Yup, I'm doing my own version of Despair Island.
I loved the original story, and I'd been sitting on a rough draft and a dream of this first chapter for literal years before I finally decided to do something with it. I though it would be fun to look at it through a true crime podcast angle! I hope you all enjoy!
Sorry if this first chapter jumps around a lot; it took a while to really find my footing with it. And just for clarity's sake, everything in italics is supposed to be the podcast narration.
Big thanks to Knifez for inspiring this story!
The Dark Underbelly Up North
Case #204: Camp Wawanakwa. Episode 1, Part 1: Setting the Stage
On the 28th of May 2007, at around eleven-thirty PM, sixteen-year-old Isadora Bell - better known to her friends and family as Izzy - was walking by herself along Cobalt Street in Edmonton, Canada. She was nearing the intersection that led to Main Street when a nondescript black van pulled up alongside her.
Within the blink of an eye, three men jumped out and surrounded her. Izzy fought, punching and kicking as hard as she could, but she was quickly overpowered and thrown into the back of the van. The street was deserted. There was no one around to witness the kidnapping. Thinking that they were going to make a clean getaway, the men high-fived one another...until one of them suddenly spotted a pair of eyes watching them from behind a fence across the street…
Hello listeners, and welcome back to The Dark Underbelly Up North, where we give detailed run-downs of Canada's history of crime; from high-profile cases to ones that have fallen through the cracks.
This week's case is going to be a little different: it will be split into four whole episodes. Each one will be about one and a half to two hours long. This is due to the extremely bizarre nature of the case, which makes it such that it has a wealth of information behind it. A lot of context is needed for you to fully understand the events that took place.
We would also like to issue a warning: this case involves crimes against minors. This case also involves graphic violence of a magnitude I have rarely talked about on this podcast before.
This case was one that had already caused an absolute media frenzy back when it happened, but now, forty-eight years later, previously classified information has since been leaked to the public and interest in the case has grown significantly.
Due to the sheer amount of new information that is now available, we have dedicated our time and effort into bringing you the events of the summer of 2007 in chronological order, and as clear and precise as possible. It is because of this, that we will start off by introducing all the people involved, and explaining the circumstances surrounding their involvement.
The three men ran across the road and jumped over the fence, pouncing on the person who had been watching them. It was a girl, who appeared to be around sixteen years of age. The men were fully prepared to kill her right then and there - after all, they had been instructed to leave no witnesses - until they realized they could use her for another purpose.
So they dragged her over the fence and across the road. All the while, she struggled and screamed. The three men opened the van's door and threw her inside next to Izzy Bell, before climbing in after them and speeding off into the night. They'd left no witnesses to what they'd just done.
~*~
An hour earlier, Eva Morozova was walking home from the gym in Ashburton, a small town an hour southwest of Edmonton. She had been training hard in preparation for the upcoming Weightlifting Championships in August. She had her head down, so she didn't notice the black van pulling up beside her until it was too late. Just like Izzy, she too was grabbed off the street and taken away into the night. It had happened so quickly that she didn't even get the chance to throw a punch.
~*~
Before Eva was taken, in the small town of Hill Creek, which was only a ten-minute drive from Ashburton, Noah Dhar was on the sidewalk outside his house, putting out the garbage bins for tomorrow's trash pickup. He'd been asked to put them out earlier, but neglected it in favour of playing a computer game. As he turned to go back inside, he heard someone running up behind him. Before he could turn around to look, he felt someone's hand cover his mouth. Another set of arms picked him up by his legs and carried him away. He felt himself being thrown into what looked like the back of a van. That was the last thing he remembered before everything went black.
~*~
These were not the first sudden kidnappings of young people, nor would they be the last. They had begun three days earlier, on the 25th May.
But, spread out over the entire country, they caused no significant blip in the statistics. There was no cause for alarm from the greater public.
On the morning of 25th May, Bridgette Summers left her home in Vancouver. She was going down to the beach to meet up with friends, as well as to take some pictures for a photo album she was creating. As she turned onto the sleepy residential street that would take her to the beach, she fell in step with a boy about her age. They started chatting, and he introduced himself as Geoffrey Smithers. They immediately hit it off, finding that they had a lot in common, particularly regarding their love of the beach. She invited him to come take some pictures with her, which he agreed to.
Soon after, they became aware of a black van creeping along behind them. Spooked, the two teens decided to make a break for it across the road, heading towards a footpath into the trees that the van would not be able to follow them down.
Unfortunately, five men jumped out of the vehicle and chased them down. They caught Geoff and Bridgette, dragging them back to the van and speeding off.
~*~
While Geoff and Bridgette were being stalked, Ezekiel Miller was traveling with his father to the small farming town of Greenhead, located in central Saskatchewan. Ezekiel, a homeschooled farmer's son, rarely left his homestead, so this trip into town was a special treat for him.
His father told him to stay inside their truck while he went into the local farm supplies store to pick up some chicken feed. Ezekiel, however, left to sneak over to the convenience store, where he purchased a chocolate bar and a can of cola. He never made it back to the truck. His father returned soon after, but there was no sign of his son anywhere.
~*~
But the ones who took Ezekiel weren't done yet. A little after midnight on the 26th, the van rode into Saskatoon and stole two more teens: Gwen Lawrence and Harold McGrady. They had both been walking home after attending an end-of-school party hosted by their fellow schoolmates. Their kidnapping was swift and left no witnesses.
When Noah opened his eyes, it was dark. He rubbed them and blinked, but still only darkness greeted him. Shifting a little, a throb of pain burst in the back of his head. He groaned, louder still when he brought up his hand to touch it.
"You're awake?"
Noah's head shot up. "Who's there?"
"I could ask you the same thing." It was a girl's voice.
"Who are you?"
"Eva. Who are you?"
"Noah. Ow…my head…"
A third voice greeted them. "I'm Izzy. I'd say nice to meet you, but, well…"
Noah blinked. It was pitch black. He couldn't even see his own hand in front of his face. "Jesus…how many of us are in here?"
Izzy spoke up again. "There's another girl in here, but I don't know her name. She won't talk to me. I think she's praying?"
The 29th of May would see the kidnappings of three more unfortunate teenagers. The first of these took place at six o'clock that afternoon.
Paula Blair was getting ready for a date with her new boyfriend, who was coming to pick her up very soon. Since he was unfamiliar with the Windsor neighborhood in which she lived, she didn't want him to accidentally drive past her house. She asked her younger sister Lindsay to stand on the sidewalk and keep an eye out for his car while she finished getting ready. Lindsay, always kind and willing to help out her sister, happily obliged.
When she heard the doorbell ring, she was ecstatic to see that her boyfriend had managed to find her house after all. She jokingly asked, "So how loudly did my sister call you over when she saw you?"
But her boyfriend was confused and asked what she meant. Paula said that she'd asked Lindsay to watch for him. Her boyfriend responded, "I didn't see Lindsay out there."
Paula ran outside, screaming Lindsay's name, but she was nowhere to be found. The only sign she had been there at all was a red flip-flop that she had been wearing earlier. Otherwise, the street was quiet and deserted.
~*~
Alejandro Burromuerto, the youngest son of the Spanish ambassador Miguel Burromuerto, had spent the evening dining with his family at a tapas restaurant in Ottawa to celebrate his seventeenth birthday. Despite the amazing food and warm atmosphere, the night ended on a sour note when Alejandro got into an argument with his brother Jose. After one particularly nasty comment, Alejandro stormed off, declaring that he was going to walk home. The rest of his family let him go and continued to eat their meal in peace, not wanting to cause more of a scene in front of the other diners.
At ten o'clock, they finished up and headed back home themselves. Since Alejandro was supposed to be home by now, they were expecting to find the porch light on and the front door unlocked. To their confusion, the house was locked up and completely dark inside. When Alejandro's mother checked his bedroom, she found it the exact same way he'd left it earlier.
There was absolutely no sign their son had made it back home at all. A drive around the surrounding streets yielded nothing. Alejandro had vanished.
~*~
Around the same time, also in Ottawa, Tyler Kennard and his father, sportscaster Oliver Kennard, were walking back to their car after dining at a restaurant. On their way, they passed a lively pub. Through the windows, Oliver recognized a few of his drinking buddies. He told Tyler to go and wait in the car while he went inside to say hello.
Oliver ended up staying in the bar until well past midnight, sharing a few drinks with his friends. When he realized what time it was, he stumbled back to his car, only to be met with a horrifying discovery. The front passenger door was wide open and the dome light inside was on. But Tyler wasn't inside. The only thing of him that remained was his beloved sports headband lying on the concrete outside the open door.
~*~
Ottawa would suffer two more kidnappings the following day. Trent Dawes was taken while heading to his guitar lesson. Duncan Adamson, having seen the van creeping behind him, ran into an alleyway to escape, but was quickly cornered and captured.
Later that same night, across the country, Heather Mackenzie would find herself stranded at a rural gas station in British Columbia, close to the American border. A tyre on her car had burst and her phone battery had died. An employee noticed a white van pulling in before quickly leaving. When the employee went out to give Heather a hand, she was gone.
~*~
The kidnappings continued. Groups of men and sometimes women stalked teens from all walks of life, grabbing them without care or concern. Where exactly they were being taken to, and why, would not be revealed until later.
At noon on the 1st June, best friends Katherine Hatfield and Sarah Hamilton, better known as simply Katie and Sadie, were at the park with Sadie's five-year-old sister, Emma. They were in Twig Falls, a suburb in the greater Toronto area. It was a quiet place, where life moved slowly.
Katie and Sadie left together to go find the public restrooms, leaving Emma by herself on the swings. They walked, hand in hand, to the tree line where the restrooms were, and were swallowed up by the shadows.
After a while, Emma grew bored and decided to find her sister and her friend. She went to the restrooms, but they weren't there. She wandered all around the park looking for them, tears falling down her cheeks as she called out their names, growing more and more scared by the minute.
An old woman came up and asked her what was wrong. She responded, "I can't find my big sister. I'm really scared. Please help me."
~*~
At two o'clock in the afternoon, a young man stepped inside the police station at Rainy Road, a tiny village situated in the far northwestern corner of Alberta. He immediately caught the attention of everyone inside, as he was from a tight-knit religious community known as God's Lambs. God's Lambs only lived about twenty minutes away, but they mostly kept to themselves. Rarely ever did they request help from the police.
The man was greeted by a policeman, who asked him what was going on. He tearfully explained, "My sister Athaliah Goodman is missing. She's been gone since the twenty-seventh. We thought she had just gone to explore the woods like she does sometimes, but we cannot find her. She hasn't come back home. Please help us. We have searched and searched and we don't know what else to do."
~*~
In Calgary at three-thirty P.M., thirteen-year-old Ella Brightly was skipping down a sunny residential street. As she skipped and whistled to herself, she called out a friendly greeting to sixteen-year-old Leshawna Mathers walking along across the road from her.
Only seconds later, a big black van parked itself haphazardly on the side of the street. Three men jumped out and grabbed Ella by her arms. As they attempted to drag her into the van, she screamed for help.
Leshawna responded to her cries and ran across the road. She punched one man hard in the jaw, bruising it. He momentarily let go of Ella, who took the opportunity to escape. She ran to a nearby house and banged on the door, but no one was home so she ran to the house next to it and alerted the occupants. They called the police, but by the time they went outside to investigate, the van was already gone, and Leshawna was nowhere to be found.
~*~
Only ten minutes later, Cody Anderson and Devon Joseph "DJ" Bentley were kidnapped from a supermarket parking lot. A witness called the police, but the van was long gone when they showed up. According to the witness, it seemed that Cody was the original target, and DJ, who was an employee of the supermarket, was also taken when he tried to come to his rescue. The police did not connect these disappearances to that of Leshawna Mathers.
~*~
Halfway across the country, another van began stalking Sierra Weber as she was walking home from her mother's house in Toronto. She ignored it at first, thinking nothing of it. The road she was on was narrow with cars parked on both sides, so she just assumed the van was driving slowly to be safe.
But she too was grabbed, without any time to react, and thrown into the van.
When Sierra's grandparents, whom she lived with, reported her missing after she failed to come home, the van had already left Toronto, never to return.
The van hummed as it chugged along the street. No-it was a road. An unpaved one, by the feel of it.
There was no light back here. Duncan sat with his back against the cold metal wall. There were four of them in total: himself, Alejandro, Tyler and Trent. No one felt like saying much.
Every so often, when the van took a turn a little too sharply, something would slide across the floor and come to rest abruptly against the wall. Trent's guitar case. Sometimes it would slide right into Duncan's feet. He always pushed it away.
Duncan was too busy thinking. He'd seen some stuff on the streets before, but never before had he had to worry about being kidnapped. But now wasn't the time to wallow like the others. Now was the time for action.
And he had a plan.
Duncan banged his fist against the wall where those thugs were sitting on the other side. They banged back and yelled, "Quiet!"
"I need to piss!"
"Tough!"
Another bang came from Duncan's side. Alejandro's crisp voice announced, "I need to piss too."
Duncan decided to push harder. "Seriously, do you want us to piss our pants?"
The van pulled over with a lurch. Duncan grinned.
The doors opened and a light flashed. One of the thugs was holding a torch. "Come on. Out."
"Thank you kindly!" Duncan said with mock cheer as he and the others climbed out.
They were standing on a desolate country road surrounded by woods. There was a full moon in the cloudless sky and not a house in view. Who knows where the hell they were.
Duncan and the others stepped into the trees. As soon as they were out of sight, Tyler ducked behind a tree and unzipped his fly.
"Dude!" Duncan whispered. "We're going to run! You can do that later!"
"Are you serious?" Trent whispered back.
"Would you rather stick around? Let's go!"
They took off into the trees, Duncan leading. The rustling must have alerted the thugs, because all of a sudden they shouted, "Get back here!" Footsteps followed close behind.
"They're chasing us!" Alejandro cried.
"Just keep going!"
They ran as fast as they could. But then the inevitable happened - Tyler tripped. It wasn't long before the thugs caught up to him.
Trent turned back to look, only to run smack into a tree. He too was caught.
"Come on!" Duncan called to Alejandro. "We have to keep going!"
Those assholes just wouldn't leave them alone, however. And worse, they were gaining on them. Duncan and Alejandro were pushing forward, but eventually Alejandro started to slow down.
"Too…tired…out…of breath…"
Duncan didn't look back. Not once. He couldn't afford to. He shoved branches aside and jumped over logs. He ran and ran and ran…
He came across a large bush and dove into it. Above the pounding of his racing heart, he realised that he couldn't hear anything else.
He was finally alone.
The 2nd June saw the last of the kidnappings.
In Moncton, New Brunswick, Jeremy Baker was snatched as he made his way to his part-time job. Later that afternoon, Owen Pattinson disappeared after going out to eat lunch at a cafe. It had rained heavily in Moncton that day, which impeded the police investigations.
Meanwhile, Courtney Perez, a Toronto native, had made a trip to Winnipeg, Manitoba, to visit her grandparents. At the same time, Justin Hills of Ottawa was also in Winnipeg to attend a modeling convention. Although the exact timeline is shaky, the two of them were kidnapped by the same van, which promptly left Winnipeg for an unknown destination.
Bridgette and Geoff huddled together in the back of the van. It had been so long since they'd last seen the sun, since those horrible men who took them had given them something to eat or drink.
When was the last time they'd spoken to each other? When was the last time either of them had made a noise?
Geoff's hands were cold and clammy, clammier than they'd ever been. One arm was around Bridgette's waist, the other hanging limp at his side.
To think how suddenly their lives turned upside down.
It at times seemed like only a few minutes ago that they were heading to the beach together. How much fun they could have had together.
Geoff had never said so - and certainly wasn't going to now - but he'd seen Bridgette before. He liked to throw beach parties and she liked to surf. That beach was their domain. Of course they'd cross paths eventually. They never spoke but he always admired her from afar. He was just way too nervous to approach her.
But then she approached him. She even invited him to hang out with her! What should have been the best day of his life became the worst.
Geoff shifted a little to make himself more comfortable. Something hard began pressing up against his hip. He felt around for it and closed his fist around it. Suddenly, a flash of light illuminated the inside of the van.
Bridgette started. "That's my camera. I think you accidentally took a picture."
On the surface, these kidnappings were remarkably similar to each other. Every victim was around 16 to 17 years old, most lived in large urban areas, and most were taken while they were alone walking down the street.
But not everything added up. They lived in different parts of the country, they were all from different socioeconomic backgrounds, and there was a good mix of those taken at night and those taken in broad daylight. Some were related to rich, powerful or famous people, but most were not. Aside from those who were kidnapped together, none of their disappearances were connected.
The police never once considered the possibility of a mass kidnapping. The cases were too scattered and too dissimilar.
"Everyone's called in. They're at the boat launch now. We can bring the contestants over tomorrow."
"Right on schedule." Chris reclined in his chair, putting his hands behind his head.
Everything was going according to plan. It was almost too good to be true. It was really happening.
Chris looked out the window. The forest was dark as the sun was setting, but enough light remained that he could make out a rabbit hopping into a bush. If that bunny could understand human feelings, it would have the show of its life tomorrow.
"Tell one of the interns to get me a drink."
He deserved a reward for all his hard work.
Wawanakwa Island is situated off the coast of Muskoka, Ontario, in Lake Huron. It is one of the more isolated islands in the area and as such was never permanently inhabited before the year 1775. That year, Baron Alexandre du Beauchene made the island his home. He had fled France the previous year to escape his debts. He built a modest two-storey home on the southwestern corner of the island, where he and his family lived in peace and quiet.
After Beauchene's death in 1809, possession of the island passed through the hands of various descendents. By the 1870s, the family had long since returned to the mainland, but still used the island as a summer retreat. Without the presence of humans, wildlife and plantlife on the island flourished. When the last of the Beauchenes died in 1925, there were no heirs, so control of the island was given to the local government.
In 1946, a man named John Mackerel, with the blessing of the government, took over the island to establish a summer camp there. Camp Wawanakwa officially opened its doors the following year. It boasted brand-new facilities, including two cabins, a mess hall, bathrooms and storage. The Beauchene House, as it was now called, was still there, albeit hidden away by the overgrown woods, and served as the counsellor's residence.
The camp immediately became popular. Generations of children passed through the cabins, woods and mess hall. They swam in the lake, played sports, and roasted marshmallows over the campfire. John Mackerel oversaw everything with a smile on his face, and was known in the local community to be kind and patient with children.
Mackerel passed away in 1977 and control of the camp passed to his son Jack. Jack Mackerel, notably more reserved and reticent than his father, nevertheless tried his best to make camp a fun experience for all.
In the early nineties, camp turnout began to decline. Another camp had opened on the mainland, closer to many families, and parents felt safer sending their children there than to an island far away. Camp Wawanakwa struggled on until 2000, when it finally closed for good. Jack moved to the town of Muskoka Lakes. Wanting little more to do with the island, he rarely visited it, though it still remained in his possession. The island's infrastructure fell into disrepair. Wildlife reclaimed the landscape. Plants grew out of control.
By the year 2007, it was rotting away, forgotten and ignored by everyone.
