The long road to justice - Part 1 | 7
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Hey, it's Nancy. Before we begin today, I just wanted to let you know that you can listen to Crime Beat early and ad-free on Amazon Music, included with Prime. For most of us, the idea of falling victim to a serious crime doesn't even cross our minds. But I've seen over and over, life is fragile. What's worse is how callous people can be, leaving loved ones to pick up the pieces.

There's no words to describe how your world stops when you find out something like that. There's just no words. As families struggle to grieve, what often keeps them going is hope the killer will be caught and held accountable.

I'm Nancy Hixt, a senior crime reporter for Global News. Today on Crime Beat, I share the devastating impact on a family when a case goes cold. This is The Long Road to Justice. If you head south of Calgary, you'll pass through the prairies. After driving for about 30 minutes, you'll hit the small farming community of Nantin.

There are three iconic grain elevators that tower over the wide open spaces and cropland, a sight that's becoming more and more rare as many have been torn down. The town is a bustling tourist attraction, known for its boutique shops on Main Street, and it's become a hub for treasure hunters wanting antiques, art, and collectibles.

If you head west from Nantin, you'll get a full view of three of the most amazing landscapes that make up southern Alberta: the breathtaking Rocky Mountains, the prairies, and the rolling foothills that connect them. This countryside is scattered with grain farms and ranches. Don Lowe runs a large cattle operation in the area.

On a Sunday afternoon in February of 2002, he took advantage of the unseasonably mild weather to drive about 100 cattle south down a rural gravel road. My two sons and I were just trailing some cattle along the road on saddle horses, horseback. We're just following them because they generally know where they're going and they're stretched out for...

150 yards, in other words, they're basically single file, two, three at a time. Not a bunch of cattle like you see in the movie, all balled up. So they're just walking down the road and we're basically behind them. My sons are young. Then, something off in the distance caught Don's eye. And I could just see what looked to be some blankets or a pile of something just off halfway down to the fence from the ditch.

It would have been out of sight for anyone driving by, but he had a better vantage point being up on his horse. As they moved closer to the spot, Don was able to see what it was. It was obviously a body.

It was obviously some trauma had gone on from something. It was a shocking discovery, and he needed to call police. In 2002, cell phones weren't that common, and Don didn't have one. He remained calm, stayed on his horse, and kept his sons and cattle away from the ditch until he could get to a phone and call for help.

Well, we couldn't stop anyway, really, because we've got cattle and it's a major kind of a traffic route, another quarter mile down there. So, and we couldn't contact anybody. So we just kept going down and I stopped the first car that came along and asked for a cell phone, at which time we called 911 or I called 911.

It wasn't long before the peaceful countryside was overshadowed by a murder investigation. A marked police car sat at each end of the rural road where the body was found to prevent anyone from contaminating the crime scene. I received the call probably around just after 5 o'clock on the 17th of February 2002.

Peter LeBlanc is retired now, but at the time, he was a corporal with the Calgary RCMP Major Crimes Section. Nanton falls under their jurisdiction.

LeBlanc became the primary homicide investigator. One of the first calls, of course, is a call to your officer in charge, your unit commander, to let them know that what you have and what you found out so far and that you're going to be looking after it and so on and so forth. From there, then you start making further calls to your forensics people, to your other investigators that you're going to take on the road with you.

I would probably have been home for 45 minutes to an hour before I jumped in my van and headed that way. It took the officer a little over an hour to drive from his home to the scene. When I drove up, the road is blocked off as we requested. So I walked in a ways up the road. It's about 800 meters from the highway to the ditch where the body was found.

What I saw appeared to be someone that was wrapped in garbage bags and a sheet. She was wearing sweatpants, I think a sweatshirt. She had reddish blonde hair. She had socks on her feet, no shoes. And the back of her shirt was lifted up enough that I could see a tattoo on her lower back.

Corporal LeBlanc was joined by a team of seasoned investigators. You put your best resources to the task to try to basically get on top of it as quickly as you can within 24 to 48 hours. Those are crucial hours when you're investigating a murder or a suspicious death. You don't get a second chance on a

Suspicious death, homicide, investigation. You only have one shot at this and you need to get it right. In 2002, Bob Dunlap was a constable with the RCMP Forensic Identification Section in Lethbridge. I was the member on call and I was phoned at home.

All I knew was there was a body found in a ditch by a rancher who was herding cattle down the road. And he saw from his saddle, he looked over the side of this little hill, and he saw this body. And so it was phoned in to the police.

Dunlap is retired now. He served 31 years with the RCMP and said things were a lot different 20 years ago, especially technology. Right now, people take everything for granted. But back then, having laptops mounted in police vehicles wasn't common. But I had one and it was handy.

He brought his own team with him to gather and document evidence at the scene. I had the one guy running the one individual. He's doing the video and then I would take still pictures and I would start

about as far as a person could throw a beer bottle away, that's about how far I'd go, and all 360 degrees. And I'd take pictures from all that. And then I would start coming in toward the scene. And then eventually you come right up to where the body is, and then that's where you take pictures of the body. But you don't want to disturb any evidence, but you're really studying as you're walking. And there was a really steep angle, so you had to be careful.

Dunlap told me it's painstaking work. With it being a gravel road area, the idea was just to process the scene as efficiently as possible without missing anything. Because the ultimate nightmare is you've only got one chance at crime scenes. It's like this whole story has to unravel and it takes a while to figure it out. At the time, you really don't know what you're looking for other than you're trying to determine what happened.

While forensic evidence was gathered, homicide investigators had another challenge. They had no idea who the victim was. There was no purse, no wallet, no identification. All officers knew was that she met a violent end. The person had obvious injuries.

So we covered those injuries and covered the hands. You put the hands in bags and then tape them so that if there's anything, say if a person was struggling and there's hair and fiber evidence under the fingernails and things like that, you don't lose that. Corporal LeBlanc is a veteran investigator, and as he assessed the scene, it immediately struck him this rural ditch was not where the victim was killed.

We knew reasonably that where she was found in the ditch was not where it happened. A lot of times we'll, you know, we'll call those a dump. You know, where somebody has taken someone's life, they've taken them to another place and they've placed them, dumped them, whatever terminology that you'd like to use. At that same time, about an hour north, family and friends of a young Calgary woman were feeling extremely uneasy.

Shandi Bard hadn't heard from her best friend, Adrian McCall, for several days. And that kind of silence was out of character. The last time Shandi saw Adrian was February 11th, 2002. Adrian had come to my office to borrow some money. She was on her way to work, so she was dressed up quite nice. And, you know, we had a little chat.

And then she had to take off and get to her new job, which was at a restaurant serving. Usually, her and I would talk every day. Every other day, we called each other on the phone all the time. So, you know, when I saw her leave that day, I just said, see you later. They had a quick chat on the phone two days later, on February 13th. That was the last time the two friends spoke.

On Valentine's Day, Adrienne was supposed to work a waitressing shift at a local lunch spot. She didn't show up or call, which was not like her. That same day, a different business, where she had applied for a job, called to offer her a full-time position. But they weren't able to reach her. As days passed, both Adrienne's family and friends grew more and more concerned.

No one had been able to reach her. And then, Shandi saw the news. And I had seen that there was a body found in Nanton and I don't know why, but it just sucked so badly with me. I said, like, turned to my mom, I said, "Something is not right, Mom." And there was a Crimestoppers phone number on the news if you had any, you know, if you knew anything.

And I don't know why, I just, I had to call. I just had the worst feeling that it was her. Back at the rural crime scene, RCMP investigators, led by Corporal Peter LeBlanc, worked around the clock to determine the identity of the victim.

When you see a situation like this of a person who's been basically disposed of, like, you know, and I'll use the word, like human garbage, like really, it's sad, it's what it is. What you do is immediately, you know, identify the person as a female and you take notes of approximate age, height, weight, that type of thing, and you start checking your missing persons files.

That's when police were contacted by Adrian McCall's best friend, Shandy, as well as her stepfather. The 21-year-old Calgary woman had been missing since Valentine's Day, three days before the body was discovered. The person that called, I believe, heard something, that someone was found, and was very concerned that it may be Adrian McCall. And that was the first thing.

the first time that we received her name. From there, of course, things start moving very, very quickly, as they do at any time when you're trying to identify someone. And this particular person eventually identified Adrian at the medical examiner's office. Adrian had a fractured skull.

And I mean, one might think right off the bat that that probably would be the cause of death, but it wasn't. It was asphyxia. And that would be from strangulation. Adrian's family and friends were devastated. And before they even had time to process the shocking news, they needed to be interviewed by the police. You need to learn everything you can about the victim because the victim can't speak anymore for themselves.

We learned that her biological father was an RCMP member in Vancouver who was presently stationed in Kosovo. We found out that she worked at Studio 82 in Calgary and we learned that her stepfather was John McGee who was the owner of Studio 82. Studio 82 is no longer in business. The building has been renovated and turned into a brewery.

But back when John McGee owned and operated it, Studio 82 was a sports bar, and it's one of the central locations in this story. We learned that her mom and her dad were divorced. We learned that her mother and John McGee were in a relationship, but that relationship was no longer there.

Police discovered her stepfather, John McGee, had recently invited Adrian and her dog, Max, to move in with him in his townhouse in Killarney, a residential community in southwest Calgary. Investigators interviewed him just over 24 hours into the homicide investigation. They recorded the conversation. Today is the 18th of February, 2002. The time presently is 10.42 p.m.

This is going to be the statement of John Medit. John told police he last saw his stepdaughter on February 12th as he headed out of town for a golf trip. She worked on Tuesday because she dropped me off at the studio and she came in and had breakfast. And she had to be at work at 11 o'clock. So to just get ready to leave, I don't know where to get help from.

When John returned home on the evening of February 17th, he noticed Adrian's car was at his house.

But his car, a 2001 Mercury Marquis, was missing. John said it was obvious Adrian's dog hadn't been cared for in a few days.

He said she would never leave Max on his own. One of the friends John reached out to was Shandi Bard. I told John, well, did you try this? Did you call here? And I mean, he exhausted every avenue he had looking for her. And then I, you know, scratched my head. Well, where could she be?

Police wondered if John's home was the original crime scene where Adrian was killed. Corporal LeBlanc said that's when he found out the townhouse had been cleaned in the days following her disappearance. We sent our forensic people in and of course we established that there had been a housekeeper there. That's not ideal, but it happens. And so you work around it, which we did.

John's housekeeper was interviewed by police. She said she arrived at the home on February 15th and cleaned up some unexpected messes made by Adrian's dog. She explained to investigators that she cleaned the entire home, including the kitchen and living room. She emptied an ashtray and cleaned the bathroom, then washed both John's bedding and Adrian's bedding.

She also noted there was no top sheet on Adrian's bed. The same forensic investigator who examined the scene in Nanton, Constable Bob Dunlap, was called to the townhouse. That's the good part about being at numerous spots because you can go, wait a minute, this ties into this, where if it's different people doing things, you might miss it.

There was a sheet that came from somewhere. And so within the house, again, you have to photograph the house, video the house, and with still pictures from negatives plus digital. And then you're looking to see if there's missing sheets or missing covers or anything. Investigators located a sheet that appeared to match the one recovered from the rural crime scene.

Constable Dunlap moved through the home room by room, collecting anything that could potentially identify the killer. And I took DNA swabs of some areas and again I collected some beer bottles and I looked all through the garbage and collected some bags and things because at the crime scene where the individual was found there were some plastic bags so we

We were comparing bags. At the same time, police learned there had been a break-in at John's bar. We had received a call from Calgary police saying that Studio 82 had been broken into in the early morning hours of the 15th of February 2002. And so we immediately jumped on that and, you know, to find out what's going on over there, like, you know, what happened.

Corporal LeBlanc said, given the timing, they needed to consider if it could be related to Adrian's murder. The place had been broken into, but nothing was really disturbed. I guess what I'm saying is, probably a key was used to get into the business. Nothing was broken, and several thousand dollars was stolen.

Now of course, the area where this money was stolen was an area where very few people would ever find it. Again, forensic investigator Constable Dunlap was called to the scene. So the money was hidden inside, above some tiles on a roof and it disappeared. So I went and looked for evidence to see if we could tie anybody into that, but it didn't work, but it was worth a try.

Constable Dunlap had evidence seized from the townhouse as well as the scene where Adrian's body was found that he needed to process. Some items were sent away to the RCMP crime lab for further examination. But all of this would take time.

Meanwhile, a funeral was held for Adrienne McCall on February 23rd, 2002, six days after her body was discovered dumped in a ditch south of Calgary. With her murder still unsolved, Adrienne's best friend Shandi said it was hard to grieve. There's no words to describe how your world stops when you find out something like that. There's just no words.

I can't express how much Adrian was loved. When we were interviewed, I was asked, did she have any enemies? No, I laugh. There was no enemies. Nobody didn't love her to death. Adrian's father, Blair McCall, had been half a world away in Kosovo on a peacekeeping mission with the RCMP when he received news that his daughter had been murdered.

I don't know if it's that you don't believe it or just your mind goes numb or the world stops or I said, "What do you mean?" You know, you ask like a stupid question like, "What do you mean?" And I just, you can't really digest that. It's, your whole life stops there for a bit.

Blair's trip home for the funeral took about 40 hours, and during that time, he tried to make sense of what happened to Adrian. He served with the RCMP for more than 40 years and investigated a multitude of tragic circumstances, but nothing prepared him for the death of his own daughter.

It's like, and I don't know if you've had this experience most people have, where you have a bad dream and you wake up and you go, that was a dream. Only, you know, I kept waking up and realizing it wasn't a dream. As they gathered to remember Adrienne, it struck him how many people showed up, how many people had loved her. She made friends easily, just very easy to get along with.

A very outgoing, personable, loving person. She was very bright. She would do anything for anybody, pretty much. I think everybody liked her. She had a ton of friends. Adrienne's best friend remembers her warm, loving nature and sparkling personality.

She just was like a bright, glittery light. Hanging out Adrienne is like her staple that everybody would know her by. And it would be a classic jogging pants, two pairs of socks with Birkenstocks sandals. That was a staple that she would always be seen in.

Big sweaters, like always, couldn't be warm enough, like always wanted to be warm, cozy, always had a big sweater on and hair back, scrunchy on her wrist. To this day, that will be imprinted in me. That is 100% the look of Adrienne. Adrienne dreamed of becoming a fashion designer. In 2002, she told her father she was excited to inch closer to pursuing a career in fashion.

She wanted to get into design school. In fact, she was registered to go to Vancouver to go to fashion school and she was looking forward to that. She was accepted. I understand her stepfather had actually paid for it. Adrienne planned to move to BC and begin classes in the fall. She had such a bright future. It was hard for those who loved her to believe she was gone.

As the homicide investigation continued, police located Adrian's stepfather's missing car. The 2001 Mercury Marquis was found in a park-and-fly lot at the Calgary airport. Corporal LeBlanc said officers tracked it down on February 21, 2002, one week after she was last seen alive and four days after her body was found near Nanton. They sent forensics over.

There wasn't a whole lot in the car. There was a pair of sandals. I mean, not a whole lot, but there was a pair of sandals in the car, Birkenstock sandals. There was something else that caught their attention two parking spots over. A pair of jeans was found, size 36 waist, 30 leg. They were seized and they were processed properly, you know, put into exhibits and so on and so forth. The car was towed to an RCMP facility where forensic investigator Bob Dunlap examined it.

I found a fingerprint on a mirror, but that was never identified. I sent that to Ottawa and then I examined the pedals for footprint evidence. That was, and the car to me was cleaned. Corporal Peter LeBlanc said they were frustrated and had very little sleep as they searched for a possible suspect. You try not to miss anything ever if you can. And it's, there's a lot of weight on your shoulders when you run an investigation.

But there was a lead. As police interviewed all of Adrienne McCull's family, friends and colleagues, they realized one important person in her life was missing. Her boyfriend. We spent a lot of time putting that together, a missing persons report with pictures, everything. And broadcasted it as much as we possibly could to see if he was okay, see where he may be.

That's next time on Crime Beat. Crime Beat is written and produced by me, Nancy Hixt, with producer Dila Velasquez. Audio editing and sound design is by Rob Johnston. Special thanks to photographer-editor Danny Lantella for his work on this episode. Thank you to Jesse Wisner, our Crime Beat production assistant, and thanks to Chris Bassett, the VP of Network Content Production and Distribution and Editorial Standards for Global News.

I would love to have you tell a friend about this podcast. There are five seasons of stories you can listen to and share. And if you can please consider rating and reviewing Crime Beat on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. You can find me on Facebook at Nancy Hickst Crime Beat and on Instagram at nancy.hickst. That's N-A-N-C-Y dot H-I-X-T. Thanks again for listening. Please join me next time.