Original subtitles

good evening i'm anthony robart this is crime beat tonight an aspiring actress finally

making headways in her career vanishes. She hadn't spent any money she hadn't touched her facebook

she wasn't on her phone. Although there are no indications of foul play it is out of character

for her to not be in touch with family and friends and we are we are all concerned for her

welfare

and now here's Nancy Hixt with Shannon Madill's last audition

Tell you a little about me? just a general me um okay i am interning uh for my radio and television program

shannon madill love to perform and truly came alive on screen a couple of lines

does that work for you? a couple of lines how exciting.

i'm not sure if i can give you a couple of lines sir i don't know how i'll be able to do that

okay yeah you got it? she spent years trying to make it as an actress and at 25

it was looking like she might finally land her big break this video was an

audition for a role in a tv series it was recorded november 26 2014. okay thanks

hours later she vanished

days went by and there was no word from shannon

after more than a week her family made a plea for shannon to call home

this is my sister she's a lovely outgoing girl and shannon if you see this please you're not in

trouble we all love you and we miss you so much we don't need to know where you are we just want

to know that you're safe it wasn't completely out of character for shannon to be hard to track down

but it was unusual for her to disappear for so many days police said there was no evidence to

suggest foul play would the young actress simply take off could she have been in an accident

her family was desperate for answers you are so loved and you are so missed and we just

just please let us know that you're okay wherever you are shannon was the youngest of four medal

children and even as a child she loved performing oh she loved the spotlight her favorite thing was

a microphone and a spotlight from the time she was tiny shannon was very outgoing even from a small

age she loved doing like the plays at the church and that and the plays at school and she was

a real performer she loved to be in front of an audience performing and that never changed she was

just such a little ham she loved to she just loved to play and be silly of course i'm probably going

to tell this story wrong but she met my uncle when she was about two or three at the airport

for the first time and she ran up to him and said kiss me kiss me like you've never kissed me before

so yeah she's she's been a ham since she was really really young

shannon played 15 instruments including the trombone and the french horn

has it all been worth it here i am the queen

she was always a bit of a spitfire she like she that red hair and fiery personality were always

very present um and i mean i think that probably partly just came from being the baby of the family

where you can like there's everyone's been through it so no one's really paying attention to you as

much anymore um you know nothing that she could do could be as worse as anything that's come before

her so she kind of had the freedom to to be a little bit more out there

after high school shannon went to university but left soon after to pursue acting

i was really really concerned about it at the time i'm not going to lie as somebody who did used to

do a bunch of performing i know how hard it can be and the scariest part of course is that it's

a lifelong rejection you're constantly it's you're constantly on a job interview really when shannon

was 21 she fell in love so she met josh at a party it was a mutual friends that they were all there

and that would have been 2010. i want to say it was probably about december 2010. josh burgess was

the opposite of shannon personality wise so they seemed to balance each other out for a perfect

fit they found a happy medium together because they both very much enjoyed the quiet times

at home they both enjoyed watching tv together playing video games together some d they had a

lot of nerdy interests that they shared and that was where they were able to have that overlap of

interest shannon seemed to really like him so we all started to really like him we enjoyed having

him around and he seemed to make her happy which made us happy after dating for about four years

shannon and josh got married and all of a sudden out of the blue i got a call on a wednesday to

find out they were getting married on the saturday and that would have been may of 2014. so they were

in a car and they decided you know what let's just get married and they're both super star wars nerds

so they decided may the fourth was coming up on that saturday and they called it justice of the

peace and found out that they were available so they decided they would do a quick wedding at the

jp's house in the months that followed shannon was busier than ever trying to make it as an actress

and juggling auditions a lot of those took her to edmonton a three-hour drive north of calgary so

she spent a lot of time on the road commuting back and forth but she was making it work

in late november of 2014 she planned to meet up with her older brother

at a calgary dinner theater but shannon didn't show up i mean the 30th was the day she was

supposed to be going to stage west with brett her brother shannon was a marvelous person she had

many things but she was a little flighty at times and she could you know sort of forget

things or that and not necessarily let people know i mean i sent her a text right away

at that point saying where are you you're supposed to be at dinner with brett and uh

and i didn't hear anything back that night which didn't totally surprise me when i i tried again

in the morning and didn't hear anything back and i thought well you know what she's probably she

knows i'm not happy and she probably just wants to avoid hearing it from me personally so i phoned

aaron so on december 1st which was a Monday I was at work i got a phone call from my father saying

that shannon had missed dinner with my younger brother and that nobody was she wasn't answering

her phone calls my dad had been calling her my younger brother had been calling her and she just

wasn't picking up one of the things that happened with shannon is if she get really overwhelmed or

depressed she would sometimes completely switch up her sleep schedule so i thought it was possible

that maybe she had fallen asleep in the afternoon because she'd been doing late nights recording

and she'd slept through the dinner and now she was just too embarrassed to pick up the phone

because she didn't want to admit that she'd messed up so i was i decided to call her hoping that she

wouldn't avoid my phone call since i wasn't mad at her but she didn't answer my phone call so

i left her a message saying that you know just let us know you're okay we're worried about you

we were actually out at dinner it was about seven o'clock on the monday night and aaron says well

i've been over to her place i can't she's not there josh doesn't know where she is and so on and

i said hey i think we should go to the police days later police and family made a plea for help in

finding shannon although there are no indications of foul play it is out of character for her to not

be in touch with family and friends and we are we are all concerned for her welfare shannon's family

stood side by side appealing for information about her disappearance this is josh this is shannon's

husband uh this is my mother lisa this is lindsey our sister-in-law our brother brett this is my

other brother tyler and that's my father david it was surreal i think is the word i would use

it almost disembodied you felt like you were present but you were watching yourself being there

coming up as police ramp up their search for shannon madill

some mysterious photos found posted in a city park lead to a potential break in the case

welcome back the family of an up-and-coming actress who mysteriously vanished

search for answers as police investigate new clues

and now here's nancy hixt with Shannon Madill's last audition

the days that followed are a blur for shannon's family as they tried to make sense of her sudden

disappearance as you're trying to piece together the story you're you know you start asking

questions that people aren't answering like where you know well where's your car where's

her phone where's her purse where like you know is it still there how the dog is being left at

the house like that doesn't make any sense for shannon the big theory was was oh she probably

went up to edmonton and she might just be laying low with this guy there was no sign

of shannon where could she possibly be if she was still alive why hadn't she contacted her family

she hadn't spent any money she hadn't touched her facebook she wasn't on her phone

there was no contact that's when people start to really get concerned because in this day and age

it's impossible to not leave a digital footprint at least in some manner and to still be able to

function it wasn't like she had a whole bunch of cash laying around she wouldn't be able to support

herself nearly two weeks later there was a major development in the case photos of a woman whose

face was covered by her hair and flowers were found attached to trees in a park in calgary it

looked like it could be shannon the resemblance was enough to spur a massive search of fish

creek provincial park one of the largest urban parks in canada police spent two days scouring

the area for clues they even brought in a cadaver dog dogs specially trained to find human remains

i remember those two days while they were doing those searches your stomach is just on

edge um you're so concerned about what they're gonna find and every time my phone would ring

it was like your stomach just drops out because you think every time the phone rings this is

when you find out this is when they found her she's dead it's over that search came up empty

it turned out the photos in the park were not related to shannon's disappearance

instead they were a part of a student art project those involved came forward to police after seeing

the search on the news it was all just an eerie coincidence shannon was still missing i withdrew

into myself i did not want to get out of bed did not want to eat anything

it was it was dreadful it was really dreadful there's just this oppressive feeling of

are you gonna are you going to survive it let alone what's going to be the outcome

i was concerned that if we found her alive what conditions she would be in what mental

condition she would be in police prepared shannon's family for all possible outcomes

there had been an incident that none of us heard about till after the fact where

shannon had called josh from the lrt you know uh claiming that that she was considering

jumping and and that uh the police had been called and involved in that

i became obsessed with the river

it's almost like you pick the lesser of all evils and somehow her having a quick drowning

became the least horrible answer to me so i became obsessed with finding her in the river

i mean to this day i still can't drive by the bow river without remembering that police

searched the rivers but again no luck it seemed like the investigation hit a dead end

by may of 2015 nearly six months passed with no sign of Shannon Madill

that's when veteran calgary police detective Christina Witt took over the case at the time

detective witt was working in the missing persons unit but she'd worked in the homicide unit before

that she's well known for being a determined and tenacious investigator whit went over every detail

of the case and took another look at the people in shannon's life starting with her

husband he seemed like a nice genuine person he was very cooperative with police they were

allowed into the residence with his consent on at least two occasions and they looked around

and didn't see anything suspicious he was always very cooperative when asked to come for interviews

you'll recall josh stood by shannon's family as they made a plea for help just days after she

went missing you know the family was very close to josh and never once did they suggest that he could

have harmed shannon which that also played into it for us i think because a lot of times the family

would be like look you gotta look at her husband or you gotta look at this and and then we will

trust the family's instincts to an extent as well and look into those things and

the family did not think that at all they he was not on their radar at all they loved

josh they trusted josh they didn't have any reason for themselves to think that he could

have harmed shannon that's when police learned josh wasn't the only man in shannon's life

coming up would those new revelations about Shannon Madill's romantic interest

help police solve her disappearance that's coming up after the break

welcome back police discover Shannon Madill's husband

isn't the only man in her life and she's not the only woman in his and now here's nancy hixt

her and josh we learned very early on through josh that they had an open marriage

they had been married for seven months at by this time and this according to josh was

shannon's idea to have an open marriage shannon was open with her family about her relationship

shannon told me that they didn't have a conventional marriage and that josh wanted to

have a girlfriend on the side and shannon wanted to keep her options open because she enjoyed

having flings aaron said they were committed to each other just not physically committed

in their relationship it wasn't considered cheating and it was all openly discussed while

many might find shannon and josh's arrangement unconventional aaron said it worked for them

i didn't actually have concerns they had a lot of open communication

shannon would actually meet josh's girlfriends so she was very well aware of who josh was dating

and spending his time with so it was very it was a very open honest conversation that they

were both willing to have with each other and it was respectful on both sides for police the

open marriage created some complexities to the case and more people to look at and investigate

could this missing persons case have been foul play after all so that was also something we had

to look at was this could there been harm done to her by someone that she was dating that we didn't

know so there was about seven i think different people who whether she was acquaintances or had

dated that we needed to interview as well six months into their marriage right before

shannon disappeared in the fall of 2014 the couple hit some bumps in their relationship

things got so bad they were ready to call it quits the very next day josh came home and told shannon

that he'd overreacted and he would actually like to try to work on the marriage after all they

decided that the best way to work on that would be to focus only on the marriage and they agreed

that they would close off the marriage until they sorted through what was going on but closing the

marriage wasn't so easy shannon ended up finding out about a week later that he was still seeing

the girlfriend he told shannon that he was going to break it off and shannon sent the girlfriend a

text they always had open communication and open phones and then about a week later she found out

that his phone was locked she asked him to open it and when shannon opened up the phone she found

out that he'd actually been in communication with the girlfriend and he'd requested to go

and break up with her in person and it turned out in that in-person meeting he actually told

the girlfriend that he was planning on leaving his wife and that she would become the primary partner

so shannon was pretty hurt shannon was incredibly hurt she felt incredibly deceived

shannon had some tough decisions to make her acting career was leading her to edmonton and

given the unraveling marriage she decided to move out as that transition happened they made a point

of avoiding each other at their home so there was a often that she would go out and wouldn't be home

for a couple of days and then would come home and they would miss each other and their schedules

were completely different because josh was doing the nine to five and shannon was usually working

in the evenings to do stand-up or she would be working overnight reading her books so it was very

common that they wouldn't actually see each other during that time on the night she went missing

josh told police he spoke to her briefly then went to bed when he woke up the next morning

she was gone investigators said shannon's footprints of life ended november 27 2014.

those are digital footprints like bank transactions emails texts any normal activities

that show someone is still alive in shannon's case that stopped at about 12 30 a.m on november 27

2014 except for some strange phone activity 12 hours later in her alley our tech crimes unit

examined her cell phone records and they were able to determine that on the afternoon of the 27th

her phone is out in the alley kind of does a walkabout in the alley and back into the residence

and so that was a flag because josh hadn't found the phone right away but he does notify police

within a few days that he'd found her phone

and couldn't really give an explanation of how the phone is out doing this walkabout

in the alley so she was last seen like in the early morning hours of november 27th and so then

this is like 12 hours later in the afternoon that the phone is out and about in the alley

eight months after Shannon Madill's disappearance police decided they needed to take another look

at her husband's story we've now had several interviews with josh and he's you know the

important time period he's he's vague and isn't giving a lot of detail and it's not really adding

up the strange cell phone activity in the alley created suspicion we didn't reveal to him right

away about the cell phone doing the walkabout and he certainly wasn't offering an explanation of why

perhaps her phone would be even still on after that kind of time period right because

cell phones typically the battery dies so you know there was no um

real obvious thing but the totality of all those things together raised the suspicion enough to

believe that yes she could have been murdered police applied for warrants to seize josh's cell

phone along with the vehicle they shared the difficulty was in order to get a court order

you need to believe that offense had occurred and early on that just that threshold wasn't being met

because of the concerns for suicide and the family's suggestion that she could just be

away somewhere and not wanting to talk to anyone by that point police had already searched the home

twice each time they found nothing out of the ordinary he's definitely starting to look more

suspicious to us at that point he's our only good possible suspect at that point we ruled out a lot

of possibilities by through all those witness interviews he's the last person to see her alive

during domestic relationships at that point where they're looking to break up or separate

those are usually the most volatile times and so that all

played into our level of increasing suspicion of josh

the mysterious missing person's case was about to take a dramatic

turn that's coming up on crime beat

welcome back to crime beat the mystery of what happened to Shannon Madill unraveled quickly

and unexpectedly and now here's nancy Hixt

on july 2nd 2015 just over seven months after shannon disappeared detective witt went to josh

burgess's home one more time this time to execute the search warrant i knocked on the door and i

called his cell phone and he didn't answer the first time and but we could hear the movement

in the room so we also had already identified but said again you know josh it's the police

we just want you to come to the door we have a warrant for your cell phone and your car we

would like you to come out technically we have the authority to come in but we just want you to come

to the door so that we can talk to you and deal with this um he answered the phone the second time

and he i felt like he was trying to buy some time like he was stalling with me and he's like i just

need a few minutes i need to go downstairs i need to put my pants on and they're in the wash and

you know he's kind of upset and he's like well why do you need to speak to me and i'm trying

to explain and you know i'm getting a little frustrated i'm like josh honestly we just need you

to come to the door we just want you to talk to us we have this court order come to the door so that

this is a lot easier than it has you know let's make this easy for you and me and come to the door

and so he's kind of stalling and i think really he was just trying to figure out what he was going to

do what his next step was because we caught him off guard detective witt said what happened next

was the last thing she expected he gets very upset and starts crying and blurts out to me that

i killed her i killed my wife i verbalized that so that the other people with me understand

what's happening and i'm like i'm sorry josh can you say that again and he's like

yes i killed my wife and i said you killed shannon he said yes i killed shannon and so then that was

just a complete transition they changed the situation and from that point on we went from

him just coming to the door to give us his cell phone to now we need to negotiate

to get him out of the house safely safely for him safely for us detective witt kept him on the

phone for an hour and 20 minutes until finally he came out he wasn't really wearing anything

other than a pair of underwear and he was covered in blood which i wasn't expecting josh burgess

was taken to hospital he had used a small like a pocket knife and had been cutting at his neck

so once he was assessed medically it was determined that he hadn't cut any main artery

so he hadn't lost he'd lost quite a bit of blood but it required some stitching

he didn't require surgery but then he had to be held over for a psych assessment

in the meantime police got another warrant they needed to search the home it was the next night

after josh was released from hospital that he was arrested and taken to calgary police headquarters

detective kurt jacobs was the first to try to get josh to open up hey josh hey doing all right

consider him i'm kirk i know that shannon's dead

and i also know that you're responsible for her death

i know that definitively what's going through your head buddy i really miss her you miss her yeah

yeah look at this picture and tell me what you would say to her if you could

same thing i always said to her yeah what was that that i loved very much that you love her very much

well into the wee hours of the following day detective witt went in to talk to burgess

you can tell me do the right thing for shannon and tell me but burgess wasn't willing to talk

anymore detectives decided to let him rest but before they did they let him know one more thing

the cadaver dogs are finding some stuff right now so there's a lot

going on at the house so we're going to focus our attention on that right now

and you can have a sleep and someone will be in to speak with you tomorrow

as cadaver dog searched his home josh burgess slept morning josh

get any sleep i think so a little bit in the morning detective jacobs came in with an update

we have shannon body she's been recovered but there's no doubt

you're responsible for the death of shannon we have evidence you've

already admitted to killing her her body's been recovered on your property

police found shannon she had been at their home all along

did you intend for this to happen josh

can you put your head up for a few minutes i know it's listen i know this is tough josh

i know it's difficult for you but i realize that

burgess was again left alone he stared at shannon's head shot and whispered

josh i just got some stuff here i'm gonna hook up

i'm a detective at the home segment a short time later a third officer detective ray bangloy

took over the interview my goal my purpose of this interview is try to get the truth out of him

ultimately this is for for court purposes and obviously the more

information we have the better and it's also for the victim's family so they can understand as to

what happened and why this happened detective bang loy is a veteran police investigator and

wit's current partner he does undercover work and that's why we're not showing his face

he's well known for his interview skills and for getting offenders to confess i'm not here to judge

you detective bangloy had the green light from the prosecutor to charge him but he wanted to

give burgess one final chance to tell his side of the story i came home she was on the couch

there's a little bit of misunderstanding where shannon believes that josh said break up sex and that's when she kind

of just goes off on on josh and starts saying very cruel things he mentions um to josh that

she regretted marrying him that she never needed him by her side and that he was the worst husband

and just a lot of very cruel things and after that josh was trying to just calm

her down and actually puts his hand on her mouth and shannon bites his hand

and screams i just wanted her to stop talking you wanted her to stop talking but what was she saying

she said she was disgusted touching you what else did she do what else did she say

and what happened i

he choked shannon until she was lifeless he seemed very remorseful and as he was

telling me uh what happened he was he was crying and very emotional um but once he did get the

story out you could just tell it was it was cathartic and it was like a huge weight off his

shoulders you know you think about it eight months of carrying this lie and betraying the family that

took him in it was a huge emotional relief for him shannon was gone murdered by her husband

the entire time she was missing he kept her at their home while police searched the house more

than once they never looked inside the storage containers on the back porch he said he put bags

of empty bottles all around her so no one would notice then just two weeks before his arrest he

moved her body and buried her in the yard i chose my lawn because it i just didn't want her to leave

i didn't want to hide her burgess maintained his silence right up until that day he blurted his

confession out to detective wit he even stood with the family as they made a plea to the public for

help knowing the whole time exactly where shannon was i think josh was still very attached to her

and didn't and this isn't something he'd ever done before i think he didn't know

what to do with her body and he didn't know how to really part with her in maybe some ways and i

don't know if that's what led to him hanging on to her for so long certainly not something you

would normally see usually people try to get rid of the evidence quickly and that's not what he did

after the break shannon's family finally learns the truth about what happened to shannon

but would there be justice in her case

police had a confession but would the punishment fit the crime in her family's eyes

and now here's nancy hickst with the conclusion of shannon mcdill's last audition

josh burgess was charged with the second degree murder of Shannon Madill her family

finally began to grieve the loss a memorial is being planned for this sunday for a calgary woman

murdered earlier this year the family of shannon madill burgess has been on an emotional roller

coaster first she was missing for months then her body was discovered and her husband is charged

with her murder nancy hicks is covering this story and nancy her family wants to celebrate shannon's

life well this family has really been through the worst possible nightmare first not knowing what

happened to shannon and then getting the worst news possible when her body was found so now

nine months after she was last seen her family is going to hold a tribute to the 25 year old

the sister will always be there to listen to laugh to lean on to comfort or simply to care

there's no one who's more in your corner and no one you're more grateful to

there's no better friendly sister and no better sister than you

the truth about what happened that fateful night wouldn't come out until more than two years later

during the court proceedings good afternoon we have breaking news from the calgary court center

joshua burgess has pled guilty to second-degree murder in the death of his wife shannon

global's nancy hixt is at the court with the latest nancy what can you tell us on this

well the justice in this case will be passing his sentence in just a few minutes burgess faces an

automatic life sentence defense and the crown have made a joint submission

for parole ineligibility suggesting that burgess served 10 years before

he is eligible for any kind of release there were tears in the courtroom as the details of

the killing of shannon Shannon Madill burgess were read along with emotional victim impact statements

joshua burgess admits he strangled his wife to death first with his hands and then his belt

he then hit her body in a large plastic container that he kept on his patio for about seven

months before burying her in his front yard he waited until the very last second to plead guilty

based off of his behavior with the murder with everything he did afterwards

the ways in which he intentionally went around to save his own hide repeatedly

i find it very hard to believe that his choice to plead guilty had anything

to do with helping us i believe it was entirely a selfish decision

because he didn't want his confession to be aired and he didn't want to have to sit through a trial

i should clarify because there was no trial the videotaped confession wasn't played in court the

first time his confession was made public was on an episode of my crimebeat podcast about shannon's

case josh burgess was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for at least 10 years

no sentence would ever be sufficient to make up for the loss we've endured i think it's something

that we've all kind of had to to to weigh uh you know the sense of betrayal of him sitting with us

conversing with us and um you know that i think just makes it that much more difficult to

to process shannon's family trusted josh he was like family to them so this

was the ultimate betrayal the fact that that he led us on for seven months and was quite

prepared to pretend he knew nothing about it and let us you know have to live with all of the

the not knowing and that betrayal was really the only emotion that i felt i was not angry with him

i was not i didn't want to harm him it was sadness and betrayal it was how could you do

this to us and to our family we supported you when we thought that your wife was missing and you've

done this thing the real gut punch happened when i finally found out the whole story because at this

point in time i still believed that even if he was involved it had to have been an accident some way

i never thought that he actually intentionally would hurt her but more you have a fight at the

top of the stairs push her she hits her head on the way down and he panicked that was sort of the

narrative that i had up until this point it wasn't it wasn't an accident he he chose to kill her

josh burgess is eligible to apply for day parole in july of 2022 shannon's

family plans to attend those hearings so the parole board fully understands the impact

of his crime the way i like to describe it is that there's a little piece of my heart that's died

and that's where she lives and sometimes i can take it out and grieve over it

and then i can put it away and go back to what i was doing before

shannon used to come to this spot to walk her dog or take in a view of the city it's

just blocks from where she lived with josh it's where her ashes are scattered and it's where her

family comes to remember her on her birthday and raise a glass in her honor she was such a

an amazing funny creative intelligent individual that i just find it so sad that that that was

taken away and you know i'm selfish i i'm i'm very sad it was taken away from me i'm sad it was taken

away from all of the family and beyond that i'm sad that it was taken away from the world that

because i think she could have done some really amazing things if she'd been given the time to

the countless home videos of shannon are treasures her family holds dear

there even just for a few moments she comes alive again on screen

at the end of her final audition tape recorded the same day she was killed shannon signs off it's the

closest thing to a goodbye her family ever got to hear so so yeah uh that's me uh are we good

thanks i'm gonna go i have to do this editing thing for tonight you're gonna edit this right

a memorial scholarship was handed out in Shannon Madill's name in 2019

the gems for gem charity organization presented the special award to a survivor

of domestic abuse to honor shannon's memory with the gift of education

i'm anthony robart thank you for joining us tonight on crime week

want more on this crime beat episode listen to my crimebeat podcast

now for free on apple podcasts spotify or wherever you find your favorite

podcasts