All language subtitles for The Detectives (2018) 3x07 - The Cottage Country Killer (English)

- This case will always be with me.
- _

I will always remember it.

Nancy Blackburn and her husband, Ian,

were found in the trunk
of their car Monday night.

Nancy had ligature marks
consistent with strangulation.

God! He hog-tied her
while she was still alive.

There is no doubt somebody
was being extremely cruel

for whatever reason.

We did have a series of
break-ins over the winter,

some guy staying in vacant summer homes.

Did you ever ID the guy?

No. We just call him the House Hermit.

As soon as I walked in the door,

I hear: "Don't move or I'll shoot!"

Do you think you could describe
this guy to a sketch artist?

Absolutely!

At this point, we believe
the House Hermit

is the one responsible
for the Blackburns' murder.

But we had no clue who he was.

If you think you see him,
do not approach him.

- Clear.
- Call 911.

He is armed and extremely dangerous.

We had to find this person.

- Synced and corrected by Firefly -
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It was I think midnight

or a little bit later than
midnight that I got the call.

_

It was in the Forest Hill area

in the north end of the City of Toronto.

It's not normally where
you would expect to find

any violent occurrence.

It was unusual.

What do we got?

Two victims, Ian and Nancy Blackburn,

reported missing from the
Caledon OPP earlier today.

- Yeah.
- They have a cottage up there.

- Where are the bodies?
- In the trunk of Nancy's car.

The bodies looked like
they had been in there

for a while.

The man was fully clothed,
and the woman naked.

The woman obviously had ligature marks

around her wrist, her legs, her ankles.

There was no doubt somebody
was being extremely cruel

for whatever reason to Nancy.

Thanks.

In the car, there was a tissue.

And the tissue appeared
to have blood on it.

We weren't sure whose blood it was.

Call a forensics truck.

Tell them to take the car
with the bodies still inside.

Nobody touches a thing in there, okay?

You already checked the house?

Yeah, just mail and newspapers
from a couple of days ago.

It's probably when the crime happened.

I mean, the house is
pretty clean otherwise.

Nothing seems to be missing.

- Any signs of violence?
- No.

But the forensics team hasn't
gotten through it yet. So...

Okay. Who found the bodies?

Jamie Osborne, the nephew.
He's pretty shocked.

Thanks.

Jamie? Detective Doug Grady.

I understand you're
the one that found them.

Yeah.

How long had they been missing?

I... I don't know.

My dad asked me to check up on them.

When I got here,

I noticed the cat didn't
have any food and water,

and I thought that was weird.

Uh, so I... I checked the
car and popped the trunk.

What made you pop the trunk?

My dad asked me to...

when I couldn't find them.

It seemed like an
unusual request, you know:

"Check the trunk for
your aunt and uncle".

Why would anyone do this?
They're good people!

I don't know, Jamie,

but we're gonna figure it out.

Nancy Blackburn and her husband, Ian,

were found in the trunk
of their car Monday night.

The car was parked outside
their North Toronto home.

A relative made the grim discovery.

The Blackburns had not
been seen in 6 days.

They appeared to be nice people.

Everybody seemed to like them.
Ian had a real estate business.

Nancy, on the other hand,
was a public health nurse,

working for the City of Toronto.

They had no children.

They lived in a nice neighbourhood.

They were your average,
normal Toronto downtown people.

We would like to know the
last time they were alive.

That would help us to
know the time of death.

Police can't say

where Mrs. Blackburn
was murdered or when.

The Blackburns owned
another home in Caledon.

A second family car was
found in the driveway there.

Police now say they don't
know where the couple died.

Was it in Toronto,

where Nancy was last seen alive,

or in Caledon, where Ian
went to repair the plumbing

in their historic country home?

Caledon is a rural
area north of Toronto.

It was becoming an
up-and-developing area

where huge homes were being built.

Ian and Nancy's farmhouse
would be treated

as a cottage retreat type of place.

It was a large property.

It was quiet. It was a nice place.

Ian never parked there, you know.

For 25 years, he parked over there.

Uh-huh. You are?

Orville Osborne.

I'm married to Ian's sister.
We share the property with them.

Osborne.

Your son found the victims. Jamie?

That's right. Poor thing.

Listen, if you don't mind my asking you,

why did you have him pop the trunk?

Honestly, I... I don't know.
We were desperate to find them.

We hadn't heard from them all week.

Then when I saw Ian's car parked there,

that's when I knew something was wrong.

But I never would have imagined...

I'm sorry for your loss.

You know, Ian's father passed
this whole area down to us

after he died.

It's a special place.

See that round barn over there?

That was built in 1890.

There's only 3 of them
left in the whole province.

You know why they built them that way?

Why?

So the devil couldn't
back you into a corner.

- Detective Grady.
- Excuse me.

Was there any animus between
the Blackburns and Orville

over the land in that huge
property up in Caledon?

It was a possibility.

Maybe there was a motive there.

Hey! Jim Hutchinson.

- Nice to meet you, Jim.
- Call me Hut.

The OPP forensic team

were going through that
house piece by piece,

the officers basically
on their hands and knees,

looking at everything.

And that's when we found this.

We tested it. It matches Nancy's blood.

Boom! That was our crime scene.

The tissue with the blood on it

found in the front seat came back.

It's not our victim's,
so it could be the killer.

Nancy had ligature marks
consistent with strangulation,

but not Ian.

He died from a different
form of asphyxia.

They think he had a bag over his head.

- What about sexual assault?
- No evidence of it.

God! He hog-tied her
while she was still alive.

Her arms were tied behind her back

and her ankles were tied to the wrist.

The severe wounds to her

were such that she must
have been in a lot of pain

at that particular point.

The person that did it

was just throwing her
around like a suitcase.

So, now you basically go back

and try and figure out
where your victims were,

what they were doing

at the last point that they
were alive that you know of.

All right.

Ian, last seen leaving work
Tuesday night 5:00 p.m.

He's going to Caledon
to check on the cottage.

Okay, this is Nancy's last activity.

She calls a friend from the Toronto home

at 7:00 p.m. that night.

She's looking for Ian.

And check this out: phone records.

Approximately one hour later, 7:56,

a 5-minute phone call from the cottage

to the Toronto home.

But after that, we got nothing.

So what was said during that phone call?

The interesting thing is
that the phone call occurred

and Nancy drove up there.

We don't know if it
was a request from Ian

for her to come up

or from the suspect.

Why did that person have to
have Nancy come to the cottage?

Okay, is there
a lot of crime in Caledon,

murders, missing persons?

Not usually.

But these 2 guns, they were stolen

from Blackburn's neighbour
outside of Caledon.

And Caroline Case,
she's a Toronto woman,

she, uh, went missing after
she left her shop 6 months ago.

What happened to her?

47-year-old Caroline Case was last seen

at her import store on Bloor
Street West in Etobicoke.

About 12 hours after she
was reported missing,

her wrecked Mercedes Benz station wagon

was found in a ditch near
Caledon, north of Metro.

We, uh, searched the area for days.

She's still missing.

We had these 2 cases:

the Blackburns, who
were taken from Caledon

and bodies are found in Toronto.

And then we had Caroline
Case abducted from Toronto

and taken to Caledon.

That was something we had
to investigate further.

Anything else?

We did have a series of
break-ins over the winter.

Some guy staying in vacant summer homes.

- Did you ever ID the guy?
- Nope.

We just call him the House Hermit.

This person who was doing
these break and enters...

It seemed to be unusual,

but it didn't seem to be violent.

- We're gonna dig into that.
- Okay.

I'm gonna focus on
closing out the family.

So, now we have to start
answering the simple questions,

Like: "Who would have a motive,

opportunity or means to do this?"

What you do in most investigations,

you start close to the family.

There is something
different about funerals

where somebody is murdered.

People will sometimes
look around and wonder,

"Is it you? Is it you?"

'cause nobody knows.

And I attended the Blackburns' funeral

to see the reaction of people.

Some people may feign remorse.

Thank you for coming, detective.

Of course. My condolences.

My son can't shake the image

of their bodies in the trunk.

And my wife is devastated.

Ian was her brother.

I don't know how to comfort them.

I've seen cases where it's put on,

and it's quite obvious.

In this case, I didn't have that,

because they're all decent people

who, unfortunately, found themselves

in an awful, awful situation.

At the same time,

the officers who investigated
all of these break and enters,

they spoke to everybody
who reported a break-in

that we thought was
related to the House Hermit.

We found that there
was a similar incident,

not in Caledon,

but in a place called Tiny Township,

north of Caledon.

And Sam Appleton had a cottage up there.

We were just stopping by

to see how this place
weathered the winter.

My wife, Rose, stayed in the car.

As soon as I walked in the door,

I noticed the TV cable
was running up the stairs

into the bedroom.

The door was closed.

It was very warm in there,
and the smell was horrible.

Then from behind me, I hear:
"Don't move or I'll shoot".

And I see a gun.

And then the man said:
"Don't look at me".

Can you describe the gun?

I don't know, a, uh, a handgun.

Then...

he had me come back down the stairs

and come lie down on the floor,

right there.

Then he tells me he's coming
back to Toronto with me.

He says he's committed a bad fraud,

and he doesn't want to go to jail.

So we get in the car,

me in front, driving with Rose,

him in the back.

- He didn't want to drive?
- No.

He insisted I drive.

I acted like nothing was wrong.

I told Rose that the guy

was just getting a ride back to Toronto.

But she quickly realized
what was going on.

We come to a busy intersection.

I said: "Either you shoot me here

or get out now!"

It must have scared him,

because he just took
our money and ran off.

Sam Appleton was a
pretty gutsy individual.

But his story helped me understand

what may have happened
to the Blackburns.

Uh, listen, do you think
you could describe this guy

to a sketch artist?

Absolutely!

We now know the House
Hermit was definitely armed.

He's brazen.

Is he a person who's now going to

escalate his criminal behaviour?

We had to find this person.

I finally get a call from the duty desk.

An officer had found weird garbage

out by the Blackburn farmhouse.

They having a picnic?

No. But the House Hermit was.

- I wouldn't touch that.
- Why? What's in them?

- Feces.
- Oh God!

These bottles were filled with urine.

Urine in a bottle, fecal
matter wrapped up...

It was totally unusual.

Take a look at these.

These are the handwritten lists

he leaves behind everywhere else.

It's military equipment.
It's pretty obscure stuff.

War planes, tanks, cannons, firearms...

It was like somebody was
playing some type of war game

against themselves.

It was getting warm.

So people were gonna be
around their cottages.

We were quite concerned
about finding him

before he could do something else.

Investigators from the
OPP had found 2 people

who came across a man
occupying their cottage.

I hear: "Don't move or I'll shoot".

Could you describe this
guy to a sketch artist?

Absolutely!

We now had at least a sketch

of what the House Hermit may look like.

This person is out there somewhere,

and we can't identify who he is.

From the Appleton incident,

we had fingerprints that
were directly related

to the House Hermit.

We ran the prints through our
national fingerprint database.

And there is no result

attributing it to anybody we know.

How could his fingerprints not
be on the national databank?

This is somebody who's been exhibiting

quite severe criminal behaviour.

At this point,

we believe the House Hermit

is the one responsible
for the Blackburns' murder.

But we had no clue who he was.

We gotta go public with this.

- Tell them what?
- Everything.

Everything about the House Hermit:

the break-ins, the sketch,
even the strange military lists.

I mean, somebody's gotta
recognize those, right?

We gotta stop this guy!

We believe that the man
who killed the Blackburns

is also responsible for a
series of cottage break-ins

in the Caledon area.

He's know to camp out in these cottages

for several days at a time.

So we call him the House Hermit.

He always leaves behind these
handwritten military lists,

like a calling card.

So for this reason, we
think he's a military buff.

Now, if you think you see him
or if you think you know him,

do not approach him.

Call 911.

He is armed and extremely dangerous.

Usually, when you
have a press conference

on a major homicide case,

you can get 200 calls.

In this particular
case, we got one call.

There was a woman in Orangeville,

30 minutes north of Toronto,

who had some information.

Alison Shaw?

I'm Detective Doug Grady, Metro Police.

I understood on the phone

that you know who the wanted
man is in the Blackburn murders.

Uh, yeah, it's David Snow.

David ran a side business
with my husband, Darris.

And last fall, he disappeared
and left us saddled with debt.

And so to recoup our debt,
we cleared out his stuff.

And that's when I saw the writings.

They were military entries in
a journal, hundreds of them.

And the handwriting is exactly
the same as what's in the paper.

And you said that he
disappeared last fall.

Do you remember when exactly?

Uh, some time in early October.

No one around here has seen
or heard from him since.

Do you think David Snow

would be capable of something like this?

Oh, he is a creep.

Anything is possible with that guy.

Okay. Thanks very much.

David Snow was a friend of the family.

Alison did not like him one bit,

but her husband, Darris,
thought that he was a good guy,

just a little odd.

We wanted to speak with Darris Shaw

as soon as we could.

I just don't see it, you know?

David was a weird guy,
but he was no killer.

It's not what your wife thinks.

Well, we see him differently.

Did she tell you he
used to babysit our kids?

Our daughter calls him Uncle David.

He's just a regular, small-town guy.

He's a bit odd, sure, misunderstood,

but he's not violent.

- So the two of you were close?
- Yeah.

We had a business together,

taking apart old frame structures,

putting them back together.

The money was good too,

until David took off, stuck
me with $2,600 in debt.

Do you know where I
might find David now?

He's probably hiding out
somewhere around here.

No one's seen him in
months, but he can't be far.

Why is that?

He just walks everywhere.

He has a pathological fear of driving.

Like I said, odd.

One we identified David Snow,

we started talking to
people in Orangeville.

A lot of the men said
David was just a little off.

Most of the women we talked
to said he was creepy,

said: "There was something about him.

We didn't like being around him".

He didn't do anything aggressive,

as they would say,

but they just felt
uncomfortable around him.

We got that intuition from
a lot of different women.

He does have a record.

Orangeville charged him
with fraud last summer

for writing bad cheques.

That's what Appleton said.

We ran the prints, nothing came back.

They made a mistake. They
thought they needed a conviction

before they uploaded them.

Regardless, the prints match!

David Snow is the House Hermit.

Yeah. Now all we need to do is find him.

We needed to talk to
David Snow's mother.

I'm hoping she's gonna give
us assistance in locating him.

His mother lived in a nice neighbourhood

in the west end of Toronto.

Caroline Case,

she ran the Jewelled
Elephant on Bloor, right?

47-year-old Caroline Case

was last seen at her import store

on Bloor Street West in Etobicoke.

Caroline Case, she's a Toronto woman.

She, uh, went missing after
she left her shop 6 months ago.

Hi! Doug Grady.

Listen, I'm staring at
the Jewelled Elephant,

and you will never guess
who lives right nearby it.

David Snow's mother.

I've met many mothers of
victims and of accused,

but I've never met a mother
who said what she said.

I'm terrified of him.

I'm so sorry, Mrs. Snow.

- Do you still see him?
- Not really.

The last time I saw him was last fall,

uh, just after his antiques
business had fallen apart.

I was so scared.

Before he came...

I hid all the sharp knives.

Did, um, did David ever
physically harm you?

Yes.

That was the reason

that I had to leave the
house in Orangeville,

the house where he still lives.

She was afraid of her own son.

She kept that house so he'd live in it,

and he wouldn't come live with her.

He grew up in that house.
The whole family did.

One by one, we all left.

Everybody in the family
was tiptoeing around David.

You know: "Leave him alone.

Just let him do what he's doing".

Police! We're coming in!

When I left the house, it
was because of the abuse.

It was a nightmare.

She had hope that he
didn't kill those people.

But she didn't doubt
for a second that he did.

David's mother confirmed
that he attended her place

in early October,

the date just before
Caroline Case went missing.

Hello? Mr. Snow?

- Get the kitchen.
- Yeah.

Clear.

Clear.

Go, go, go.

Clear.

Go, go, go.

We're looking for David Snow.

I believe David Snow is the
one responsible for the murders

of Caroline Case and the Blackburns.

We go in his house.

It looks like somebody hasn't
lived there for quite some time.

Here. Hold this.

We found a hidden room.

You should get in here.

Oh!

There's various
pictures from catalogues,

cut-outs of women,

but not quite pornography.

It was a bit odd.

And it told us a little bit

about this person's psychological side.

There's all kinds of military
books with military equipment.

Ships, tanks, planes all over the house.

We don't know where he is or
what he's going to do next.

He's definitely on the run.

So, we put out a Canada-wide
warrant for his arrest.

Police say David Snow does not drive.

They believe he is in
hiding in the Caledon area.

- He is armed and dangerous.
- _

As predators escalate,
they become more dangerous.

And he was escalating.

So where would he go from there?

"Police are looking for anyone

who may have seen Christina
Robinson last Friday".

And they're never gonna find you.

We just got another
report on the House Hermit

from Caledon.

The owners just got back
from a winter in Venezuela.

This doesn't help. None of this helps!

It just confirms what we already know.

We need to know where he is now!

I mean, he may still be in Ontario.

He could also be
anywhere in the country.

All right, let's send out
everything we have on Snow:

the fingerprints, the military writings,

the serial numbers
of every gun he stole.

And, I mean, he's not
just sitting around hiding.

We need every police
agency in the country

to know everything that
could possibly identify him,

because he's gonna do this again.

And when he does, we
need to know about it.

All right. I'm on it.

The whole time we're looking for him

in the Greater Toronto Area...

unbeknownst to us,

we find that he was
out in British Columbia

the entire time.

_

What's happening?

Wait here.

Eight days ago, she
closed up for work at 6:00

at this East Vancouver
photography studio

and disappeared.

This is a classic,

unexplainable missing persons case.

There appears to be no
reasonable explanation

as to why this young
lady has gone missing.

Move.

I found her at a video store.

You like?

During that time,

a video store clerk goes missing,

and the RCMP find the
car in Mount Seymour Park.

I've got a Beetle in Mount Seymour Park.

License plate matches the missing one.

In the car, they found a
firearm that was stolen...

from Caledon.

That's how we knew it was
David Snow who had that car

and was in that area.

There's another woman!

- Where?
- Over there.

Hey! Are you okay?

The women are rescued.

And Snow takes off further
into that Mount Seymour forest.

And so, RCMP North Vancouver

conducted the largest
manhunt they've ever done.

They're searching the forest
and its maze of trails

for one suspect.

Stay there.

They brought in as many
officers as they could,

because this guy was now out in an area

that is heavily travelled
by a lot of people.

All vehicles leaving the
park are being searched.

All entrances into the area are closed.

So, at the same time,

I get the first plane
that's flying out west

and go to Vancouver.

He never untied you?

Once, when he kidnapped the other woman.

He walked me to the car and
he told me to wait for him.

I was alone and untied.

And I could have walked away.

Why didn't you?

I didn't know where he was.

I didn't want to get
shot. I was terrified.

I remember thinking to myself that:

"This is the end".

"He's gonna kill me".

I'm so sorry I have to ask this.

Um...

Is this the guy?

That's him. Yeah.

He felt like a very...

sick kid...

and I was his toy.

I was just something
for him to play with.

He had no conscience.

He had held her captive
and tied up for 8 days.

I was amazed by how she
had gotten through this

and survived it.

She was a strong young woman.

It's believed the suspect
had been camping out

in this dense parkland.

Police believe he's still here,

trapped within countless roadblocks.

RCMP conduct a search
throughout this particular park.

And all night long, it's going on.

They have helicopters.

These are huge parks with
lots of forest areas...

within David Snow's comfort zone.

And so he got to the
Suspension Bridge restaurant,

which is in the Capilano Park,

and saw that there was somebody
closing up the restaurant.

So he took her to the back,

not knowing the police were in the area.

And the officer hears
movement behind the building.

Police!

David Snow was caught in the act,

sexually assaulting and
attempting to murder a woman.

An ambulance came,

took her to the hospital right away.

And she survived this incident.

Anything to say, Mr. Snow?
Anything to say?

A dramatic story unfolding
in British Columbia tonight,

revolving around this man, David Snow.

Police arrested him yesterday

after a manhunt that chased
him out of the mountains

around North Vancouver.

They accused him of kidnapping 2 women

and trying to kill a third.

You're not happy to see him.

It's not a job satisfaction,

like, "Okay, now we've got you",

because you're still working on
your case all the way through.

I've already spoken to my lawyer.

I have nothing to say to you.

When you're sitting
across from a murderer

and you're asking questions,

there's only one person in that room

that knows everything,

and it's not you.

So we thought: "Okay.
Let's throw everything out.

Let's just see what sticks".

Okay, but, um...

there's just one thing
I... I want to know.

Okay?

What did you have Ian say to
Nancy on the phone that night

to convince her to
come up to the cottage?

All right, well, that's fine, David,

because we know about
everything else you did.

You've made it quite
easy for us, actually.

We know that you killed
Ian and Nancy Blackburn.

We had the DNA in the tissue

matching up with David Snow's DNA.

It was a perfect match.

That was basically the nail
in his coffin, so to speak.

Caroline Case.

We know that you spotted her
after visiting your mom one day.

We know that you took
her from her store.

We know you made her drive you home.

I'm gonna tell you everything,

but I need a guarantee.

What guarantee?

I don't get a day over 25 years.

I didn't want to make
a deal with a killer

and allow him a sentence
that I felt was unfair

for what he did,

and that is life in jail,

opportunity for parole after 25 years,

but not an outright deal
where it's 25 and done.

We're going to put you away
for a long, long time, David.

We felt so adamant

that we wanted to find Caroline Case

and that David Snow was
responsible for her murder.

There was no doubt in our mind.

He is a reasonable suspect
in the Caroline Case matter.

We asked the OPP to do
another search in that field

where the car had been overturned.

Today, a convoy of cars
carrying up to 100 officers

moved into the area

to conduct a blade-by-blade
search of the grass.

Police found the remains

to missing business woman Caroline Case.

There was an autopsy,

but there wasn't enough evidence
to relate back to David Snow.

I'm convinced that David
Snow killed Caroline Case.

But me being convinced is not enough.

The fate of the man
nicknamed the House Hermit

is now in the jury's hands.

What we could do is only convict him

for what we actually had.

And we had him for the Blackburns,

and so that's the ones
we charged him with,

and that's the ones we could prove.

The Crown says the most
important piece of evidence

is a bloody tissue found
in Nancy Blackburn's car.

The stained tissue contains Snow's DNA.

The only way we can properly speak

for Ian and Nancy Blackburn

is to have a conviction in the end.

As the verdict was read
out, Snow had no reaction,

simply staring downwards,
never looking at the jury.

Life in prison with no chance of parole.

We got a conviction for Ian and Nancy.

Unfortunately, we couldn't
do it for some other victims.

Asked by the judge if he had any words,

Snow mumbled: "I've got nothing to say".

I don't think he feels bad
about anything he's done.

He's a psychopath.

And I think feeling guilty

is something he's not capable of.

I've had the occasion to be close to him

and stare him right in the eye,
and it's just a blank stare.

There just doesn't seem
to be anything there.

Ian Blackburn's sister says:
"Justice has been served".

It's been a long 6 months
waiting for this to come.

And we're so thrilled

that we finally have a
verdict we all wanted.

It's done. We're finished with this guy.

He's now going to a place that
is better than what he deserves.

But it's finished.

_

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- www.addic7ed.com -

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