ANATOMY OF A COVERUP-Paul Palango

FOLLOW-UP TO THE #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER 22 MURDERS
The truth about the deadliest criminal incident in Canadian history has remained untold—until now.
Investigative journalist Paul Palango’s 22 Murders examined the April 2020 shooting spree committed by Gabriel Wortman that began in Portapique, Nova Scotia, and ended thirteen and a half hours later when Wortman was shot dead by RCMP officers. The episode left numerous serious questions in its wake—most especially why was the killer able to evade police in such limited geography for so long?
Since then, the government called a public inquiry into the massacres—the Mass Casualty Commission. Though Palango unearthed a treasure trove of evidence pointing to the possibility that Wortman or someone close to him was acting as a police agent, the commission evaded all the big questions and let the RCMP off with a slap on the wrist. To this day, no one has been held accountable.
In his new book, Palango continues to crack the case, delving deeper into the evidence and testimonies of the witnesses who have been ignored. Drawing on his vast experience as an investigative reporter, he has mined the thousands of pages of commission documents to reveal the wall of secrecy and deceptions constructed by the RCMP and the criminal justice system, exposing new facts that may alter the public’s perception of what really happened.
A tour-de-force of reportage, Anatomy of a Cover-Up accomplishes what the commission set out to do—uncover the truth about the Nova Scotia massacres and bring long overdue justice to its victims. ANATOMY OF A COVERUP: The Truth about the RCMP and the Nova Scotia Massacres—Paul Palango











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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
killers in true crime history and the authors that have
written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK. Every
week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,

(00:30):
journalist and author Dan Zupanski.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Bity me. This is the follow up to the number
one national bestseller Twenty two Murders. The truth about the
deadliest criminal incident in Canadian history has remained untold until now.
Investigative journalist Paul Plangel's twenty two Murders examined the April

(01:00):
twenty twenty shooting spree committed by Gabriel Whartman that began
in portapic Nova, Scotia and ended thirteen and a half
hours later when Whartman was shot dead by RCNP officers.
The episodes left numerous serious questions in its wake, most
especially why was the killer able to evade police in

(01:23):
such limited geography for so long. Since then, the government
called a public inquiry into the massacres, the Mass Casualty Commission,
Though Pelango unearthed a treasure trove of evidence pointing to
the possibility that Whartman or someone close to him was
acting as a police agent. The Commission evaded all the

(01:47):
big questions and let the RCMP off with a slap
on the wrist. To this day, no one has been
held accountable. In this new book, Pelango continues to crack
the case, delving deeper into the evidence and testimonies of
the witnesses who have been ignored, Drawing on his vast

(02:10):
experience as an investigative reporter, his mind the thousands of
pages of commissioned documents to reveal the wall of secrecy
and deceptions constructed by the RCNP and the criminal justice system,
exposing new facts that may alter the public's perception of
what really happened. A touredive force of reportage, Anatomy of

(02:36):
a cover Up, accomplishes what the commissions set out to do,
uncover the truth about the Nova Scotia massacres and bring
long overdue justice to its victims. The book they were
featuring this evening is Anatomy of a cover up. The
Truth about the RCNP and the Nova Scotia Massacres with

(02:59):
my special guest, investigative journalist and author Paul Poleango. Welcome back,
to the program and thank you very much for this interview.
Paul Polego.

Speaker 3 (03:12):
It's great to be back, Dan, thank you so.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Much, and congratulations on your latest book, Anatomy of a
cover Up.

Speaker 3 (03:20):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
First off, just for people that are tuning in now
and don't know the story of your other book, twenty
two Murders, tell us just briefly about the publishing of
the book twenty two Murders.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
Well after the massacres of twenty two people in Nova
Scotia in April twenty twenty, on the weekend of eighteenth
and nineteenth of that month, I became involved in the
story and following the story, and it became apparent to
me that the Roal Canadian amount of police were attempting

(03:58):
to perpetrate a cover up. This was based on my
experience and my lengthy experience with public inquiries and covering
the RCMP. I've written five books about them, and when
I looked at it, I thought that I've always seen
cover ups retrospectively. I've come across them and late in

(04:19):
the game and analyze them, and the media and politicians
basically said, you're a conspiracy theorist, and I knew, you know,
I was dealing with facts and that I could see
this cover up coming, and I thought they would use
the same playbook. So twenty two Murders was written to
force a public inquiry that was going to be called

(04:42):
into the massacres, to deal with people in facts and names.
Things I put on the public record, and then I
knew this would cause them to generate all kinds of
paper and information they were likely going to hide. But
once they did that, I knew where to look at
how to find it. And that basically leads to the

(05:04):
publication of anatomy of a cover up, because I take
apart the cover up and show what happened, what was
hidden in plain sight, and how it worked.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
You're right that there are twenty five truths about the
Nova Scotia massacres. Twenty two of those truths have names.
Tell us about the other three truths in this Nova
Scotia massacres.

Speaker 3 (05:29):
Well, the main truth is that the RCMP RCMP officers
on the ground during the thirteen and a half hour
rampage by Gabriel Wortman that led to all these deaths
did nothing. They saved no one. They didn't get in

(05:49):
front of him. There were no roadblocks. He drove around
for probably one hundred and fifty miles around Nova Scotia
on a Sunday morning, picking off people. You're in there,
including an RCMP constable, Heidi Stephenson. The other truth, one
of the other truth is truth is they were lying,
The government and the police were lying. They were covering up,

(06:13):
and that was a truth that was evident from the beginning.
There wasn't any other. So there was no heroism at
all on the part of the RCMP, and they were
protected from the beginning by the government, and governments involved
the bureaucracy, the Department of Justice, and so the truth
was stimied almost at every turn.

Speaker 2 (06:34):
This public inquiry was named the Mass Casualty Commission, and
you talked about public inquiries that you had written about
and witnessed before. What was this Mass Casualty Commission? What
was its premise in the first place, as you write,
how are they going to conduct this public inquiry?

Speaker 3 (06:56):
Well, right off the bat, the government indicated that it
would be trauma informed, that they didn't want to hurt
anyone else's feelings or cause any more of pain, and
that the principles of restorative justice that are typical in
the Indigenous community would be applied to it, which right

(07:17):
away signal to me that some shenanigans were up. Because
when the government says it cares about your feelings and
the police say they're worried that they don't want to
hurt your feelings anymore, I get really really suspicious. As
for the restorative justice principles, there were no Indigenous people

(07:37):
involved in this other than some of the police officers
who many of them who did nothing. It signaled to
me that they were not going to be playing this
straight or trying to get to the real truth, which
proved to be the fact.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
And you talk about that they threw around the word
that governments always throw around this transparent, and see that
this commission would be transparent.

Speaker 3 (08:03):
Yes, it's like Shakespeare would have had fun with that.
Every time they got into a difficult situation where they
were trying to hide something important, the commissioner, former Chief
Justice of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court, J. Michael McDonald,
would say we're going to be absolutely transparent here, and

(08:24):
then as I go through it, I show you he
was anything but transparent. It was totally opaque. They basically
cut short testimony anything that was sort of headed into
waters they didn't want to go where the transparency lay
just prevented any real discussion of what happened. It was

(08:47):
the opposite of transparent and every step of the way.

Speaker 2 (08:51):
What was the role of the victims families in terms
of having this mass Casualty mission not proceed as the
Mass Casualty Commission originally had planned. What was the role
of the families in changing that direction?

Speaker 3 (09:12):
Well, in the months after the massacres in twenty twenty,
the government and the RCMP signaled that they were going
to do a review and this review. Then they finally
announced the review in July twenty twenty, which meant that
these three commissioners McDonald and two others, one who was

(09:35):
highly politically connected to the federal government was sort of
a fixer for the federal government, would conduct a review,
which meant they would look at all the paperwork in
a hotel room somewhere, order sandwiches over a couple of days,
find a couple of minor misdeeds, give the RCMP a
slap on the rest, they go home. Nothing to see here.

(09:56):
The families were so outraged by this review, as were
a lot of citizens. Law school professors, lawyers, themselves politicians.
I wrote about it extensively that this was part of
the cover up. So then they announced the federal and
provincial government announced a joint federal provincial public inquiry headed

(10:21):
by the same three people who were going to conduct
the review. So essentially they were still going to conduct
the review, but pretend it was a public inquiry. And
that's again largely what transpired.

Speaker 2 (10:36):
What were you doing and writing as a journalist, and
what was the and tell us about Frank magazine.

Speaker 3 (10:43):
I started out, you know, I was in my early
seventies when this started. I didn't think I'd be doing
this for five years or longer. I started out wanting
to help other journalists with what I knew about the
RCMP and what they were doing based on my extensive
knowledge writing about them for over thirty years. All the reporters,

(11:05):
the mains, the legacy and alternative reporters basically said go away,
old man, we don't need your help. And I could
see the pattern that was emerging. They were going to
cover the story for a couple of weeks and then
lose interest and move on to the next flower show
or the next shiny object. I was running out of
places to publish. I had some places that took a

(11:27):
story here and a story there, and eventually it got
into the fall of twenty twenty, and I wanted to
write about Lisa Banfield, who was the common law wife
of the shooter, Gabriel Wortman. At this point, six to
eight months afterwards, she had not been named by the government,

(11:48):
the police. They were all protecting her, treating her as
a victim. And the only one who had named her
was Frank Magazine, and they cleverly described and Frank Magazine
is a satirical magazine with two different versions of it,
one in Ottawa and one on the East coast of
Canada and the Atlantic. Frank cleverly did a piece on

(12:09):
Lisa Banfield, calling her a hero and identifying her as
a hero to get her name out and as Andrew Douglas,
the editor of Frank said at the time, who could
complain about that? But he got her name out there.
And then as I investigated her, I wanted to write
a story because I said, her story doesn't make sense

(12:30):
to me. There are too many questions, and I was
warned by other journalists don't do that. Women's groups will
be marching on We had a business, we made fuse glass,
and we had a business in Chester, Nova Scotia. And
one reporter says, women's groups will be marching on your
store and protesting because she's a victim and you're going
to be victim shaming her. And I said, no, I

(12:52):
don't believe her story, and there's supporting evidence why I
should not believe her story and the public should know
about it. So I went to Andrew Douglass at Frank
Magazine and we cut a deal. I didn't want to
write in Frank's satirical, starky fashion. I said, I'll just
report the story and you run it. And that became

(13:12):
sort of a marriage made in heavens. We transformed Frank
from being a snarky satirical magazine and gossip magazine into
a sort of a paper of record about the facts
of the Nova Scotia massacres, and that worked out very
very well. I mean we were able to get out stories,
put names on the record, put scenarios on the record,

(13:34):
basically find more of the real story, and back the
police and the government into a corner.

Speaker 2 (13:42):
You talk about that. J Michael McDonald, former Chief Justice
as Nova Scotia is the chairman of this commission, but
also Leanne Fitch, former police chief and doctor Kim Stanton.
Can you just tell us their backgrounds which seemed to
be very in for this commission.

Speaker 3 (14:01):
Well. I found that McDonald from the beginning was a
suspect choice as Chief Justice of the Nova Scotia Court.
He was involved in a case overseeing a case years
earlier involving the former Premier of Nova Scotia, Gerald Reagan,
who was charged with multiple sexual offenses involving young girls.

(14:23):
And when the case finally came to trial, Donald found
a way to get the most serious charges stayed and
eventually the others were dismissed. And people were outraged by this,
and he was seen to be a Liberal Party bagman
who would do favors for the Liberal Party which was
in power at the time of the massacres at the

(14:45):
federal level and the provincial level in Nova Scotia. Leanne
Fitch was a for police chief in Fredericton, New Brunswick
and she was applauded widely applauded for being the first
openly gay female police chief in Canada. The problem with Fitch,

(15:06):
there are many problems with Fitch. In my mind, she
was married to a cop in Frederton. She was the
police chief at the time. Gabriel Wortman was conducting some
criminal activities in that area and she likely was aware
of it and had an interest in covering it up.

(15:26):
After she stopped being the police chief in New Brunswick
in Frederton, she eventually became a member of the RCMP
Management Advisory Board two months before the massacres. So she
was in cahoots with had pictures taken with Lee Bergerman,

(15:47):
the Assistant Commissioner of the RCMP in Nova Scotia. They
were like buddies. They were all part of a women's
policing group and she was as she continued to be
part of the National Police in tell diligence operations and
overseeing committees. So she was a police insider at every

(16:07):
step of the way, in an RCMP insider. She resigned
the Management Advisory Board thing. But her father was also
a Mountie. Her late father was a Mountie. I mean,
there's no way she should have been there overseeing what
the mount he's had done. And as for Stanton, she
was involved in women's groups and had written a trees

(16:29):
on what the public inquiries are there to basically do
social engineering, not to get to the facts. And that again,
that's what happened, and I described the evolution of that
public inquiry process. You know, Stanton was stating a fact,
but she was the wrong person there. She was not

(16:50):
you know, she was part of the women's groups, the
women groups, and she was part of testified as witnesses.
I don't know why. Nobody could understand why they were there,
but the government sort of muddied the investigative side of
things by bringing in indigenous groups and other groups that
had nothing to do with us.

Speaker 2 (17:10):
Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
these messages now from this Mass Casualty Commission. What is
it in the beginning their official narrative regarding Lisa Banfield
and what is the initially their stated focus of this inquiry.

Speaker 3 (17:33):
Well, Lisa Banfield the official you know, the official narrative
evolved to be something like this. It changes over time,
but the initial narrative was there was a party at
workmen in Banfield's warehouse, man Cave women Cave at one

(17:53):
thirty six Orchard Beach Drive in Port of pech Nova, Scotia.
A fight breaks out over some sort of conversation with
a couple from Maine. Banfield goes home, goes to bed
around seven o'clock at night. Workman eventually comes. There's a fight.
He drags her out naked from bed, cuffs her around,

(18:16):
ties her up with bathrobes, robe cords, handcuffs her, fires
bullets near her head into the ground, burns his cottage down,
locks her in the back of a replica police car
that he had. She climbed through the silent patrolman, got

(18:37):
out of the handcuffs, escaped into the woods and spent
all night in the woods at zero degrees temperature that's
thirty two degrees fahrenheit, so freezing temperatures, scantily clad, and
eventually survived without hypothermia. And the Mass casually Commission and

(18:58):
the AIRCNP shell her from the beginning as a victim
of domestic violence, and the focus of the inquiry had
nothing to do with it, would not delve into Gabriel
Whartman's criminal background, which was extensive, but into sort of

(19:20):
rather weak allegations about domestic violence. In fact, the most
egregious event happened eight years earlier, and Lisa Banfield never
made a complaint. In fact, she didn't even remember a
complaint being made.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
You write that she had been interviewed initially by police
and so, and she didn't speak in front of this
commission till July twenty twenty two. She talks about what
Whartman does after he puts her in the car and
thinks she's secured in his cop car. What does she
hear and what does she think the plan is for Wharpman,

(20:02):
which includes her sister.

Speaker 3 (20:04):
Apparently, well, her story sort of, it's hard to nail
down what the real story was, but you know, Worman
said he was distressed by COVID. Her according to her,
he was distressed by COVID. The world economy was failing.
He was cashing out all his assets. He was going

(20:28):
to become a survivalist. And then in a fit of rage,
he burned down their beautiful, extensive log cabin cottage which
was like a mini mansion, and burned down his warehouse.
And then he was going to kill a bunch of people,
including her sister, And eventually he killed the thirteen of

(20:50):
his or He was accused of killing thirteen of his
neighbors and nine other people. That was about it as
far you know, I guess there twists in turns along
the way, but we'll get into it.

Speaker 2 (21:04):
Tell us about Gabriel Wartman in terms of he's supposed
to be this wealthy genturist, but also he has this
he's a collector, and he has four known replica RCMP cars.

Speaker 3 (21:19):
Well not replica cars. He had four decommissioned police cars
okay that were stripped, but one of them, twenty and
seventeen four tourists he rebuilt into a replica of an
actual police cruiser with a silent patrolman, a radar unit, lights, decals.

(21:43):
It was to the you know, at a glance, it
looked like a real police car.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
Also that he had numerous motorcycles, you say, sixteen motorbikes,
he had four by fours. But also that he had
a known reputation as a person that smuggled various things
from Maine in the US.

Speaker 3 (22:06):
He when he went to university at the University of
New Brunswick. For people who don't know, Fredericton is about
a forty five minute hour drive from the border crossing
at Holton, Maine, which is the top of I ninety
five going down the East coast. When he was in Fredericton,
he was hooked up with a crooked lawyer named Tom Evans.

(22:29):
There are some suggestions that they had a relationship because
Evans was gay and he'd had relationships with other young
men and they were involved in smuggling cigarettes, guns, everything
across the border, either the land crossings or by boat
across the Bay of Fundy at the top of the
Bay of Fundy, or not the Bay of Fundy but

(22:51):
the Gulf of Maine in the top there. He'd been
doing that and bragging about it for years. Drugs, guns, rifles, grenades,
and he was bringing them into the country and then
selling them and motorcycles motorcycle parts all the time. So
he was he was active in doing this and there's

(23:13):
some suggestion that the police knew about this, but nothing
was done.

Speaker 2 (23:20):
Also, in the initial police report, Lisa Banfield pold police
of the weaponry that she believed Warpman possessed.

Speaker 3 (23:29):
Well, yeah, she professed to be someone who didn't know
anything about guns, but then she would talk about them
as military style guns, you know, a glock. He had
a Ruger, a Ruger Mini, which was like a small
AR fifteen. He had shot an antique shotgun and he

(23:51):
had sniper rifles. I don't think she talked about the
sniper rifles or the grenades. Others talked about them. But
he had about four or five guns. But he always
had a lot. But it wasn't a massive arsenal as
the police made it out to be.

Speaker 2 (24:07):
At this inquiry, obviously, the commission talks about the police response.
Lisa Banfield is not discovered by police till six thirty am.
So this occurs after ten pm the night before. She
has found at six thirty am. So tell us what

(24:28):
the inquiry says and states as the police response initially
to this massacre.

Speaker 3 (24:37):
Well, Lisa Banfield says, she disappears into the woods. She
has no nothing on her feet, hands, It's zero degrees.
It's snowed in Halifax, which is about an hour and
twenty minute drive to the south that night, so it
was very very cold and in the morning the police
curiously there are thirteen people dead in the community. The

(25:01):
RCMP doesn't know that, but they they know there are
bodies lying on the road down Orchard Beach Drive, Lisa
McCully and Corey Ellis, and they know there's a few
other bodies at the house of the Blair family, but
they don't know the extent of anything. And then they
send off their members home around Speginning around six a m.

(25:27):
And then, miraculously, at around six point thirty three, Banfield
shows up at the house of Leon Jodrey, who lived
at the north end of the portapict development. And Leon Jodrey,
who worked in the as a department, you know, as
a forester working for the provincial government, knew the forests

(25:49):
and he said she came up and he was shocked
to see her. And in his estimation, he told the
original policeman he was dealing with, I don't believe her
story that she was in the woods all night because
she doesn't have hypothermia. She's not dirty, he said. She
looked like she had fresh makeup on and her clothing

(26:11):
was barely soiled. And then the commission, however, and the
RCMP along the way, completely ignored Leon Jodriy. They just
refused to deal the factor indications that Jodrey was harassed
by the RCMP, and all that was accepted of the
testimony was that Banfield was brutalized, she was lucky to survive,

(26:40):
and never questioning depth about the nature of the fight
she had with Wortman, the nature of their finances. As
you pointed out, she testified in July twenty twenty two,
July fifteenth, in fact, and it wasn't until a few
days after she testified that Werbman and Banfield's financial records

(27:01):
were put out and nobody that was never brought before
the commission, the media never reported on it, and her
financial records showed the contrary to the mcc and RCMP
story that she made fifteen thousand dollars a year and
was basically a work in sex slave of Wortmen. Well,

(27:22):
she barely lived with Wortman in the nineteen months prior
to the massacres on her visas alone, never mind her
debit card or cash purchases. On her visas alone, she
was spending in excess of approximately five tho two hundred
dollars a month and the bills were all paid for,

(27:45):
so almost one hundred and sixty thousand dollars and visas alone,
twenty thousand at a discount clothing store, you know, twenty
thousand here, ten thousand there at makeup stores. So she
wasn't as hard done by as she seemed. But that
was all kept from the public eye.

Speaker 2 (28:04):
Let's get back to the police and their stated reason
for dismissing all of those RCNP officers at six in
the morning. What was the reason behind them being let
go go home?

Speaker 3 (28:20):
Well, they never really give a reason, Dan, I mean,
the only reason we knew that they went home at
six thirty early on was that at a roadside memorial
for some of the victims who were killed on the
second day, a mount he showed up in full dress,
a teary eyed mount He showed up in full dress uniform.

(28:41):
His name was Sergeant Dave Lilly, And in the while
he was standing there, he told a reporter, a freelance
reporter who was working for the Globe and Mail in Toronto,
that everyone was sent home at six point thirty and
he didn't understand why, and most of the contingent of
mountings had gone home, and the next shift wasn't coming

(29:03):
into like ten in the morning, and the RCMP never
really explains why that happened. But in that gap, that's
when Lisa Banfield showed up at Leon Jodrey's house and
was whisked away to the hospital, but not even to
the hospital. First to a sort of a command center,
and then to the hospital. Her injuries, which were first

(29:27):
described as minor by those attending her in the ambulance,
suddenly became spinal injuries later and when she appears before
the Mass Casualty Commission, she says she seems to have
difficulty understanding or recounting what her injuries were, and says
her wrist hurt from pulling off the handcuffs. But the

(29:50):
problem with that story was that in the original story,
and this is typical of the story. The original story,
she was handcuffed in the back of the car. She
escaped fro acculously from the handcuffs, crawled through the silent patrolman,
and got away. But later on it was revealed the
handcuffs were only on one wrist, So why did she
struggle to take it off one risk when all she

(30:12):
had to do was run. She's starting to be being killed. Sure,
none of it made sense now.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
Also, the premise for the police, we talked about them
going home at the round six am, six thirty am
and before them before they even know of Lisa Banfield
and what has happened to her before her account is
in front of the police, But what is the premise,

(30:43):
What is the what do the police believe is a
situation with Whartman? Is he shot? Is he committed suicide?
And can he leave? If not shot or committed suicide,
can he leave port a Peak? Can he leave the air?
What is the police position?

Speaker 3 (31:02):
Well, they figure that morning, they figure we have it
locked down. There's only one main road out of the
out of Portapec And later on they discovered a second
road through a blueberry field and they blocked that off
in the middle of the night. And then there's a
small patrol of a swat team that they call him
the Ert And in the RCMP, that small patrol heard

(31:29):
a gunshot in the middle of the night and they thought,
they speculated, oh, that's Gabriel Wortman committing suicide. So in
the morning we'll go hunt the woods. And this is
a heavily wooded area, small population, like only one hundred
people probably year round, two hundred and fifty in the summer.

(31:49):
They figured out, well, he's dead in the woods, and
Lisa Banfield, Uh, she's probably dead in the woods. We'll
go take care of the dead people who are lying
out in the open. In the morning, they did nothing
that a normal police force would do in this situation.
And then this speculation such as it was, turned deadly
because the next morning at nine point thirty they had

(32:10):
to call about another fire an an hour's drive to
the North Away shooting. Then there's three people dead there
another person dead, and they wake up to the fact
that Nova Special wakes up to the fact that Gabriel
Wartman's driving around the province shooting people and the RCNP
is seems completely flabbergasted and handcuffed and doesn't it what

(32:33):
to do?

Speaker 2 (32:35):
You say, they're handcuffed. But part of that is that
he has this replica RCMP car. Also, he has this
person who has given him the cows which would make
it look like a replica police car. And he has
a replica RCNP uniform on No.

Speaker 3 (32:57):
He had a real RCMP uniform. His uncles and his
cousin were RCMP officers. He had collected RCNP officers, postal
employee uniforms, he fire department uniforms. He had all kinds
of paraphernalia. And one of his best friends was a
Halifax police officer on the Halifax Police Force. He had this.

(33:23):
He had the police for the decals he got The
interesting thing was the decals were installed by his neighbor
who recently had been paroled. His name was Peter Griffin,
and he was paroled after being charged in Alberta with
drug trafficking and was hooked up with the Mexican Cartels
and La Familia laf Familia and MS thirteen thel Salvadorian

(33:50):
Street gang and the Hell's Angels because his family had
ties to the Hell's Angels. Historically, Peter Griffin installed the
decals on the police car while he was on parole
and oddly never charged with any offense.

Speaker 2 (34:08):
Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
these messages. Now we're talking about the next day, thirteen
people have been murdered. The police have no idea initially
that next morning that he's hidden out nearby. They do
not know that they have not contained him whatsoever, and

(34:29):
most of the force believes he's dead anyway. But when
they do get reports the next day him driving around
shooting people, they use as communication the RCNP Twitter, even
though they're not maybe using it to their full capacity,
but also that they decide not to scare the public

(34:52):
with reports of what Wartman is doing, so could you
explain that for us.

Speaker 3 (34:57):
Well during the day. You know, this thirds at ten
o'clock at night on Saturday night, and the first RCMP
Republic report is about eleven twenty six pm when it
puts out a Twitter notice saying that a tweet that
the RCMP are responding to gunshots in the area of Portapic.

(35:22):
It had been going on for an hour and a half,
so they were trying to clean it up and they
said people stay in their houses and during the night
they had updated tweets. But the problem was and they
were vague tweets, they weren't specific tweets. And the problem
was that in Nova Scotia a small percentage of people

(35:46):
followed Twitter at that time, and who follows it in
the middle of the night anyways, and so none of that,
there was no public warning put out. There was a
public alert system in place, they didn't use it. So
the next morning when he started up and he, you know,
he started coming back to the area of porta Peck

(36:07):
in his car after killing three people in Wentworth, a
woman walking down the road on Highway four. And then
eventually he goes to a house in a place called Glenholm,
not that far from Portapec. He's going back to the
area where the original killings are and there's no police.
He goes to the house, the Fisher House at Glenholme.

(36:28):
The RCMP respond lately to that. Well, the thing that
happens there Dan He passes an RCMP corporal going to
the house on Glenholm and the corporal recognizes him as
the potential shooter, but is afraid to pursue him, so
drives for almost a mile before he turns around and
loses sight of him. Then the RCMP stage miss him again.

(36:53):
He gets away, kills two home nurses who are in
separate vehicles in a place called Bert and keeps driving
towards Halifax. He goes through all a town called Truro,
about fourteen thousand people. It has its own police force.
They don't put out a warning. And this is the
interesting thing. He is shown on camera driving through Truro,

(37:17):
passing people walking on the street. He didn't shoot any
of them, And you have to wonder why was he
shooting the people he shot and why only in RCMP.

Speaker 2 (37:27):
Territory, right, And that's part of your discovery as well,
with this entire anatomy of a cover up. Is the
reasons why Gilbert Wartman killed some of the people that
he did.

Speaker 3 (37:42):
Well, He killed some of the people. Gets back to Banfield.
Bamfield was always portrayed as his common law wife of
nineteen years, but the documents clearly show they had a
polyamorous relationship, that he was her primary and she was
his primary. Praises from the world of polyamory. So they

(38:05):
were having sex with multiple people. It appears in the
Rampage he shoots a number of women who he had
had sexual partners, and it makes you wonder why did
he do that? What was the purpose of that? Was
he trying to please Banfield? Is a reasonable question. He
killed one of the people. He one couple he killed

(38:28):
the first ones, Jamie and Greg Blair. Jamie Blair haad
ties to the to a Hell's Angels murder twenty years
earlier killed Aaron Tuck, who had ties to another motorcycle gang.
It just Sean McLeod was an Atlanta Jenkins who he
killed on the Sunday morning and spent three hours unexplained

(38:52):
to this day what he was doing at their house.
They were corrections officers who worked at federal penitentiaries in
Truro and spring Hill, Nova Scotia. No idea why he
was there, and then he burned their house down after
he left. It's just all very mysterious and it's never
really explored.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
You explore some of that theory that you have in
twenty two murders. What is your idea that you posit
about his involvement potentially with the Hell's Angels and also
with the RCMP themselves as a potential informant. Tell us

(39:33):
what you've discovered.

Speaker 3 (39:35):
Well, it struck me looking at what I know about
police operations, is that, especially in Canada, that when a
special operation is coming to an end, it's usually the
most dangerous that's the most dangerous time. When I was
trying to understand what was going on in workman's world

(39:57):
around him in Nova Scotia, Northern and Southern de Brunswick,
which is right next door, I thought what police operations
were going on at that time. So I did some investigation,
and a giant operation that had been going on for
a long period of time culminated with four arrests about

(40:18):
eight days before the massacres, and I started to look
at that and through various information I gathered, I was
told by some sources that Workman was likely a confidential
informative police agent involved in that operation. And the Hell's
Angels are particularly visible in eastern Canada because it's a

(40:43):
primary smuggling area. There's over three thousand you know, Nova
Scotia alone has about three thousand miles of coastline and
it's and it's tied to Maine, so it's a good
place to smuggle. Wortman was involved in that, and he
was he was so close to the criminal world that

(41:04):
one of the amazing things about the Mass Casualty Commission
that investigated this is they can find no criminal ties.
They didn't want to explore that. One more point on
that den as I get into the latter stages of
the book, I show that there are strange relationships, strange

(41:24):
things that Workman does. Are the way he identifies himself,
and some of the conversations that are recorded in emails
with Banfield and and some of the things he a
policeman in Halifax says about him indicate Workman was likely

(41:45):
a confidential informant. And this becomes sort of a conundrum
because if Worbman was not a confidential informant, just an
ordinary crazy guy, a dangerous who went crazy and shot
a bunch of people. Why are these references in the
record when you deal through the record like they shouldn't
be there, There should be nothing linking him to the RCMP.

(42:09):
And as I show in the book, there are all
kinds of references, including I think one of the best
that was completely misinterpreted by the mainstream media and the
alternative media covering this was an allegation that Worbman threatened
to kill a cop in twenty ten, twenty eleven. And
I go over that and that the RCMP purge that

(42:32):
from their records, but it was still in the records
of municipal police forces in Nova Scotia. Why was that?
And it finally became obvious that it was a cover
likely a cover story for Workman as an agent or
confidential informant. Because the police know the bikers can penetrate

(42:52):
their records, that they wanted to vet someone and check
out their bona fides to see if he really was
a bad guy. They go into the records and see
he threatened a cop. But even the cop he threatened
said he had no recollection of this. It was a
legend story, I think, But the other police forces had
it in the records as if it was a real thing,

(43:15):
and it came forward later. So that's part of the
sort of shenanigans going on behind the scene that shouldn't
be there if Wortman was not a confidential informant.

Speaker 2 (43:28):
You add some credibility to that with this strange Brinx
delivery of four hundred and seventy five thousand, just previous
to these massacres. Tell us what you discovered about that money.

Speaker 3 (43:43):
Because I was stymied by the media in conducting investigation,
I used talk radio and got on a show there
by Palk radio show, the Late now Late Rick Haw
And one day I was on the show and I said,
Stephen Are from mcclean's magazine has heard from a source

(44:04):
that Worban's got a million dollars delivered to him in
a bricks truck. And I heard from my own source
that was four hundred and fifty thousand in a breaks truck,
completely different sources. And so I went on Rick how
one day and I said, I had this conundrum that
we hear these two stories, and what is the truth.

(44:26):
Why would I do that? Well, getting back to what
we said earlier about the quality of media is so
bad in Canada. There's no sort of sense of competition.
You could tell them the story you were doing and
no one would follow up on it. I could do
it on the airwaves and say this is what I'm investigating,

(44:47):
this is what I want. When I finished rick House
Show that day, I got a call from someone who
said it was four hundred and seventy five thousand, and
I said, well, how can you approve it? He's and
said I've got the video of him getting the money,
and that it became a sort of a series of
negotiations that got the video, and that was sort of

(45:10):
the hallmark of an undercover operation, receiving money from a
Brinks operation. The RCNP and the mass Causilty Commission had
all kinds of documents saying it came from Workman's personal
money that he had saved, but it never they never
ever show where the money comes from. And secondly, the

(45:31):
mass Causilty Commission sort of glosses over this. When it
was all done, I went back to my original sources
and said one of the documents that was never discussed,
never released by the mass Casulty Commission was the release
form that Workman has seen shown signing on the video

(45:54):
in the cage at the BRINKX operation in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
And I asked my source who authorized the release of
the money, and my source on that document it says
the RCMP New Brunswick. That is never never, that was
completely ignored by the Mass Casualty Commission. But it makes

(46:17):
the case, like I said, that he was a confidential
informant and none of that stuff should be there if
he wasn't.

Speaker 2 (46:26):
But Jesus as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages.
One thing that people don't know is and then you
write about, is that sort of the relationship historically between
the RCNP and the government in terms of protection of
each other.

Speaker 3 (46:47):
Well. Absolutely, you know, people in Canada, you know, in
recent months have shook their head at what's going on
in the United States and Donald Trump wanting to take
care of takeover the FBI and politically put his political
appointees in place, and controlled the justice system and control

(47:08):
the entire process about how police the justice system work.
And I sort of laughed. I said, well that's the
way Canada is now. Canada has been like that since
nineteen eighty four. Because in nineteen eighty four there was
a public inquiry the McDonald Commission, which essentially I've always
argued was sort of set up under false pretenses, and

(47:30):
examined the RCMP, recommended changes in the RCMP that were
not entirely necessary, and then made the commissioner recommended and
the government immediately adopted this recommendation that the Commissioner of
the RCMP be a deputy minister in the government, which

(47:51):
made the Commissioner of the RCMP serve at the pleasure
of the Prime Minister. And this political fluence began sort
of the rot inside to the RCNP and what it's
become today. So if you look over the last since
nineteen eighty four, the number of high profile Canadian business

(48:12):
people or politicians who have been charged with a criminal
offense is almost is minuscule, almost zero, I mean high flying,
you know, powerful establishment businessman Conrad Black committed crimes in Canada,
was charged and convicted in the United States, served time
in the United States, and then sucked up to Donald

(48:35):
Trump and was pardoned by Donald Trump. But in Canada
nothing got done. And that was typical of how it
works across the country. That the RCMP was essentially neutered
and politically controlled by the government.

Speaker 2 (48:52):
Back to this Mass Casualty Commission. Many of these you
write about that no one was ross examined per se.
They testified, but because they didn't want to further apparently
further the trauma of the officers, or of the victim's
family or the witnesses. But there was a process that

(49:16):
really did not look like cross examination at all.

Speaker 3 (49:21):
No, there was no cross examination. Lawyers who represented some
of the families and other groups. They had all kinds
of groups they are muddying the waters, who had nothing
to do with the case itself. The lawyers had to
vet their questions with the commission and were given ground
rules on the questions they could ask. For example, Lisa

(49:42):
Banfield could not be cross examined because she was too fragile.
RCMP members who were on the scene could not be
cross examined because they were too fragile. It went on
and on and on. And one of the things that
one of the strategies used by the RCMP from the beginning,
which was the inquiry went along with, is that no

(50:07):
serious criminal charges were laid against anyone. There was no
serious criminal investigation that in that way they could protect
all the information. The RCMP destroyed information early on. I
got the memo. We demonstrated to them that we could
penetrate their walls. I got the memorandum saying there's a

(50:29):
moratorium on the destruction of evidence of the Gabriel Workman
case three months after the massacres. Four months after the massacres. Well,
the case is still being investigated and the mass CASI
the commission didn't even address that what was being destroyed
and why.

Speaker 2 (50:49):
One very important aspect of this mass casualty the mission
was the supposed investigation of what happened to Corey Ellison.
Originally in this commission it was deduced that he was
shot by Gabriel Wartman. What did you find in this regard?

Speaker 3 (51:11):
This is a key story and one of the things
I think the RCMP covered up, desperate to cover up,
and it explains a lot of their behavior the next morning,
about sending people away, leaving the bodies outside after Clinton Ellison,
Corey Ellison's brother came out of the woods. A couple

(51:31):
of days later. He gave an emotional interview on TV
where he said, I think the Mounties shot my brother
and people dismissed that he was very emotional. He had
some issues. Later he would can and say, oh, I
apologize to the mountings after the mountains put pressure on
him and talk to him, but he kept returning to it,

(51:55):
and the media dismissed him. When I got involved in
in looking at the case, like analyzing what happened in
every aspect of the case, and dan a line about this,
one of my citizen investigators, Ryan Potter, put it this way.
Imagine this entire event before it happened, while it happened,

(52:16):
and after it happened as a long train ride with
stations along the way, and at every station the train stops,
there's a terrible mess. Nothing is right, everything is upside down,
things are missing. Well, when I looked at the original
story of the RCMP narrative, they said workman left by

(52:39):
the blueberry Field road that they didn't know about, and
then they did. They sort of manipulated evidence to prove
that he did that. And you know, it's too long
to get into now, but what I show is that
didn't happen. He did not go through the blueberry Field
and they had the evidence, but they suppressed it. Why

(53:00):
is that important? Well, at the end, I show how
Leon Jodrey basically comes back from the dead, but his
phone records of Dean Dillman, another guy who was calling
Leon Jodry, and Dean Dillman was in a position he
worked for the government in natural resources as a forester
as well. He was at the scene that night, and

(53:22):
he was in a position that made it impossible for
Gabriel Wartman to get past him. So Gabriel Wortman didn't
go that way, and that meant that Gabriel Warman went
past the mount Hees who were manning the road at
portapeg Beach Road and Highway too. But how this relates
to Corey Ellison is that in the original narrative they

(53:46):
said Werbman shot Corey Ellison to escaped through the blueberry
field at ten forty five. They speculated this that was
their story before Dean Dillman came forward with records which
proved he was there at ten thirty eight to ten
fifty eight. The Wortman didn't go that way. The problem

(54:06):
is evidence came forward later from Corey Ellison's phone showing
he'd been shot at ten forty twelve. So if you
stitch everything together, it appears to me that Wortman was
not in that area at that time, and the likely
had already left the seat by the road and OURCNP officers.

(54:35):
Another odd thing. The first three nine one one calls
came from Orchard Beach Drive, desperate calls. Jamie Blair was
shot in the middle of hers the mount. He said
they did not go to that street till ten forty nine,
although they got there at ten twenty six. I've never
seen a nine to one one call where the police

(54:56):
did not go to the nine one one site. Cory
Ellison was killed across the street from where Lisa McCully,
one of Worman's girlfriends, was killed. I think they accidentally
shot him. And then there's three things that basically prove
or suggests that's true. On the first press conference held

(55:19):
by the RCMP and after the massacres, the Chief Superintendent,
Chris Leather said three referrals were going to be made
to the Police Watchdog Oversight Committee SERT to investigate the
shooting of Workman, the shoot up of the Oslo Belmont
fire hall, and an exchange of gunfire between the gunman

(55:42):
and RCNP officers last night. Then afterwards that disappears from
the public record. Wow In an early statement by to
the police that was left on the public record, Banfield,
who was hiding supposedly hiding in the woods in that area,
says I heard someone say how's it going, boys, and

(56:05):
then bang bang bang bang bang. The other factor is
that the autopsy report on Corey Ellison was briefly, almost
accidentally released by the Mass Casualty Commission and then pulled back,
but not before my citizen investigator, Ryan Potter, got a

(56:26):
copy of it, and it showed that the Corey Ellison
was shot five times. All Workman's victims were shot once
or twice, except for I think Greg Blair was shot
a couple of times on the porch of his house.
The way Ellison was shot suggests there was a police shooting.

(56:49):
By the volume of shots, Workman killed almost everyone with
a head shot, usually one shot. He was like a marksman.
Corey Ellison was shot multiple times. And the final twist
on this dan a few weeks ago after the book
was published, I got contacted by someone who said, I

(57:12):
want to talk to you about what happened that night
five years ago. My cousin was one of the Mounties
there that night my other cousin and I think our
cousin shot Corey Ellison And I said, well, I sort
of make that case without naming him. I said, I
had a choice with this bounty in that mounty, and
he was this mounting.

Speaker 2 (57:34):
What happens with Leon Jodrey. He is not treated well
by the police. He doesn't believe he's treated well. He's dismissed,
his account is dismissed. What happens, unfortunately to Leon Jodrey, he.

Speaker 3 (57:47):
Sort of slides into a depression. He was with the
Blairs the night before they were murdered. He was friends
with the Galensis. The neighbors on either side of him
were basically were murdered. Lisa McCully was his old girlfriend.
He tried to warn her about being near Workman, but
she was fascinated by Wortman. He went into a depression.

(58:08):
The RCMP didn't believe him, the media didn't believe him.
I believed him, and others believed him, and eventually at
Christmas twenty twenty he tried to live in the woods.
I think Christmas twenty twenty one, tried to live in
the bush and almost froze to death. His mental health deteriorated.

(58:29):
One night, he was going to move to a motel.
He stopped to talk to a mountain who was parked there,
asking for directions. One thing led to another. He was
arrested because he was bringing his guns to the motel.
He had them in the back of his truck. There's
an obscure law that you can't transport guns in the
middle of the night. And he was put in immediately

(58:51):
put into a mental facility, mental health facility, drugged, his
health deteriorated, and in the middle of doing our pod
cast one night, I got a call and he had
committed suicide. Terrible thing. I dedicated this book partly to
his memory because he always stood by his story and

(59:13):
I believed his story.

Speaker 2 (59:16):
Let's jes this as an opportunity to stop to hear
these messages. Now, let's get back to the Mass Casualty Commission.
And finally Lisa Banfield appears. Tell us who questions her
and the type of questioning and is that questioning limited

(59:36):
in any way?

Speaker 3 (59:38):
The lawyer they got to question Lisa band The lawyer
they got to question. Lisa Banfield was basically hired to
work for the commission. She was brought into the background
in women's rights and victimology basically and sort of went

(59:58):
soft pedaled the whole thing. Never asked her any tough questions.
It was just never got into any of her story,
just accepted everything that went along, and then the lawyers
of the families were not allowed to ask any tough questions.

Speaker 2 (01:00:19):
What was new, if anything, from what she had originally
told police to what was she officially said at this mission.

Speaker 3 (01:00:31):
Frankly, Dan, I don't think I don't see anything new
that she said that that was relevant. I mean, the
thing that stood out to me that was new was
she she wasn't sure of what her injuries were other
than her back hurt a bit. I remember she was told.
The original story from the RCMP after some time is

(01:00:52):
that she had spinal injuries and cracked vertebrae and all
kinds of things like this, and she was a very difficult.
She's almost on life support according to them and witnesses
I talked to it said she was fine, that she
didn't appear to have anything wrong, and there were statements
to that effect in the RCNP record and nine or

(01:01:16):
ten Dee she got off the she got out of
after she got out of the hospital so called got
out of the hospital. One of my sources found her shopping,
one of her She was shopping and looked perfectly fine.
There was nothing to appear to be wrong with her
mentally or physically. So I knew this. And you know

(01:01:37):
all kinds of women's right people where they're defending her
and calling her a hero. But I think Rob Pineo,
the lawyer for one of the families, there's all these
pictures of her crying and stuff, and Rob Pineo Riley
put it to me. I says, what did you think
of Banfield's testimony? And Pineo says, she cried with her
mouth and I thought that's something. I mean, that's what

(01:02:01):
I thought.

Speaker 2 (01:02:03):
You write about a photographer, Crowchack and the one photo
that captured Wartman's final moments. And then we get into
I want you to discuss this very controversial killing of
Gabriel Whartman, apparently at this Big Stop gas station. Tell

(01:02:24):
us what you believe happened and what the official narrative
of what happened.

Speaker 3 (01:02:29):
Well, the official narrative is that Wortman, this wiley guy,
made his way to the Irving Big Stop, which is
a big service center restaurants and you know, multiple pumps
and trucks, trucks and everything just north of Halifax International Airport,
and that he went there and two policemen, two Mounties,

(01:02:52):
who were just happened to be in the area. We're
going to fill up their truck which was half full already,
and fill up their truck and they're suburban and they
got out there filling it up, and they recognized the
guy at the next pump, who is Werbman, who is
driving a car he stole from his twenty second victim,
Lisa Glay, And they noticed him and he had a

(01:03:15):
welt on his head, which becomes an important part of
the story. And they one thing led to another and
they engaged him and they shot him. And that's the
story they stuck to. The police watchdog reviewed the evidence
and he and said, that's the story. We're sticking to
that story. But as I said, one of the things
we did was penetrate all the police operations, the MCC operations,

(01:03:39):
the Department of Justice operations and got things. And one
of the things we got were the videos showing what
actually happened, and we got other videos showing that the
thing they described the first part of it happened at
another gas station that they tried to cover up, and
then they fused it altogether to make it look like

(01:04:02):
this all happened, you know, the story at the story
that happened at the Petro Can station actually happened at
the Big Stop. And what happened at the Big Stop
was the videos clearly show the two bounties coming in
at high speed, pulling up, pulling upside the pump, and
from the time their car lurches for religious to a

(01:04:24):
stop and starts to come back, from that time to
the time the door is opened, the copp is standing outside,
the drivers standing outside, and the passengers come around five
and a half seconds from the time the car stops
to the time the first bullets of like twenty five
are fired into workmen. So they appeared to know it

(01:04:45):
was him. They there was no sort of discussion or
anything like that, no recognition possible. They just came out
and executed him. And part of the cover up was
that the federal government the day we we finally you
went to court and Frank magazine went to court and
forced these things to come out before the media even

(01:05:07):
started to cover it. The federal government, our stories began
to circulate about commissioner of vi RCNP had politically interfered
in the case over gun rights and guns and things
like this, and it all blew up and she lost
her job and Pete Pele forgot this part of the story.
One last thing dan on it. When the mcc examined

(01:05:29):
these five and a half seconds during the test of the
public testimony, it took them probably two hours to do
the five and a half seconds because they went frame
by frame to make it look like it took a
longer time. And finally, even then when we fought to
get all the tapes in the videos, they left some

(01:05:50):
of it out and some of it was edited and truncated.

Speaker 2 (01:05:54):
Wow, you mentioned Brenda Lucky and the government's response at
this mass Casualty Commission and the excuse for the government
to enact stronger laws regarding law abiding gun owners.

Speaker 3 (01:06:15):
That's right. It became a big issue because the government
of Justin Trudeau, who was Prime minister then after the massacres,
immediately seized on the massacres to implement a ban on
probably more than one hundred and fifty different kinds of
guns and then sort of made even stricter bans in

(01:06:36):
the next couple of years. But all the guns that
Workman used were smuggled across the border and came from
the United States, which is the biggest problem in Canada. Sure,
Donald Trump talks about fentanyl going into the States, the
biggest issue is guns coming into Canada and Mexico from
the United States. That's the big social issue right now
in Canada.

Speaker 2 (01:06:56):
You're right about the huge source of critical evidence that
you got from a police source called True Blue. Can
you tell us about this contact with this source and
what it sparked.

Speaker 3 (01:07:11):
Well, as I said, we had to demonstrate that we
could get pierced the walls and get out things that
they wanted hidden, just to spook them and sort of
make them honest. At the second anniversary, when it was
clear they were hiding things, I put out an appeal.

(01:07:33):
It was the first anniversary. I put out an appeal
saying I needed a great there's all this stuff being hidden.
I know it's being hidden. I've found some of it.
I found all kinds of things. The audio tape that
was on an analog system that covered part of the
night of April eighteen showed the police story. The police

(01:07:53):
were lying and I said, I need a great Canadian
to step forward and provide us with things like nine
one tapes video. I wanted proof of death of Wortmen.
I wanted to see how he died because I didn't
believe their story. And as source emerged, we called true Blue.

(01:08:13):
My wife named True Blue, provided us with nine one
tapes showing that petrated to the RCMP an official government
story that the police didn't know which Gabriel Wortman dressed
as a cop until the next morning, and when Lisa
Banfield came out of the woods, the first three nine
one one caller said it was Gabriel Wartman dressed as
a cop who was killing people. And then True Blue

(01:08:37):
also provided the videotapes that showed the lie they told
about the Edfield big stop and the fact that they'd
already encountered Wortman about ten minutes earlier at another gas station.
And that was really helped turn the public tide because
I could demonstrate that people that the RCMP was lying

(01:09:00):
because I knew it was a cover up. Even though
people were in your conspiracy theory, I could theorist, I
could see the cover up, and I knew from my
experience how to penetrate and reveal it. You know, there's
a thing that the concept of negative proof, you know,
and negative proof is if you can prove in the

(01:09:20):
absence of evidence you can't get and reluctance of people
to cooperate. If you could prove their narrative is not true,
that means there's another truth. And so we can infer
from those things that you know on the Blueberry field,
I could prove it's not true. Therefore the other proof
is the other truth is who killed Corey Ellison? The

(01:09:43):
same with the irving big stop. What really happened?

Speaker 2 (01:09:47):
It?

Speaker 3 (01:09:48):
Was he executed or was it No? The RCNP said, oh,
we stumbled upon him, we didn't know he was there.
I can prove that's not true. So that looks like
he was executed. So you have to ask why was
he execut Was it just because he killed all the people,
or what was the genesis for the problem he had
with the RCMP. Was he trying to make the RCMP ashamed?

(01:10:11):
Was he trying to harm them? And I think that's
what he was doing. And there's one other big sort
of truth we destroy. One bit narrative we destroy in
the book is the killing of Constable Heidie Stephenson, and
we can't ignore that that's a big story.

Speaker 2 (01:10:32):
Well, tell us about that story, because that's a one
of the most vivid scenes is this Gabriel Wartman in
a replica car with a police uniform with the appropriate
the cows on that car enough to fool at RCNP officer.
So tell us about Heidie Stephenson's.

Speaker 3 (01:10:54):
Heidi Stevenson was a constable approaching fifty years old who
spent most of her career on the RCMP Musical Ride,
which is a horse show that goes to sort of
circuses and arenas during the summer. She was a school
liaison officer public relations officer, but for some reason now
she was back on patrol on this Sunday and she

(01:11:17):
ended up the RCMP, as I said, was not getting
in front of workman, almost as if they were allowing
him to come towards Halifax. And Heidi Stevenson assigned one
of her people from the Enfield unit to go on
Highway too, not the expressway where all the mountains were gathered,

(01:11:38):
but on Highway too, and he was alone on Highway too.
Then she realized, oh, I should go over and help him,
and Werdman came down the road down Highway too, knew
where Morrison was, turned in there, shot him or shot
at him, wounded him, but Morrison drove off, ran turned

(01:12:00):
around and drove after him, and as they were coming
to what is called the Cloverleaf Loop, Stevenson came in
and drove under the bridge as Morrison took the exit
to go down Highway to didn't see her. Mister by
second she came around the clover relief workman was driving

(01:12:21):
straight on another section of the road. Sara coming ramder
spun her around. The RCNP story eventually becomes that Heidi
Stevenson first rammed Wortman, then they changed that. Then she
was in a gunfight with Wortman and fired fourteen rounds
at him, twelve from outside the car, two from inside

(01:12:43):
the car before Wortman killed her. The problem with that
story was, well, first of all, all the media and
everyone jumped on that Heidi Stevenson was a hero. But
the problem with the story is the evidence didn't fit
that story. So I went over all the evidence and
you know, as I lay out in detail on the book,

(01:13:06):
I had written that those chapters, there's two chapters I
had written them and in the right and I had
concluded that this was a made up story. They needed
a heroin. They unified behind her, they wanted the story
to work. And I was doing some last minute double
checking through all the records, in all the documents, and

(01:13:30):
then I found a document was like the smoking gun,
and what it showed was that three days after the
Heidi Stevenson was murdered, the head of curt the police watchdog,
the interim head Patrick Kerran, a former chief justice the
Nova Scotia Provincial and Family Courts, had rejected a request

(01:13:55):
from the RCMP to investigate whether Heidi Stevenson had accidentally
shot a good Samaritan bystander Joey Webber, who was the
twenty first victim in the massacres, and that she should
be investigated for that even though she was dead. And Kerrent,

(01:14:17):
in a document which I largely include in the books,
basically tells him to hit the road and says, in
the most remarkable institutional institution no missive you've ever seen.
That you already told us on Sunday as you investigated it.
She was executed. All the evidence showed she was executed.

(01:14:39):
Kerran said, I'm not going to try to prove get
involved in this because essentially he could see what they
were trying to do. They're trying to get an investigation
by the police watchdog to justify that the shooting had
actually taken place. But this raised there was no evidence
that there were twenty seven witnesses to what had happened

(01:15:00):
and earwitnesses an eyewitnesses, only two had heard thirty rounds
being fired, most heard seven to nine. When I investigated
the thirty round story, they reduced it to much less
than that. And then where they lived and saw or
heard what they saw or heard could be attributed to

(01:15:20):
echoes because he was using a ruger, a mini ruger,
and it's a very loud gun, and no one close
to the scene saw it. And then I finally found
the evidence of one witness who followed Wortman. I remember
I said Morrison got shot and drove a Morris and
then Wortman followed him, while another guy, Bernard Meira, and
his wife followed Wortman. He stopped at that scene, turned

(01:15:45):
off his engine and watched what happened, Wortman crashing into
the Stevenson's car, getting out, shooting her through the back
side the back passenger window. All that her never getting
out of the car, and that match what everyone else said,
and that was ignored. So what it does raise is
where did the shellcasings come from? Where they planted? And

(01:16:07):
if they planted that, what else did they plant.

Speaker 2 (01:16:11):
Let's jes this as an opportunity to stop to hear
these messages.

Speaker 3 (01:16:16):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:16:16):
One thing that we haven't spoke about was Lisa Banfield
at this mass Casualty commission, But there are criminal charges
against her and her relatives that are at the same
time as this commission and then later are dealt with
shortly after. Briefly just explain those charges.

Speaker 3 (01:16:38):
Well, what I told you early on earlier was that
the RCMP didn't want anyone charged, and it looked like
in the fall of twenty twenty that Lisa Banfield was
being protected. And at the time I talked about me

(01:16:59):
going to work for Frank magazine to write about Lisa Bainfield,
it was clear that the article I was going to
write about Lisa Banfield was coming out on Monday, showing
that she was protected, et cetera, et cetera. On the
Friday afternoon, the RCMP announced charges that Lisa Banfield, her
brother and her brother in law were being charged with

(01:17:20):
providing ammunition to workman that he used in the massacres,
and the media went crazy, and at the time I
rewrote my article to point out these are likely bogus
charges that will never have their day in court and
will only be used to stall any discussion about Lisa
Banfield because she faces criminal charges. And basically that went

(01:17:43):
on for two years. She couldn't speak because she faced
criminal charges. Then she went before the mass Casualty Commission.
They treated her with kid gloves, and then she wasn't
asked about any of this. It's a misdemeanor anyways. It
was like a traffic teck. And as soon as the
mass Casualty Commission was finished with her, she made an

(01:18:05):
appearance before a judge in a restorative justice setting. Well,
who was the victim? Nobody was there, and the charges
against her and her brothers were dismissed. It was clearly
what I said it was from the beginning.

Speaker 2 (01:18:20):
Let's get to this eventual outcome of this commission. I'd
like to know tell us the public response, the mainstream
media's response, and more importantly, the victim's famili's response.

Speaker 3 (01:18:36):
The media treated it like it was the real thing.
Most of the media, although most of them couldn't understand
what was going on because the thing was so disjointed
and boring and deliberately dull and boring and uninformative and
sensationalized what it needed to be that it was like
a circus. It didn't make sense. The families were outraged.

(01:19:00):
Of the families thought it was a schmazzle. The lawyers
thought it was a cover up, but nobody would talk
on the record about that because all the families were
forced to sign non disclosure agreements with the government to
get funding for the to appear at the MCC. They
also have legal cases that had non disclosure agreements with
their law firms not to disco to discuss anything, especially

(01:19:23):
with someone like me. Some people, you know, the domestic
violence people hailed it as a great moment forward, but
nothing much has ever happened since then. They set up
implementation committees to hide behind that go on for three
years now overseeing the implementation of the one hundred and
thirty recommendations. But all that she's being used as as

(01:19:45):
a shield so the politicians don't talk about it. Politicians
in the five years since this outrageous event. Not one
politician has stood on their hind feet and criticized the
RCMP or the process or anything. So it's been left
up to me, citizen investigators and the people who've been

(01:20:05):
involved to try to get hold the RCNP and the
governments accountable. And that's what we did in this book.

Speaker 2 (01:20:13):
What was the response to your previous book about these
massacres twenty two murders?

Speaker 3 (01:20:19):
Well, I was number one bestseller in Canada and continues
three years later to be selling very very well. The
Random House told me about a couple of weeks ago
the meeting we had in Toronto, that they figured it'll
be one of those historical legacy books that people will
just buy forever. The other thing Dan about this is

(01:20:39):
you rarely, as an author, get the opportunity to take
two kicks at the can at one story and this one.
You know, I designed to be at least two books,
you know, by asking the question what's the big secret?
And the second book is trying to answer that, And
now I'm at the at the point where I may
have to write a third books. The lingering question now

(01:21:01):
is who killed Corey Ellison? And that is sort of
the heart gets to the heart of what the cover
up is about, you know, because they had a lot
at stake. They had to cover up Workman's connections to them,
all the mishaps and the mistakes they made, like Corey Ellison,
they covered up and they tried to shape a narrative

(01:21:23):
that the main street media bought. Much of what happens
you know in our world today, fake stories, telling the
story knowing that no one's going to challenge them. They
didn't expect I would be there. You know, there's a
great line from George Orwell who says, I just copied
it here. Orwell's line about the truth. The further society

(01:21:44):
drifts from the truth, the more will hate those who
speak it. So I got a lot of people disliking
me because I'm trying to speak it. But I've got
an enormous number of people who've come on side. I
had a book launch event three nights ago in Halifax
that was spectacular, went on for three hours. I brought
up people who were ignored as witnesses who told their stories.

(01:22:07):
It was very moving, and I know people can listen
to my podcast Dispersing the Fog to hear part of that.
What we did. It's a similar thing. But my podcast partner,
lawyer Adam Rodgers, and I discussed the elements of the
book because I did the audio book as well.

Speaker 2 (01:22:26):
Absolutely, I want to just mention in closing, just the
victims of this porta Peak massacre. Thirteen died initially nine
the next day Greg Blair, Jamie Blair, Lisa McCully, Corey Ellison,
Frank Gulichin, Don Madson, Gulichin, John Zall, Elizabeth Thomas, Peter Bond,

(01:22:51):
Aaron Tuck, Jolene Oliver, and Emily Tuck. And then the
next day Sean McLeod, Alana Jenkins, Tom Bought Bagley, Lillian Campbell, Icelop,
Heather O'Brien, Christine Beaton, Heidi Stevenson, Joey Weber, and Gina Gouley.

Speaker 3 (01:23:14):
And that's what one last point, there's an absolutely At
my book launch, people were in tears when I over
the Heather O'Brien story where she was shot by Whartman.
She was like, I think the sixteenth, seventeenth victim, probably
eighteenth victimy, I don't, I can't know nineteenth victim. I
think she was shot by Wartman. When the RCMP arrived,

(01:23:37):
they put a blanket over her, declared her dead, and
the family knew she wasn't dead. She had a fitbit
on and showed her heart was beating for eight hours. Incredible,
Or she died and the RCMP would not allow a
metavac helicopter to come in, wouldn't her family to come
by her side, and then the mass casually can mission

(01:24:00):
hid all the fitted evidence and would not allow it
into testimony, and the family only released it afterwards. And
I tell that story.

Speaker 2 (01:24:10):
This commission portrayed the many of these RCMP, these mounties
as brave and then afterwards traumatized. But your investigation, your
books tell a much different story.

Speaker 3 (01:24:28):
Absolutely. You know, after the massacres, they did nothing, never
got in front of anyone, never confronted anyone. But that
summer seventy mounties took the summer off because they were stressed.
That says more about the RCMP than anything else.

Speaker 2 (01:24:45):
Incredible. I want to thank you very much, Paul Plango
for coming on and talking about your incredible anatomy of
a cover up, the truth about the RCMP and the
Nova Scotia massacres. For those people that want to check
look Out twenty two murders, your other books other than
twenty two Murders and this book Anatomy of a Cover Up?

(01:25:06):
Can you tell us about a website or any social
media you do?

Speaker 3 (01:25:09):
No, all I'm doing is right now, I don't do
social media. We do are Dispersing the Fog, which is
my third book on the Mounties from two thousand and eight,
very difficult to get nowadays. My books are about of
circulation above the law, the Last Guardians, but Dispersing the
Fog sort of set the tone for what I'm doing now.
All I do is the Dispersing the Fog podcast. We're

(01:25:31):
on podcast number sixteen now and we discuss this book
now and legal things that are going on in Canada,
the United States and around the world with my podcast
partner Adam Rodgers, which is on Sunday nights at seven
thirty Eastern eight thirty Atlantic on YouTube.

Speaker 2 (01:25:54):
Sounds good, fantastic. Thank you so much for Anatomy of
a cover Up, the Truth about the RCNP and the
Nova Scotia massacres. Thank you so much for this interview,
and you have a great evening, and good night

Speaker 3 (01:26:06):
Thank you, Dan, thank you, good night.