Original Broadcaster Captioning (Enhanced). Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a quotation record.
00:01:22And we begin tonight with the first murder of the year in Dawson Creek.
00:01:27[Mark] January 2025.
00:01:29Gunfire rings out in Dawson Creek.
00:01:32One man is shot at this hotel and survives.
00:01:35Across the street,
00:01:37another man shot in an apartment isn't so lucky.
00:01:41[newscaster] Now, police are not commenting,
00:01:43but CJDC TV News has learned
00:01:45Johnny Joel Freeman was murdered.
00:01:48[Mark] Johnny Joel Freeman,
00:01:50a local man with a lengthy criminal record.
00:01:53In this case, the Mounties made an arrest.
00:01:5623-year-old Nolan Schmidt was taken into custody
00:01:59the night of the murder. And yet what finally seemed like a win
00:02:03for the Mounties was anything but.
00:02:06I think that he is just an individual
00:02:09that feels rage
00:02:11and he doesn't have the proper outlets for it, right?
00:02:14[Mark] Outreach worker Jan Atkinson believed Schmidt
00:02:17was a ticking time bomb with mental health issues.
00:02:21Here's Schmidt when he was a kid
00:02:23in a video posted on Facebook.
00:02:26That's three times, bud. Look at this shit.
00:02:29[Mark] And it was clear to Atkinson years ago,
00:02:32the ticking time bomb would explode.
00:02:35I was upset that he had the opportunity
00:02:38to even be out in the community. He'd been caught with weapons in the car.
00:02:42He was a drug runner, he's a drug dealer. [Jan] I think he was a drug runner.
00:02:46He hung around with some bad guys.
00:02:48He did some really bad things.
00:02:50[Mark] And one day Atkinson says Schmidt took a run at her
00:02:53when he was staying at the shelter where she worked.
00:02:56He was pretty angry with me
00:02:57and he started running towards me,
00:03:00and he was pretty hyped up. And were you afraid for your own safety?
00:03:04Yeah, yeah. [Mark] That's when Atkinson wrote this letter.
00:03:08Schmidt was going back to jai,
00:03:10and Atkinson gave the judge a long list of reasons
00:03:13why he needed to stay there and get help.
00:03:16"I am begging the courts to remand
00:03:18Mr. Schmidt into custody," she wrote.
00:03:21I had written a letter to the judge being like,
00:03:23"You know, blood's gonna be on your hands."
00:03:28If he's released back into the community. If he's released back into the community.
00:03:31What was your fear?
00:03:33My fear was that he would murder somebody.
00:03:37♪
00:03:42Do you like coming out here to get a little peace and quiet?
00:03:45Yeah. Usually there's an engine running, but. [chuckles]
00:03:49[Mark] Andy Tylosky calls the Peace River region
00:03:52"the last of the Wild West."
00:03:54He's a farmhand who grew up here.
00:03:58He remembers Nolan Schmidt as a kid.
00:04:03[Andy] I knew his mom from her days as a bartender in Fort St. John.
00:04:06She always spoke about her son, and she was just proud, as proud as could be,
00:04:10about this young man. She was the glue in Nolan's life then.
00:04:14Yeah, yeah, they were very, very close.
00:04:17[Mark] Until she died when Schmidt was 18.
00:04:21[Andy] He found her. -What did that do to him? -It just wrecked him.
00:04:27He lost his sense of hope. The most important thing to him,
00:04:31the only rock he had in his life.
00:04:32And he told me at the funeral he just started drinking,
00:04:38because that was the only way that it kind of numbed the pain.
00:04:41And he never really stopped.
00:04:44[Mark] Tylosky remembers years later, Schmidt contacted him from ja.
00:04:48He had a sentencing hearing and needed to tell the judge
00:04:51he had a place to stay, so Tylosky showed up
00:04:54to court to give Schmidt a chance to go straight.
00:04:58I was gonna provide him a relatively safe environment,
00:05:01as much as I could. But you, at that point in his life,
00:05:04-you were his last hope. -Pretty much, yeah.
00:05:08[Mark] But Tylosky says within a month
00:05:10things started to fall apart.
00:05:12-Was he doing drugs? -Oh, he was cracked right out.
00:05:15As soon as he got his first welfare check, it went right up the pipe.
00:05:19[Mark] When Tylosky accused Schmidt
00:05:20of stealing money from him, things got violent.
00:05:23[Andy] We're driving just from downtown Fort St. John,
00:05:26just happened to be passing the police detachment
00:05:30when he pulls my kitchen knife out on me and goes,
00:05:34"Give me-- Like, you're not gonna do this with me.
00:05:36I will, you know, kill you," basically.
00:05:41[Mark] The police in nearby Fort St John
00:05:43defused the situation and took Schmidt into custody.
00:05:46At that point, Tylosky thought he was done
00:05:48with Schmidt for good, assuming he was behind bars.
00:05:51But then his phone rang.
00:05:53Two hours later, I get a call from him: "They've released me.
00:05:57They just wanna get rid of me out of the jail." Like, they didn't wanna deal with him.
00:06:00But here's a guy...
00:06:03who is...
00:06:06a loose cannon, who has mental health issues.
00:06:09I mean, there's warnings on file about this guy.
00:06:14-He's pulled a knife on you. -Yeah. [Mark] He's been arrested by the police.
00:06:17And they just release him and say "Good luck"?
00:06:20Mm-hmm. Yeah, I guess so. That was that.
00:06:23We have to remember that police officers are people too,
00:06:26and nobody likes to work harder than they have to.
00:06:28[scoffs] I think it's sometimes where it comes down to. Like, he would have been a lot of paperwork,
00:06:32a lot of trouble for them to deal with.
00:06:36[Mark] Two days later, Johnny Joel Freeman was shot dead.
00:06:40Yeah, but it certainly wasn't some sort of coordinated gang attack, I can tell you that much for sure.
00:06:44[laughs] And I'm lucky in a lot of ways.
00:06:46-[Mark] Could have been you. -It could have been me.
00:06:51You know, I think we just all lost a little bit more faith
00:06:54in the system that we're supposed to trust.
00:06:57And until we can trust the system,
00:06:59people aren't gonna have trust in coming forward.
00:07:02Nothing's gonna happen. -[Mark] Nothing gonna change. -No.
00:07:07[Mark] Some things never change.
00:07:09Four months later in Dawson Creek, another murder.
00:07:13It was mid-April when police discovered an abandoned truck
00:07:17on this lonely stretch of dirt road southwest of town.
00:07:21Inside the truck, the body of Emily Ogden.
00:07:25The RCMP gave her the unlucky distinction:
00:07:28she was Dawson Creek's murder victim number 13.
00:07:33That abandoned truck belonged to a well-known drug dealer
00:07:36in Dawson Creek, and a familiar name to us:
00:07:39Arron Linklater. It had been just over a year
00:07:43since five people stormed his house with guns in the middle of the night.
00:07:47But time hadn't erased Linklater's lasting memory of that violent night.
00:07:52There was a girl in the situation.
00:07:53She was laughing at me. I'll never forget her laugh.
00:07:58[Mark] That girl was Emily Ogden,
00:08:00Dawson Creek's 13th murder victim.
00:08:03Let me take you back to the home invasion-- Absolutely.
00:08:06Because the woman who laughed in your face
00:08:09-is Emily Ogden. -Yep. She's dead.
00:08:11She winds up dead and her body's found in your truck.
00:08:14Yep. My house was broken into and my truck was stolen.
00:08:17I was drunk, came home.
00:08:19I had no idea what exactly the circumstances are to it.
00:08:22I was blown away, 'cause I woke up
00:08:24really, really intoxicated still. Then I got taken into custody.
00:08:28I had no idea of all the details. It was like--
00:08:31You have no idea that Emily Ogden was dead? -No. -Do you have anything
00:08:35-to do with her death? -No. But you know that you're a suspect.
00:08:38-Yeah, prime. -Prime suspect.
00:08:43But the police aren't the only ones
00:08:45who think Linklater killed Emily Ogden.
00:08:47He says everyone in town believes that too,
00:08:50including Emily's criminal friends.
00:08:53Do you walk around now with a bulletproof vest? -I do. -Why?
00:08:57Major Crimes came here and said that my ex-girlfriend and I,
00:09:00that our lives are directly in jeopardy.
00:09:02-Somebody wants to kill you. -Yeah.
00:09:05And I just told them to get in their Jeep,
00:09:08and I said, "Can you guys go around the block
00:09:10and park right over by the neighbour's house?
00:09:13Because that's where the line up to kill me begins.
00:09:15Get the fuck off my property."
00:09:19[Mark] By April of 2025,
00:09:21the police had their hands full in Dawson Creek.
00:09:23Another unsolved murder, and every indication
00:09:27the cycle of violence would continue.
00:09:29We live in a farming community,
00:09:31but it's like, we have this new generation of entitled children.
00:09:35-Do you know what I mean? -[Mark] Entitled and armed.
00:09:38Entitled and armed, and it's just,
00:09:41I've never seen anything like it.
00:09:45[Mark] When we come back, we follow a new lead
00:09:47in the mysterious disappearane of this man from Dawson Creek.
00:09:51My name is Mark Kelley. I'm with the CBC program The Fifth Estate.
00:09:54We're asking questions about the disappearance of Cole Hosack.
00:13:17of Canada's Wild West, then there's a growing need
00:13:20for a sheriff to ride into town and clean it up.
00:13:26With 13 homicides in four yea,
00:13:28Dawson Creek now has a murder rate
00:13:3014 times the national average.
00:13:36Families of the victims continue to wait for answers.
00:13:40It's a wait that aches.
00:13:44Take the case of Cole Hosack.
00:13:46He's been missing for almost two years.
00:13:49He was passing through Dawson Creek
00:13:51when he stopped at a bar to ring in the New Year. The police have confirmed
00:13:55there was an altercation outside the bar. And then what happened?
00:13:59And then he's just never seen again.
00:14:02[Mark] But how could he just disappear? Exactly.
00:14:06[Mark] His mother, Julie Hosack, has been pleading for help,
00:14:09searching for answers ever since.
00:14:11I could feel that there's fear in Dawson Creek right from the beginning.
00:14:16[Mark] The Fifth Estate has learned late last year
00:14:18the Mounties arrested and questioned a suspect in the case:
00:14:23Matt Lawton.
00:14:25We also learned the last persn Cole Hosack called
00:14:28the night of his disappearance was the same Matt Lawton,
00:14:31a suspected drug dealer in Dawson Creek.
00:14:35So we went to Lawton's house armed with questions.
00:14:39Hey, Matt. My name is Mark Kelley, I'm with the CBC program The Fifth Estate.
00:14:43We're asking questions about the disappearance of Cole Hosack.
00:14:48[Mark] His family is looking for answers,
00:14:49and we are just looking for your help to explain
00:14:52about what happened that night.
00:14:57[Mark] He had your phone number.
00:14:59He made a call to you. It was the last call he made.
00:15:04[Mark] Why would he have your number?
00:15:09We don't know where he is, Matt. His family is looking for answers.
00:15:17[Mark] In the end, the Mounties released Lawton without charg.
00:15:20The RCMP now say they are treating
00:15:22Hosack's disappearance as a murder.
00:15:25The case remains unsolved, and still no sign of his body.
00:15:32Behind the fear in Dawson Cre,
00:15:34there is one name that rises above the rest:
00:15:37Tanner Murray, the infamous repeat offender,
00:15:40arrested last year with a small arsenal of weapons.
00:15:44And the more people learn about Murray and his criminal convictions,
00:15:47the more suspicious they've become. Do you think Tanner Murray had something to do
00:15:51with Renee's death? No comment.
00:15:56Are you afraid that commenting on that could get you more death threats?
00:16:00Yes. 100%.
00:16:04I don't personally know Tanner. Just what he's done to people.
00:16:09Which is?
00:16:10Drugs. You name it.
00:16:14Well, if you know this, presumably police know this. [community member] Oh, the police know,
00:16:18but they've got to get the evidence. -Nobody will come forward. -[Mark] Why not?
00:16:21[community member] They're scared. Yeah, people in town have told us
00:16:25they don't even wanna mention his name because they fear that
00:16:28that could mean trouble for them.
00:16:31What impact does Tanner,
00:16:34or has Tanner Murray had on the community of Dawson Creek?
00:16:38I think he's mostly just instilled a real sense of fear.
00:16:40I think until Tanner, you know, sees some accountability,
00:16:45I think that that will continue to be an issue.
00:16:49[Mark] Murray has never been charged with murder,
00:16:52but his criminal record continues to grow.
00:16:54This spring, the RCMP in neary Grande Prairie, Alberta,
00:16:58pulled over an SUV with stolen license plates.
00:17:01Inside the vehicle?
00:17:03Tanner Murray, who was wanted for violating his probation.
00:17:07The RCMP later turned up a guitar case filled with guns
00:17:10and drugs-- cocaine, fentanyl, methamphetamines--
00:17:15and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
00:17:18Murray is now being held without bail.
00:17:24We're here at the courthouse in Grande Prairie, Alberta,
00:17:27where Tanner Murray is facing a string of criminal charges related to his arrest
00:17:31with that guitar case full of guns and drugs.
00:17:34Well, his lawyer made an appearance before a judge
00:17:36here this morning, saying at this stage,
00:17:38Murray will not plead guilty.
00:17:40So that means, much to the relief of the people in Dawson Creek,
00:17:44Tanner Murray will remain in custody... for now.
00:17:49While Murray is in jail, his half-brother isn't.
00:17:53This is Jessie Ray Stevens.
00:17:55This year, he changed his profile picture to this,
00:17:58armed with a Beretta pistol.
00:18:00He was in custody until recently,
00:18:02when attempted murder charges against him were dropped.
00:18:05The witness failed to show up and testify.
00:18:09After Murray's arrest in Grande Prairie, Stevens posted this picture.
00:18:13It's him with Murray as kids, with an ominous warning...
00:18:29Also on the receiving end of threats, Arron Linklater,
00:18:33the drug dealer we interviewed this spring.
00:18:35He spoke by phone to Fifth Estate producer Timothy Sawa
00:18:38days before we returned to Dawson Creek this fall.
00:19:19[Mark] When we went back to speak to Linklater this fall,
00:19:21we found the RCMP forensics team entering his house.
00:19:27Day turned to night before we got an indication
00:19:30about what was happening insi.
00:19:34We've been outside Arron Linklater's house now
00:19:36for several hours, waiting for answers.
00:19:39We weren't sure whether the RCMP had taken him into custody
00:19:42or charged him with any crimes.
00:19:44But just minutes ago, the body removal unit arrived,
00:19:48and it became clear to us,
00:19:49Arron Linklater would not be leaving his home alive.
00:20:11[solemn music]
00:20:15Police are calling his death suspicious.
00:20:18No one has been charged.
00:20:21In our interview, Linklater told us how lethal drugs are used
00:20:25to quietly kill people in Dawson Creek.
00:20:29Is there a salt shaker in the room? Okay. I'm gonna show you something
00:20:33about how much carfentanil it takes to kill a human body.
00:20:37That's enough to kill three people.
00:20:40So it's an assassin's drug. Guy will come over and party,
00:20:44make like you're his best fucking friend in the world. "Hey, man, here's a gram for you,
00:20:47here is a gram for you, and here's gram for you.
00:20:49But this gram, it's just for you."
00:20:54[Mark] Despite the threats, one of the last things Linklater told us?
00:20:58He wasn't gonna run from the fear.
00:21:13[Mark] We wrapped up our investigation with questions
00:21:15for the RCMP at their headquarters in Surrey.
00:21:19This time we're sitting down with Staff Sergeant Kris Clar,
00:21:22a senior media relations officer in BC.
00:21:25We spoke with Superintendent Wijayakoon.
00:21:29He said, "Give us six months, and we will have
00:21:33a measure of success for the families
00:21:36in some of these cases." That was one year ago.
00:21:39Since then, there have been no arrests
00:21:43in the investigations into the 11 missing or murdered.
00:21:46There have been no charges.
00:21:48Is this your measure of success?
00:21:52So I just actually spoke with Superintendent Wijayakoon
00:21:55about this very thing. I think he probably regrets adding a timeline there
00:21:59because we're still hopeful
00:22:02that we will come to success in some of these investigations,
00:22:06and I think we're very close to that still.
00:22:09As you build your cases,
00:22:12people in town are watching the people
00:22:14that they suspect are murderers walking free in the community.
00:22:17I think the biggest misconception here is,
00:22:21you know, knowing and proving
00:22:24are two completely different things.
00:22:28We can say that we know this person did it.
00:22:31But we need to, and I think more importantly,
00:22:35prove that in a court of law
00:22:37and successfully prosecute that
00:22:40so that the families of the victims do get that justice.
00:22:45[Mark] We showed the staff sergeant the photo of Jessie Ray Steve,
00:22:48Tanner Murray's half-brother, pointing a pistol.
00:22:52What message do you think this picture sends people in the community?
00:22:56Well, it's obviously a direct threat.
00:22:59Appears to be a direct threat.
00:23:00To anyone to speak ill of his brother,
00:23:04or to testify against his brother, for example.
00:23:09Well, I wouldn't wanna speculate, but...
00:23:12it's a general threat.
00:23:17[Mark] Days before we went to air,
00:23:19the RCMP found another body, this one in a burned-out vehie
00:23:23near this area the locals call Dead Man's Curve.
00:23:26It's the third body discovered here
00:23:29in this bloody string of violence.
00:23:31The RCMP is treating this latest case
00:23:33as yet another homicide,
00:23:36Dawson Creek's 15th.
00:23:41Shyann Hambler's two cousins are among
00:23:43the murdered in Dawson Creek.
00:23:46There's a lot of fear in this town. [Shyann sobs]
00:23:53How do you take that fear away? [Shyann] There's somebody behind this,
00:23:57and somebody has to know something.
00:23:58I just wish that whoever knows this can come forward.
00:24:02I'm proud to stand up for them,
00:24:05because who else is gonna stand for somebody
00:24:08and say something if it's not me?
00:24:13[Mark] When you look at the cycle of violence,
00:24:16which sort of started shortly after
00:24:18you arrived in Dawson Creek,
00:24:21do you see it ending any time soon? I do.
00:24:27You know, I have to have, like, a belief that people are,
00:24:30you know, gonna do the right thing, and I have to have faith
00:24:33that people are gonna have a bit more courage, right?
00:24:36So, yeah.
00:24:40[birds cawing]
00:24:46[theme music playing]
00:24:52Hi there Canada.
00:24:56The funny, not so funny thing about the
00:24:59world right now is the thing you maybe didn't see coming.
00:25:04My favorite word? Tariff. Minimum 10% tariff on
00:25:08all imports. We're already hearing about layoffs. He is
00:25:12trying to break us.
00:25:15So you have questions. How should Canadians be preparing
00:25:19for that next trip? How seriously are you taking
00:25:22this threat? How is Hamilton bracing for
00:25:24tariff impact? And while your elbows have been
00:25:27up, elbows up, for us it's the sleeves rolled
00:25:30up. Because you need answers.
00:25:34Our journalists countrywide and all over the world are on the
00:25:38case. Canada, we got you and we are right
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00:27:53[sirens blaring]
00:29:39♪
00:30:32we're in Vancouver's downtown east side,
00:30:34the epicenter of a poison drug crisis in Canada.
00:30:38Since 2016, more than 4,000 people have died
00:30:42of opioid overdoses in this city.
00:30:44More than 50,000 across Canada.
00:30:47The main killer is fentanyl.
00:30:49[siren wailing]
00:30:51I was overdosing, like, upwards of twice a day. I think the way that I'm going now, like,