his parents were equal parts proud and relieved. Once he got into the workforce his weaknesses turned to strengths. Caleb started working in warehouses and seemed to thrive. The methodical work suited his personality and he became kind of a ladies man. He was quick-witted and had a knack for flirty banter. When he was 27 Caleb met someone while working for a collector Barbie retailer called My Favorite Doll. This younger woman Melissa seemed like his perfect match. She was cute and blonde and wanted to start a family. Bridget and Bill were hopeful. They were happy to have him seeming like he was going

19:06to settle down. Caleb and Melissa had a son. They got married and then they had a daughter. They bought a house in Georgetown not far from Mississauga. Caleb loved being a father. They were the light of his life and Bridget and Bells too. Bridget's brother Doug remembers Bill holding his grandson and just beaming. The smile on Bill's face you can just feel the joy going from the top of his head to his feet. He just was in seventh heaven. Caleb's family noticed a big change in him during this time. He seemed to become more responsible. Bridget's friend Pam remembers the relief that Bridget and Bill felt. Caleb was happy. He was really settling into kind of fatherhood and familyhood. Things were looking good for a while.

20:07Caleb's life finally seemed to be taking shape. And on Pitch Pine Cressant, Bill and Bridget had become the committed grandparents they were meant to be. After years of worry, it felt like the family had entered a calmer chapter. But pretty soon all of that would change. In the months after Bill's death, Bridget would be consumed by grief, an ache that never really left her. But the night she discovered his body, she was in a kind of a trance. Waiting for the coroner, Bridget called her friend Pam in Toronto. There's some events in your life that will be forever engraved in your mind. I was lying in bed reading a book and the phone rings and its

21:11Bridget. And it was a pretty succinct statement. Bill is dead. And so if I thought I was sleepy, I was no more. She got in her car and drove the half hour to Mississauga. When I got there, there was caution tape all around Pitch Pine and the police wouldn't let me in. Pam waited outside and Bridget came out to see her. I had never seen anyone in shock before, but clearly she was and it was terrible and we just hugged each other. At the scene were several police officers. While waiting for the coroner to arrive, they started asking Bridget questions. You can hear some of this on the 911 tape.

22:13They asked, did he have any medical problems? She said no. Was he taking any medications? Lipitor for high cholesterol. When was the last time you spoke with him? Bridget said that afternoon around 2.30. They'd spoken on the phone after he finished his shift at the grocery chain warehouse where he worked as an analyst. There was one thing about the scene that made Bridget uneasy. Who locks the bathroom door when you're home alone? None of it made sense. None of it at all. Bill was an athlete. He played basketball. He did martial arts. He was the kind of guy who everyone figured would live to be a hundred. I can't believe Labor Day is almost here. I'm not ready to let Summer go just yet. We've got the picnic menu planned, friends are coming over and my one stop before everyone arrives is always total wine and more. I'll grab a couple bottles of wine, some tropical

23:16canned cocktails, plus a few hearted shelters like mango, lime and pineapple. That's why I keep coming back to total wine. The selection is incredible and with the lowest prices, it's easy to prep for the long weekend. This Labor Day shopped total wine and more. Spirits are not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly, B-21. A coroner arrived just before 11 pm. Examining the body, he saw abrasions on Bill's neck, thin red marks lengthwise across the throat. The coroner thought the marks might be an imprint from the gold chain Bill was wearing. He wanted them documented, so police took photographs. Despite the locked door and the neck abrasions, investigators didn't consider the death suspicious. Bill was in his 60s, a decade when the risk for heart attack rises. There were no signs of a struggle or forced entry, no bloody wounds or obvious trauma. Liz remembers an officer

24:22sharing a theory at the scene. He had a heart attack and gone to the bathroom because he felt sick and then he fell beside the toilet. She remembers someone telling her that a person having a heart attack will often feel and urge to urinate before they die. An officer at the scene wrote in his notes, this death appears to be natural. And a later report said the coroner had no further concerns regarding further police investigation. In other words, nothing suspicious. But here's the thing. In policing, it's considered best practice to treat all sudden deaths as potential homicides, until the evidence shows otherwise. You only get one real shot at a crime scene. You can't go back and collect evidence you didn't gather the first time around. What the police didn't do that day would be questioned much later. Because they didn't consider

25:25Bill's death suspicious, they didn't collect forensic evidence like DNA swabs. They didn't canvass the neighborhood to check if anyone had seen anything. And they didn't hold the scene. Officers were in and out in under four hours. But because no one knew for sure how or why Bill died, the coroner sent the body for an autopsy. If there was something suspicious about his death, this was the chance to find it. After Bill died, Bridget remained fixated on this feeling she had, that something wasn't right. Bridget, never for a minute thought this was a natural death. Never for a minute. Bill was a fit guy. That night he was scheduled to go play basketball and slim no history of hard issues.

26:32So none of it made any sense. Then again, sometimes healthy people die without warning. It's an uncomfortable fact. The autopsy took place at the Credit Valley Hospital in Mississauga the day after Bill died. A suspicious death case would have been treated differently. The body would have gone to the coroner's office headquarters in downtown Toronto for a full autopsy, with one of the region's highly trained forensic pathologists. But no one, not the police and not the coroner, had flagged Bill's death as suspicious. And the police didn't come to the morgue to photograph the autopsy as they normally would if there had been concerns about foul play. So the pathologist approached his job with the same understanding. This was not a suspicious death. As he began examining Bill's body, what he found was kind of baffling. There were no heart abnormalities,

27:42no signs of disease, no evidence of natural death at all. There was no explanation for Bill's death. There were some troubling findings though. Bill had several unexplained injuries. Abraisions on his neck that had been photographed at the scene. There was a large bruise on his scalp and the most concerning finding. He got a fractured sternum. A fractured breastbone. That's the long flat bone in the center of the chest. And then the question is, why has he got the fracture of the sternum? And why has he got an isolated fracture of the sternum? This is Dr. Christopher Milroy, a renowned forensic pathologist based in Ottawa. He didn't do the autopsy on Bill and wasn't involved in the case, but reviewed it years later. The original pathologist declined to walk me through the findings, so I called Dr. Milroy to get his take.

28:44I would be concerned about an isolated sternum fracture. You just don't see them very often. The breastbone is one of the strongest bones in the body, and it takes a lot of force to break it. It can fracture during CPR, but no one had done CPR on Bill. Certainly raises major concerns. The pathologist who examined Bill's body was concerned, too, so he called the corner who'd been at the scene to discuss the injuries he'd found. The corner told the pathologist that Bill had been wearing a thin gold chain when he died, and they discussed how this piece of jewelry might explain the neck abrasions. With the way the body was positioned, propped up against the wall, maybe the chain left an imprint. Normally, the kind of linear markings Bill had on his neck would be a big deal. They could suggest he'd been strangled. To investigate further, a forensic pathologist would

29:50perform a specialized dissection to determine whether pressure had been applied to the neck. When you have anything in the neck, on the skin, it's almost a default. This kind of layered neck dissection can reveal subtle injuries. It's the gold standard in forensic autopsies. You're looking for bruising in the muscles and soft tissues of the neck, and then any fractures of the hyoid bone and the voice box cartridges. The pathologist who performed Bill's autopsie didn't do this type of dissection. He noted the hyoid bone was intact, but still, without a layered dissection, it's possible something was missed. The pathologist and coroner discussed whether Bill could have injured himself at the gym,

30:51breaking his sternum that way. But it seemed unlikely. Sterinal fractures are very painful. It was far fetched to think a man in such agony would drive himself home and stop to pick up dinner on the way. The most likely scenario the pathologist concluded was that Bill fell against the bathroom vanity. In his report, the pathologist said that Bill might have collapsed suddenly after having an irregular heartbeat and then struck his head and chest in the fall. Or maybe the fall came first and the injuries caused his heart to stop. That explanation doesn't make sense to Dr. Milroy. Well, typically if you're going to fall over, I mean, just, I mean, in the bathroom, tumbling over in the bathroom, you don't expect to see someone that have an isolated sternum fracture. Despite the injuries and despite the fact that there was no evidence to support a heart issue,

31:54the pathologist concluded that the cause of death was acute cardiac arrhythmia. And that was a problem. That cause of death that was given was nonsense. Acute cardiac arrhythmia is not a cause of death. It means that a person's heart is stopped. It doesn't explain why. Years later, Ontario's chief forensic pathologist would say that the broken breastbone was an astonishing finding that should have led to further investigation. I'd want to see the scene photos and see how big was the bathroom. What could he have fallen against? This is not entirely adding up. The pathologist who performed Bill's autopsy never saw the scene photos. The police didn't send them. Bridget didn't know any of this. She wouldn't learn about Bill's unexplained injuries

32:55until months later, once the autopsy report was finalized. All she knew in the aftermath of her husband's death was that the authorities believed he'd had some kind of heart issue. When the family eventually learned about the fractured breastbone, the fall in the bathroom theory didn't make a lot of sense to them. The powder room was tiny, about 30 square feet, and the way Bill was found wedged between the toilet and the wall. Bridget's brother Doug wondered how could a person even fall that way? I mean, you just can't picture somebody having a heart attack and ending up in that position behind a locked door. I've said this to lots of people. I mean, there's no way that a man is going to lock his bathroom door. It's the only person in the house. In the days after Bill's death, Bridget trusted that the authorities were doing

33:58a thorough investigation. She had a lot going on. She had to plan a funeral. And then came something else she hadn't counted on. Bridget wanted to be the one to tell her grandchildren about their papa's death. So the day after he died, she drove to their elementary school. The kids had a close bond with their grandparents. This news was going to be difficult to hear. Bridget arrived at the school and went to the office. She asked the secretary to call the children out of class. But the kids weren't there. They didn't come to school, not that day, and not the next. At first, Bridget thought their mom, Melissa, had maybe kept them home or taken them on a trip. She knew they weren't with Caleb. By then, he and Melissa had separated.

35:01A few days later, Doug went with his sister to Melissa's house to look for the kids. We drive over and there's nobody there. A neighbor came out and told them something shocking. The family that lived in that house, they moved. So that's how Bridget finds out that the kids have gone. Now, not only was her husband dead, her grandchildren, Caleb's son and daughter were missing. She didn't panic. She didn't go crazy. She said, well, we got to find the kids. Next time on what happened to the Harrison's, things get ugly. Melissa was doing everything within her control to separate Caleb from his own children.

36:05And a tug of war ensues. I am ready, willing and able to be part of our children's lives, and not just a visiting father. I am a good mom and provide an excellent life for my children. If I don't protect them, who will? Don't want to wait for the next episode? You don't have to. Unlock all episodes of what happened to the Harrison's early and ad-free right now by subscribing to the binge. And it doesn't stop at what happened to the Harrison's. Subscribers get a binge drop of a brand new series on the first of every month. That's all episodes, all at once, all ad-free. Search for the binge on Apple podcasts and hit subscribe. Not on Apple? Head to getthebinge.com to subscribe directly.

37:06What happened to the Harrison's is an original production of Sony Music Entertainment. The show is hosted and reported by me, Amy Dempsey Raven. The lead producer is Cooper Moll. The series is written by me and Cooper. From Sony Music Entertainment, our executive producers are Catherine St. Louis and Jonathan Hirsch. The series was sound designed and mixed by Scott Somerville. We use music from Epidemic Sound. Production managers are Tamika Balan's Kalazny and Ashley Ann Craigbaum, fact-checking by Fendell Fulton, additional production support by Myron Kaplan. Our lawyer is Alison Sherry. Special thanks to the Toronto Star, where my reporting on this story began more than a decade ago. If you value local investigative journalism, subscribe to a newspaper where you live. Please rate and review what happened to the Harrison's. It helps spread the word.