What Happened to the Harrisons? | 1. Sudden Death

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My husband I just came home from work and I found him collapsed on the back of the laboratory. Can you see him? I beg of her and what did he say? What did he say? Three, six, three, five, pitch, pine, crescent.

It's after dark. It's been three, six, three, five, pitch, pine, and crescent. It's after dark. It's been three, six, three, five, pitch, pine, and crescent. It's after dark.

It's after dark. On April 16, 2009, and Bridget Harrison has just arrived home from a meeting.

“Bridget is 62, a slight woman with green eyes and a graying pixie cut.”

She works a lot in education, and her husband Bill usually has dinner ready when she gets home.

Okay, sir. Okay, sir, have some away, you know he's not. Bridget and Bill have been together since they were teens. People say they operate in tandem, like two parts of the same person. Bridget is passionate and intense.

Bill is calm. He keeps her grounded. I don't know, I just opened the door and found him here. That night, she expects to find Bill waiting for her. She came home and the door was light, there were no lights on in the house or outside. Right away, Bridget knows something is wrong.

She gets out of her car. She walks across the stone pathway to the front door of the house where they've lived for 35 years. It's a beautiful place, an elegant mid-century home with a dramatic roof line that slopes downward from a high peak. Bridget opens the front door and steps inside. The foyer is dim. The only sound is the low hum of the television in the living room.

On the coffee table, she sees a half-eaten take-out meal from the Portuguese restaurant around the corner. She started calling his name and she went and looked everywhere. Bill doesn't answer. Back on the main floor, something catches her eye. The door to the small bathroom just off the foyer is closed.

She tries the knob. It won't open. She had to go and get something to unlock the door. She works a piece of wire into the lock. It clicks and the door opens. Inside, Bill is lying motionless on the floor.

She realized it was too late. It was stiff and pushed into the corner next to the toilet. On the 911 call, you can hear Bridget's struggling to move him. He's a tall athletic man and it's a small room. His body feels rigid. He's not breathing.

Okay, I can tell. He's not breathing. He's not breathing. Oh my God. Police and paramedics arrive and they confirm what Bridget already knows. Her husband of 40 years is gone. Bill's sister Elizabeth Galand was at home that night when Bridget called.

She said gone. "Are you sitting down?" And I said, "No." She said, "Well, maybe you should." And I said, "Why?"

And she said, "Well, Bill's dead." Like I didn't accept it right away. I just saw some things wrong.

She calmly got in her car and drove the familiar 10-minute route to pitch pine.

“Her brother's place was a second home to Liz and her daughter.”

And now, it was wrapped in police tape. I saw the police car standing once everything was there. The police let Liz into the house and Bridget took her to see Bill. He was on the far side of the toy. The walls here, the toilet's here, he was right between it. Almost right away. Police and the coroner call this a natural death.

Likely a heart issue. Bill was 64. Police found no signs of forced entry or a struggle. He was found home alone with no obvious traumatic injury, like a gunshot or a stab wound. Police see this kind of thing all the time and often it is a natural death. But in this case, certain things didn't add up.

Why would a man home alone lock the bathroom door?

“Why were all the lights out? And how does a fit and active guy like Bill?”

A man who looked like he had decades left, suddenly dropped dead. As Liz watched the paramedics wheel her brother's body out on a stretcher, she couldn't shake the feeling that the police were missing something. They brought him out into the living room area where we were standing. I remember saying to him, Bill will find out what happened here.

We don't know, but I'll find out. I'll promise you I'll find out. Liz wasn't the only one who would come to question the conclusion that this was a heart issue. Not cause of death that was given was losses. This incident, Bill's tragic death, was only the beginning of something much darker. I started covering the story years later as a journalist for the Toronto star,

but not because of Bill. I came to pitch by in crescent after police were called to investigate another sudden death at the Harrison residents.

And this death was the third, in less than five years, three sudden deaths in one house.

“Was this an unfortunate run of bad luck, or something more sinister?”

The worst investigative mess I've ever encountered. Long simmering what took you so fucking long to get here. Why do I have this, this gut feeling that something is not right? I understand we got a haunted house on this region. Some evil thing happened here. You're a world of shit.

This wasn't ghosts and goblins, okay, these were murders. As I dug into the case, it became clear that this was more than a coincidence. It wasn't just the three deaths. There had been a car crash, a mysterious house fire, a string of reported home invasions, and a missing person's investigation all tied to the same people.

I would come to see that this story wasn't just a family tragedy. It was something much bigger and more troubling. What happened on pitchpine crescent was an unbelievable failure. The family all along suspected something was terribly wrong, but no one figured it out until it was too late.

From Sony Music Entertainment, this is what happened to the Harrison's. I'm Amy Demsey Raven, episode one, sudden death. Before the tragedies on pitchpine crescent, Bridget and Bill Harrison had, from the outside, an enviable life, a marriage people admired, a big circle of friends, a home where people gathered.

At the center of it all was Bridget. She stood out, her big personality, her bold fashion choices, her sharp intelligence. She was a high school teacher and principal who was kind of a legend. Someone who students remembered long after they left her classroom.

She was bright, she was talented, and she was the first born daughter.

And if you're a first born daughter, you know that you carry the hopes and dreams of the family.

That's Doug Blackwell, Bridget's brother.

“The two of them grew up together in a blue collar neighborhood in London, Ontario, a university town.”

Bridget was a local star, a gifted child actress and singer who performed in stage and television productions. At 16, she landed a summer apprenticeship at the Stratford Festival, a renowned theater company in southern Ontario, famous for its Shakespearean productions. That's where she met Bill. Bill Harrison was a catch, tall, athletic, and incredibly handsome, with kind eyes and a great laugh.

His older sister lives adored him. He was a calm, cool, sort of person who's quite a gentleman and kind and patient. Bill and Liz grew up in Stratford, and they were one of the few Black families in town. At the festival, Bill worked in the costume department. Bridget worked backstage, calling actors to their cues.

The two of them hit it off. They're really hopping with each other. They were a very impressive looking couple. Bill was a six-two, cool, very, very cool, and Bridget's blonde, beautiful. See that couple walked down the street and you go, "Oh, he's grown." Best thing that's ever happened to you financially.

Go, easy. Sold my car on Carvana. Amazing offer. Really? I hit 200 on the Scratcher.

“Did the Scratcher come to your house and hand you a check?”

No. How many Scratchers did you hit to get that? I hit a button on Carvana.com once. Okay, that's fair.

It's like the lottery, except you always win.

Not like the lottery at all, actually. Exactly, inexplicably good. Offersworth Bragging about sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up these more play. I remember Bill's mom and dad trying to cool the situation. Because they knew better than we knew how tough it was going to be for these two.

Through it all, Bridget and Bill remained committed. They married in 1969 and eventually settled in Mississauga. Back then, it was still a suburb of Toronto. Bridget taught high school drama and English. Bill worked in sales and other office jobs.

Together, they formed a circle of close friends who over time became family. Here's one of them, Pam Maine. Bill was quieter and more reserved. But that was a great balance for Bridget. Because she'd be hopping in the air on stuff.

And he had the ability to just pull her down to the ground. And then, you know, you've got the opportunity to go back. And then, in 1975, they moved into the house on pitch pine crescent. The house where years later Bridget would find her husband dead. And the life they knew would collapse.

But before all that, the house was a magical place. It had cathedral ceilings and tall front windows that filled the main floor with light.

And it became a second home for their family and friends.

A place where people came together for birthday dinners, game nights and cousins sleepovers. It's been like a small hotel through the years. Liz lived nearby and spent a lot of time on pitch pine as she raised her daughter, mostly on her own. Bridget and Bill helped Liz through parenthood.

And she did the same when they started a family. Bridget and Bill couldn't have children on their own. So they decided to adopt. One day, she just called and said, "I'm getting a child tomorrow and I have nothing like I don't know what I'm going to do."

He was pudgy and adorable with dark hair and light brown skin. They named him Caleb.

“I remember Bill telling me, you know that they were going to notice somebody.”

Well, they adopted him out of a foster him. And he had diaper rash so badly that he was scarred.

But Doug watched him grow into a completely different kid,

which wasn't always easy.

“Hi for active and, you know, funny and hippy and on the girl all the time.”

Caleb never stopped moving. If you have a kid like this, you know both the joy and the exhaustion. He was a challenge. He really was. At school, Caleb struggled with learning. He had to ret syndrome and was bullied for it.

His ticks disrupted the class and got him in trouble. Liz looks a little weary when she thinks back on her nephew's childhood antics. But they had a special bond.

Caleb was a little rascal. He gets you going.

He was a rather hard discipline. They would come to a grievance on what approach they were going to take with him.

“Bridget loved her son, but they had a challenging relationship.”

She was a force in public education, known for turning around tough schools. Caleb was smart, but resistant to structure. He hated school. You can imagine how difficult that dynamic would be. A kid who struggled academically with a superstar teacher for a mom.

Caleb could push Bridget's buttons. No doubt about it. And so, Bill took more and more of the discipline, the raising part, the consequences rather than Bridget. When Caleb graduated from high school, his parents were equal parts proud and relieved. Once he got into the workforce, his weaknesses turned to scratch.

Caleb started working in warehouses and seemed to thrive.

“The methodical work suited his personality.”

And he became kind of a lady's man. He was quick-witted and had a knack for a flirty banter. When he was 27, Caleb met someone while working for a collector-barby retailer called My Favorite Doll. This younger woman, Melissa, seemed like his perfect match. She was cute and blonde and wanted to start a family.

Bridget and Bill were hopeful. They were happy to have him, seeming like he was going to settle down. Caleb and Melissa had a son. They got married and then they had a daughter. They bought a house in Georgetown not far from Mississauga.

Caleb loved being a father. They were the light of his life and Bridget and Bill's two. Bridget's brother Doug remembers Bill holding his grandson and just beaming. The smile on Bill's face, you can just feel the joy going from the top of his head to his feet. He just was in seventh heaven.

Caleb's family noticed a big change in him during this time. He seemed to become more responsible. Bridget's friend Pam remembers the relief that Bridget and Bill felt. Caleb was happy. He was really settling into kind of fatherhood and familyhood. Things were looking good for a while.

Caleb's life finally seemed to be taking shape. And on pitchpine crescent, Bill and Bridget had become the committed grandparents they were meant to be. After years of worry, it felt like the family had entered a calmer chapter. But pretty soon, all of that would change. In the months after Bill's death, Bridget would be consumed by grief,

an ache that never really left her.

But the night she discovered his body, she was in a kind of a trance. Waiting for the coroner, Bridget called her friend Pam in Toronto. "There's some events in your life that will be forever engraved in your mind. I was lying in bed reading a book and the phone rings and it's Bridget. And it was a pretty succinct statement. Bill is dead.

And so, if I thought I was sleepy, I was no more." She got in her car and drove the half hour to Mississauga. When I got there, there was caution tape all around pitchpine and the police wouldn't let me in.

I had never seen anyone in shock before, but clearly she was and it was terrible.

And we just hugged each other.

“At the scene, we're several police officers.”

While waiting for the coroner to arrive, they started asking Bridget questions. You can hear some of this on the 911 tape. They asked, "Did he have any medical problems?" She said, "No. Was he taking any medications?" Lipitor for high cholesterol.

When was the last time you spoke with him? Bridget said that afternoon around 2.30. They'd spoken on the phone after he finished his shift at the grocery chain warehouse where he worked as an analyst. There was one thing about the scene that made Bridget uneasy.

"Who locks the bathroom door when you're home alone?" "None of it made sense. None of it at all." Bill was in athlete. He played basketball. He did martial arts.

“He was the kind of guy who everyone figured would live to be a hundred.”

Where are the two of us from? And where are the two of us from? Of course, in Europe, Rosario said that. With the highest standard of the world. Many thousand Russians were waiting on them

with brotherhoods, brothers and sisters. The Willy Rosario D.E. A coroner arrived just before 11 p.m. Examining the body, he saw abrasions on Bill's neck.

Thin red marks lengthwise across the throat. The coroner thought the marks might be an imprint from the gold chain Bill was wearing.

“He wanted them documented, so police took photographs.”

Despite the locked door and the neck abrasions, investigators didn't consider the death suspicious. Bill was in his 60s, a decade when the risk for heart attack rises. There were no signs of a struggle or forced entry. No bloody wounds or obvious trauma.

Liz remembers an officer sharing a theory at the scene. He's had a heart attack and gone to the bathroom because he felt sick and then he fell beside the toilet. She remembers someone telling her that a person having a heart attack will often feel an urge to urinate before they die.

An officer at the scene wrote in his notes. This death appears to be natural, and a later report said the coroner had no further concerns regarding further police investigation. In other words, nothing suspicious.

But here's the thing. In policing, it's considered best practice to treat all sudden deaths as potential homicides until the evidence shows otherwise. You only get one real shot at a crime scene.

You can't go back and collect evidence you didn't gather the first time around.

What the police didn't do that day would be questioned much later. Because they didn't consider Bill's death suspicious, they didn't collect forensic evidence like DNA swabs. They didn't canvas the neighborhood to check if anyone had seen anything and they didn't hold the scene.

Officers were in and out and under four hours, but because no one knew for sure how or why Bill died, the coroner sent the body for an autopsy. If there was something suspicious about his death, this was the chance to find it.

After Bill died, Bridgett remained fixated on this feeling she had that something wasn't right.

Bridgett never for a minute thought this was a natural death.

Never for a minute. Bill was a fit guy. That night he was scheduled to go play basketball and slim no history of hard issues. So none of it made any sense.

Then again, sometimes healthy people die without warning. It's an uncomfortable fact. The autopsy took place at the credit valley hospital in Mississauga,

A suspicious death case would have been treated differently.

“The body would have gone to the coroner's office headquarters”

in downtown Toronto for a full autopsy with one of the region's highly trained forensic pathologists. But no one, not the police and not the coroner, had flagged Bill's death as suspicious. And the police didn't come to the morgue to photograph the autopsy

as they normally would if there had been concerns about foul play. So the pathologist approached his job with the same understanding. This was not a suspicious death. As he began examining Bill's body, what he found was kind of baffling.

There were no hard abnormalities, no signs of disease, no evidence of natural death at all. There was no explanation for Bill's death.

There were some troubling findings, though.

Bill had several unexplained injuries, abrasions on his neck that had been photographed at the scene. There was a large bruise on his scalp, and the most concerning finding. It's got a fractured sternum.

A fractured breastbone. That's the long flat bone in the center of the chest.

“And then the question is, why has he got the fracture of the sternum?”

And why has he got an isolated fracture of the sternum? This is Dr. Christopher Millroy, a renowned forensic pathologist based in Ottawa. He didn't do the autopsy on Bill and wasn't involved in the case, but reviewed it years later.

The original pathologist declined to walk me through the findings, so I called Dr. Millroy to get his take. I would be concerned about an isolated sternum fracture. You just don't see them. Very often. The breastbone is one of the strongest bones in the body,

and it takes a lot of force to break it. It can fracture during CPR, but no one had done CPR on Bill. Certainly raises major concerns. The pathologist who examined Bill's body was concerned too,

so he called the coroner who'd been at the scene to discuss the injuries he'd found. The coroner told the pathologist

“that Bill had been wearing a thin gold chain when he died,”

and they discussed how this piece of jewelry might explain the neck abrasions. With the way the body was positioned, propped up against the wall, maybe the chain left an imprint.

Normally, the kind of linear markings Bill had on his neck would be a big deal. They could suggest he'd been strangled. To investigate further, a forensic pathologist would perform a specialized dissection

to determine whether pressure had been applied to the neck. When you have anything in the neck on the skin, it's also difficult. This kind of layered neck dissection can reveal subtle injuries.

It's the gold standard in forensic autopsies. You're looking for bruising in the muscles and soft tissues of the neck and then any fractures of the high-oid bone and the voice box cartridges.

The pathologist who performed Bill's autopsy didn't do this type of dissection. He noted the high-oid bone was intact, but still, without a layered dissection, it's possible something was missed.

The pathologist and coroner discussed whether Bill could have injured himself at the gym, breaking his sternum that way. But it seemed unlikely. The sternal fractures are very painful.

It was far fetched to think a man in such agony would drive himself home and stop to pick up dinner on the way. The most likely scenario the pathologist concluded was that Bill fell against the bathroom vanity. In his report, the pathologist said

that Bill might have collapsed suddenly after having an irregular heartbeat and then struck his head and chest in the fall.

Or maybe the fall came first

and the injuries caused his heart to stop. That explanation doesn't make sense to Dr. Milroy. Well, typically if you're going to fall over, I mean, just in the bathroom, tumbling over in the bathroom, you don't expect to see

someone that have an isolated sternal fracture. Despite the injuries and despite the fact

the pathologist concluded that the cause of death

was acute cardiac arrhythmia and that was a problem. That cause of death that was given was nonsense. A acute cardiac arrhythmia is not a cause of death.

It means that a person's heart is stopped. It doesn't explain why. Years later, Ontario's chief forensic pathologist would say that the broken breast bone was an astonishing finding

that should have led to further investigation.

“I'd want to see the scene, photos, and how big was the bathroom?”

What could he have fallen against? This is not entirely adding up. The pathologist who performed bills autopsy

never saw the scene photos.

The police didn't send them. Bridget didn't know any of this. She wouldn't learn about bills unexplained injuries until months later once the autopsy report was finalized.

All she knew in the aftermath of her husband's death was that the authorities believed he'd had some kind of heart issue. When the family eventually learned about the fractured breast bone, the fall in the bathroom theory didn't make a lot of sense to them.

The powder room was tiny about 30 square feet and the way bill was found wedged between the toilet and the wall. Bridget's brother Doug wondered how could a person even fall that way?

I mean, you just can't picture somebody having a heart attack and ending up in that position behind a locked door. I've said this to lots of people.

I mean, there's no way that a man is going to lock his bathroom door if he's the only person in the house. In the days after Bill's death,

“Bridget trusted that the authorities were doing”

a thorough investigation. She had a lot going on. She had to plan a funeral. And then came something else she hadn't counted on.

Bridget wanted to be the one to tell her grandchildren about their papa's death. So the day after he died, she drove to their elementary school.

The kids had a close bond with their grandparents. This news was going to be difficult to hear. Bridget arrived at the school and went to the office. She asked the secretary to call

the children out of class. But the kids weren't there. They didn't come to school. Not that day and not the next.

“At first, Bridget thought their mom, Melissa,”

had maybe kept them home or taken them on a trip. She knew they weren't with Caleb. By then, he and Melissa had separated. A few days later, Doug went with his sister

to Melissa's house to look for the kids. We drive over. And there's nobody there. A neighbor came out and told them something shocking. The family that lived in that house,

they moved. So that's how Bridget finds out that the kids have gone. Now, not only was her husband dead, her grandchildren, Caleb's son and daughter,

were missing. She didn't panic. She didn't go crazy. She decided, well, we got to find the kids. Next time, on what happened to the Harrison's, things get ugly.

Melissa was doing everything within her control to separate Caleb from his own children. And a tug of war ensues. I am ready, willing and able to be part of our children's lives and not just a visiting father.

I am a good mom, and provide an excellent life for my children. If I don't protect them, who will? Don't want to wait for the next episode. You don't have to.

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“What happened to the Harrison's is an original production”

of Sony Music Entertainment.

The show is hosted and reported by me, Amy Dempsey Raven.

The lead producer is Cooper Mal. The series is written by me and Cooper. From Sony Music Entertainment,

“our executive producers are Catherine St. Louis and Jonathan Hirsch.”

The series was Sound Designed and Mixed by Scott Somerville.

We used music from Epidemic Sound. Production managers are to meet a balance collazine and Ashley Ann Craig Bone. Fact-checking by Fendell Fulton,

“additional production support by Miron Catherine.”

Our lawyer is Allison Sherry. Special thanks to the Toronto Star, where my reporting on this story began more than a decade ago. If you value local investigative journalism, subscribe to a newspaper where you live.

Please rate and review what happened to the Harrison's. It helps spread the word. The series is hosted by the Harrison's.