Jordan: You hear about these every so often because when it happens, it’s a huge story.
News Anchor: Police say they’ve solved the 42 year old cold case murder of Sandra Matott.
News Anchor: Julie Ann Hanson. Her murder, which after 49 years, had been a cold, cold case. But as of today, police here think they have their man.
News Anchor: Denise Stafford was killed in her own home back in 1985.
News Anchor: And as Fox 13’s Kimberly Kuizon reports, her family finally has the answers they’ve waited forever to hear.
Jordan: Of course, the reason that it is a big story when a cold case gets solved is because most of them never do. Every police department has a filing cabinet, digital or otherwise, full of crimes that just sit there unsolved. There may be a Detective or two charged with investigating them, but there’s not a lot of resources available for decades old cases with no new leads. No new leads means no new answers. And behind every one of those cold cases is a family that’s still waiting, still hoping for those answers. Each one of these files is a story without an ending. But sometimes the unlikely happens, someone asks the right question to the right person at the right time and learns something new, and that can lead to more questions and sometimes, to answers. Then you do get the story that leads the newscast. So how do you go about heating up a cold case? How do you report something that happened decades ago with the urgency of now? Today’s guest will explain that. And so will her new podcast.
I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings, this is The Big Story. Fil Martino is a veteran crime reporter for CityNews680 in Toronto. She is one half of the team that created a new podcast called Tracking a Killer: the Cold Case Files. Hey, Fil.
Fil: Hello. Thanks for having me.
Jordan: You’re most welcome. Thank you for making a fascinating podcast. Why don’t you tell me what attracted you and Madison, your co-host, to cold cases.
Fil: I mean, I’ve been covering cold cases for a long time. I don’t want to give away my age, but over 25 years, I like to say that I’m always looking for an ending to the story. And for cold cases, there’s no ending. So I think that’s what attracted me to it. I’d like to get an ending for these stories because a police service like Toronto has about 700 cold cases on file. So I would love to get some of these solved. I would love to help the families who are still looking for answers. And Madison Fitzpatrick, who’s my co-host, she’s a true crime junkie. She loves that kind of stuff. She’s grown up watching it on TV, and she’s always said, wow, these are real people. They’re looking for answers. And that’s her, I guess, interest in it. But both of us together, we have a passion for unsolved crimes, basically.
Jordan: I think everybody listening understands what a cold case is, like that’s kind of a typical part of the lingo. But maybe could you tell us how these cases typically end up cold? What’s the process to get to the point where you go in that filing cabinet?
Fil: Okay. So I’m going to use Toronto Police as an example, because a lot of the cases that we are looking at are Toronto Police cases. So let’s go by their definition. So in Toronto, the standard they use is if the crime occurred four years ago, if the investigator is no longer in the unit, and if there have been no major leads in the case over the past few years. So that’s the Toronto Police’s definition of a cold case.
Jordan: When you’re reporting these stories, and if you think of an example, feel free to use a specific example. When do you start to understand as you’re covering it in the moment that things are slowing down, nothing is happening. We’re stuck. This is going to end up in that filing cabinet.
Fil: Well, I mean, I’m going to go back to a case that I did in 2002. This is going back a long time, and it was a woman. She had gone missing and days go by, weeks go by, and you’re thinking, wow, this is going to go cold. How are the police going to be able to solve this case? I thought it would go cold, right? Because you always hear, oh, after a few weeks, if you don’t have major leads, then that’s it. It’ll never be solved. But that’s not true. But in the end, it was a Toronto, actually, a Toronto Police officer who turned himself in four months later and the woman’s body was found in his home. So that didn’t end up being a cold case. But usually it’s when months go by. That’s when you start to think they might have a problem solving this case.
Jordan: So for season one of the podcast, which is out right now, there are eight episodes. You just mentioned 700 cold cases in Toronto Police alone. You’ve gone a little bit outside of Toronto as well. How do you figure out which cases to cover, which cases might still have some meat on the bone, where you might have a potential for an ending?
Fil: That’s a good question. It’s a hard question, too, to answer for us. It was, I guess we thought, could these cases be solved so many years later, one of them has like a reward being offered. And then the other one, the one that we really wanted to do with was the Elizabeth Bain case.
Jordan: For those of us outside of Toronto, describe the Elizabeth Bain case briefly. Who is she?
Fil: Sp Elizabeth Bain was a University of Toronto student. She was reported missing in June of 1990. Her vehicle was found a few days later and police determined there was foul play. Her body has never been found. But police did arrest her boyfriend at the time, Rob Baltovich, and he was found guilty. He was in prison for eight years before the courts deemed him not guilty. So the case has never been solved. But Rob Baltovich wants this case to be solved. So that’s why we picked the Elizabeth Bain case.
Jordan: Before we get into some of these specific cases, and I’ll probably ask you a little bit more about Elizabeth Bain. But in general, once you’ve decided on a case like that, what is the process to get back into it and start reporting it again? You guys have done lots of crime reporting. This is kind of a different beast, I imagine.
Fil: It is, but it’s still storytelling, right? So what we do is we reach out to the cold case units. That’s how we started out. We reach out to the cold case units. We tell them, look, we want to tell these stories, and then we also ask them, are you in contact with the family members? Because for us, involving the family gives some insight into the victim. What the victim was like, when did the family members see the victim last? So that’s how we did it. And we just want to make sure that we also involve the families because, look, they’re looking for answers all these years later, some of them 30 years later. So I guess that’s the way we did it.
Jordan: How do you approach those families without knowing, in some cases, they’re eager to talk again. They are hunting for answers. In other cases, I imagine you’re dredging up some pretty painful stuff for them. How do you approach them with that balance towards sensitivity and also, like, this might be a chance to finally move this case.
Fil: I mean, because that’s how we explain it to them. We say, look, we think there’s value in retelling this story because police say that crime can be solved even years later. So that’s how we start our conversation with the victim’s families. We say, look, this is a way we can retell this story. Maybe it might generate some new leads, and then we ask them to tell us about the family member. What was the person like? And I feel like they feel comfortable. They’re a little bit comfortable speaking about the family member because they know the family member. So that’s how we start. And it is painful. And they have said, this is painful talking about this again, but they tell us, look, we see value in what you’re doing here.
Jordan: When you’re reporting something so many years later, how do you try to do things differently to find information or answers that weren’t found the first time? What kind of different processes, different questions and interviews, that kind of stuff, do you use?
Fil: Well, I think the best, I mean, this is just in general, the more people you have in your story, the more people you speak to, the better your story, the more information, right? So that’s what we’re trying to do, get as many people, maybe people who never talked about it before, get them to be involved. That’s what we’re trying to do, right. The more people you can get interviewed, the more information that people might say, hey, you know what I remember that case or I was walking by that park that day, and that kind of thing.
Jordan: Can you give me an example of one of the cases you’ve dug into in which you found something that people didn’t realize back then? Maybe it didn’t lead to all of a sudden arresting the killer, but that allowed people to look at the case with a new light?
Fil: Well, I think again, I’m going to go back to the Elizabeth Bain case because we spoke to Rob Baltovich, right. And Rob Baltovich went to prison for eight years for this crime, and he talked to us, and he basically went through every, he spoke to, this is the last time I saw her. And this is what I did after when we were trying to search for her. And he kind of went through every single part of what happened back then. And we’re talking 1990, right. So I think that maybe some people don’t know all the information, he goes into where she was last seen, where he last saw her. So this is all new information that maybe people can. It will jog people’s memories, right. Because we’re talking about a student. We’re talking about a University campus. Maybe there were students there who saw something and maybe all these years later will say, hey, you know what I remember, I think I saw her that day or that’s what we’re hoping. So that’s the kind of thing that we’re trying to do.
Jordan: In terms of the genre in general, you said something very interesting at the start that you’ve been doing this for decades and that your partner, Madison Fitzpatrick, came up consuming this stuff. And since you’ve been here watching what’s happened, I’d love to hear from you about the evolution of true crime and how it has become so all consuming. Anybody who’s listening to this who is a fan of podcasts probably knows that it’s one of the most, if not the most popular genres of podcasts. The documentaries are coming out several per week. There’s a voracious appetite for this that I feel like didn’t exist back then. What’s happened?
Fil: Well, first of all, social media has happened. But I also think back then, like, I’ll give you an example, Patricia Lupton, she’s the oldest, that’s the oldest cold case Toronto Police have on file, right. So this is years and years ago. So Patricia Lupton was a twelve year old. She lived in Toronto. Apparently there was an ad up for a babysitter, right. So she took the ad down, called the person and said, hey, I’ll be a babysitter, like she wanted to make some extra money. And then on March 9th, 1959, she was found on the side of the roadway in the McCowan and Ellesmere area of Toronto. She was suffering from injuries. She was pronounced dead at the scene. Now, when we’re talking about 1959, when she left the store where she got that ad, there’s no camera that shows her leaving, right? They don’t have that kind of thing. They don’t have a cell phone to track the person who she called before she disappeared. This is the kind of stuff we have now. So I think people even, maybe they want to get involved. They like the idea that, hey, maybe I can help solve this crime. I think that might be part of it. Or they can just be like me. They want an ending to these stories because someone has to speak for the victims and the families are looking for resolution.
Jordan: Have you had any resolution since you started reporting this? You know, this is where I ask you to spoil just a little bit. You don’t have to spoil the whole podcast or all the stories, but I’m really interested in hearing if anything has heated up, if we have seen any results.
Fil: Well, this is funny. We started, we did our interview with the OPP about 28 year old Monica Chisar. She was a mother of one who disappeared from Hamilton in 2018. So we did a whole interview with the Detective who was working on this unsolved homicide. And during the process of us, we’ll say during production, they’ve arrested someone in connection with that case.
Jordan: Fascinating.
Fil: Yeah, we’re not directly involved, but the case, it’s not completely resolved. But now they have someone who they’ve arrested in connection with this woman’s homicide.
Jordan: Before I let you go. One of the things that I’m interested about this show is how different it is from the kind of true crime podcast some people might automatically think of, the kind of dramatic retellings of old murders for fun. You guys are like breaking news reporters, and you approach this in a different way. Explain that to me.
Fil: Well, let’s start with first of all, we are two different reporters, right? We have someone who started her career a few years ago and who’s really followed true crime for many, many years. And then you have myself who has been covering the crimes for over 25 years. For starters, I think even the dynamic of the two hosts is different, but I think we’re more about knowing the victim, getting to know the victim through the family members. And we truly want resolution. We want to help these family members find out what happened to their loved ones.
Jordan: Where does this go from here? I know you’re already thinking perhaps about a second season, but I’m more interested in how you guys relate to the families that you’ve talked to because they are such a presence on the show. Are you still in contact with them? Are you planning campaigns around episodes coming out to kind of raise this awareness? Because I know when we spoke about this show a while back, you said that was really your goal, was to get the stories out there again.
Fil: Get them out there, get them retold again. There’s value in this because police always tell us this, that they’re one tip away from solving these kinds of cases, right? So that’s what we keep in mind. And you ask, do I keep in contact with the family members, one of the family members in the Donna Sterne and Wendy Tedford case, now, those were the two 17 year olds who were found shot dead in an empty industrial lot in the north end of Toronto in 1973. So one of the sisters of one of these victims, she is in contact. And she said, thank you. Thank you for telling this story again, because she’s hoping that eventually she’ll be able to find out what happened to her sister.
Jordan: Fil, thank you for doing this with me today. Thank you for the work you and Madison are doing. I can’t wait to listen to the rest of the show.
Fil: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Jordan: Fil Martino of CityNews680, and of course, of Tracking a Killer: The Cold Case Files. Yes, that podcast is on Frequency. That’s not why Fil is on the show. Fil is on the show because I find this stuff fascinating. You can find Tracking a Killer at frequencypodcastnetwork.com or, of course, wherever you get your podcasts, just like you can find The Big Story wherever you get your podcasts. And at thebigstorypodcast.ca and on Twitter at @TheBigStoryFPN, and via email, thebigstorypodcast, all one word all lowercase, @rci.rogers.com [click here!]. We’re in every podcast player. We’re in every smart speaker.
Stefanie Phillips is the lead producer of The Big Story. Joseph Fish and Braden Alexander are our associate producers. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. Have a great weekend. Stay safe. Thanks for listening. And we’ll talk Monday.
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