S03E16: THE MURDER OF TESS RICHEY

Stephanie: Coming up on this episode of Crime Family.

There were concerns that there was a serial killer on the loose in the area around the same time that she went missing. Just curious to know why he would say, "Oh, that's me in the sketch." If that was me, I'd be, "Hell no, that's not me."

Katie: There's a serial killer on the loose and they know he's operating in that area. Then you have a missing woman, wouldn't you be just looking? It's like they were going through the motions of looking for her, but couldn't find her when really, if they would've put any effort, they would've found her. It does seem like they were just making it look like they were trying.

Stephanie: It's obviously worse then when a police officer has to come to your house and say that your daughter has been found dead, but for you to find them yourself is probably more heartbreaking than anything I could ever imagine.

AJ: Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Crime Family. I'm your co-host AJ and I'm here with my two sisters, Stephanie and Katie. This week Steph is gonna be telling us all about a case that she's been looking into. This is one that I actually suggested for you Steph. I thought it might be an interesting one for you to look into. It happened here in Toronto and I know quite a bit about it, but thought it would be interesting for the podcast. You can go into the case and let us know all about this one. What case is it? First?

Stephanie: The case I'll be doing is the Tess Richey case. I never heard about this case until AJ suggested it for me. Once I started doing some research, it's quite an interesting case. There's quite a bit to unload in this case so I'm just gonna dive right in. Tess Richey was born in North Bay Ontario, and she was the youngest of five. She moved to Toronto when she was just 19. According to her sister, Rachel, who was eight years older than Tess, Tess loved life. She loved her dogs and she loved her family. They were a pretty close knit family. Tess was also a kindhearted and spirited person who wanted nothing but happiness in her life. When Tess moved to Toronto, she was a server, but her dream was to become a flight attendant. Tess wanted to travel the world. She was taking a flight attendant course at Seneca College in Toronto and her life was going pretty well. Like I said, she had a pretty good job and she was going to college and she was young and wanted that independent life. But unfortunately her and her boyfriend had broke up in the fall of 2017 around November 23rd, and Tess was really devastated. Her sister, Rachel was there to support her and Rachel and Tess were very, very close. They were soulmates, according to Rachel. The day after her breakup, Tess and Rachel spent the whole day together, they talked about the breakup. They went shopping and because Tess loved her dog, they went to a dog park. That evening Rachel had made dinner and had to coax Tess into eating because Tess was still pretty upset about her breakup. And even though Tess was shaken up about her breakup, she was still making plans to go out that night with a friend that she knew from high school who just had moved to the same neighborhood. Her name was Riley and suggested they go to this well known drag bar called Crews and Tangos. Rachel's husband ordered an Uber for Tess so she could meet up with her friend downtown, but little did she know that this would be the last time she would see her sister .Tess arrived at the bar at around midnight and it was a very packed bar. Tess texted her sister to let her know that she had arrived safely. Rachel mentioned that Tess's phone was like her second friend. She never went anywhere without it. She said her ring tone was the theme song for the show, American Horror Story. Kind of ironic as we get into this case a little bit more. Tess's friend Riley showed up shortly after and the two danced the night away and drank a lot. Because Tess was a small girl, she was a very lightweight and unsteady on her feet. It didn't take her long to get drunk. On one of the security cameras that were at the club, you could see Tess and Riley heading to the dance floor. In this video, you can see a man following Tess and Riley to the dance floor. This man was Kalen Schlatter who was a 21 year old male known as a lady's man. In the second clip you can see him dancing with another guy right next to Tess and her friend. These videotapes are a key component to this case as you'll hear later on. I'm just going to give you a little bit background about Kalen. Kalen was, like I said, was 21 and he was seen as a lady's man. He lived with his parents and his younger brother in Toronto. After he graduated from high school, he went on to study mechanics at a post-secondary college. He was also into video games, sandstone carvings, board games, and card games. He seemed like a good person, not a violent person and just a person that kept to himself. According to some footage of the bar Kalen had arrived 15 minutes before Tess did at Crews and Tangos, and he arrived after he was drinking at a friend's house. He was pretty drunk when he got to Crews and Tangos. There's also footage of Riley and Tess together upstairs and downstairs and outside by the front door but it did not show that Tess and Kalen had any interactions while inside the club. As the night goes on they're dancing and having a good time. At around 2:15 in the morning Tess and Riley were asked to leave the club because they were very intoxicated and you can see Tess arguing with the bouncer. The bar was about to close anyways, and Tess and Riley were having a smoke outside while the crowd was exiting the club. At this time, Kalen was also exiting the club. Kalen was known to wait outside and lurk in the crowd for groups of girls and would strike up conversations to find someone to sleep with. About five minutes after the girls were asked to leave the club, they are seen walking down Church Street heading northbound, but they disappear out of the camera view. As they continue to walk, you can see in the video cameras, that Kalen looks in their direction and after he finishes his conversation, he heads in the same direction as Tess and Riley. At this point, Tess is wanting to go home so she tries to flag down a cab. Kalen had caught up to Tess and Riley and had struck up a conversation with them. So when Tess flags down a cab Kalen convinced them to keep walking and they want to go find something to eat. Tess just waves off the cab and they're heading down Wellesley to get a hot dog. In this footage, you can see them walking down towards a hot dog stand. As they were walking, a witness named Michelle Teape, who lived two doors down from the intersection of Church Street, said she heard some commotion at around 3:00 AM on November 25th, the same night as Tess and Kalen and Riley were out. She then looks over and said she saw Tess, Kalen and Riley walking down the street. She says she hears them laughing and it seems like they were running from something. She was actually right because Riley had just sprayed mustard all over the hot dog cart. She could see the hot dog vendor and the damage that Riley did. Teape then says that Tess said sorry to her for making too much noise, but Michelle Teape said it was okay. They started to sit down and have a conversation. Michelle noticed that they were pretty intoxicated. Tess and Riley introduced themselves, but she said that Kalen just stood there and only said, "Hi," in a shy voice. He didn't really talk to Michelle that much. The conversation lasted about 20 minutes and at this point, Riley had told Tess that she wanted to leave. This made Tess upset because Tess wasn't ready to go home. According to Michelle, Kalen said, "I've got this. It will be okay." There are some videos showing that Riley's walking westbound on Dundonald Street, away from the direction of Tess and Kalen, so she's leaving to go home. I guess there was an argument. Riley wanted to go home at this point, but Tess didn't want to. Riley just left anyways, and this was around 4:00 AM. So at this point, Tess also decides that, well, since Riley's leaving, she would like to leave too. She flags down a taxi again, but Kalen waves off the taxi because it was holding up traffic. I guess it was really busy where they were. For them to get into a cab, it just was holding up traffic. Tess and Kalen walked a little bit more and then Tess seemed to be still quite a bit upset about the argument she had with Riley before she left. It was at this point around 4:02 that Tess calls an Uber and the Uber showed up at 4:15 but Tess did not. The next video shows Tess and Kalen walking hand in hand towards a small stairwell and you see them both going into the stairwell. You can see in the video that Kalen walks back up the stairs, but Tess doesn't come up the stairs with him. This was the last time anyone has seen Tess alive. Before I go any further, do you guys have any comments? When I was doing research for this case, I was amazed about all the video footage that was out there. You could see Kalen and Tess pretty much throughout the night, leading up to the horrible incident that I'm about to tell you about.

Katie: What was the stairwell leading to? Was it a house? Was it an apartment? Could it have been a building that she went into and went out a back door or something?

Stephanie: It was a house that was under renovations.

AJ: It was a concrete stairwell that at the bottom, there was a door that I'm assuming was just locked. So maybe it led to a basement of some type in this building.

Katie: Oh. So she couldn't have gone in and gone out a different door?

Stephanie: No.

Katie: Okay.

Stephanie: In the video, if you look closely, it shows the house stairwell and you can see it just ends at the bottom of the stairwell and there is a door there, but I I'm assuming it didn't open.

Katie: I'm wondering what the purpose would be for them to go to that little stairwell that didn't lead to anything. You know what I mean? Like what were they thinking of going to this little stairwell? I'd be curious to know.

AJ: I think also its important to know that all this surveillance footage was recovered after the fact, in the course of the investigation into the case. These were surveillance footage that must have been captured from businesses or whatever, right? They were downtown. This bar they're at is in a populated, busy downtown area. All of the stores would have surveillance footage. This is the trail that they were able to piece together or the story they were able to piece together based on the witness, Michelle Teape, who they came across after leaving the bar and then all of these different surveillance footage along their route. That's how they pieced it together. This all came out later.

Stephanie: One of the biggest things when I was researching this case and reading about Tess was that I couldn't imagine her friend just leaving her there with this guy that they just met at the bar. I mean I know a lot of people do that and nothing ever happens to them, but to me, they went together, they could have went home together.

Katie: Speaking from my own experience, we've gone to the bar with like a group of friends and one of them breaks off because they meet somebody, that happens almost every time. Well, it used to happen I mean, and so I don't think it's that strange or uncommon for her to just leave her with some guy that she met. It happens all the time and it's happened to, you know, people that I've been with. Especially at that age, you just don't think of the dangers and especially when you're drunk, you're just thinking, have a good time, you know, see you later.

AJ: Yeah. I mean, it's kind of expected if you go with a group, not everyone's going to leave as a group. She was 19, like Katie said, at that young age, it's especially true I feel.

Katie: Yeah. When we would go down, there'd be this one specific friend that would come with us and wouldn't even meet somebody, but would just leave on his own and run to McDonald's and then run home.

Stephanie: Yeah. She wasn't 19 when she went missing.

AJ: Oh.

Stephanie: She was 22.

AJ: She was still young, still in her early partying years.

Stephanie: Yeah.

AJ: Early twenties.

Stephanie: So the next morning, Tess's sister, Rachel, texts Tess but she doesn't expect an answer right away because she knew that Tess was out all night and she's probably hung over and that she probably was just sleeping. But when she didn't hear from her after 6:00 PM, that's when she started to get worried. Rachel says that it wasn't normal for Tess not to answer her phone because she was always in contact with her sisters and other family members. When they didn't find her at her apartment, that's when panic sat in. The police were called for a missing person's report. When the police turned up nothing after their search, that's when Tess's mom and one of her other sisters decided to travel to North Bay and search themselves because to them the police weren't really doing anything. They were searching but they couldn't find her. Tess's case only started to get widespread attention after Rachel, Tess's sister, traveled across the province to search for her. It was then that people really started to know that she was missing. You see, after Tess's mother came down and searched for her daughter, after putting flyers up all around Toronto, it was actually Tess's mother and a family friend that found Tess in the stairwell, just 40 meters away from where she was last seen. Of course, this put a lot of people in a frenzy because at the time the police were quickly criticized for their failure in finding Tess. It was weird that the police were in the same location just three days earlier and they didn't find her body. They didn't see her body. So obviously their searching tactics weren't up to speed.

AJ: Well, yeah. It's so weird. I remember, I lived here at the time and it was all over the news so people were aware that she was missing. She wasn't missing that long really right before her mother found her. It was a short time. It ended up being her mother that found her. Supposedly the police had checked in this area, but obviously they didn't check very hard. She's at the bottom of the stairwell. You just walk a few feet off the sidewalk and peer down that stairwell you'll see her. I mean, her mother was able to find her and she's not a trained searcher. The police who were trained and looking in that area couldn't have looked very hard obviously. They searched and didn't find her.

Katie: Do they know that she had been there the whole time? Could it have been a coincidence that that's where she was last seen, but maybe she left and then the police did search, but then she happened to end up there again. Do they know that that wasn't the case?

AJ: Steph will go into it a bit more. I feel like at the time, I don't think that was in their minds or maybe it was, but I think the narrative was that the police were just incompetent and just didn't search hard enough. Like I said, the surveillance footage came out after. She was found in the stairwell and then it was the surveillance footage found later that showed them going into the stairwell. I think people assumed that she had been there the whole time. So I don't really know.

Katie: Well, yeah, I guess if they saw footage and they just never saw her coming out of the stairwell and then she's found in the stairwell, she obviously hadn't left and come back. So I guess that answers that. Is this an example of the police, just thinking that she's a 21 year old girl, she was out drinking, partying, she went on a bender or met somebody and went with them. They weren't really thinking it was that serious. Is that what they were thinking as well? Maybe?

Stephanie: Yeah. It was speculated that the police were thinking she was just out partying. She's probably just at somebody's house, sleeping it off and just hasn't contacted anyone yet. Obviously that wasn't the case when her mother found her in the bottom of the stairwell. I couldn't imagine having to find your own daughter. It's obviously it's worse when a police officer has to come to your house and say that your daughter has been found dead, but for you to find them yourself is probably more heartbreaking than anything I could ever imagine.

AJ: I think it's a fine line too, because like you said, the police could just assume that she's a 22 year old, she's just partying, she'll be back. You can't put all these police resources into looking into every single person who doesn't answer their texts within 12 hours of last being seen. Most of those people will turn up or, you know, even if it's a couple of days, you know, they just say, well, they always turn up or, you know, it ends up being nothing. So you have to walk that line of you can't investigate every little thing, but then also you can't not look into every little thing, but it, and it's only in retrospect now since we know what happened in this case. How do you know that this one is any different until you know that it was different?

Katie: Yeah. I guess when you think about it, I guess 9 times out of 10, it does turn out that the person was just sleeping it off or didn't want to answer their phone for whatever reason. The fact that the police were in the area and didn't see the body or didn't care to look hard enough, and then her mother had to come and kind of do that job for them is heartbreaking.

AJ: Yeah. They're putting on this act as if they were really caring and that they did everything right. Obviously they weren't. If her mother was able to come and retrace her steps, she's an amateur detective or not even a detective, right? She's just logically following the steps from the bar that she was last at and she's able to find her relatively quickly. If she's able to do that and these trained police officers aren't able to then obviously they put no effort into it at all.

Katie: It's like they were going through the motions of ,"we looked for her, but couldn't find her" when really, if they would've put any effort, they would've found her. It does seem like they were just making it look like they were trying.

Stephanie: So those police officers who were criticized for failing to find Tess were eventually charged with misconduct for neglect of duty under the police service act. So they did get charged for not canvasing the neighborhood thoroughly and doing their job properly. Going back to when Tess's mom found her, she knew it was her daughter right away. Well, I mean, she was obviously the mother and you should know your children, but she describes that she knew it was Tess's body laying at the bottom of the stairs because Tess had this black sweater on with high heels and fish net stockings. Her purple purse was next to her, as well as her pink polkadot phone that she never left home without. She was also covered in soot from a pile of gravel that was next to her body. If you were just walking by, you might not have seen her body.

Katie: Yeah. I'm thinking, because this was November, right in Toronto, it was probably very cold. It probably would've preserved the body more than if it was in the middle of summer where you probably would've been able to smell it. There would've been flies around it faster than November. That probably helped with the concealing of it I think.

Stephanie: Mm-hmm . After those police were charged with misconduct, the police department put a team together to create a missing person's unit. When this team was created, it didn't take long for the murder investigation to start. At this time, the only suspect they had was Kalen Schlatter. He was the last one to see her alive. You can see in the footage that they both go into that stairwell and he's the only one that comes out. At this time the police believed that he sexually assaulted her and then strangled her. The sexual assault and the strangulation was just speculation because at that time there was no autopsy done on Tess yet. They were trying to piece together what could have happened to Tess. Because Kalen was one of those people who liked to go out quite often to pick up girls and go to clubs, according to an article that I read, Kalen at one point had told an undercover cop that he liked going to gay bars to find people to have sex with. He knew that women also go there as well. According to some video footage, you can see Kalen, like I said earlier, arriving at Crews and Tangos. At this point, they're looking for the last person to see Tess alive and they put out a sketch of this person that they believe was the last person to see Tess. Kalen called in to say that was him in the sketch.

Katie: Wait, did they think it was him before and he was just confirming or did he step up out of nowhere and was "That's me."

Stephanie: The video footage was of him coming out of the stairwell. They didn't have his name, but they knew what he looked like.

AJ: So they found the surveillance footage and then they made a sketch based on that surveillance footage?

Katie: Oh, okay and then he came forward and was, "That's me."

Stephanie: Yeah.

Katie: Okay.

Stephanie: On December 10th during a press conference, they showed some video footage of a man last scene with Tess, and then around 9:00 that night Kalen calls 911 and says that he is the man in those images. Then the officers went to his house and placed him under investigation detention. So not arrest, I guess. The police wanted to do an undercover operation on Kalen and they wanted to watch him over the course of several weeks, but they were concerned for the public safety. I guess after he was taken into custody, he was let go. They were concerned for the public safety because of the violence of the crime. They ended up arresting him on February 4th, 2018. He was placed in a holding cell at 3:15 AM and his parents, because he lived with his parents, went down to the jail cell and gave him food and drink to calm him down.

Katie: Wait, you're allowed to do that? Give people food when they're in jail.

Stephanie: That's what it said in the article I was reading. Yeah. They gave them food and drinks because at the time he was arrested and charged, but he wasn't sentenced to anything.

Katie: Oh. Maybe you're allowed to do that in the holding cells. Okay.

Stephanie: Once he was in the holding cell, the autopsy was complete and it revealed that Tess died from neck compressions. So this showed that obviously she was strangled and that's when he was charged with second degree murder. At the time of his arrest he had no police record. When information comes out that Schlatter was arrested, it was then that Global News released information that Kalen Schlatter had witnessed an attempted murder back in August of 2017. When a man attacked his neighbor with a hammer, Kalen claims he had tried to intervene and help the injured person. He was in a similar situation prior to Tess's murder, but this all came out after he was arrested, all of this information.

AJ: Except he was helping in that scenario.

Stephanie: Yes. He was helping.

AJ: Yeah and not helping in this scenario.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Katie: Was he actually helping him?

AJ: Well that's what he says, I guess.

Stephanie: Yeah, that was according to a Globe and Mail article. They did an interview with him. He witnessed it. I don't think there was actually any investigation into that.

Katie: Well, did that person die?

Stephanie: It didn't say. It just said he was injured. So the investigators who were working on Tess's case believed that Kalen and Tess first met on the night she was killed and that her death was a crime of opportunity. On March 21st, the charges were upgraded from second degree murder to first degree murder after new evidence was found. The trial was supposed to last about six weeks, but there was concern at the time because of the COVID pandemic. And at the time, all the Ontario court proceedings were adjourned for months. Justice Michael Danbrot offered the people who were proceeding in the case if they wanted to continue or wait for a later date. They all chose to continue. On March 23rd, 2020, Schlatter was found guilty of first degree murder. That's how it ends. He was found guilty on March 23rd, but when Tess first went missing, this all came out after he was found guilty, but when Tess first went missing, there was concerns that there was a serial killer on the loose in the area. That serial killer was known today as Bruce McArthur. He was known to frequent that area where Tess was murdered because that's where the gay bar was that she went to. We all know who Bruce McArthur is. Right?

Katie: Yeah. Bruce McArthur killed gay men though, didn't he?

AJ: Yeah.

Stephanie: Yes. After she went missing there was concerns that there was a serial killer on the loose in that area but they didn't know it was Bruce McArthur until a bit later.

AJ: Well, there had been the long investigation because there had been a series of gay men who were found murdered or missing from that area of the city. Then I guess that they were maybe zeroing in on Bruce McArthur at that time because that was in November of 2017. Then Bruce was arrested in January of 2018, which would've been only two months after Tess died. That was happening at the same time as the Bruce McArthur investigation and so, yeah, I guess maybe people thought that maybe their resources were just strapped because they were so focused on Bruce McArthur that they didn't have the resources to focus on...

Stephanie: That's what I was going to say. I think when they were looking for Tess at the time, they were preoccupied with the Bruce McArthur case. They were trying to hone in on a serial killer and then they had this murder on top of that. So, I mean, yes, they did some shady search work locating her body, but, I mean, Toronto Police had a lot on the go probably every day. That still doesn't excuse them for not searching for her the right way.

Katie: Yeah. I guess if you are thinking their mindset, it's like we already have a serial killer and then there's this girl that was out partying and she's missing. So, like we were saying before, they're not that concerned because she's probably just out partying, sleeping somewhere. They have a serial killer that they're thinking about. I can definitely see why this was not a priority for them, even though, of course, like you said, that doesn't excuse their shoddy police work. You had mentioned earlier that more evidence had come out and that's ultimately why Kalen was convicted. I'm just curious what other evidence was there?

Stephanie: Yeah. According to Kalen, during his trial, he said that he and Tess went down that stairwell to make out and that Kalen wanted to have sex with Tess but Tess said no because she was on her period that night. He then claims that he ejaculated on his pants and was a little bit embarrassed about it as he tells his story in the courtroom. According to the forensic evidence, there was semen on the upper part of Tess's pants and saliva on her bra. Kalen then goes on to say that he invited Tess back to his parents' place and was telling her that he had a very cool family and that he really wanted her to meet his family, but Tess denied his offer and told him to leave. She pulled out her phone and about 45 minutes later, you can see Kalen walk out of the stairwell, but Tess did not. Obviously there was some type of assault or disagreement because she didn't want to go back to his house or she didn't want to have sex with him or whatever the case may be, you can tell, he was embarrassed or didn't like the fact that she was rejecting him. He got mad and very violent towards her. That's the evidence that came forward. His story of why they went to the stairwell and then the forensic evidence came out, DNA evidence.

AJ: Yeah. They literally had him on video, tracking his entire night, plus the DNA evidence that they found on her body. Those two things together, it was like indisputable, really.

Katie: Yeah, that's interesting. I remember you said earlier that he was considered a lady's man so probably he wasn't used to rejection. So maybe that was what tipped him off. Also I'm surprised that he wanted to take her back to his parents' house. Who wants to go meet some random dude's parents at 4:00 in the morning? Definitely agree with her on that one. So yeah, it was almost an open and shut case. There was evidence, they saw him in the stairwell, then she just never came out.

AJ: It's interesting too, because you said that he turned himself in to the police because saying he was the person in that sketch, or he didn't turn himself in, but he said that he was the person in that sketch. The only reason that they had those sketches was because they saw the person that matched that description in the surveillance footage. They have the DNA evidence even without that surveillance footage. They wouldn't have been able to know who that DNA belonged to if he didn't have a record, if he wasn't in the system. That sketch from that footage, along with the DNA evidence...

Stephanie: Were what opened and closed the case, because you could see him with Tess and Riley the entire night and then you have the witness Michelle Teape seeing Kalen with Tess and Riley. He couldn't escape from the murder because there was so much physical evidence out there.

Katie: Well, yeah. Also, all the video cameras are working in that location. Everything worked out well, it worked against him, but worked out for justice for the family. So that's not something we see all the time.

AJ: Yeah. That's true. I just looked at a picture, it wasn't even in an alley, it was just a house along the street. You wouldn't suspect there to be a random security camera on this house. It just looked like a house that maybe had construction work being done. So it's not like it was an alley that, so it's not necessarily a place that you would suspect to have a security camera on you, which is why maybe he didn't think that there would be evidence of that because he didn't think this random house would...

Stephanie: Sorry. I'm just curious to know why he would say, "Oh, that's me in the sketch." If that was me, I would be, "Hell no, that's not me."

Katie: I'm wondering if he knew that they got that sketch because of the video footage or if the police said, "This is two witnesses that say that they saw you with her." He may not have known that there's an actual camera in that alley, in that stairway. Maybe that's why, to make it not look as bad. People saw him with her, that Tina woman. I think without that footage DNA was on her, that could still be circumstantial. There's no proof that he was the last one to see her without that footage. I think that was definitely the nail in his coffin for sure.

AJ: Yeah, I'm gonna send you actually a picture from what the house looked like or what the area looked like. I think it's easier to think about it when you see it, obviously. It wasn't an alley, but the stairwell was at the back. The part that's furthest back from the street. That little white part.

Katie: Oh, the black door.

AJ: Yeah. I'm assuming that that's the black door. There's a stairwell going down from there.

Katie: Oh, okay.

AJ: It looks as if there's a railing, right? There's that railing?

Katie: Mm-hmm.

AJ: Then there's also a picture on that same site I got this from, of what the stairwell looked like.

Katie: In my head I pictured an alley, but this really is a space between two houses. There really isn't a way out.

AJ: I don't know, if I was walking on the sidewalk there, I wouldn't think of there being a security camera.

Katie: No

AJ: it just looks like just a space between two houses, which...

Stephanie: I think a lot of construction places, have cameras just in case some vandalism goes on or someone steals construction equipment. I feel like a lot of places would have surveillance cameras on their construction sites.

Katie: Right. Was this a construction site though? Or was it just an abandoned house? Because if it wasn't a construction site and just some random house, like AJ was saying, you wouldn't think there was a camera there. .

AJ: Yeah, you're just thinking this is a house. It doesn't really look like a construction site necessarily. I mean, yeah, there's some boards, but I don't know.

Katie: Yeah. That fence, it is what they would put up, I think for a construction site, but your first thought would not be that's a construction site. I guess when you see that first picture, if you were the police that were supposedly looking for her, you would have to go right up to that stairwell and look down to see her. So if they were walking along the sidewalk and looking down that little space there's no way they would've seen her. You really had to make an attempt to go down that way.

AJ: Yeah. And I guess it also makes sense too how, even before I saw this picture I had in my mind that it was actually closer to the street. I was, "How would someone not see it?" But I guess you wouldn't really see the body at the bottom of the stairwell unless you go up to it. It's obviously not visible from the street. I thought it was closer to the sidewalk and I was, "How is no one seeing this?"

Stephanie: If I'm a police officer doing my job I'm going to look in all the stairwells.

Katie: You're not going to walk by that area and be, "No, she's not there." You would, like her mother did go down there and check. You wouldn't leave any space unturned because you never know.

AJ: Her mother had no reason to think that she was in that specific stairwell, but she was just searching thoroughly in the area, which is something the police could easily do. You don't have to necessarily have a reason to believe that that's the stairwell she's in. You don't know she's in a stairwell, but you're just looking in the area.

Katie: That's such a small space. You could tell, if he's standing in that stairwell, she really couldn't get out because it's walls on both sides. It's a really scary place for someone to go through that. It's definitely not an easy spot to get out of if someone's blocking your way. There's only one way out and he kept her from going out.

Stephanie: It was November, so it would've been cold. It could've been icy. Not that it would matter, but she could have tried to get away, but slipped. Do you know what I mean? It's a weird case though. It was open and shut. She was murdered. They found who did it so quickly because he turned himself in.

Katie: At this point one interesting aspect is that he maybe didn't mean to, he was trying to maybe be cooperative by saying," I was with her and that's me in the sketch." But not realizing that they actually had legit footage of them going in there together and her not coming out. I think the interesting but sad aspect is that her mother had to be the one to find her. Definitely adds another layer of sadness to this case.

AJ: What would've happened if her mother wasn't able to make it to Toronto as soon as she did to find her? Would the police have found her at all? Who else would've found her?

Katie: Yeah. How long would she have been there before somebody did find her? Then by that time, maybe some of the DNA evidence wouldn't have been there if there was snow. Right?

AJ: Yeah. You get a few snow storms.

Stephanie: A construction crew could have found her.

AJ: Yeah. I'm surprised they didn't. She was there for a few days.

Katie: That's true.

AJ: Obviously they weren't working there for the few days.

Katie: Yeah. Maybe they were inside that fenced area and maybe they wouldn't have even had to go down to that stairwell at all. So yeah. Who knows what the outcome would've been if her mother wasn't as persistent as she was?

Stephanie: Parents are persistent. You want to know where your family member is. You want to try and find them. It's the police's job to find what happened to your family member. You're not supposed to find your daughter laying in the bottom of a stairwell. You can go search for your daughter, but you're not the one who's supposed to find them. That's supposed to be the police's job. They did get charged with misconduct.

AJ: I think they were just preoccupied, honestly, with the Bruce McArthur case. That was a huge investigation that took up most of their resources. So I don't think any case around that time got any of the attention it really deserved.

Stephanie: Wasn't that around the same area too?

AJ: Yeah. It was in the Village. It was where all the gay bars are. That's what the victims of Bruce MacArthur were, gay men from the village that went missing. Then this just happened to take place in the same area of the city around the same time that there was all of that investigation. People lumped them in. Obviously she doesn't fit the M O. She wasn't a, a gay man, but I think it just all happened to take place at the same time. That's why her mother had to be the one to find her because the police just didn't give a shit.

Stephanie: They didn't have the resources, I guess, to have someone search for her properly. That doesn't matter, you're police. You have to find other ways to do your job. If you can't do it yourself, bring in other teams or bring other people in to help. You can't just give up.

AJ: They had all of their resources strapped on the Bruce McArthur case but even that one, they botched many, many times. They're just incompetent.

Katie: There's a serial killer on the loose and they know he's operating in that area and then you have a missing woman. Wouldn't you be just looking because she could be a victim of his. So why not just search your hardest because you just never know what you're going to find rather than being, "Nothing probably happened to her. Let's move on."

AJ: That could help you.

Katie: You never know. Sometimes serial killers do stray from their M Os. You just never know maybe she was with somebody that he wanted and she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe she saw something that he did. You know what I mean? It's not that far fetched that she could have been a victim. Search for her as if she was. Even if she wasn't, you know, still searched for her properly.

AJ: Exactly. Then there was also the body of a trans woman that was found around the same time as well that they were looking into as possibly a victim of Bruce MacArthur too. All of these things were happening around the same time. They didn't really put any attention into those other two. They just focused on the victims that were suspected, like the gay men that were suspected to be victims of Bruce MacArthur.

Stephanie: There was speculation out there that maybe she was an escort. Her parents didn't know.

Katie: Maybe she put herself in that situation and it's not worthy of looking that hard for.

AJ: Yeah.

Stephanie: They think every 22 year old who gets drunk just happens to be out gallivanting with somebody.

Katie: Well that's usually what happens. That doesn't mean you have to assume that that s what happened every single time.

AJ: I try to play devil's advocate or look at it from their perspective. We don't know the amount of missing person reports that they get in a day that end up being nothing. You know what I mean? You don't hear about those ones. They don't turn into anything. They probably get so many reports of a missing person and then 24 hours later they're found and they weren't actually missing at all. It was just, they were mad at their mother or something. Right? I feel like they get that so many times that eventually they might just be in that mindset of, "Well, we're not going to be really concerned until we have an actual reason to be." They just didn't have that in this case until her mother found her body.

Stephanie: I do feel bad for her friend Riley, because she did leave her alone with Kalen, even though they had an argument because she was leaving. If she would've just stayed this would never have happened.

Katie: Yeah. I mean, obviously we can't put any blame on Riley. There's no way she would've known and you never know something could have happened to her as well if she would've stayed. We don't know how overpowering he could have been for even two women. Right?

AJ: So that's the Tess Richey case.

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Katie: Bye.

Stephanie: See you.