In September 1992, 20-year-old Acadia University student Kenley Matheson vanishes without a trace. Only two weeks into his first semester, Kenley's new friend Tom Gordon spots Kenley walking on the streets of Wolfville, Nova Scotia the evening of September 21 for the final time. What happened after this alleged sighting have been a mystery for over thirty years. In the time since Kenley went missing, several theories have emerged (some plausible and others shocking).
In the first part of our season four finale, we discuss the timeline of Kenley's final days at Acadia, alleged credible sightings of him in the months after, a mysterious phone call to his mother, Sarah, and information that comes to light after a serial killer's arrest on the other side of the country in the late 1990's.
Using information uncovered in the docuseries "Missing Kenley", we discuss the perplexing mystery of Kenley Matheson's disappearance and all the possibilities that existed for the first 24 years of the investigation. Until a new tip in 2016 blows the entire case wide open...
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If you have any information regarding Kenley Matheson's whereabouts or anything pertaining to his disappearance, please contact Ron Lamothe, the director of 'Missing Kenley' at ron@missingkenley.com.
EPISODE RESOURCES:
"Missing Kenley" (Amazon Prime Documentary):
https://www.primevideo.com/detail/MissingKenley/0N2H9PCPFW4RUK2R5FZGC0T3CR
In September 1992, 20-year-old Acadia University student Kenley Matheson vanishes without a trace. Only two weeks into his first semester, Kenley's new friend Tom Gordon spots Kenley walking on the streets of Wolfville, Nova Scotia the evening of September 21 for the final time. What happened after this alleged sighting have been a mystery for over thirty years. In the time since Kenley went missing, several theories have emerged (some plausible and others shocking).
In the first part of our season four finale, we discuss the timeline of Kenley's final days at Acadia, alleged credible sightings of him in the months after, a mysterious phone call to his mother, Sarah, and information that comes to light after a serial killer's arrest on the other side of the country in the late 1990's.
Using information uncovered in the docuseries "Missing Kenley", we discuss the perplexing mystery of Kenley Matheson's disappearance and all the possibilities that existed for the first 24 years of the investigation. Until a new tip in 2016 blows the entire case wide open...
FIND US ON SOCIAL MEDIA:
Instagram: @crimefamilypodcast
Twitter: @crimefamilypod1
Facebook: Crime Family Podcast
Email: crimefamilypodcast@gmail.com
Become a patron here:
https://www.patreon.com/Crimefamilypodcast
Get your Crime Family Merch here: https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/123775076
If you have any information regarding Kenley Matheson's whereabouts or anything pertaining to his disappearance, please contact Ron Lamothe, the director of 'Missing Kenley' at ron@missingkenley.com.
EPISODE RESOURCES:
"Missing Kenley" (Amazon Prime Documentary):
https://www.primevideo.com/detail/MissingKenley/0N2H9PCPFW4RUK2R5FZGC0T3CR
AJ: covering the case of Kenley Matheson, a young student who disappeared without a trace from Acadia University in Wolfville Nova Scotia back in September of 1992.
And so, as it turns out, this is the final official sighting of Kenley as he disappeared after this alleged sighting by Tom and has never been confirmed to be seen again.
In his interview, he was super hard to read. It was like he had no emotion. He looked like he was breaking down at the end a little bit, but he was very much like, no, I had nothing to do with that disappearance. I don't know, I couldn't get a read on the guy.
She still thinks to this day that that could have been Kenley, but she's not a hundred percent sure that it actually was.
I don't know. I was so back and forth. I mean, it could have been him, but why would he say, you don't wanna talk to me? Like, what do you guys think? Do you think it could have been him?
Hey everyone. Welcome to Crime Family. I'm your co-host AJ, and I'm here with my two sisters, Stephanie and Katie, just like always. This is our season four finale, so we're going to break it up into two parts like we always do. We have a great interesting case to discuss for the finale. We're excited to be at the season four finale. It's kind of crazy. You know, we just recently had our two year anniversary for the podcast and we've had four seasons, so it's crazy that we're at the end of another season .For this episode, we will be covering the case of Kenley Matheson, a young student who disappeared without a trace from Acadia University in Wolfville Nova Scotia back in September of 1992. For 30 years, this case has perplexed Kenley family as it brought up so many questions and very few answers as many other cases on this podcast. So it's just interesting, like connection. So I actually went to Acadia University. I lived in Wolfville for four years. So it's always interesting when a case takes place in a place that you're familiar with. It's like a small town so you know all of the names that they're mentioning, all the places. You know the bar that the students would go to. When you know those places and have been there yourself, it makes things hit just a little differently, obviously. I went to Acadia. I was there 2011 to 2015, 20 years after this case happened. I don't know anything about this case, but it's just interesting that such a small town and such a small community, so you'd think that, I know it had been 20 years, but you'd think even a name could have come up or you would've maybe just been familiar with this missing person, but I actually had never even heard of Kenley Matheson or anything about this case until just late last year when the five episode docu-series called Missing Kenley came out on Amazon Prime. So it was actually, my roommate watched it first and she's like, didn't you go to Acadia? Didn't you live in Wolfville? Have you ever heard of this case? So that's how, she told me about it, and then of course I watched it and it was just crazy that I had never even heard of it up until that. Were you guys familiar at all with the case until you watched the documentary or ...
Katie: No. I had never heard about it until you started talking about it.
Stephanie: Yeah, same with me. I never heard of it until you said something about it.
AJ: It's definitely an interesting case. So we're gonna cover all of it. It's actually funny cuz last week we did the Holly Bartlett case and that was a case that happened in Halifax around, you know, similar areas that you guys were familiar with. So just funny that this week, it's me that has that little bit of that connection. The case is a doozy and quite honestly the docu-series, I don't know for you guys, but for me it was, you know, one of the most interesting that I have watched in a while or maybe ever. Of course I could be biased just cuz of my connection, you know, to Acadia and stuff, but I don't really think that's it. I mean, I think I would've found it just as interesting and just as good if I hadn't, you know, known anything about Acadia or anything like that. I know you guys watched it. What were your initial thoughts after you watched it for the first time?
Katie: Yeah, I thought it was crazy that I had never heard about it before until I started watching it. And I think it was just super interesting cuz it's one of those cases where there's so many paths that they go down to figure out what happened. There's so many theories and even coincidences maybe that could've, you know, things were happening at the same time and it's just one of those mysterious things that you just don't know the answer to. So it was, yeah, it was really interesting to watch.
Stephanie: Yeah, same with me. I never heard of it before and when I watched it I was thinking to myself , Why haven't I heard about this? I feel like, I mean, I guess back in the day it's all over the news in Wolfville, but I guess it hasn't really spread through the rest of Nova Scotia. When I was watching it, I was just shocked about how there was so much misinformation and people didn't know about him or about this case and it went in so many different directions. But I do have to say, the documentary that we're gonna be referred to a lot, it was really well done. It was probably one of the best documentaries that I've watched in a long time. So, because I haven't heard of the case, just made it that more easy to follow because the documentary was so well done.
Katie: Yeah, and I think it's, cuz I'd never heard any detail about it before. It's not one of those things where you know what's gonna happen or you know the outcome. I had no clue what was gonna happen. So that was the interesting part about it.
AJ: Yeah, it's interesting cuz I guess if you look at the backstory of the documentary, it actually had been in production for a long time. He got funding for the documentary and then he had been filming it or working on it for 10 years or something before it even came out. It came out in 2022, so he had been working on it since, you know, 2012. So it's a long process. And what's really interesting, which obviously we're gonna get into, is that I get the feeling that it was gonna be maybe a four episode documentary because the first three episodes they go down, you know, this route and then this route and it seems at the end of the third episode they introduce this huge development that actually happened in real time. So they got a huge lead in the case while production of the documentary was going. So then the last two episodes were following up on that lead. Without that huge lead, it would've been a very different documentary I feel. I feel the last two episodes are really the ones about where it gets crazy.
Katie: Yeah. I feel like if it didn't take so long for them to produce it and get it out there, it would've been released without those other few episodes. Right. So yeah, it would've been very different cuz if it would've just came out earlier, we would've missed all that or they would have to re-release it. So it's lucky that it took so long, I guess.
AJ: Yeah. Yeah. So just really interesting about the story of the making of the documentary too. So, yeah, so it's very, very interesting. So we're gonna cover it. And for our other finales, I feel like we did cases that maybe were a little bit more well known, so we did a more general talking about it, you know, for the Madeline McCann and, JonBenet Ramsey and stuff. So this one, because it's a little bit lesser known, we're still gonna do the overview like we always do, and give you all the main details and then we'll get into the discussion of it and theories and stuff like that. The case begins in September of 1992 when Alan Kenley Matheson, so he just goes by Kenley, his middle name, and his sister Kareen both begin their freshman years at Acadia University. Both had grown up in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Their parents had divorced when they were younger and they had both gone and lived with their father after the split, even though they still remained very close with their mother. Kenley had taken two years off after high school, before entering university. So even though he was slightly older than his sister, they were beginning their studies in the same year. So after high school, Kenley had taken two years off to think about what he wanted to do. He did some solo traveling in South America and Mexico, and also traveled around Canada and spent two summers planting trees in British Columbia. So he made some pretty decent money at this. So the hard work really paid off. In the documentary, they interviewed some of the friends that he had made throughout his travels, including one female friend that he ended up having a crush on. And then another male friend who, you know, remembers Kenley pretty fondly as they traveled through South America and Mexico and all of that stuff. They describe him as a free spirit. He was outgoing and just seems to have that wanderlust and adventurous side to his personality. So maybe returning back to small town Nova Scotia after all of this in order to pursue an undergrad was maybe something that was boring to him. Obviously he still was interested in it. I mean, he did it. But you know, throughout the documentary they say that he was quite adventurous and liked to travel, so maybe being confined to the smaller town in Nova Scotia might have been a drag for him, or something that he was just struggling with because he had all of that experience elsewhere. Only a week or two into the school year, Kenley ends up taking a trip with some new friends, Tom Gordon and Kirsten Tomilson to Corkums Island on September 11th, just over an hour's drive from Acadia University. Corkums Island was a popular spot for, you know, summer vacationing or camping and stuff like that. Kenley and his two new friends spent their time swimming and enjoying the outdoors, just for a nice weekend away from the university. And so after this weekend trip, the three of them returned back to school and returned to their daily routines and Kenley attended all of his classes as normal that week. Then on Thursday, September 17th, a friend of Kenley, named Chris Hardy sees Kenley on the outskirts of town and he says he's heading back into town from what appeared to be the Dykes. The Dykes and Wolfville are basically, you know, a walking trail on the very coast of the Bay of Fundy, which fun fact, has the highest tides in the world. The Dykes are a popular spot for hikers or for anyone wanting to go out, enjoy a peaceful walk. There's benches along there, there's a trail. I know students will go mud sliding there cuz when the tide's way out, they just go jump in the mud. I don't know. They do it for frosh week at Acadia. So, that's a really popular thing to do. For anyone who's familiar with the Valley, the Dykes are a pretty popular spot. So this friend Chris Hartling says that he sees Kenley walking back into town from the Dykes area and there's just a five minute walk outside of the town. Not really far. Chris mentions in the documentary that seeing Kenley walking alone from this area at this time of night was odd to him because it was nighttime when this occurred. Chris recall that when he asked what Kenley was doing, Kenley just mentioned that he was doing laundry at the laundromat close by, and Chris found this odd as well because as he says, you know, there's probably laundry facilities at Crowell Tower, which is Kenley's residence building on campus. He found the notion that Kenley would be on the outskirts of town doing laundry at nighttime when there's laundry in his own building, very strange. So I think, well yes, this might be weird, it's not really a reason to be alarmed, I don't think. I mean, especially him coming from the Dykes, cause like I said, it's a popular spot, people go there, they smoke weed, they come back. So the fact that he was coming from there is normal to me. I mean, the fact that he's doing laundry there is weird. I mean, yes, he probably does have laundry in his residence, but who knows his reasons. You know, maybe it was busy, maybe it was full and he didn't wanna wait around so he just did it at the laundromat in town or something like that. I don't think that particular detail is sketchy or anything, but Chris is just describing it as something that was odd to him. That was on Thursday, September 17th. The next event in the timeline is the party at Crowell Tower. Again, that was Ken's residence building on campus and that was on the weekend of September 18th. So at that tower party, it is believed that Kenley was very drunk and he had been hitting on other people's girlfriends and just being a little outta control as college students can get at parties. I mean, we've all been there, I'm sure. So they interview some people in the documentary who just say that he was, you know, unruly and he would drink too much and was, you know, it was the topic of conversation at the party cuz it was very noticeable that he was very drunk from what people are saying anyways. His sister Kayrene goes to visit Kenley in his dorm room at around 4:00 PM on Sunday, September 20th, just to kind of touch base with him about the party, see if he was all right, and just to have a talk with him, I guess, just to, you know, she had probably heard about it, you know how word gets around, you know, they probably heard, "Your brother was super drunk at the party." So maybe she was just going to, to make sure he was okay. She remembers when she went to see him in his room, he was sitting on his bed just being kind of quiet, but nothing too out of the ordinary. They ended up making plans for Monday evening to meet up and do calculus homework together. Then later that same night on Sunday, September 20th, around 9:00 PM, RA Todd Barker sees Kenley in his room. Todd says that he went to the room as the RA so that Kenley could sign some type of form, a room agreement or something of that nature. So Todd recalls that Kenley was reluctant to open the door and opened it just a crack and poked his head out. Todd said that that was normal for Kenley and that he would often do that when Todd or anyone else would come to the door. Todd said that he had the impression at this time that Kenley was ironing, which Ken's mother says in an interview, that that is something he would do. It was one of his quirks. He just loved to iron his clothes. Todd does say in this documentary that, you know, that he wouldn't have had an ironing board in the room and having an iron was against, you know, the resident's policy. I guess you couldn't have one of those in your room. He says, even though we had the impression that he was ironing in his memory, or maybe at that time too, it just strikes him as odd as something that that would be happening, but for whatever reason, he had that impression. And so, yeah, that was around 9:00 PM on Sunday, and then on Monday, September 21st, bank records show that Kenley withdraws $20 from an ATM on Main Street in Wolfville. Kenley's friend Tom Gordon, so he's one of the friends he went to Corkums Island with, he recalls seeing Kenley on the streets of Wolfville that afternoon, and then again that evening. First, Tom says that he saw Kenley coming from the bank and walking along Main Street back towards Acadia at around 2:40 PM. Tom says that although they were on opposite sides of the road and they didn't talk or anything, nothing seemed alarming about Kenley at this time. He took note of what Kenley was wearing and the fact that he had on a baseball cap and maybe a backpack heading towards town. He sees Kenley again around 5:00 PM that evening, walking out of town towards the ,town of New Minas, which he said he saw him walking out of town by the athletic complex. If you're familiar with Wolfville, it's one main strip where all of the businesses are, that's Main Street, and then Acadia is on Main Street at the end of that. Then once you pass Acadia, you're on the outskirts of town heading into New Minas, which is the next town, you know, a ten, fifteen minute drive over. So he says that he saw Kenley near the athletic complex, this was near the end of where Acadia ends and where you're going to the outskirts. So as it turns out, this is the final official sighting of Kenley as he disappeared after this alleged sighting by Tom and has never been confirmed to be seen again. Ken's mother, Sarah McDonald called Kenley's floor at Acadia at around 5:00 PM that night. She says that she had received mail for him at the house, so she was calling him just a very normal call to see if he wanted her to send it to him. She said that was around five on that Monday night, but he didn't answer. At that time, in 92 it was just a payphone for the whole floor so anyone could pick it up, I guess. She says that the person who answered said that Kenley had gone down for supper at meal hall. Obviously she didn't really think too much of it at that time. Then that was Monday, so there were no alleged sightings on Tuesday at all. The events of Tuesday we don't really know anything about, and then on Wednesday, September 23rd, after not seeing her brother for a few days, his sister Kayrene goes to his room with another friend and when she gets to his room, he was on the ninth floor, room 9 0 4. She says that when she got to his door, there was a note on it. She says that the note said, you know, call your mom or call your sister, just you know, as people are calling, they're probably, that's your way of communicating, right? You don't have a cell phone at that time, so you're just leaving notes on people's doors if people call for them. She also says that she spotted Kenley's RA, Todd Barker, and she says that Todd was also concerned by this time. Probably hadn't seen him for a few days either, so Todd opened the door for Kayreen and when she goes in, she notices that nothing seemed out of place really at all in the room. She said things looked like he had just left to go to class or something, but nothing outta place or, you know, maybe a little messy, but just messiness that's typical of a 20 year old college student. Nothing outta the ordinary there. So it was shortly after that, in the days after he was last seen, that he was reported missing to the Wolfville Police because by this point it had been, you know, a couple of days since he was last seen, and no one knew where he was. Then after being reported missing, the investigation began by the local police and the RCMP. It was immediately thought by police, or by some at least, that he had maybe left of his own accord, just gone out on another adventure. I think that was one thing was because he was described as this adventurous person who had a motorcycle. The initial thought was like, "Oh maybe he just skipped town. He wanted to go on a trip somewhere, so he just left without saying anything." Which, you know, his family says is obviously very weird. He wasn't the type of person who would just get up and leave town with no explanation and not talk to anyone for days if they didn't know where he was. They don't really think that that's believable, but they really think that the police sort of latched onto that theory because once they knew that he was that kind of person who was a traveler, an adventurer, then they just thought that that must have been the plausible theory at the time. So there was, you know, a search for Kenley and the police searched his room, in Crowell Tower, but it was not treated as a homicide at this time. It was only a missing person, so therefore the room wasn't taped off, there was no DNA evidence that was ever searched for or taken from the room. So that was definitely a police blunder. You know, who knows what evidence could have been recovered from that dorm room if it was cordoned off immediately. I mean, I guess I understand their perspective. Like they said it wasn't a missing person's report. It's not a homicide so you don't necessarily have cause to go in and you know, scour the room for D N A or cordon it off like it's a crime scene cuz it wasn't a crime scene, it was just the room of a missing person at that time. So I can definitely see both sides, even though it's frustrating that nothing was really taken or seized from the room. There was mentioned, you know, that there was some cigarettes in the ashtray in the room. The police in the interview of this documentary say, there could have been DNA extracted from the cigarettes, could have been someone else smoking them. Was there someone in the room with Kenley. Whose cigarettes are these? Any type of lead, but nothing was taken. No DNA was recovered, so that never happened. Kayrene did notice that his backpack and his shaving kit were gone, but the rest of his toiletries were all in the room and his passport was still in the room. If you have that theory that he was gonna go and leave the country or something and go on an adventure, I mean, he could very well do that within Canada, but if he had plans to leave the country, he would've needed that passport, you would assume. She also says that there was a newspaper with a Greenpeace ad that was ripped out of it, and so police had followed up to see if maybe he just up and left to go to Toronto or something, and worked for Greenpeace, but nothing ever really came of that lead at that time anyways. Afterwards, in the early stages of the investigation, there were some discrepancies regarding when RA Todd Barker, saw Kenley. So the initial police report says that Todd reported seeing Kenley at around nine or 10:00 PM on Monday night, not Sunday night. But then two years later, Todd changes his story with the police and says that he just made a mistake. It was Sunday night that he saw Kenley in his room, when he went to go get him to sign that form, he said, "Oh yeah, that was Sunday night. That wasn't Monday." So two years after Kenley goes missing, his last known sighting is changed by 24 hours. Originally being thought of as being Monday night, when really it was just the night before. So that makes Tom Gordon's sightings of him on the streets of Wolfville that Monday afternoon and evening, the last sightings of Kenley, because according to Todd's original story, it was a Monday night at 10 that he saw him in his room, which means okay, he was in his room as of 10:00 PM but then he retracted that and no, that was actually Sunday. So his last known sighting was the evening at 5:00 PM when Tom says he saw him. There was a lot of discrepancy about that, which people thought was weird. You know, they're interviewing Kenley's sister and his mother and they're saying that it was just odd that someone so close to the investigation, cuz even, you know, when they're taking statements and stuff that would've been shortly after and they don't think it's very easy to get confused of nights. But I mean, I think for me anyway, I get confused all the time. You know, like earlier this week you think like, "Oh, was that Wednesday night I did that or was that Tuesday? "So I could very easily see a scenario where someone is forgetting a night and then maybe something happened later and he's like, "Oh yeah, this came to my mind and that was Sunday night, so I know that I couldn't have seen him Sunday. You know what I mean? People's memories get jogged later. So I don't think that's necessarily sketchy.
Katie: I definitely think mixing up the days is a normal thing. And I mean when you think about it, the RA, it's not like he was looking after Kenley exclusively, right? He had a whole floor he would have to look after. So he probably, you know, maybe mixed him up with somebody else. He went to see somebody else on Monday instead of him and then he realized. So I think it's super normal for him to have mixed the days up and not really anything to worry about in this case.
Stephanie: Yeah, I agree with Katie. That's one of the things I thought when I was watching it. I don't think he intentionally mixed the dates up. I think he actually just got them mixed up cuz I mean there's a lot going on when you're an RA going to school and you see tons of people. So I don't think it was anything. I think the police were just trying to find something and trying to pinpoint something, but I don't think it was anything to be suspicious about.
AJ: Yeah. And I know that they interviewed the private investigator in this case who has taken on the case or in large part. He says that, yeah, that would certainly make him a person of interest, you know, based on that changing story. But obviously nothing definitive about him obviously being involved because you can't really, there's nothing that says that, you know, I think it's plausible that you could mix up dates. Like I said, I do that all the time. And yeah, like you guys said, he's an RA. He has a whole floor of people that he's keeping tabs on so you could forget or mix up, you know, when you saw someone this day. And so I don't necessarily think that, you know, it's all too weird. But then there was sort of also discrepancies about whether Todd had opened up the room for Kenley's sister. He says that he wouldn't have been allowed to do that. You know, as part of an RA is confidentiality. You're not supposed to obviously be opening up rooms for other people. So he says that didn't happen. But then she clearly says that he let her in the room so that whole thing is kind of weird. There is this, you know, in one episode of this documentary, a little bit of question about Todd Barker and what his deal is or what he knows. Maybe he's hiding, but I didn't really get the sense that that was anymore than just speculation or trying to cast out on someone. I don't really think that there's anything legitimate there. If you were to follow that path of his being guilty, I don't think you would get too far at all.
Katie: I was just gonna say, yeah, I feel the same, that that whole mix up, like, did he open the door, did he not? They talked about maybe those doors were really easy to jimmy open with a knife. So they're saying someone else could have done that. I don't think either way it was anything malicious or people are trying to hide anything. I think there's just like a mix up ,miscommunication, people are misremembering. So I didn't really take that as a red flag of any kind really.
AJ: Yeah. And I think it's one of those cases that's like, yeah, of course if you like pit someone's story one day against their story from years later and they don't match up and then you put creepy ominous music and interviews of other people behind it, then you can make it seem like it's sketchy even though it's probably not. I think at the very least, or maybe I think at the most, Todd was maybe the cool RA who would bend the rules and maybe he would open doors for people. So I think maybe the fact that Kenley's sister is saying that he opened the door for her and then he's saying, "Well no, that didn't happen." Maybe it's just cuz he's trying to cover up and say, "Oh no I didn't do that. Oh no, I followed all the rules. I didn't break them." I think he just was trying to cover up the fact that he didn't do that.
Katie: Yeah. He broke the rules, but he didn't wanna admit that he did, if it was just a small thing. To open up someone's door. But yeah.
AJ: Yeah. So I think it's just lying, but not necessarily because of being involved in Kenley's murder or disappearance. Just the fact that he was lying about something else.
So Kenley's disappearance perplexed police and his family, there was no sightings of him. He had over $4,000 in his bank account at the time that he went missing. And then nothing in his bank account had ever been touched since he was last, seen since that $20 ATM withdrawal the day the Tom Gordon says he saw him, his bank account hasn't been touched since. So even if he thought he was gonna go pack up and leave, the fact that he isn't even using his bank account is, you know, sketchy if that were the theory. A few years after his disappearance, there is another possible lead that emerges. Serial killer Andrew Paul Johnson was arrested in British Columbia, the opposite side of Canada from where this case takes place in Nova Scotia in 1997, and he's arrested on multiple offenses, including the kidnapping and confinement of a 20 year old woman and attempting to kidnap 12 year old girls while posing as a police officer. So it came out that while arrested in British Columbia, Andrew Paul Johnson actually stems from Nova Scotia and is speculated to be involved in a series of unsolved homicides from Nova Scotia in the 1990s. So furthermore, Sarah McDonald, Kenley's mother alleges that she was told directly by an R C M P officer that police concluded that Andrew Johnson was camping on Corcum's Island the same weekend that Kenley and his friends were in September of 1992, and that Andrew Johnson and his girlfriend were at Kristen Tomilson's. So Kristen Tomilson is the friend, one of the friends that Kenley went to Corcums Island with. The police say that Andrew Johnson and his girlfriend were at Kristen Tomilson's family's residence for dinner that same weekend as well. But that has never been confirmed. So therefore the theory emerged that maybe Kenley had met Andrew on Corcums Island that weekend when they were both still there. Maybe they struck up a friendship. Perhaps Andrew was then involved in Kenley going missing just a week later. Maybe they met up, or Andrew somehow knew that Kenley went to Acadia, went back to harm him, or led him somewhere or something. So that was a theory that had emerged. For whatever reason, Kenley's mother says that a police officer, RCMP officer told her that they were able to confirm or that they knew that Andrew was at Corcum's Island, not just at Corcumès Island, but eating dinner with Kenley's friend, Kristen's family with Kenley and Kristen that same weekend that they were all there. I mean, if that's true, that's a very, very odd coincidence that the serial killer who had allegedly killed a bunch of people in Nova Scotia before he went to BC was dining with Kenley and his friends on Corcum's Island a week before Kenley disappears. So that is in and of itself just very odd. Andrew Paul Johnson was actually interviewed for this documentary film where he denies being on Corcum's Island that weekend or ever meeting Kenley. He also denies being involved in the cold cases of Kimberly McAndrew, Andrew King or Stephen Michael Hall. So those are the three main cold cases from Nova Scotia that he was, the police believed that he could have been connected to. He denies in this documentary ever knowing any of the three of them, maybe seeing them, you know, on missing posters, but never ever meeting them. And he admits to living in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia in September of 1992 and working in Lunenburg at that time. And he does admit to being at the Ovens Campground near Corcum's Island at least once as well. So the RCMP officer who had allegedly told Kenley's mother that Kenley and Andrew were both there on the same weekend, refused to be interviewed for the documentary. So we aren't sure exactly if that actually was the case or not. They interview, of course, Kenley's friend, Tom Gordon. He recalls meeting a nice couple that weekend while they were on Corcum's Island, but has no recollection of their names and could not confirm their identity, and neither could Kristen either. Reports also suggest that Andrew sold the vehicle that he owned shortly after Kenley went missing. And according to Kenley's mother, she says that she was told that this is an MO for Andrew, that he would do that. In other cases, he would get rid of cars that he had leased or that he had shortly after these people or his victims would go missing. But it could be unrelated. It could be a coincidence that he's just selling his car. That happens to be early October, just a couple weeks after Kenley goes missing. No matches for Kenley's DNA had ever been found on residences or belongings of Andrew's or Andrew's vehicle. There's absolutely nothing definitive that connects these events or proves that Andrew Paul Johnson is tied to Kenleyès disappearance at all. It is likely that the events are purely coincidental and not connected, but it is still an unsolved case. So who really knows? So what were you guys thoughts on this kind of twist, cuz this is one of the first big twists in the case when they introduced the serial killer. Do you guys think he was on Corcum's Island that weekend? Do you think he really was at Kristen's family's residence for dinner? That would be a very huge coincidence.
Katie: I know. I go back and forth about this. I think it's logical to think that he could have been there and he just forgets their names and what they look like. Because, I mean, have you ever gone to a party and meet people, hang out with them and never see them again. And you could never name them, never pick them out in a crowd. So I feel like that could be the situation here. So maybe they did meet, I don't think it's impossible or Improbable. In his interview, he was super hard to read. It was like he had no emotion. He looked like he was breaking down at the end a little bit, but he was very much like, ÈNo, I had nothing to do with that disappearance. No, I never met that woman. He was just very, I don't know, emotionless, I guess. So, I don't know. I couldn't get a read on the guy.
Stephanie: Yeah, I agree with Katie. I don't think he could have been at Corcums Island. A big coincidence if he was. I never heard of this, Andrew Paul Johnson, the serial killer. I would never recognize his name. Not that that matters to this case, but to me, it just seems like a really weird coincidence that he would be on the same island the same day at their house eating dinner with them. It just, yeah, to me I don't think it's a possibility that he was there.
AJ: I mean, I guess, like what Katie said, yeah. You know, you go, you might, if you're like, you know, camping or something and you meet other campers and you spark up a conversation with them and then they invite you, because Kristen says that her house, her family's house on Corcums Island was open to anyone. You know, their parents would invite people for dinner and stuff like that, that they had met. So, the fact that he was there isn't weird because Kristen says like lots of people would just be there randomly for dinner. So I just think, I mean, he could have been at Corcums Island if he lived in Nova Scotia in 92. Nova Scotia's not a super huge place. I mean, you know, it could be, you know, it's a coincidence that he was there the same weekend. But I just feel like if he was there the same weekend as Kenley, what are the chances that then Kenley then goes missing a week later? It's like literally a week later and then Andrew sells his car shortly after that, which he would always do before. To me that would be just a wild coincidence, which can happen cuz coincidences happen. But to me, I just feel like that would be a huge coincidence to not believe that those two sort of things could be connected in some way, would just be naive to me, I feel. But then also, I don't know. Kenleys mother says in this documentary that she distinctly remembers, like someone told her, an RCMP officer told her that they knew that he was there because they even ask, or the filmmaker asks Andrew in this interview when he is interviewing him for the documentary, he's like, what would you say to the fact that police are able to connect you to Corcums Island on the weekend of September 11th, 12th of 1992? So he's saying it as if, you know, the police have been able to confirm that, but we don't know what led them to that. The PI that they interview who's been doing this case now, he says that he's never, ever come across anything in his investigation that ever confirmed that Kenley and the serial killer ever met. But I just think, why would an RCMP officer say that to Kenleys mother a long time ago? And you know, I just feel like it's just too big of a coincidence to not be connected.
Katie: Well, also, I think the other people that they think he may have murdered, they found all of their bodies right. Then Kenley body was never found. So it's a very different MO sort of, if he went out of his way to hide this one super well, like why would he do that if the other ones were out in the open, if it was him that did all those. So it just, there's just all these things that don't match, but still the possibility is still there. So. Yep. It's a hard one to figure out.
AJ: Yeah, I mean the only thing I could say to that is maybe he didn't kill those other cold cases that they never solved, but he did kill Kenley, you know.
Katie: Yeah, that's true.
AJ: That's the only thing. Yeah. I mean, the serial killer stuff really makes up most of episode two of this documentary. And so when I watched the documentary for the first time, I was like, I was convinced. I'm like, there's no way that he's not involved. Like what are the chances that, you know, you kind of have like other cases and other times when there's just these like, sort of like weird things like keep coming out and it's like, how, how many times can you just believe that it's just a coincidence? You know, if things keep coming up and like, I just find that to be a very strange coincidence. But then obviously later on in the documentary, like there's more twists that happened then, so I really don't think it was Andrew if I had to guess right now. But it's just very, a very weird sort of set of circumstances that this serial killer and Kenley were both at the same place, allegedly on the same weekend and then Kenley then goes missing a week later. That's just very odd to me. And also, yeah, like in, in the documentary, I couldn't get a read on him either, when they were interviewing him. He also says that he says the police determined that he has psychopathic tendencies and he's just saying this like so matter-of-factly, like yeah, they said it had psychopathic tendencies. So I feel like just the way that he said that kind of made it seem plausible that he did have psychopathic tendencies. It was just kind of creepy the way he said it.
Katie: Yeah, definitely it did. He, I definitely got that like psychopath vibe from him for sure.
AJ: Yeah. So I think he is like legitimately a bad person. Even though he says that him being connected to all these cold cases is just a ploy by the police just to keep him in jail longer, which, I mean, the police are corrupt. We all know that. But, I also think this guy is just a genuinely bad guy. So, so as for Andrew Johnson, he is still currently incarcerated in a British Columbia prison and has been denied parole a total of 10 times, most recently in June of 2021.
So if you're being denied parole 10 times, it's probably cuz you're just a bad guy, I would say. So that does it for like the first two episodes of the documentary. So that's kind of where the case stands at that point. Steph's gonna tell us a little bit about the next evolution of the investigation or other interesting things of note that come up in the third episode.
Stephanie: Like AJ said, the investigation didn't really go anywhere. Was at a standstill. So the next part that I'm gonna be talking about is more the theories of what people think happened to Kenley and some of the evidence that was provided. During this part of the investigation, there was a theory that Kenley might have still been alive. This was one of the big questions out there. Was he still alive? If he's still alive, where is he? Did he just disappear cuz he wanted to. But the reason why some people think he was still alive is because during this time there have been quite a few sightings of him at various places according to some of the witnesses who say they saw him. And a lot of these witnesses were acquaintances of him that he met while traveling or that he was friends with in high school, but also a lot of his friends think that Kenley could be still alive and that he wanted to disappear. And that question came up with one of his friends who he met during his gap year. So a gap year would be from the time he graduated high school to the time he went to university. He did a lot of traveling in between there, like AJ said. So this friend of his said that if anybody was gonna disappear or know how to disappear, it would've been Kenley because he was very diverse in the traveling world, I guess he traveled a lot, so he would know different places that if he wanted to disappear, he knew where to go. It wasn't outta the possibility that Kenley had just run away or disappeared because he was someone who did travel a lot. So there was that question, maybe he just didn't wanna be at Acadia anymore. He didn't wanna be in that lifestyle, so he just got up and left. But according to his family, that doesn't really seem possible cuz he was really close to his sister and he wouldn't have just left without telling his sister or his family. So to me that doesn't really seem like the possibility that he's just disappeared on his own. But also going back to the fact that they think he's still alive, Kenleys mom had gotten a phone call at around 4:00 AM which she immediately woke up to to answer cuz it startled her, cuz normally you don't get phone calls at 4:00 AM, and she says that the person on the other end of the line kept saying, you don't wanna talk to me, you don't wanna talk to me. Kenleys mom replies by saying, who is this? Who is this? She was trying to see if she could recognize the voice, but she said the voice was too low. She thinks it could have been Kenley, but she wasn't a hundred percent sure. It just startled her. She was trying to keep the person on the line to make sure that she could recognize his voice. So the following day, she went to the R C M P and they put a trace on her phone. But unfortunately the caller never did call back and they were never able to establish who called that day, so they never could trace the call. So there was another dead end. And she did go on to say in the interview, in the documentary that she still thinks to this day that that could have been Kenley, but she's not a hundred percent sure that it actually was.
AJ: Do you think it was.
Stephanie: I don't know. I was so back and forth. I mean it could have been him, but, why would he say, you don't wanna talk to me? That doesn't really seem like somebody who's close to his family would say. What do you guys think? Do you think it could have been him?
Katie: Like for me, I feel like it could have been him and he, you know, maybe he did want to disappear and then he had this guilt that he didn't tell his family. And then the longer he left it, the more he felt the guilt. He had been reported missing and there was posters up and you know when you leave something for too long and the longer you leave it, the worse it gets. But you just don't wanna confront it and it just keeps building. I feel like maybe he felt like that. It's just like he had left it for so long that him now reaching back out to them was too hard to do. And also, I can remember his mom was talking about that she had bipolar and she felt that maybe he had a little bit of that in him as well. He went through cycles of depression. And so if he was going through some mental health crisis, maybe something did snap in him and he disassociated from that life in a way. And then he was trying to find his way back but felt guilty and maybe didn't really want to, so he was confused, like I feel like that is maybe possible. He maybe did wanna disappear at first and then felt bad about it and then just never came back. Like that's maybe stretching it a bit, but that's the sense that I got from all that.
AJ: Yeah, they do even interview some of the friends from his travels, that one friend who recounts that story he has of, he walks out, they were on a boat of some sort at one point and walks out and Kenley is on the edge looking as if he was, not that he was going to jump, but it was telling the story as if it was somewhat, maybe not relevant, but could explain if he was having thoughts of suicide or if he was having thoughts of, I don't know, depression or something like that. Like I think that was kind of the point of that story in this documentary was to kind of show that maybe this was something he was struggling with to kind of justify that he could have just left on his own.
Katie: Yeah. Yeah. It was like he had been drinking a lot and then he climbed over the barricade on this ferry or something, and then he was like, yeah, there was nothing between him and just falling overboard into the ocean. So it was just kind of him, I don't know, thinking about his life, thinking about the world kind of thing. He was very introspective, I feel. So he could have been struggling with that kind of mentality.
Stephanie: Yeah, and like the RCMP said, he did do a lot of traveling, so it wouldn't be hard for him to go somewhere and just hide and nobody know where he is either. So I mean, wanna believe that that's what happened to him. He's out there somewhere and he disappeared and he just doesn't wanna be found. But I also feel bad for the family that if that's the case, he's out there but his family doesn't know that. And so I feel bad for the family not knowing where he is at, even if he is alive.
Katie: Yeah, also at the beginning of the documentary they talk about how he was hesitant to go to Acadia. It wasn't necessarily because it was Acadia, but probably just university in general. Cause I'm thinking he had two years off of freedom, right? He was in BC planting trees. He was down in Mexico for seven weeks at a time. So he had all this freedom and then now he had to go back to like this institution where everything was very structured and scheduled. So yeah, like AJ was saying, that was probably a drag and such a bummer on his lifestyle that he was used to. It doesn't, it's not out of the realm of possibilities that he was just like, I just need to get out of here for a while and rethink my life.
AJ: Yeah. And then when he calls his mother, if he did call her, cuz I can't remember the exact year it's in the documentary, but a couple of years after he disappears, she gets that call. So maybe he was having second thoughts, but also I feel it could also be possible someone was pranking her, which is also terrible and horrifying. Do you think she could have dreamt it? I feel like sometimes we see, this reminds me of the Johnny Gosh case that we covered, you know, where the mother says that he came to her door and she had a conversation with him. Like to me it could be something like, maybe she dreamt it and thinks that it actually happened. But I don't wanna say that that was it, because I don't wanna delegitimize if she really thinks it happened. But that was just something that I thought of.
Stephanie: That's funny that you say that because I was actually thinking of that exact case when I was watching this documentary and she said that that phone call came in and the first thing that came to my mind was that case. It goes back to Johnny Gosh. So, I mean, it's so hard to say cuz we can put ourselves in her shoes. At that moment, it's been a couple years, her son's been missing. She wants to find answers. So deep down in her mind she thinks that's him. But maybe in reality, we all know it probably wasn't him. But like I said, we don't know and it's been 31 years. So I'm gonna go into more detail, obviously about certain theories, but if he did disappear, I think it's time for him to maybe come out of hiding and just let people know that he's still alive.
AJ: Well, I think there's a possibility that maybe at the time that that call happened, he could have been alive. But I don't think now he still is.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I think maybe he meant to disappear or just go on a little trip on his own and then something happened to him at that time. So it's a combination of both things. He wanted to leave, but he intended on coming back, but then he just never made it back. So that's what I'm thinking.
Stephanie: Yeah. That makes more sense than. Forget what I said. Cause that makes more sense. But I'm just saying, I'm hoping he is still alive out there, but who knows? It's probably at this stage in the disappearances, highly unlikely that he is. So that was one of the biggest theories going around, that he was still alive. And like I said, a lot of people believed this because of the several sightings of him. So one of the other sightings, someone said they saw him was there was a guy who said he was at the Halifax International Airport when he says a young guy in a ball cap walked past him. And this witness says that he took a couple steps back and got this weird feeling that he should turn around to see who this person was, but by the time he turned around to where the person was standing, he was not there anymore. So he decided to go look, he went outside to see if he could recognize him. He searched the other side of the airport to see if he could look for him. And when he came back, he noticed that the beer that the guy had the beer at this table, was still cold and there was only a couple sips out of it. So it was like he had just gotten the beer and the person was gone in like a minute. The filmmaker in the documentary asks do you think this could be Kenley? And he said it could have been him, but like he said he wasn't a hundred percent because, he didn't get a really good look at him, but he did say he had a ball cap on, and we all know that Kenley, when he was last seen, was wearing a ball cap. So it could have been him, but he wasn't a hundred percent sure.
Katie: I can't remember. Did he know Kenley before this? Because I mean...
AJ: I think he did.
Katie: How many people wear a ball cap? He's like, holy fuck that's the missing kid.
AJ: No, I think it was, I think it was. Yeah, he was a relative of Kenley or someone who knew him.
Katie: Okay. So I guess he knew that he was missing and maybe he felt...
AJ: Yeah, yeah that's...
Katie: Wasn't some random guy. Okay.
AJ: No, I think, yeah, I don't know the exact connection cuz...
Stephanie: Oh, sorry. Did I not say he was? Sorry?
AJ: Well, you just said someone.
Stephanie: I had it written down that he was, someone that he was related to. Sorry, I meant to put that in there. But it was a distant relative. I don't think it was immediate family. So...
AJ: Well someone who just maybe knew that he was missing.
Stephanie: Yeah.
AJ: And knew what he looked like and that he always wore ball caps. And so, he's in the airport and sees someone who you see in the corner of your eye and you look back and thought it could be Kenley. Then he said, well maybe Kenley saw him and then got up and left cuz he didn't wanna be found or something. I think that was the point of that. But that's sketchy either way. I don't know.
Stephanie: Yeah, and he had a weird feeling, to know that could have been him if he decided to search the airport to see if you could find him again. Because if you just saw somebody and think you know that person, or saw him, you're not gonna be searching the airport to see if you can find him again if it's just some random person.
Katie: It's weird. I feel like it's such a loose connection, but I mean, why would he order that beer and then, all of a sudden just get up and leave. Maybe, yeah, he did see the guy recognized him and didn't want to be recognized, so that kind of makes sense. But...
AJ: Yeah.
Katie: I don't know.
AJ: Like he had planned to be there longer, but then when he saw that person, he thought, "Oh, I'm gonna leave." Cuz why would you order a beer, take two sips of it and then leave? Unless you're like, "Oh shit, my plane's leaving." Or something, I don't know.
Katie: Oh yes, flight got changed. He's like, "Oh, I gotta go."
Stephanie: Well, that's what I was thinking. If we go back to that theory that he wanted to disappear and he's at the airport, he sees somebody that he recognizes and he is like, "Oh shit, I don't want anybody to see me." Then he takes off. That's a big possibility. But like I said, the guy couldn't find him. I mean, the Halifax airport is pretty big, and it can be busy at times, but Kenley was pretty distinct. He stood out, so it would've been hard to miss him or whatever. I don't know what I'm trying to say, but you know what I mean? So yeah, that was just one of the sightings, possibly of someone seeing Kenley. Another witness by the name of Ian Stillwells claims that back in 1993, he said he spoke to Kenley in April of 1993 in Halifax on Gottingen Street at Cornwallis. Stillwell continues to say in the interview that he knew Kenley from years ago when they used to go dirt biking together while camping in the Annapolis Valley. Stillwell said he saw Kenley in Halifax and that Kenley seemed fine and at that time when he saw Kenley, he didn't know that he was missing until he saw the missing posters in the fall of 1993. A few months after, there's that sighting of him in Halifax by his friend Ian, and then another person said that they also saw Kenley in the Halifax area. This time he was in the line at the Palace, which is a nightclub in Halifax. This witness goes by the name of James, I think it's Pineau. He said he was also in line at the palace waiting to get in. And he says that the guy behind him started to talk to him about Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. James says that he was studying at Kings Tech and then Kenley, who he thought was Kenley, goes on to say, "Oh, you might know my cousin Wendell, cuz he also goes to King's Tech too." So they get to talking and he says that Kenley never really mentions anything about himself except for the fact that he goes to Acadia. And then James says he turns to talk to his other friend, who he was standing in line with, and when he went to turn back around, he said that Kenley was gone, and he had looked for him in the crowd and then on the street, but there was no sighting of him. Then about a week later, well I presume it was a week later, he meets up with Wendell for coffee. James then mentioned to him that, "Oh I was talking to somebody the other day that knew you." And Wendell's like, "Oh who would that be? So James described the person to him and Wendell showed him a photo of Kenley. James says, "Yes, this is the person that I was talking in line for the Pallace." Wendell says, that's my cousin Kenley. He's been missing for over a year. So immediately James was shocked...
AJ: So weird.
Stephanie: ...that he saw this person and was talking to him.
Katie: It's those things that make me think that, yeah, Kenley did want to just leave on his own for a little bit because how would you mistake Kenley for somebody else, you know what I mean? That's just too weird.
Stephanie: So the fact that he talked to this person for like 20 minutes before he disappeared. Like James said, Kenley said nothing about his life, just about Nova Scotia, that he went to Acadia, but he didn't say his name. He didn't say where he was from or anything like that. Just that he went to Acadia.
AJ: So I feel like that had to have been Kenley, right? What are the chances that someone is gonna just say that?
Stephanie: So leaving out those details about your life. "Oh, I'm going to Kingstec, I'm doing this, I'm doing that," like James was doing. He obviously didn't want anybody to know.
Katie: Well, we don't know the conversation. I mean, they were talking about Nova Scotia. They were talking about PEI and talking about that he went to Acadia and the other guy was talking about he was going to Kingstec, and then Kenley is talking about his cousin that goes to Kingstec, so, I mean, they had this conversation, but Kenley wasn't like, "Oh, I disappeared and don't tell anybody," kind of thing. It's like a very normal conversation.
Stephanie: He also didn't introduce his name either. He didn't say who he was either though.
Katie: No, but I mean, this guy may not have said his name to him either, though.
AJ: Yeah. It could just be like, you know, you're standing in line for a nightclub, you might not say your name, you just start having a conversation with someone. But I feel that had to have been Kenley, right? What are the chances that he would be talking to someone in line who says, "Oh, you might know my cousin who went to Kingstec and that's his cousin who went to Kingstec. Right? I don't know.
Katie: Yeah. And the way he described him and then saw the picture of him and said, "Yeah, that was him." And then his cousin Wendell was like, "That had to be Kenley because he's the only cousin I have that goes to Acadia." Or something. So yeah, it's crazy. I feel like it was him. That's my feeling.
Stephanie: Yeah, and what you said Katie, saying these are the things that I think that makes me think that he just wanted to disappear.
AJ: Also the fact that it wasn't just one, it was like that one at in line for the Palace and then that other one who says he saw him on that intersection, he said he didn't even know Kenley was missing. He just saw him and he knew Kenley and obviously, so he didn't know he was missing, so he thought, "Oh, it's cool, it's Kenley." Then realizes, "Oh, he's actually a missing person and I just spoke to him not that long ago." The fact that there's two of those stories makes me think that it has to be real.
Katie: Yeah, I know. It's weird.
AJ: So I feel like it could be very much the case, Katie like you said, it is something where he did just get up and leave Acadia. He had only been at Acadia for two weeks before he left, or a couple of weeks before he left, so he just got fed up and left and then was in Halifax, in that area for a while, just doing whatever. Maybe he was at the airport, maybe he was doing other things, and then something happened after these sightings.
Katie: That's what I think may have happened.
Stephanie: Yeah. So, just like those sightings, how crazy they are, there's one other sighting of Kenley, and this was back in the winter of 1997 in London, Ontario. This sighting was by a girl named Cindy, who was a distant relative of Kenley. She says that this guy knocked on her door, a guy who was working for Green Peace. She describes this man as a tall, thin man with a ball cap on. She said that he was very personable. He knew what he was talking about. He was very interested in his job. She says at the time, she normally doesn't invite people into her house, but she said on this day she did because she just thought he was a special person. She didn't know Kenley at this time. They had never met.
Katie: It was her husband's family that was related to Kenley's family.
This was just like a normal young person. She goes on to say that, in the summer of 1998, so that following summer, she and her husband take a trip to Cape Breton to visit his family. They were staying at her husband's aunt and uncle's house. They stayed there for a few nights. So like she said, when you're staying at people houses, you sit down, you talk and you get to know them. She was staying at this house and she happened to just start looking around and just, talking about the house and having conversation and she happened to look at a photograph that looked super familiar to her. So she asked the aunt that lived there who this person was in the picture, and she says, "Oh that's my nephew." Cindy's like, " Oh, think I know him." And the aunt's saying's, "Oh, really?" And Cindy's like, "Yeah I think this is the young man who came to my house canvassing for Greenpeace." And the aunt says, "Okay. Well that's kind of weird because he's been missing for some time now." So again, she didn't know who Kenley was at the time. So there's another sighting of, "Could this be Kenley? Could this not be Kenley?" But the fact that she recognized his picture, goes to show that it probably was him. Do you guys think it was him?
Katie: Well, yeah, and even further to that, when she got back to Ontario, she talked to Greenpeace and she brought the picture of Kenley to them and they confirmed that, yeah, this does look like somebody that used to work for us or does work for us. But they couldn't give names or confirm that really, just cuz it was probably private information. And they said a lot of transient people, they just take that job for a little bit while they're just passing through. So she said that it did look like someone that worked for them, but there was never a confirmation that he did.
AJ: Going back to the fact that, you know, the sister saw the newspaper with the ad for Greenpeace ripped out. So it's also weird that it is Greenpeace. I think the fact that it's Greenpeace is significant too. There's the ad ripped out in the paper and then, and then this woman has someone who looks like Kenley come to the door, working for Greenpeace. Do you think those two things are not related? I don't know.
Katie: I don't know. Yeah, that's another coincidence too if they're not related, then yeah. What are the odds of that? It's just weird.
Stephanie: So what Katie said, when Cindy did go back to Ontario, she did look into Greenpeace, but they never did tell her if he did or did not work for them. But also after doing some digging, neither the Wolfville police records nor the RCMP files indicated whether or not the Toronto Greenpeace office was ever called back to check to see if Kenley was on the payroll. So again, that lead was never, followed up on.
AJ: Which I feel would be so easy to do. The police could just subpoena the payroll records from that year...
Stephanie: Yeah.
AJ: ...and see. Because you know, in order to have a job at Greenpeace, you have to have a social insurance number, right? So he would put his name down, his real name, I'm sure, right? To get paid and stuff. So his real name and everything should be on the payroll if he worked there. So it's something so easy to do.
Katie: Maybe. But wasn't there also a part of the documentary, it said when he came back from Mexico, he had come back under a different name or something. He had given them a different name, so.
AJ: Oh yeah. That was also sketchy too. Yeah, that time he was in Mexico for that many months, he flew back under this other name, which was weird. How you could just do that.
Katie: Yeah.
AJ: I guess it was the nineties. It wasn't as secure, but why he would've done that anyway? Not only the fact that he was able to, but the fact that he did that.
Katie: Yes. It's such a weird little detail. They just didn't even say anything, just gloss over. It was just a little text on the screen. But, so I mean, he did it before, he could very easily just change his name. And...
AJ: But I feel like in Canada, if you're gonna work and get paid, you would have to supply a social insurance number at a place like Greenpeace. Right? I don't think you could just, I mean, maybe I'm wrong.
Katie: No, that's probably true. Yeah. To get paid, you'd have to go through like your bank account. It probably would have his real name if they would've looked into it. That's just such an easy thing.
Stephanie: That's what I'm saying. If they took the five seconds to call up, or subpoena them, like AJ said, give them their records of who was on the payroll. Then you would know if he worked there or not.
AJ: Yeah. Yeah. Just called up the office, "Hey, I work for the RCMP and need to subpoena these records." Done. They do it.
Stephanie: How easy is that? Why not do that? Again look at the shoddy police work. Those were all the sightings, nothing really came out of those sightings. No new evidence of Kenley ever came up with those sightings. People said, "Was it him? Was it not him?" I'm pretty sure in all of those incidents it probably was him because it was easy for people to pick him out of a crowd. For me anyways, all these sightings were probably him. We have to go back to the main idea of when he first went missing, go back to his dorm room. Like you said AJ, nobody had access to his dorm room except for the RCMP. Right? It wasn't...
AJ: Well no, they didn't cordon it off.
Stephanie: Yeah. So people could go in there and stuff. So one of the main things that kept being brought up in this case was the backpack that he carried with him everywhere. This backpack was red and black, I believe, right?
AJ: Yeah.
Stephanie: So this was a very distinct backpack. If you watch this documentary, it's brought up quite a bit in this investigation. People say that this is a backpack that Kenley wore on him all the time. And some people say that the backpack was in the room at this time and some people say it was not in the room at the time or it was removed or whatever. And then you go back to Tom Gordon, he said he saw him walking on Main Street with a backpack on. So his backpack couldn't be in his room if that was the last time someone saw him.
AJ: I was just gonna say, the discrepancy was because Kenley's sister said that the backpack was gone when she went in the room on the Wednesday.
Stephanie: There was a backpack there, but it was his hiking backpack that was there, not the backpack that he took everywhere with him.
AJ: Yeah. And that's what she said. She said his shaving kit and his backpack were gone, but then everything else was there. So his backpack is if he's just going to class or something. But then other people say that it was there in the room at another point, because there was that two day period, right, where Monday he was last seen and then Wednesday she goes into the room for the first time. So there's 48 hours and then within that 48 hours there's other people who said they went into the room and saw that the backpack was there.
Stephanie: Yeah, Kristen, the friend that he went with to Corcum Island with said that the backpack was there and the filmmaker specifically asked, "Do you remember seeing the backpack," or something to that effect? And she said, "All I can remember when I looked in that room was the backpack. The backpack sitting there.
AJ: Mm-hmm.
Stephanie: And that's the backpack. But then his sister said the backpack wasn't there. And then there's also that confusion of, Tom said he never even went in the room, that you weren't allowed in the room. So how could you see the backpack if you weren't allowed in the room?
AJ: Yeah. And then Kristen says that no , she was let into the room. Todd let them into the room? Which again, cuz his sister said that Todd let her into the room. She got in. So he also let them in on Tuesday the backpack was there and then on Wednesday it's not there. So did someone go in later and remove it as evidence or maybe Kenley came back into the room? Yeah, like he was there on Tuesday, the backpack was there. He came back to the room, got the backpack. Left. And that's why on Wednesday when his sister went in there wasn't there. So maybe he was not missing on Tuesday, just no one had seen him. But he might not have been missing.
Katie: Yeah.
AJ: Or did someone go into the room to get rid of the backpack for some reason, leave and then when his sister went in on Wednesday it was gone. That's confusing. Kristen or Tom, obviously they're not gonna remember it was 30 years ago and they're trying to recall these details for this interview.
Stephanie: Yeah. And then they asked Kristen, "Did Kenley have a crush?" Was there a love triangle going on between the three of them or whatever? And she says, "No , I never had interest in either of them. I don't know. But to me they seem kind of spacey when it comes to them asking questions. She doesn't even know what year he went missing, or what year she was even in when she was talking in the interview. And then Tom has this big novel of a diary that has everything he did when he was in Acadia, which I find odd as well. But anyway. Do you find that odd? He has a diary of everything he did?
Katie: No, I used to keep a diary and I used to write in there every day.
Stephanie: I guess.
AJ: Well, I think for him, because he was British, he came to Acadia probably as an exchange student or something. So he's keeping this diary of...
Katie: His travels.
AJ: ...big adventure.
Katie: Yeah.
AJ: Yeah. So he just happened to write these details down...
Stephanie: Okay, that makes sense.
AJ: ...that become important later. But then also that part of the documentary where they ask him to read a portion of the diary and he keeps skipping over one line all four times.
Stephanie: Mm-hmm.
AJ: Which is super odd. And then they try to make it seem like maybe Tom's hiding something cuz they throw in a question like, "Well you said you saw him here, but there's a discrepancy here with the backpack." So I also think...
Stephanie: Because he only says he saw him once, but according to his diary, he saw him twice or
something like that.
AJ: Yeah. There was records that say that ,no , he saw him twice, you know, once near the ATM...
Stephanie: Mm-hmm.
AJ: ...and then later at 5:00 PM heading outta town. Because then there's that whole thing with the convenience store. One of the things that they try to cast out on Tom was because he says that he saw him heading out of town towards the, whatever the name of convenience store was .
Stephanie: Oh, Nolan's convenience.
AJ: Yeah. Which Kenley's sister says that, everyone knows that that's also where the bus stop is. So she thought it was weird that he made a point to say, "Oh, I saw him heading out of town towards Nolan's convenience." When it's like he said that because he wanted people to think like, "Oh, okay, he was going there cuz he's catching the bus to go somewhere." So then that was also thrown into question. Did he just try to throw people off, to come to the conclusion of, "Oh, he just, you know, went on a bus and left because he was going to the convenience store and took the bus." And then they were throwing into question did he see him twice that day or once and did he go into the room? Did he see the backpack and all that stuff.
Stephanie: Oh, yeah, cuz then Tom Gordon says like, "Well , where do you think Kenley is? He used to be fine." So he checked South America or something stupid like that. That's what he says. So why would you say that?
AJ: Well, yeah, when they questioned him initially. Way back then they said check South America. Just maybe as a sarcastic joke. He likes to travel a lot, maybe you should check there. But there's a whole 30 minutes of that documentary where they're trying to make it seem like Tom is sketchy, which I don't think, and then they put him under surveillance and follow him around.
Stephanie: Yeah. I'm gonna get into that. Yeah.
AJ: Okay.
Stephanie: Going back to this whole backpack scenario, even the filmmaker even interviewed the police officer at the time, and they don't even recall the backpack being there. Or some of them recall it being there and some of them don't. So, who knows where his backpack is, or if Kenley even had it on him or somebody removed it.
Katie: Well, there's two backpacks. There's probably confusion about which backpack they're talking about. It's like, yeah, I saw the backpack, but they're not talking about the same one. So I feel like people don't understand what's going on with these backpacks, right?
AJ: Yeah.
Katie: So I saw the backpack. I didn't see the backpack, but they did see a backpack. It's not the same one. So it's super, just confusing.
AJ: Yeah, true. Yeah. Like Kristen and Tom say, "Oh yeah, we saw a backpack." Yeah, the hiking one that his sister says was there, but the other one wasn't. Yeah. And it's 30 years ago too so they're trying to recount all these things. How are you gonna remember when you went into a room 30 years ago? I don't know.
Stephanie: And one of the other things is, which was shocking to me, and probably one could be a red flag in the investigation, but I don't think anything ever came out of it. But five months after Kenley had disappeared, Kristen Tomilson brings in Kenley's Laker hat to the Wolfville police station. And this is the same hat that apparently he was wearing when he went missing. So that's super suspicious. Even the filmmaker even asked her about it and she doesn't remember bringing a hat to the police station.
Katie: Maybe he had more than one hat.
Stephanie: But why would she have his hat? Maybe she found it and brought it...
Katie: Because he left it at Corcum's Island that one time and then she brought it to the police after he had gone missing. But then other people are saying Tom is saying that the last time you saw him, he had the hat on.
Stephanie: But he could have a different hat on.
Katie: He could have had more than one hat.
Stephanie: Yeah. And Tom doesn't remember what kind of hat he was wearing, so it could have been any type of hat really. But anyways, I just find that suspicious. I don't know. Do you guys think that was suspicious when she brought the hat in? I mean, it's evidence maybe, but I'm not sure. It was confusing.
AJ: Well, I mean, I just think he probably had multiple hats. I just think they're just not the best narrators or reliable narrators in general, and then when you add on that it's 30 years later and they're trying to remember. She doesn't even remember, like you said, what year she's even in currently...
Stephanie: Yeah.
AJ: ...or was at that time.
Stephanie: She looked really spacey to me anyways.
AJ: And she couldn't remember what she said. She doesn't remember bringing the hat. So I feel like, I don't know. I don't think either of them are involved basically. Which I think this part of the doc tries to maybe say that they are, or suspicious at least.
Stephanie: Yeah.
AJ: That's what I feel. I feel like the filmmakers threw most of the people under the bus during this.
Katie: Yeah. Because this is where maybe they thought that the documentary was gonna be ending. This is episode three, right? And they didn't have all the other info yet. Sometimes were thinking like we gotta get some suspicion.
AJ: Yeah.
Katie: Cliffhanger happening here. So they were trying to point the finger at these two people, but, or especially Tom, but I feel like they had nothing to do with the disappearance and there's just too many years had gone by. They couldn't remember details. Things were jumbled. So, yeah.
AJ: Yeah. And they had lost touch with each other. Tom and Kristen didn't even talk after. They hung out for the year, the semester, and then he went back and then that was it. So their stories don't even match each other's. But it's like, well they haven't talked or seen each other in 30 years and they probably have different accounts of what happened. Obviously they do.
Stephanie: Yeah. So like we said, we don't think they're involved. As the filmmakers, at this point they're trying to pinpoint it on somebody. So Tom is one of the people that was highly suspected in this documentary. One because he says he saw Kenley or speculated that he saw Kenley twice, but he only said he saw him once.
AJ: Well, I, oh, sorry. I was just gonna say technically Tom's the last one who saw Kenley alive officially. Right?
Stephanie: Yes.
AJ: If he's the last one. And that's why, I know at one point Kenley's sister saying it would make more sense in her mind if Kenley went missing on Sunday night because he wasn't in class at all on Monday and had no other sightings really on Monday at all, except for this one that he had with Tom. So she's like, the fact that Tom's sighting of him is the only thing they have that puts him there on Monday, you know, going missing on Monday versus on Sunday. So then they were also saying that's why Tom's sighting of him was so relevant because that literally puts him at Acadia and Wolfville on Monday. Otherwise, he wasn't in class at all on Monday or any of those other days, so he must have gone missing. But I guess he did the ATM withdrawal , the $20 withdrawal. But Tom's the only one who saw him that day at all.
Stephanie: So yeah, the filmmakers really are trying to , like Katie said, this is where they thought the documentary was gonna end, so they wanna wrap it up and pinpoint it on somebody. So Tom, at this point in the documentary, they started surveillance on him during his stay in Wolfville and this was by a private investigator hired by the filmmaker. He didn't return to Wolfville, but he did spend an hour nearby in Walton and he was described by the filmmakers, of acting odd and staring into the Minas Basin. They said he was acting, it was strange to them that he wasn't taking pictures, he wasn't having a smoke or doing anything. He was just staring at this body of water for what they said was for a while. And they said he got back into his car and he was in his car for 20 minutes just staring into the, water or whatever.
So, um, yeah, I think I just,
Katie: I don't know what they're really trying to prove here, but to me, just like, he's probably just nostalgic, like he had been there so many years ago. Just, he just like thinking back, just like looking at, you know what,
Stephanie: where he used to live before he leaves again. Like I don't
Katie: think there's anything suspicious
Stephanie: about
Katie: it at all.
Stephanie: And they're like really trying to push it.
AJ: Yeah. And that's what, that's what I was thinking too. Exactly. When I was watching it, I'm like, he's probably just like revisiting a place he had fond memories of 30 years ago. It's back for the first time and he's just thinking about it like to me, well not
Stephanie: everybody who's gonna sit by a lake is gonna smoke anyways or take pictures.
Yeah. Sometimes people just, some people just stand there and look into a lake on a normal
AJ: basis. Well, and also like, I think too, like I think it's just the fact, like that was, even though I said that the documentary was so good, it's one of my favorites. Like this is the one part where I'm like, okay, this filmmaker's try like stretching.
Like there's nothing here. You're just trying to make it kind of intriguing. But I mean, trying to point out like these little small details in Kristen and Tom's stories, Without giving us sort of like the context that like it's 30 years later, they're not in touch with each other. Like these are small details to them, right?
Like yes, it's important and maybe in the grand scheme of the investigation, but like to them there was like one moment in time, 30 years ago, you can't expect them to have a perfect memory of it. And if they did, it'd be sketchy. So I just think he's really trying to stretch and it's was annoying. Yeah.
Even though I liked the documentary as a whole. So the
Stephanie: family at this time, despite repeated access to information, the RC m p refused to release the original statements that Tom Gordon, Kristen Tomson, and Todd Barker made to the fulfill police department. Tom Christian and Todd all passed the polygraph test that was ministered by the RC m p e.
So they were ruled out as suspects after they took those tests. So I guess, I guess originally they were never asked about the backpack prior to Kayne entering the room. I guess the filmmakers, I guess they were, what, what they questioned about the backpack, like during the original investigation or were they questioned about the backpack during the filming of this documentary?
That part to me is confusing. Well, it could
Katie: have been both because their, their police reports were never released. We don't know what they talked about. But I mean, they were asked about the backpack during the documentary as well, but we don't know.
Stephanie: Um, so I guess cuz we don't know their statements, the original statements, we don't know if, yeah, like Casey, we don't know if they were talked about the backpack, but according to the documentary, they were never asked by the RCMP about the backpack prior to Ken's sister entering the room.
So, which is shocking to me because you think the, that if we don't know. If they were ever asked, but if they weren't asked about the backpack, you think that would be the first thing the police would ask? Considering the backpack was with Kenley at all times, every time, everywhere he went, so, so that part, this part of the, like, this part of the documentary, like AJ said, like, like I love the documentary and it was really well done, but a lot of it I find around this part was like just trying to find, just grasping at straws, trying to find, pinpoint who did it, trying to get answers that aren't
AJ: there.
Yeah, because like at this point it was like the only leads was like possibly that he ran away. Yeah. All these sightings that they have from all these people, the serial killer, and then maybe his friends like Kristen
Stephanie: and Tom, who knows. I mean, yeah. Going back to like the original statements from Todd and them, like do the parents, can the parents have access to them?
Are, are they allowed to get access to them? Obviously they haven't, but are
AJ: they? Well, it's freedom of information you
Stephanie: should be. Is that something that anybody like in any type of case can get access to? Oh yes. Well, case a case is still open,
Katie: there's things that they have to keep to themselves. So I don't even think like a Freedom of information request would necessarily
Stephanie: make them have to
AJ: release it.
Yeah. Depends on what they're requesting, what information they're requesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the first three episodes of the documentary really just try to like put you in a possible theories. Um, but really nothing is clear, like I said. And every theory, there's just as many questions, like whether it's the serial killer one or, or that he went to Halifax or he left on his own or his friends, which I don't think is a possibility like Tom and Kristen were involved, which I doubt.
So all this sort of stuff, no one really knows. But then it's really in the last two episodes of the documentary that there's like a new development that happens during the filming of the documentary that really changes everything and kind of throws all of the other theories, I don't wanna say out the window, but like really becomes the main theory I think.
So we're gonna end part one. Of the finale here. Seems like a good spot and to, to end it. And, uh, we'll pick up part two of this with the, you know, big twist or the big turn of events in this case, which you're definitely gonna wanna stick around for. It's a really just keeps getting crazy and crazy if you think it's crazy now.
So, um, thanks so much for listening to part one and, um, you can keep listening for part two and we'll see you soon. You can follow us on all the social medias until then, um, and all our, our Patreon and our, our me store and everything like that, it's all on the, all on the, the show notes. So you can, you can check that out on the show notes to, to get access to all of that.
So thanks so much and we'll see you in part two.