S32 E6: Sheena | Sea of Lies

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This is a CBC podcast.

I've been thinking about what it means to be 15 years old.

When you're 15, you don't have the responsibility yet of a driver's license and you don't need to have clear answers about who you want to be.

You're still more kid than adult.

But you can feel that starting to change.

You can sense that you're at the beginning of having real agency, where you're like, what am I good at?

Where do I want to go?

What do I want all of this to look like?

To be 15 is to still be a child, but a child first grasping the raw, undiluted potential of life.

It's the age Sheena Walker was in 1990 when she first disappeared from her mother, her siblings, her friends.

Her mother got the call that they'd found her six years later.

When the Devon Police figured out Sheena's true identity, immediately they set about how best to reunite mother and daughter.

taking into consideration, of course, that the daughter in this case now had two young daughters daughters of her own.

The officer tasked with setting up this sensitive reunion was Brian Slade, a member of the original team that conducted the search of Little London Farmhouse.

I joined the police in 1987 and in 1996 I was an aide on a CID office at Torbay.

Slade had been assigned to be the point of contact between Sheena and the police ever since they still thought Sheena was Noel.

from Interpol, the police learning her true identity, and all of a sudden, her mother who she'd spurned six years earlier was on a plane to reunite with her.

Barb Walker was the only person who never stopped looking for Sheena.

When Sheena first disappeared, of course, there was outrage, media coverage, police investigations.

But as the months folded into years, the crowd thinned out, until it was just Barb, trying to get Sheena's story on TV in any way she could.

America's Most Wanted passed on her pitch.

Unsolved mysteries didn't call her back.

So she settled for an episode of the shortly-lived program called Missing Treasures.

I'm Al Waxman, and this is Missing Treasures, a search for our lost children.

Children change people's lives.

They allow us to see the world anew.

Their loss can be devastating.

For Barb, Sheena's birthdays came and went on the calendar, marking not her arrival in this world, but her absence from it.

After a few years, a Canadian police officer suggested to Barb that she should just move on and forget about her, because she wouldn't be the same kid anyway.

But then the call finally came, and she got on a plane to meet her now 21-year-old daughter.

Detective Bill McDonald sent Slade Slade to meet her.

Bill instructed me to go to Heathrow Airport and collect Barbara and we went through the process of bringing Barbara and Sheena together.

She was a nice lady.

She's really pleased to meet us.

Clearly Barbara was really keen on meeting Sheena.

Sheena obviously didn't know the game was up at that time and we didn't know what reaction we would get.

Hence, we used social services because obviously the children have got to be a big priority and we need to make sure that we dealt with that situation as delicately as possible.

They set up the meeting in a social services building in a room with a children's play area.

They brought Barb through the door and there was Sheena, the daughter she never gave up on, in the flesh, a mother herself now.

The moment that Barb thought might never happen

was here.

And that in itself was a, I know, a very emotional and hugely significant moment for Barbara Walker, Sheena's mother.

As mother and daughter embraced, everything around them was an unconscionable mess.

But this moment was not.

There was a flurry of loose ends to be tied up before Sheena was allowed to fly back to Canada with her mother and children.

She needed to give statements to both the British and Canadian authorities, get her bail cancelled, and to alert the Canadians about the avalanche of paperwork heading their way to process not just Sheena, but her two children.

And the biggest meatball of all was that not tomorrow or next month, but at some time in the future, the Devon police would need her to testify in court against her father.

But there was a caveat.

Once she returned to Canada, we've got no hold over her.

We can't force her to give evidence.

She's a Canadian citizen in Canada.

We can't compel her to come back to the UK to give evidence in a murder trial and evidence against her father.

If Sheena was going to testify in the eventual murder trial, it would need to be her choice and her choice alone to do so.

By putting her on the plane to her home nation, her actual home nation, The Devon police knew that she was under no obligation to ever come back.

Up to that point, she'd been aloof and uncooperative at every step.

And now they had every indication that even though the jig was up, she was not about to turn on her father.

My impression was that she still looked up to her father and still loved him.

No one knew where her head was at.

No one knew what her father had indoctrinated her with.

No one knew what she thought or felt or was still trying to hide.

And she certainly didn't seem in a hurry to talk to anyone about any of it.

I'm Sam Mullins, and this is Sea of Lies from CBC's Uncover, Episode 6: Sheena.

As soon as we started to uncover what was happening on the ground here in July,

the picture really started to

really crystallise in our minds.

Bill MacDonald took us around the Dart region, the area in Devon along the River Dart, to retrace the steps of Walker and Platt's July 1996.

You're the first people I've worked with that have taken the trouble to come down and actually come and see it properly because I think you have to see it to really understand it and see how it all fits together.

When the inquiry began, guided by the calls and the cell tower pings of Walker's cell phone, the Devon police began a rigorous door-knocking campaign all up and down the DART to see if anyone remembered seeing Ron Platt or Albert Walker that July, or, better yet, if they'd seen them together.

The details of Ron Platt and Albert Walker's movements in the final month of Platt's life are complicated, but to those building the murder case, essential to understand.

The verified timeline of the final month of Ron Platt's life goes like this.

In June 1996, Albert and Sheena Walker are living in Woodhamwalter, Essex, and Ron Platt is living nearby in Chelmsford.

Sometime that June, Albert tells Sheena that Ron has moved to France, and Ron Platt's actions that month seem to support that he did indeed plan to move.

Ron gives his notice at the Chelmsford place.

On June 21st, Albert helps him move out.

They put all this stuff into a storage unit.

And then, Albert checks Ron into a nearby hotel where he'll remain for a couple of weeks.

Then, in the first week of July, Albert picks up Ron and they drive four and a half hours west to Tottenhams on the River Dart in Devon, where they check into a place called the Steam Packet Inn.

Two days later, Albert walks into a nearby yachting shop where he purchased seven items.

A jacket, varnish, grease, a length of rope, a roll of green duct tape, a roll of black duct tape, and an anchor.

What was Ron thinking during this time?

That he and his good friend Albert were simply having a mini vacation, a sort of send-off before he moved to France?

We don't know for sure.

But the police found two women who remember chatting with Albert and Ron in the pub at the steampacket the night of July 8th.

The talkative one of the two men told them that they were both divorcees and that they had a plan to sail to France to start a new life.

Which brings us to July 9th, 11 days before Ron Platt died.

July 9th remains a big question mark, a day that fascinates those familiar with the case to this day.

That morning, Albert and Ron checked out of the steam packet inn after breakfast, got on the Lady Jane, Albert's 24-foot sailboat, and headed out to sea.

No one sees them until late that night.

At around 11 p.m., Albert calls a hotel in Totnes, one called the Royal Seven Stars.

and says, we're on a boat waiting for the tide to come in.

Do you have two rooms?

They did.

So, a very tired-looking Ron and Albert arrive at the Royal Seven Stars Hotel shortly after that.

And Albert says to the concierge, memorably, My God, we were stuck out at sea, and then on the drive here, I just ran over a cat.

Why did they check out of the steam packet in that morning if they knew they were coming back?

What were they doing for all of those hours on the Lady Jane that day?

Bill MacDonald still wonders.

Could that have been an abortive attempt on that particular visit?

Was it a dress rehearsal for what was to come?

Was he just putting the final preparations to his final plan?

We don't know.

The only person really that could tell us that would be the two people involved.

All we know is that the next morning, Ron Platt checked back into the steam packet inn for 10 more nights, which is significant because he only had 10 nights left in his life.

So with Ron checked in, Albert Walker drives four and a half hours to Woodham Walter.

Then, on July 12th, Albert Walker loads Sheena and the kids into the car for a pre-planned, pre-booked holiday halfway up the dart in Diddisham.

Albert, Sheena, and the kids had reserved a cute little cottage called Potter's Loft.

They were booked at the cottage for a full week, July 12th to 19th.

But the week was dreadful.

The weather was bad and both the children caught a nasty cold, so feeling robbed of their holiday, or perhaps for some other much darker reason, Albert called the booker.

They wanted to extend the stay.

The father was insistent they extended the stay.

That property,

Potter's Loft.

They were unable to secure that.

There was obviously other people coming in.

Albert was told that another similar place just around the corner was available, a cottage called the Old Brew House.

So with 48 hours left in Ron Platt's life, they moved a few houses down the hill.

They had to vacate, so China had to move everything, all their clothing and the kids and everything they brought with them down the hill into the old brew house.

If the river dart is a snake, we have Ron in the steam packet inn at the very tip of the tail in the north.

And we have Albert in Diddisham, the fat middle of the serpent, with the Lady Jane moored just across the river.

But then suddenly on July 18th, Albert tells Ron to leave the steam packet in and move to an accommodation downriver of him in Dartmouth, where the mouth of the snake spits the dart into the channel.

As we're stood here now, it's an idyllic setting, it's a beautiful stretch of river, and it's difficult to conceive that this is the backdrop to what eventually would be the day of the murder.

Which brings us to July 20th, 1996.

Albert Walker wakes up that morning and tells Sheena that he's heading out for a solo sale for the day on the Lady Jane.

So the sequence would have been he would have come out of this accommodation as we're stood here now, walked down the pontoon.

To get to the Lady Jane's mooring just across the river, he needed a ride.

Not just from anyone, but from a man named Captain Kirk.

Kirk would have come come over picked him up and they would have taken him the short distance upriver to the river mooring on the short ride across the river albert would have had a perfect view of the greenway estate as you look up through the trees you'll see a large white house set back on the hillside the house is famous because agatha christie the most famous mystery writer in history, lived there for the last 40 years of her life.

Coincidence?

Maybe not.

Anyway, the yacht, the Lady Jane, would have been moored mid-river.

He would have gone on board.

Kurt would have come back to his pontoon.

And then Walker would have sailed the Lady Jane boat up the river, probably about half an hour to the port of Dartmouth.

Before he was picked up by Walker, Platt had breakfast at the place he was staying and checked out.

That holiday accommodation was called the Anchorage.

And it's only hours later, having left that, that he's murdered at sea with an anchor.

As Ron Platt walked away from the Anchorage that morning, it was the last time he was ever seen alive.

Back in the rented cottage, Sheena spent the day doing something I'm very familiar with.

She was just trying to have a smooth time with her two young children.

When the kids fell asleep that night, as she waited for her father to return, Sheena did something that would prove to be very important in the case against Albert Walker.

She turned on the TV.

When Sheena first told police that she watched television the night Albert was gone, right away they asked, Oh, yeah, what was on?

Do you remember the TV programs on what happened?

Did you watch Coronation Street?

What happened in that episode?

To try to get an accurate timeline of what they're saying.

And Sheena remembered exactly what she was watching that night.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the opening ceremony of the games of the 26th Olympiad, the Centennial Olympic Games.

She couldn't recall the date specifically, but remembered that during the day as she was sat with the kids, just waiting for her dad to return, she watched the opening ceremony of the Atlanta Olympics.

The ceremony was in Atlanta, but since the UK is five hours ahead, it aired on tape delay in the UK the following night.

And that for us, to be able to tie that down, that was huge.

Albert Walker eventually came back that night around 10 p.m.

looking windswept and disheveled and went straight to bed.

The next morning, Captain Kirk took Albert, Sheena, and the kids to the Lady Jane to, quote, tidy up.

Two days later, they went back to Woodham Walter, and five days after that, the fisherman John Koppick discovered Ron's body in his fishing net, six miles away from the shore.

So as the timeline came into focus, it was clear.

By placing Ron and Albert and Sheena all on the river Dart on those key dates, the inquiry had unearthed a clear story of circumstance.

But the fact remained.

If you're going to tell a story of circumstance in a jury trial, you need something more.

They needed Sheena, and they needed her to testify.

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The police knew that they had some time.

A trial date for something like this was at least a year out.

They needed to use that time to earn Sheena's trust and build a relationship with her.

And how are they going to do that?

They didn't know.

That was Officer Brian Slade's problem to figure out.

I was asked to keep contact with her.

When Slade put Sheena on the plane back to Canada, he vowed to keep in touch with her over the phone in the coming weeks and months, to check in, to not be a stranger.

But as he watched her go, he certainly didn't like his chances.

The first time I met Sheena, she was extremely cold to me.

I'm the enemy, on the police.

While everyone who had met her in the UK described her as quiet, deferential, deferential, soft-spoken, this didn't jive with the version of her that Slade met.

She certainly was not a meek and mild lady, and she didn't mind being cutting, certainly.

Actually, I wouldn't call her shy at all, but she's an intelligent lady who knew her own mind.

Every time Slade made contact in the early going, he was met with silence.

She didn't want to engage with me at all.

Well, I even want more answers.

But she was extremely distrustful of the police and she didn't know what was going to happen with her.

But he persisted.

So I just tried to keep contacting her.

I think it was something like a monthly basis, just to touch base with her, which may have gone into weeks, but mainly.

Just try to keep that contact and to see whether or not she would or would not return to the UK.

Even though she was trying to build a new life back in Canada, her feelings towards Slade and the police in general remained unchanged.

It was still quite a testy relationship as such.

But even though it was awkward at times, Slade kept calling.

We would discuss different things.

Her children were quite similar age to my children, and so that was quite a good subject to have.

Is that two-year-old talking yet?

Mine won't stop.

You have many conversations with someone you do build up a level of trust.

And I didn't want Sheena to do anything that she didn't want to do.

Obviously, all I wanted from her was the truth.

Over the course of weeks, Slade got to know the unknowable Sheena Walker.

Definitely did take a while.

And it certainly wasn't immediate.

And with trust came understanding.

I think that she'd been clearly groomed by her father to believe that's the right thing to do to run away and

live a life of of priority as such with someone else's money, to live a second life, really, to live a life of a lie.

The way she talked about her father was not in a way that suggested she felt victimized by him.

It was only when she talked about her current situation, reacclimating to life inside her mother's house, that she sounded displeased with one of her parents.

She was

very pro-her father and very anti-her mother.

Her father had indoctrated her mind in order to push her further away from her mother, which clearly worked.

Groomed, I think, is a term that we use now, really.

It's a term where someone can manipulate someone to think that they are who they're not and to do things that maybe they

aren't in their best interests.

And this is the moment, a couple of months after her return to Canada, when Sheena receives a call from the UK, not from Slade, but from her father in prison.

His calling card only gave him a couple of minutes, but he successfully got the message to Sheena that he needed to.

He said, I need you to amend your statement.

I need you to say that you did know that Ron was in Devon.

that while we were there, you knew that he was staying nearby.

And then they were cut off.

This was the test, the gut check.

When he needed her the most, would she do her father's bidding?

Routine phone calls carried on and during one of these, I remember she told me that her father contacted her from prison, phoned her, and asked her to change her testimony.

Before she'd left the UK, she gave an on-the-record statement about what exactly she and Albert were doing that July.

One of the things in the statement was that

she didn't know that Ronald Platt was in Devon at the time that he was.

Because it turned out that in addition to telling the police that Ron had left for France that June, this was the story he told his daughter as well.

And now Albert Walker is phoning her from prison and asking her to change that part of her statement.

and asking her to lie to say actually she did know that Ronald Platt was in the area.

I think it's quite a damning thing, really.

Why would he lie about Ronald Platt to his own daughter?

Not an accomplice to murder, but the accomplice to the double life

they're leading.

Why would he not share that fact with her?

Because he was going to murder him.

And I realized it was very significant straight away.

Slade rushed down the hallway to tell his chief, Phil Sincock.

And his first words were, well, we need a statement from her, don't we?

it would have been unheard of for a an aide to travel uh international travel to take statements as such but bill syncock put his trust in me and um i arranged to travel to canada

after so many conversations things between slade and sheena felt much different than the last time they were in the same room in a good way.

The relationship was getting better at that stage.

But even though Sheena knew that Slade was coming to collect this specific statement in which she would merely be restating what she told him over the phone, seeing it on paper seemed to give her pause.

She clearly knew that this new statement provided some quite damning evidence against her father.

Again, I'm not persuading her in any way, but just talking around the issues, really.

And she was reluctant to put her signature to that piece of paper.

So they sat in it.

And just like he had every step thus far, Slade gave her space and made it clear that he wasn't here to convince her to do anything she didn't want to do.

He explained that all this is really about is the truth.

A statement of the truth.

Yeah, it took a while of discussion, but eventually she did decide it.

She signed her name.

I took a statement which took a number of hours.

The statement was quite lengthy, and yeah,

it was okay.

The fact that Sheena was comfortable sharing this with Slade was very meaningful.

Not just because she would have known that this would hurt her father, who she obviously still cared about, but just by virtue of the act of him calling her to change her testimony, that alone would be one of the most damning facts that the prosecution could put to a jury.

Charles Barton would be the one leading the prosecution.

And as the trial date was imminent, he made crystal clear what they'd need to have their best shot at winning.

He took young officer Slade aside.

And he said he wanted Sheena and tried to get an assurance from me that Sheena would come back and give that evidence.

And I wasn't able to give him that assurance because I didn't know myself.

Her demeanor.

had definitely changed towards her father.

The way she thought about her father had definitely changed.

Being taken from her home environment not against her will but she'd been groomed in order to believe that was the right thing to do it's a very terrible thing so yes i think at that point she felt she was a victim and it was clear that the power that he did have over her had gone but just because her framing of everything had evolved didn't mean that she was ready to face her father in court with the entire world watching but it did put a bit of pressure on on me in order to actually get a yes or no answer from her as to whether or not she would.

I didn't want to put her under any pressure because I knew I was asking such a big thing for her to come across and give evidence.

The relationship had been built.

The trust had been established.

But now it was finally time for a definitive answer.

Will you testify against your dad?

She was asking for certain reassurances.

Certainly, one of the reassurances was that she didn't want any photographs taken of her by the press.

The case was making headlines in Canada, and there had been a seemingly permanent gaggle of photographers camped out at her mom's house.

So we gave her assurance that we would do our utmost to try to make sure that didn't happen.

Sheena, are you going to do this?

She agreed.

And then we went through the process of how we were going to make that happen.

Bill MacDonald put a plan in place.

We took a decision that to get her into the UK safely we wouldn't put her on a commercial airline and we approached the RAF and they very kindly agreed to fly Sheena and a Nimrod with a whole complement of RAF personnel who had no idea who she was into Britain.

That was a very, very unusual step.

It was the right thing to do.

I went across to collect her, flew into

Toronto.

Paparazzi were actually at every airport near to Sheena's location in Canada, waiting for her to be spotted or seen for the scoop that she was leaving.

Slade collected her without being detected.

And then we flew four hours to Edmonton and to the other side of Canada.

They needed to go to Edmonton because that's where the military aircraft would be taking off from.

And we had a couple of days in Edmonton.

Sheena, at this stage, was, I've got to say, quite stressed.

And I had to try to keep her stress levels down.

I had to keep her entertained for a couple of days and trying to think about what to do in Edmonton.

So I'm in Canada and the only place that's not interesting.

Well, I shouldn't say this, probably Edmonton people listening, but

I asked, what is there to do there?

Canadians, if someone from abroad approaches you and is like, I'm I'm in Edmonton for two days, what is there to do there?

We all say in unison on the count of three, one,

two.

And apparently they've got a really large mall, shopping mall.

West Ed, one of the biggest malls in the world.

Selection will greet you there.

West Edmonton Mall.

A shop of stream and a world of excitement.

West Edmonton Mall.

So we had a bit of fun there.

And I thought we were getting on quite well.

On the eve of the flight, with the start of the trial a mere 48 hours away, everything was going according to plan.

But each hour brought more visible anxiety to Sheena's face.

What she yearned for was privacy, solitude, a peaceful place to just be with her children.

And where she was going was the exact opposite.

Clearly, it was getting a lot more harmful.

That evening, Slade went to go check on her to make sure that she was okay.

But when he knocked on her door,

there was no answer.

She went missing as such.

She left the hotel.

Trying to stay calm, Slade went into the lobby and out on the street, but there was no sign of her.

God damn it.

He had one job, and their flight was only hours away.

I didn't know where she was or if she was going to come back.

After Slade had a brief heart attack, Sheena finally reappeared.

She just needed some space.

And after a poor night of sleep, it was time.

And I remember driving out to the airport and Sheena being in the back of the car in tears because she was so stressed about

what was happening.

She was delicate.

She was vulnerable.

She was nervous.

She was anxious.

She wanted to come over and do the right thing.

You know,

it's a massive thing for her to go through.

So I kind of understood that.

And

I must admit, I was relieved when she got on the plane itself.

Sheena in a warplane, heading to a hostile territory to be brave.

I was so unprepared.

for the tidal wave

of global interest that the inquiry would then take.

It was massive.

Detectives Clenaghan and MacDonald had never seen anything like it.

It was exciting.

It was a huge case.

In Canada, unbeknown to us, it was incredibly high profile.

And that kind of transferred over here.

That was the first trial I've been involved with where you've got those big TV vans with the satellite dishes on top.

Mobile trucks from CNN, Sky News, Fox News.

It was on the front page of all the papers.

And everyone, it seemed that a whole news population had descended on Exeter Crown Court, which back then was obviously in the old castle.

The Exeter Crown Court was on the grounds of the thousand-year-old Rougemont Castle, one of the oldest castles in England.

Shakespeare mentions it in Richard III, and there's a plaque on the wall that says, The last people in England to be executed for witchcraft were tried here and hanged.

It was on this historic red cobblestone upon which the key players in the case made their entrances in tinted vehicles.

The judge, the prosecutor, the defense lawyer, all men worthy of this stage, all considered among the best barristers in England.

Albert Walker was brought handcuffed out of the van and out of view of most of the telephoto lenses.

Of course, no longer able to get his bi-weekly color treatments, he showed up wearing a beard of solid white.

Clenahan Clenahan arrived with his captain Phil Sincock, as Sheena was whisked into the courthouse undetected.

To the prospective jurors, the Crown Attorney advised that they would be calling a total 36 witnesses and that the trial would last about four weeks.

They quickly selected a jury comprised of eight women and four men.

And with that, the judge nodded to begin.

Crown Prosecutor Charles Barton was a man of substantial size and volume.

He was well known to never need the aid of his notes, and when he spoke in court, he never made eye contact with anyone but the jury.

The first five words of Barton's opening statement were, This case depends upon detail.

His opening remarks gave the jury a quick skim of all the evidence that he would be presenting.

and promised that while almost all of it would be circumstantial in nature, that when held all at once, the truth of what happened to Ron Platt would be undeniable.

And with that, it was time to call the first witness.

In English law, the prosecution back first,

so our witnesses are heard first.

Who Barton would call to the witness stand first was of huge significance strategically.

and was a call that he'd been ruminating on for months.

And so, with all eyes fixed on him, Barton said the words that one reporter in the courtroom described as having the effect of gunfire in a church.

He said, My Lord, the first witness I'm going to call

is Sheena Walker.

Coming up on Sea of Lies.

Albert Walker's eyes were fixed on his daughter throughout her testimony.

I actually went in there feeling quite powerful.

I actually think, I'm going to beat you.

I'm going to beat you, mate.

He's giving the performance of his life, and he's certainly a smooth, talking, charming man.

If he is guilty,

this is a man throwing a gigantic dice.

This is a huge gumble.

Sea of Lies is produced by What's the Story Sounds for for CBC.

It's hosted and written by me, Sam Mullins, and produced and reported by Alex Gatenby.

Mixing and Sound Design is by Ivan Eastley.

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