The Canadian massacre you’ve never heard of

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Jordan Heath Rawlings If you are familiar with the true crime genre in all its forms, you are probably used to a certain type of victim. You know the type, she lit up the room with her smile, or maybe they were the girl or boy next door. Or of course, innocent and adorable kids disappearing off the street. The true crime that we are talking about today is none of that, and it raises some good questions. Who deserves to have their story told? Who deserves to be publicly mourned? Who gets the posters and the podcasts and the police resources and who doesn’t? This is the story of a Canadian mass shooting on a Halloween night just a few years ago, and unless you lived near the community, where it happened, you probably never heard of it. Why is that? What happened at Whiskey Creek? Well, that brings us back to the victims.

I am Jordan Heath Rawlings. This is The Big Story. Laura Palmer is the host and creator and producer of Island Crime, a true crime show that examines cases from Vancouver Island. This season, it’s Whiskey Creek, season five. Hi Laura.

Laura Palmer Hello, Jordan.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Thank you for doing this with us again.

Laura Palmer Thanks for asking me. I really appreciate it.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Well, these are fascinating stories and I love them because they’re so different from a lot of the true crime that we see. So maybe just, start by taking us there. Set the scene for us. Where is Whiskey Creek? What’s it like?

Laura Palmer Okay, so if you’ve ever been to Vancouver Island and you’ve driven to Tofino, you’ve likely passed through Whiskey Creek and maybe not even have noticed. It’s a rural area in between Qualicum Beach and Port Alberni, so sort of mid island. And it’s the kind of place that really you would just drive through and think, what is this place? Because it’s got a really odd collection of small businesses, like they seem like they don’t really belong along the side of a highway. You have a place selling little hot tubs made out of cedar. You have these big blowing men and an inflatable bong advertising a bong shop along the way and tie-dyed shirts being sold, a surf shop. It’s just, it’s kind of a weird little area, but it’s also really pretty like it’s in the foothills of Mount Aerosmith. And it’s just, you know, 15 minutes away from a gorgeous lake, from Cameron Lake and from Cathedral Grove as well. So it’s, it’s a kind of a mix of odd little businesses and a beautiful rural area. And then there’s residential as well.

Jordan Heath Rawlings I feel like I’m about to do the dun dun dun thing here, but that sounds like a beautiful community. But this is a true crime podcast. What happened there?

Laura Palmer Yeah. So I would say up until a couple of years ago, if you’d heard of Whiskey Creek, you maybe had heard of it because you stopped there for ice cream or something. But in 2020, in fact on Halloween night of 2020, there was a mass murder there. And I think it’s going to come as a bit of a surprise to people in other parts of Canada and maybe even to people on the island, because outside of that initial flurry of stories that comes after something like this. There’s been very little coverage of what happened out there.

Jordan Heath Rawlings I have to say, I mean, I work in the news, you know, we talk all the time. I had never heard of this until you told me about it.

Laura Palmer Yeah. So, you know, some of that could be down to the fact that it was, you know, at the height of Covid and really so much of our news coverage was devoted to that. But I think a lot of it is also about who the victims were and how little really the public seems to care about what happened here.

Jordan Heath Rawlings And I mentioned in the intro that the victims do not fit that particular true crime type victim. Just tell me about ’em. Who were they?

Laura Palmer Yeah, so in in past series, I have tried to kind of broaden the framework, I guess of the kinds of victims that I focus on. But I think it’s fair to say a lot of true crime stories are devoted to stories about women in particular. And people who kind of fit that, you know, they lit up the room kind of characteristic. These people are not that. So when I say that specifically, I’m talking about people who have some criminality in their backgrounds, some drug addiction. One person in particular, Sean McGrath, who is believed to have been the target in this shooting, was a career criminal. He spent more than half his life in and out of jail and really, you would not believe the things people feel comfortable saying about this guy, after he’s deceased, you know? He is someone who was apparently feared in the community, and you hear a lot of people saying, Hey, good job, we’re better off without this guy. Nice work. You know, he got what was coming to him, kind of sentiment around his death.

Jordan Heath Rawlings I know you’ve dug really deep into this and this is gonna be a big focus of the season, so I don’t want you to spoil the story necessarily. But set the scene for me, like what do we know about what happened around the shooting and what don’t we know, I guess?

Laura Palmer Well, I would say up until this series, there is a lot that the public doesn’t know. Including, really anything about the other two victims that day. When I say the other two victims, we have Sean McGrath, we have his girlfriend, Shanda Atkinson, and then we also have a young guy named Tyler who died that day and another young man who was shot but survived. And there’s really very little that’s been written or known about these other three. And so you’re going to hear a lot more about them in the story and what is becoming quite clear to me. And as the series rolls out, you’ll hear more, but Sean McGrath is likely the intended target. But it looks to me that these others were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And that’s the kind of thing we’ve seen in, you know, gang shootings over on the lower mainland. But it really hasn’t been reported as part of this story. And that’s one of the reasons why I think it’s gonna be very important for people to hear about these other victims. Because you know, it’s one thing for people to talk openly about this live by the sword, die by the sword idea, but I think people will be quite surprised to learn that, two of the people who were shot that day really were just in the wrong place. And they have families who are now living in fear and are horrified that their loved ones were part of this.

Jordan Heath Rawlings And where were they found? Tell us the scene around where the bodies were discovered. Where the crime took place.

Laura Palmer Yeah, so the other thing I should say about Whiskey Creek that people may know it for on the island is it’s a place people go to buy their Christmas trees. There’s a big Christmas tree lot there. And in fact, the murder scene is not far from that Christmas tree lot. It’s out down a forest service road, a place where people dirt bike and kind of go and have some camping and that kind of thing. But Sean McGrath and a few others had set up an encampment in the woods. And they did that because frankly, they had nowhere else to go. As is true in a lot of parts of Canada, it’s really hard to find housing. And if you’re a career criminal and you get outta jail, there’s just very few options for you. So he got set up out in the woods really as a last resort, and the shooting takes place out in this rural encampment in the middle of the night on Halloween night. And because it’s Halloween night here on the island anyway, fireworks are a huge thing.

So people heard the loud noises. They thought maybe it was gunfire, but they also thought equally it could be fireworks. Then the trailers that Sean and the other campers were living in, were set on fire. And so people, you know, saw the smoke, called it in, but it’s not until two o’clock the next afternoon that a dirt biker stumbles upon the body of one of these guys who had managed to kind of make his way out to the Forest Service Road, obviously trying to get help and died there. And so some of the bodies were found in the trailers, in the burned out trailers. But one of the victims was found on the road and then the survivor was still there at two o’clock in the afternoon having been shot. And so he isn’t discovered till that afternoon either. And it’s really, it’s a, it’s a miracle. He gets flown out to a hospital that day and, and he is still alive.

Jordan Heath Rawlings When you decided to take on this case and you know, you start with that horrific scene and you start asking questions about it, what surprised you?

Laura Palmer So many things really. I suppose once I started hearing the stories of who was out there and why I was surprised that, these people could be victims in this kind of attack. You know, I felt like it wasn’t what I thought it was, and I think that will surprise a lot of listeners as well. I think they may be able to connect with these people in a way that they might not have expected. So that certainly surprised me. It also surprised me because I went into the community numerous times and talked to people. And how openly people spoke about. Really, if it was vigilante justice, that was okay because these were bad people doing bad things. And I guess I was taken aback by how openly people would express that kind of sentiment to me. You know, it’s the kind of thing you see online and, and maybe it’s one thing to write it as an anonymous post on a Facebook account or something, but you know, that’s what people were saying and are saying out here. So, I’m hoping that once people hear a little bit more about the circumstances and the victims here, they might feel differently about that.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Tell me a little bit about the investigation that happened afterwards, or lack of it until you picked it up again and started asking questions.

Laura Palmer So, Local reporters were the first to name Sean McGrath and Shanda Atkinson. The coroners and the RCMP and now the Vancouver Island Integrated Crime Unit have been really tightlipped on this story. At the outset there were comments made. There were two press releases and then nothing. And I mean nothing. Like when local reporters, you know, on the anniversary try and update their stories, they go and ask for a comment, anything, and they get nothing. And that is what I’ve also encountered as I’ve tried to tell this story. They are just unwilling to say anything, which could mean, possibly, that it’s at a sensitive time in the investigation. That’s possible. But you know, the coroners even it’s been two and a half coming up to three years and they haven’t released the cause of death of any of these people. It’s incredibly frustrating, I would say, and it’s one thing for it to be frustrating, you know, for me as a journalist, but the families, they are waiting for answers and they’re pushing for answers. Like one of the young men’s families in particular has been really aggressively trying to get the police and the coroners to tell them something, anything, and they really get very little. And I’ll say this, I get it. It’s open and the police are doing their thing. But I will say that, you know, I’ve done stories where the case is 20, even 30 years old, and you get the same response, it’s an open, active investigation. Personally, I think the police could be a little more transparent about what they’re doing and open up about the nature of the investigation, if not the specifics. I think that would be helpful to the public and to the families.

Jordan Heath Rawlings What do you do as a reporter, especially as somebody who is diving so deep into this case, when you get stonewalled like that, like this case is still open and nobody has any idea who did it or if we’ll ever know. So what do you do in that situation?

Laura Palmer All I can do is try and talk to the people who are closest to the victims, closest to the families—people who have some sort of perspective that will help inform the story. In the series, you’re going to hear also from a retired coroner and RCMP officer who kind of, you know, if, if the police won’t talk to me, he’s the next best thing. He’s going to give me that perspective of what the investigation might look like based on his experience, which is extensive here on Vancouver Island. So, you know, that’s how I try and handle it. I would say if any of the police involved are listening, I would love to speak with you. I suppose that goes without saying, but I do what I can and I continue to push them to talk to me.

Jordan Heath Rawlings You’ve covered in the previous seasons of Island Crime, some pretty famous cases from Vancouver Island, including Michael Donahue, and sort of, as you kind of alluded to, a lot of the past subjects that you’ve covered have been a little bit different. These guys, it seems like nobody gives a crap about, how do you approach that when you’re trying to get into what actually happened and what you know, like I understand that it’s, it’s easy to interview their family and friends because they definitely care about them, but you know, to your point about the town, like the town seems ready to write them off.

Laura Palmer Yeah. So I think I’ve said before in the podcast series, I, I’m a big fan of the Harry Bosch character from the Michael Connolly novels, and he has this motto that is, everybody counts or nobody counts. And I love that. I believe it. I feel like, you know, this level of violence, will mean that innocent or so-called innocent people are gonna get hurt. And if you don’t care about the people who have a criminal background, you should care about the people who might be standing next to them and get caught in the crossfire. And even though I fully appreciate the justice system is far from perfect, you know, I do believe in the rule of law and I don’t like the idea of people thinking they can just take somebody’s life, no matter what the reason. I just don’t think that can stand or you know, it’s anarchy. So I live here on the island. Yeah, I’m reporting on these stories, but I’m also a citizen here and I, and I just don’t think it’s acceptable that that can happen and nobody cares.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Last question. Episode two of this show drops tomorrow. What are some things that people are going to learn as it goes along that are going to surprise them? What’s the skeletons in the closet or the surprising revelations that might come along?

Laura Palmer So you’re gonna start to hear a little bit more about the young man who is found dead on the service road. He is someone that no stories have been told so far about, and he’s the reason why I’m doing Whiskey Creek. It was his mother who contacted me and said, Hey, my kid died out there. My boy died out on that road. And was only found by accident, by a dirt bike rider, and nobody seems to care. And I can’t get any answers. So you’re gonna start to hear his story and you’ll hear more of it as the series unfolds. But that’s, that’s an episode too.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Laura, thank you for this. Thank you for all the work you do. Can’t wait to follow along, as this thing unfolds.

Laura Palmer Thanks, Jordan.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Laura Palmer, host and creator and producer of Island Crime. Episode two, the show drops tomorrow. You can find it, yes, wherever you get your podcast. We will also of course, link to it in the show notes. You can find The Big Story in the same places. But you can also find us at TheBigStorypodcast.ca. You can talk to us on Twitter @thebigstoryfpn, and you can write to us hello@TheBigStorypodcast.ca. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow.