- 4 days ago
Murder She Solved S01E05
Category
🦄
CreativityTranscript
00:00It is a case that will launch one of the biggest manhunts in the province of Ontario's history.
00:0772-year-old Harley Walker has disappeared.
00:12And the man police believe is responsible is on the run.
00:18Speeding through the Canadian countryside, driving into oncoming traffic like a madman.
00:25The surveillance team fights to keep him in their sights, for he carries with him a terrible secret.
00:32The hidden location of the missing senior who's seriously injured, perhaps even dead.
00:39And now, the could-be killer seems intent on self-destruction.
00:44He's picking up speed and taking the corner sharper.
00:49For lead investigator Pauline Gray, it's a nightmare.
00:55He's a desperate man, or he's a killer on the run.
00:58When police lose sight of him.
01:03Had their suspect taken his own life?
01:06I also can't help him die. We need him.
01:09For investigators on the case, it's a terrible twist in a frightening and intriguing story of internet sex.
01:16He'd been using the bulletin board system to pick up dates.
01:20Financial extortion.
01:22The checks raised a red flag.
01:24The visa raised a red flag.
01:26And the hunt for a brutal predator.
01:29I suspect that he knew that he had led a monster into his life.
01:34The quiet community of Cabbage Town is steps from downtown Toronto, but you'd hardly know it.
01:52This neighborhood in Canada's largest city is a little piece of paradise for those who live here.
02:11Like 72-year-old Harley Walker, and even those who visit.
02:17I used his house as my oasis, too. I mean, I would go there to write.
02:23And to eat.
02:25I was probably over there for dinner three nights a week.
02:28He was a really excellent cook.
02:30He had an encyclopedic knowledge of jazz, which was really phenomenal.
02:35He's just a really interesting person to talk to about anything.
02:39A former television director and respected member of Toronto's gay community, Harley Walker liked nothing more than to entertain friends in his comfortable kitchen and beautiful backyard garden.
02:53He was pretty set in his ways, so he had things he liked to do and places he would go, and his circle was pretty defined.
03:02Which is why Greg Seal is surprised when his good friend and former lover suddenly disappears from sight.
03:10The last time I saw Harley was the Thanksgiving Monday.
03:17I tried calling the Thursday and didn't get a hold of him.
03:20And then by the Friday, I was still calling the house, and I was a little suspicious.
03:25Seal is relieved when he finally hears from Harley by email.
03:30I can remember the day because it's Friday the 13th.
03:33The message was a bit cryptic, something along the lines of, I have to leave town.
03:38I'll be in touch when I return.
03:40So I immediately picked up the phone and called his place, and there was no answer.
03:47When the weekend comes and goes without Harley getting in touch, Seal spends a sleepless Sunday night.
03:55On Monday morning, he sets out for Harley's house.
03:59When I turned the corner and I saw his car there, I knew he was home.
04:03Well, I mean, the car was home.
04:05And that's when I went up to the doorbell.
04:12Now it walks a person I'd never seen before.
04:15The man tells Seal that Harley had gone out of town for the weekend,
04:20and that he'd stopped in to check on the plants.
04:24I could see the car, and I'm thinking, well, you're lying.
04:27But what I immediately did is I laughed.
04:31Greg Seal is now more concerned than ever.
04:35Where had Harley really gone?
04:38And why was this strange man in Harley's home alone?
04:42Seal contacts a mutual friend living in the neighborhood, and the two of them return.
04:48So maybe, you know, an hour later from the time I had first rang the doorbell.
05:00And there's no sign of the person.
05:04Nothing really looked out of place.
05:06Then Seal notices five days of unopened newspapers at the front door.
05:12You know, it just seemed right out of character.
05:14Even if Harley was really, really busy, he would pick up the glove mail from the porch,
05:18open it, and at least read something with his morning coffee.
05:21So, with great hesitation, I decide that I'm going to go up to his computer.
05:27There, Seal finds something that seems to confirm his worst fears.
05:33An email, apparently from Harley, sent to his financial advisor, asking him to liquidate everything in his portfolio.
05:45My first thought was, can you do that in an email?
05:48I knew that Harley didn't do his investments that way.
05:51Had Harley been forced to send the email?
05:55Perhaps by the man who'd answered his door?
05:58Immediately, I felt sick. Physically sick.
06:02Seal contacts police to report his friend missing, and then meets the officer at Harley's home.
06:09It was like a bad television show all of a sudden.
06:13He was outright nasty. Like, he said, well, this Harley, maybe he doesn't want you in his life anymore,
06:19and you just can't take the hint like I was a stalker or something.
06:24I'm worried that a crime has taken place, and I can't believe that I can't get anybody to listen to me.
06:30Worse still, police now believe that Seal might be lying to them.
06:35The next-door neighbor clearly saw myself, and what she said was Harley, in the backyard the day before.
06:42And now, you know, 12 hours later, I'm claiming that he's been missing for a week.
06:48But that was not Harley. That was my other friend who happens to be retired and has white hair like Harley.
06:52We were in the backyard looking for Harley.
06:55To get the authorities on side, Seal contacts Harley's financial advisor and has him report a crime.
07:03Thursday, I got a phone call from a detective.
07:07And it's a world of difference when you talk to a detective.
07:10It just really is.
07:12That detective is Barry Radford.
07:15Greg was being truthful.
07:17They didn't have a tiff. They are really good friends.
07:19They do talk every day.
07:20Okay, now why would Harley not continue his normal routine?
07:24This is his normal routine. It raises red flags.
07:27Radford decides to open an investigation into Harley's disappearance.
07:32His first step, to send a uniformed officer to Harley's bank.
07:37So he went there and just said, would you mind just giving us an idea of any kind of activity that's been going on in his account?
07:43We're just trying to find out where he is, what he's been doing.
07:46We find out that his visa had been used to purchase some gas.
07:49Police tracked down the gas station's surveillance video.
07:53We saw a person using the PayPass and we saw it was being used to pump gas into a weight van.
08:00Could it be Harley Walker?
08:03You could tell it was a male, a younger male.
08:06Why is a man using Harley's PayPass to fill up gas in a rental vehicle?
08:14It started to, very early on, just feel not quite right.
08:21Detective Sergeant Pauline Gray is assigned as lead investigator on the case.
08:27We look at the newspapers not in the bin anymore.
08:31The blinds not being opened anymore.
08:34All those things that we do on a daily basis, that's our initial starting point, is when these things stop.
08:40And there are other signs, says Pauline's police partner, Detective Ian Briggs.
08:45If he had gone away, he certainly hadn't taken his car and he hadn't packed any luggage.
08:50Nor had he taken his toothbrush and glasses.
08:57It was fall and there was leaves sort of blown into the doorway.
09:00And as little as I knew Harley at that point, I knew just by walking in the house and getting that sense,
09:05that that's not something he would do.
09:07He wouldn't leave his house in that condition.
09:09Video shot by police at the time of the investigation, reveals other subtle traces of trouble.
09:16His vacuum cleaner was laying out in the main area, which was unusual, according to his friend.
09:22Throughout his upstairs, Harley had these Indian carpets.
09:27It has a nap that catches things.
09:29And the carpets had been drawn into the doorways.
09:33What that said to me, that something had been dragged.
09:36Not something the meticulous Harley Walker would have done.
09:40So who had, and why?
09:43Walked into Harley's bedroom and what I saw was matching pillowcases and no duvet.
09:50Is there a simple explanation or do the missing bedding and bunched up rugs paint a more sinister picture?
09:58It looked to me like the duvet had been dragged out of the room and down the stairs and the carpets in turn had come with it.
10:08Downstairs on the kitchen counter, investigators discover even more telling evidence.
10:15A shower curtain, packing tape, a roll of heavy-duty garbage bags.
10:22For Pauline Gray, they all point towards foul play.
10:27We started thinking in terms of that somebody was looking to wrap something.
10:31Homebody Harley Walker has been missing for nearly two weeks.
10:40It's enough to cause friend Greg Seal to head to Harley's looking for him.
10:46First, a man he has never met answers Harley's door.
10:51Then, Seal discovers an email sent from Harley's computer instructing his broker to liquidate all his assets.
11:01Worried about the fate of his friend, Seal calls local police.
11:05But at first, they don't take his concerns seriously.
11:08I mean, it was frustrating and I can't believe that I can't get anybody to listen to me.
11:14It's not until Harley's broker contacts the authorities that a search for the senior gets underway.
11:21That's when police learn that someone has used Harley's credit card to gas up a rented van.
11:27Homicide investigators conduct an extensive search of Harley's home and discover the duvet missing from the bedroom.
11:34Hallway rugs that look as though something has been dragged across them.
11:39And shrink wrap, packing tape, and a shower curtain in the kitchen.
11:44Afraid that Harley has been abducted and needs rescuing, lead investigator Pauline Gray calls in a forensic specialist.
11:53Given the packing supplies and shower curtain in the kitchen, Detective Todd Carefoot begins his search there.
12:01So I got down on my hands and knees with a flashlight and just started looking inch by inch across the kitchen floor, starting at the doorway.
12:08Carefoot finds what he's after.
12:11It was very small, like the size of a head of a pen and be dried blood that's now adhered to the floor.
12:16Tiny traces, almost invisible to the naked eye.
12:20But they are everywhere.
12:23Then I started to look at the sink itself and I found there was two small pieces of coagulated blood that was almost going down the drain in the sink.
12:31Then Carefoot looks upwards.
12:34On the ceiling, bloody remnants of a violent assault.
12:38For instance, if someone was stabbing someone with a knife, the knife would become bloodstained and then some of the blood will be projected normally upwards onto a wall or onto the ceiling.
12:50The stakes are much higher at that point.
12:53That cast off meant that there had been some transference of blood from a weapon or a fist to the ceiling.
13:03Does this blood belong to Harley Walker?
13:07What grisly scene took place in this comfortable kitchen?
13:11And can police find their victim before it's too late?
13:15In his determined search for answers, Carefoot turns to forensic science.
13:20If there's a porous surface like a tile floor, if there was blood there, a quantity of blood that's now been wiped clean, there's still going to be small traces of blood that's trapped inside the pores.
13:30So what we do is we use a blood reagent.
13:32It's a chemical that will adhere to the hemoglobin in the blood and it makes it turn purple.
13:37And in this case, reveal the marks of a cloth, someone's desperate attempt to mop up a huge amount of blood.
13:46And there is more visual evidence of the gruesome cleanup.
13:50The chemical developed some toe marks that were on the floor in blood right in front of the kitchen sink.
13:55You could see all five toes on the ball of his feet.
13:58By looking at that, you could just really visualize seeing the suspect standing there at the kitchen sink washing blood off his hands.
14:06But the suspect has been sloppy and the investigators are not.
14:11The very edge of the shrink wrap was a slight amount of blood.
14:16When you see something like that, it's very graphic.
14:18It gives you an impression that he was actually using this to bind up the body to remove him from the house.
14:23That's when Gray recalls a videotaped statement to police made by Harley's friend, Greg Seal.
14:30What we do catch from this video is that Greg saw things that he didn't realize he saw.
14:36Like in the few seconds before the stranger answered Harley Walker's door.
14:42His front door has a glass bit on it. It diffuses the image so you can't 100% see clearly.
14:48But there was like something orange in the hall that looked to me at the time like scaffolding.
14:54Like it was the color of scaffolding and it kind of puzzled me.
14:57But based on Greg Seal's description and the investigators experience, they think it's something else entirely.
15:05And that was a dolly. It was a moving dolly.
15:12When he was leaving, he mentions that he looks to his left and he sees a moving van.
15:17And those two things become paramount in the investigation later on.
15:21The only thing you need a moving van and a dolly for would be to move a body.
15:26Detective Todd Carefoot doubles his efforts in the hope that Harley Walker could still be alive.
15:32He discovers secreted away in the dining room amongst Harley's jazz records, a large plastic garbage bag.
15:41It was concealed very well.
15:43As soon as you opened up, you could smell decomposition inside the bag.
15:47Now I could see there was a number of blood stained clothing in there.
15:50Now police have found another clue, one they hope will lead them to Harley's attacker.
15:56There was a receipt that was in the bag for buying some plastic wrap, which is the same as was found in the kitchen with the shower curtain.
16:03Was it possible that the person who purchased the wrapping material was caught on the stationery store's surveillance camera?
16:11While police contact the store, lead investigator Pauline Gray asks a forensic pathologist to join them at Harley's house.
16:19We wanted him to look at the amount of blood that we believe was in the home and let us know, was it possible that somebody could survive this much blood loss?
16:30And he said, yes, it was possible.
16:32It was possible that somebody could bleed like this and still survive.
16:36In her search for the culprit who had abducted Harley, Gray turns her attention to the senior's computer.
16:43There was several websites that Harley was on daily.
16:47He really did spend hours on the internet.
16:49Some of that time spent hooking up with men.
16:52He'd been using the bulletin board system to pick up dates.
16:57Meeting men through the internet through a couple of chat lines in the city.
17:01And so there were possibly hundreds of avenues that had to be tracked down.
17:08Potential leads in a case that was becoming more serious by the hour.
17:13Some of Harley's friends had long worried about his online romances, including Brian Gloyd.
17:20I had mentioned to him, I said, you know, just, just watch it because people can be anything they want online.
17:26You have no idea.
17:28And he, oh yeah.
17:29Yeah, I know.
17:30No problem.
17:31No problem.
17:32His first choice was to have a new online person come to his house.
17:37He felt safest in his house and more comfortable that way.
17:40And Harley's computer was his little black book.
17:44Gray brings in tech crimes to examine it.
17:47A labor intensive process of tracking IP addresses to find the person behind every suspicious email or online chat.
17:56We felt that that was going to be the key or help us find where Harley was.
18:01Meanwhile, Detective Barry Radford is continuing his search into Harley Walker's financial affairs.
18:08And has discovered suspicious check transactions on Harley's account.
18:13Through the cooperation of the bank, they contacted the person who actually cast the checks.
18:18And that person subsequently called me later in the afternoon.
18:23His name is David Reed.
18:25And he admitted that, yes, those were his checks.
18:28And yes, he'd cashed them.
18:30And yes, he knew Harley.
18:32So I asked him if he'd come in and have a chat with me.
18:34And he said, you would.
18:37Actually, I was quite surprised how fast he showed up.
18:39And he agreed to be interviewed.
18:42Well, that's not behavior you would normally assume would come from somebody who is involved.
18:47You know, he's willing to come in for an interview.
18:50He came right away.
18:51Well, he's quite a big man.
18:53I would say about 6'2", over 200 pounds.
18:56He had mentioned that there was this guy from Mississauga, a big beefy guy that he was getting to know, met him online.
19:06But David Reed tells Radford and his partner that he'd met Harley Walker by chance at a coffee shop close to the senior's home.
19:14Not only that.
19:16He made a point of saying that he wasn't gay.
19:18He was married with a son.
19:20There wasn't anything more than friendship, which was fine with me, but I never approached that.
19:26He volunteered that information to me.
19:29I can't say it was an ongoing sexual thing, but I would say that I find it hard to believe that Harley would continue relations with him had there not been something sexual.
19:40Could that have been David Reed at Harley's house days earlier?
19:44And was Reed the one who rented the white van?
19:50I asked him about renting a van.
19:52Oh, yeah.
19:53He admitted that he'd rented a van because he was moving.
19:56Well, why were you moving?
19:57Oh, financial problems.
19:59Money's kind of tight.
20:00That's why Harley gave me the money, just to help me over the hump.
20:03So he took the money and cashed it.
20:07But he missed out a lot of things.
20:09Like, he never told us about using Harley's PayPass to fill up gas in a rental vehicle.
20:18Sometimes people lie to us to hide other parts of their lifestyle.
20:22Perhaps David Reed was lying to us because he was financially a mess, and his wife and friends didn't know.
20:29Perhaps he was uncomfortable with the fact that maybe he was gay.
20:32At the end of the interview, he just said, you know, I just want to help Harley.
20:36I just want to help whatever I can do to help you guys find him.
20:39I'd never do anything to Harley.
20:41That's what he said just prior to leaving.
20:43Back at Harley's house, forensic expert Todd Carefoot has finished looking for blood and begun the search for fingerprints.
20:51We started at the front door.
20:53We found what appeared to be a left thumbprint on the inside of the mail slot, inside of the front door.
20:58And that was significant because anatomically that would show that whoever left that fingerprint was in control of the house for a period of time because he removed mail from the mail slot.
21:06Could the print belong to David Reed, and might he have had a hand in Harley Walker's disappearance?
21:13A lot of basis for fingerprints is when people perspire, and when they perspire usually when they're doing something bad and they're feeling guilty.
21:21But Reed seems an unlikely criminal.
21:24We had done a background check on David Reed and found out he had absolutely no police record.
21:29We had no record of even simple things like parking tags or speeding tickets.
21:34Police compare the fingerprint from the mailbox to those in the countrywide fingerprint database, but find no match.
21:42As much as TV likes to portray us as these forensic gods, basically our work is done through talking to people.
21:51Talking to people, interviewing them.
21:53They give us tiny little pieces, shreds of the puzzle, and we put them all together.
21:58And now, police have found what could well be a big piece of the puzzle.
22:05The surveillance footage from the stationery store clearly shows David Reed entering the store, then calmly purchasing the plastic wrap and packing tape found in Harley Walker's kitchen.
22:20Materials police believe were used to abduct Harley Walker.
22:26Police have found evidence of a violent struggle and bloody clean-up in the home of missing senior Harley Walker, causing lead investigator Pauline Gray to call in a forensic pathologist.
22:44He determines that despite the blood loss, the injured 72-year-old could still be alive.
22:51Gray has tech crimes combed through Harley's computer in a search for suspects amongst his online dates.
22:58And police investigating Harley's bank records find recent checks written on Harley's account.
23:05Detectives call in the man who cashed them, 42-year-old unemployed financial advisor, David Reed.
23:12In his interview, Reed tells police that Harley lent him the money because he was broke.
23:18And he admits to having rented the white van parked outside of Harley's house around the time the senior went missing.
23:26But David Reed leaves out the fact that he'd used Harley's pay pass to gas up the van.
23:32And that he'd recently purchased the same plastic wrap and packing tape that police believe was used to bind up Harley to remove him from the house.
23:41Now, investigators have received frightening new intel about Reed from another police force.
23:48We had information that David Reed had been involved in plotting something like this before.
23:54Where they were going to tie up and extort money from an older couple.
23:59Once they got the money, then they were going to kill them and bury them.
24:02Police had no hard evidence in that case, so Reed was never charged.
24:11But his apparent involvement in such a vicious plan sends a chill through the investigation team.
24:19They tracked down David Reed's rental van.
24:23Forensic officers found deposits of what we believe to be blood.
24:26One on the handle, one in the back of the van.
24:30And they were able to match.
24:32And very early on, tell us that, in fact, the blood in the back of the van matched Harley's DNA.
24:36So we knew Harley was in that van and Harley's bleeding.
24:41They also know that if there is any hope of saving the senior, police need to find him fast.
24:48But where had David Reed taken Harley?
24:51Using information from local communications towers, investigators trace the movement of the man who has quickly become their number one suspect.
25:01So we were able to see that David Reed's cell phone was hitting towers close to Harley Walker's home.
25:10And then able to see that that particular phone was bouncing off towers right up the highway and into northern Ontario, northern southern Ontario.
25:20At the same time, we find out that David Reed had a family-owned cottage up in the Copacock area.
25:27And we had the odometer from the moving van.
25:31And the moving van had gone about what you'd need to do to go north to Copacock and back in one day.
25:39All signs pointed to the distinct possibility that Reed had hidden Harley at his family cottage.
25:48Armed provincial police scramble to locate the cabin, then cautiously move in.
25:55They carefully search the premises, but find no evidence of Harley Walker, dead or alive.
26:05Despite their disappointment, investigators are more convinced than ever that David Reed is their man.
26:12And they're not the only ones.
26:14It seemed to me that this David Reed, when I saw his picture, maybe would be the type for Harley.
26:21Like he was kind of beefy, he was very good looking.
26:26And I think maybe Harley would buy a story from this guy, you know.
26:31But unless they can find Harley, Reed's involvement in the senior's abduction will be difficult to prove.
26:38Police decide to casually ask Reed to drop by the station for a second interview.
26:44We didn't want to set off any bells.
26:46But just in case their suspect decides to make a run for it.
26:51We got a surveillance team on David Reed and sent the investigators up to knock on his door.
26:58So he stepped out on the porch.
27:00I said, we just need to clarify a few things because we are based on our investigation.
27:04You're the last person who actually saw Harley.
27:06So we just need a little bit more information from you.
27:09Would you mind coming into the station and have another chat with us?
27:12He did agree to come in. He said as soon as his wife arrived home, he would come in for the second interview.
27:18Radford heads to the station and the surveillance team waits just out of sight of Reed's home.
27:25Does Reed know that the investigation team is on to him?
27:30Will he panic and unknowingly lead them to Harley?
27:34I'm not on the road, I'm told, five minutes.
27:42And Reed's wife had returned home.
27:44She went in the house, he walked out the house, jumped in his car, drove south for about two minutes, made a U-turn and drove due north.
27:53And north is the complete opposite of coming in for an interview.
27:57David Reed appears to be on the run.
28:02Surveillance kept telling me that he was driving somewhat erratically and it was difficult for the surveillance team to keep up to him.
28:11But investigators can't afford to let Reed out of their sight.
28:15And I made a phone call and we got a plane up and had the plane start conducting surveillance so that the surveillance team could pull back a little bit.
28:23He's driving up the highway, he's driving into oncoming traffic.
28:33And that speaks to me of a man who's desperate.
28:35If Reed did abduct Harley in order to extort money from him, had he killed the senior in the process?
28:44The only one who could answer that question is Reed himself.
28:50The evidence against David Reed in the abduction of 72-year-old Harley Walker is piling up.
28:59Not only did Reed use the senior's pay pass to gas up the same rental van seen outside of Harley's home.
29:08Reed also recently cashed checks on Harley's account.
29:12A forensic search of Reed's rental van found traces of Harley's blood.
29:16And Reed's cell phone records revealed their suspect traveled to Coboconk, Ontario, the location of David Reed's family cottage.
29:25Police searched the property but find no evidence of Harley Walker.
29:30When investigators discovered that Reed had planned a previous extortion and see surveillance footage of him buying the plastic wrap and packing tape they believe he used to abduct Harley Walker.
29:43They send detectives to his North Toronto home.
29:47But instead of heading to police headquarters as promised, Reed flees into the countryside.
29:54And now we have a guy on the loose who we believe has a hand in Harley's disappearance.
29:59Police use surveillance vehicles and a plane to track him.
30:07He stops at a conservation area.
30:10And he gets out and he walks around the conservation area.
30:13Believe it or not we start thinking about protecting the life of David Reed.
30:16Because he's behaving like somebody who may be going to commit suicide.
30:20Rather than arrest Reed and risk him clamming up about where he's hidden Harley.
30:26Investigators wait and watch in the hopes he'll eventually lead them to the abducted senior.
30:32But there's a problem.
30:34The plane had run out of fuel so they had to turn around and literally glide back to Toronto.
30:40And the surveillance vehicles had to move in again.
30:44And it was becoming dark.
30:46The headlights were becoming visible.
30:48And David Reed was driving quite erratically.
30:51Surveillance police are forced to back off so as not to be noticed by Reed.
30:57That's when the situation gets out of control.
31:00He's going around country block which is a good square mile.
31:05But he's picking up speed and taking the corner sharper and sharper.
31:10They were worried about the surveillance so they just stayed at the four corners tucked away and watched him.
31:16At this point, there was a great bang.
31:23They thought that he had committed suicide, that he'd shot himself.
31:27If David Reed is dead, Harley Walker may never be found.
31:35The officers go down the country road looking and the windows are smashed out.
31:42The car is in really bad condition.
31:45But David Reed's nowhere to be found.
31:47Literally vanished.
31:49While the surveillance team searches the immediate area,
31:53and investigators call for provincial police backup.
31:56After the accident, his car was impounded and brought back to our office.
32:00They found Harley Walker's camera and also his wallet with driver's license in the trunk of the car.
32:08David Reed is clearly their man.
32:11And now, they've lost him.
32:13At first light, the police launch an intensive ground search.
32:19So we brought in dogs and the dog followed the scent from the car to a river which was nearby.
32:25And then there was no more scent after the river.
32:28The tracking dogs had lost Reed's smell when he crossed the water.
32:33But police are convinced this area is where they'll find Harley Walker.
32:38It's at this point that we find out through police officers, as a matter of fact,
32:43who knew David Reed grew up with them, that they went to a scout camp together that was in Copacock.
32:49And so we really did sort of focus on that's probably where Harley was.
32:54But their hopes of locating Harley still alive are dwindling.
32:59The Copacock area has been used on a number of times by criminals to take bodies from the city up and get rid of them.
33:07It's a large, marshy, lake-filled area.
33:10There were abandoned wells, little caves, abandoned houses, outbuildings.
33:18There was just thousands upon thousands of places to hide a body just within a kilometer or two of the particular tower
33:26that David Reed's cell phone has been bouncing off of.
33:30It is gradually becoming clear that what was a rescue is now the search for a body.
33:39It's like a slow, leeching realization that in all likelihood, you know, Harley's not with us anymore.
33:46Harley's gone.
33:48And now I'm investigating a murder without a body.
33:52It is now November, three weeks since Harley Walker's disappearance,
33:57and days into the search for what is certainly his killer.
34:02With winter fast approaching, police step up their manhunt.
34:07We brought officers in from all over Ontario and set up a command post.
34:13We had farmers checking their fields.
34:15In fact, we did find out that David was up there by just that,
34:18by somebody finding that somebody had been living in their shed.
34:22A lady had gone out to her garden shed and found it disturbed.
34:27It appeared that someone had actually been sleeping in her shed.
34:30And he's left behind a fingerprint, which police compare to those found on David Reed's business documents.
34:37They get a match.
34:39So we now knew that David Reed was alive and on the run and still within the Gray County area.
34:45That's one of those times when you think, I'm coming.
34:48Like, I'm coming to get you.
34:50Their wait is almost over.
34:53Pauline and I were in the office, and it was late evening.
34:57We were working on the case.
34:59We were sitting across from each other.
35:01We had been tracking David's phone, but it had been off.
35:06And so we really didn't have any idea where he was.
35:09We received two phone calls almost simultaneously.
35:14The first call was from our technical people that said David Reed had just fired up his cell phone.
35:19And Ian's phone call was from the OPP, who said that they were closing in on a cottage where they believed that he was.
35:28Tailing their prime suspect in the abduction of missing senior Harley Walker, David Reed crashes his car before disappearing from sight, launching one of the largest manhunts in Ontario's history.
35:45Provincial police comb the countryside looking for Reed and for his victim, whom they now believe is dead.
35:53First, they find evidence Reed had been sleeping in a garden shed.
35:59The OPP was able to lift a fingerprint from one of the doors.
36:02It's definitely David Reed's fingerprint.
36:04Then, they get a visit from a startled local cottager.
36:08When he walked into the room, into the cottage, a person's wallet was open on, I believe it was a table.
36:15He literally left the cottage right away and drove to the OPP station.
36:19Within minutes, a SWAT team descends on the cottage.
36:25After over a week of running from police, David Reed surrenders to them.
36:31But will he give up Harley Walker's body?
36:35Investigators transport their suspect back to Toronto.
36:40He was sitting in the back seat with a killer and I spoke to him the whole way home, a long drive, several hours, in the car with them.
36:49We told David Reed, basically, that we knew that he was responsible for Harley Walker having gone missing and that we were assuming he was dead.
36:58They accuse Reed of befriending Harley, probably through a dating site, in order to extort money from the senior.
37:07When Harley refused to cooperate, the thinking goes, Reed killed him, then hid the body.
37:14Back at the station with Reed, investigators bring out maps of the Kobukonk area.
37:20And he looked at them long and hard.
37:22And I really believed he was on the edge of showing us where Harley was.
37:27But then he just withdrew and said, no, I don't want to say anything at this point.
37:32Leaving investigators with the painstaking task of trying to come up with the evidence they'll need to convict David Reed of murder.
37:42We have lots of circumstantial, but we don't have anybody seeing David ever with Harley.
37:47We don't have anybody seeing him rolling him out of the house.
37:51We don't have anybody seeing David Reed driving the van.
37:54You know, all those are holes that can be punched in my defense.
37:57And all they need is a reasonable doubt. That's all the jury needs.
38:01But investigators are determined to charge David Reed even without Harley Walker's body.
38:08Over the next few months, they work to assemble their case until they're confident they have enough for a conviction.
38:16Only then do they get a call from David Reed.
38:20His lawyer has phoned. He wants to give up Harley.
38:24In exchange for a second degree murder sentence, David Reed would tell them where he hid Harley's body.
38:31So David drew us a map.
38:33He drew the driveway of the Boy Scout camp and drew an axe where he believed he had buried Harley.
38:41The following day, armed with a video camera, investigators join forensics officers at the site.
38:49We had a thaw. It was getting warm and the body was starting to decompose.
38:55So the dog went in and in 13 seconds, the dog hit.
38:59Reed had marked the spot with a branch cross.
39:04After four and a half hours of painstaking digging, we discovered this crypt basically in the ground.
39:11It was a bizarre reality to see that container come out of the ground, covered in dirt, slightly damaged, and know that there was a human being inside that case.
39:23He had made a casket out of a plastic storage container and boxes that he had because he was, of course, moving.
39:33And now the shrink wrap and the packing tape that we had seen the very first day in Harley's home.
39:39An autopsy reveals that Harley Walker had been stabbed in the heart.
39:45Strangely, yeah, I definitely thought of those last moments.
39:48Like I thought Harley figured it out.
39:51And like most of Harley's meetings, they're in the kitchen or the solarium where they have coffee.
39:56And the butcher block of knives is right there.
39:58And Reed just picked up the knife and stabbed Harley.
40:01David Reed says he was driven to do it, when after months of being friends, Harley insisted on more.
40:10I can't say for sure, but I can tell you that David Reed was extremely desperate.
40:15He was living in a house of cards.
40:17He was maxed out on all levels of personal finance.
40:22Even when Harley said, I don't loan money, David saw his life crashing down around him.
40:29And he saw a way to get that money.
40:32On August 31st, 2007, David Reed was convicted of second-degree murder
40:38and given the maximum sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole for 17 years.
40:45In May of 2010, Detective Sergeant Pauline Gray received a prestigious award
40:52from the Ontario Homicide Investigators Association for her outstanding courage, tenacity and compassion.
41:01For more information, go to myviva.ca forward slash murder she saw.
Recommended
44:22
|
Up next
2:05
53:39
47:12
46:14
44:45
40:19
38:37
49:08
48:48
48:44
28:45
28:45
28:40
28:50
28:42
28:45
41:05
41:13
41:58
42:47