Prime Time Krime
North Bay Psychiatric Hospital Disappearances: Part 1
Right now in true crime: Donna Adelson Discovery hearing, Kouri Richins hearing update, Long Island serial killer update with possible connection to 1996 cold case.
In part 1 of 2 in this episode series we will talk about 3 disappearances from the North Bay Psychiatric hospital in Ontario Canada. We will discuss the disappearances of Phillipe Guerin in 1966, Norman Welch in 1976 and Terry Zubko in 1982. Let’s chat about their stories and how they could have just simply vanished into thin air.
Sources for episode:
https://www.toronto.com/news/crime/behind-the-crimes-how-did-6-patients-vanish-from-a-psychiatric-hospital/article_0f6861b8-de1c-555a-b43e-c63d171f8dda.html
https://www.baytoday.ca/local-news/he-just-vanished-325931
https://www.northbaypolice.ca/news-releases/unsolved-missing-person-investigations/norman-richard-welsh
https://www.northbaypolice.ca/news-releases/unsolved-missing-person-investigations/terry-anthony-zubko
https://int-missing.fandom.com/wiki/Terry_Zubko
- Duration:
- 33m
- Broadcast on:
- 23 Jun 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
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Just 21 stands in the kitchen of her boyfriend, Joey Benton's family home where she and her two-year-old daughter, Adriana Wicks, happened living. She has the only phone in the home in her hand and is on a call with her father. Jennifer expresses how the night before, she and her boyfriend's parents, Joe and Cindy Benton, have been involved in a very heated argument. In fact, it was so heated that Jennifer was still rattled from the night before. She moves the receiver down to talk to a muffled female voice coming from behind her. She then says goodbye to her father and hangs up the phone and what happens next? Well, that's what we're here to find out, isn't it? Jennifer and Adriana Wicks have not been seen or heard from since March 25th, 2004. I'm a true crime investigative podcaster living in the same town where the Wicks girls went missing. Hi, I'm Jules and I've teamed up with Jennifer's sister, Casey Robinson, to ask some big questions from our little Hushtown that we've been too afraid to ask each other over the last 20 years. Where are Jennifer and Adriana Wicks? Small towns talk and guess what? We're listening. Missing in Hushtown is coming 2024, wherever you get your podcasts, the entire first season will drop in August. We'll see you then. - Welcome to Primetime Crime. I'm your host, Kylie. Let's talk right now on true crime. And then together we are going to work on warming up some cold cases. Let's go. - Hey guys, welcome back to Primetime Crime. It's Kylie. We are gonna go ahead and get into right now on true crime. We have a few things to talk about. First thing is first, I do not wanna forget to mention this. Donna Adelson, who is Charlie Adelson's mom, if you've been listening to my summer series, you have been following along. She is going to be on trial later this year, but they have announced the date that they're going to be doing all the discovery stuff. And they're also going to be talking about who the witnesses are all gonna be. And that is gonna be on July 22nd. So I will be sure to keep you guys updated on that one 'cause I do think it's gonna get really interesting. For those of you that saw initially when Donna first appeared in court, she was very theatrical, very dramatic, almost to the point where it was a little like off, like something was off. So it's gonna be very interesting to see how Donna presents from here on out, how she's actually gonna present during trial because having a defendant that is like overly expressive and dramatic and all of that is not gonna bode well for her. So it's gonna be very interesting to see what all happens with that. Okay, next thing I wanna talk about is the judge in the Corey Richins murder case has officially set a preliminary hearing. Now Corey is the mom who is accused of killing her husband, Eric Richins in March of 2022. He is the one that ended up passing away and he had five times a fatal dose of fentanyl in his system. She went on to write a book about grief after he passed away and it was a children's book. And of course it has now ended up being tied to her allegedly. So her attorney had withdrawn from her case and they now of course have newly appointed attorneys to her and given them time to become familiar with her case so they can prepare for trial. And they have now said that they're ready or will be ready and they have scheduled a preliminary hearing for August 26th, 27th and 28th. They said that it could last about two or three days. And this is basically the hearing in which the judge is gonna determine if there is enough evidence in order for her to stand trial. She is charged with aggravated murder and attempted aggravated murder, two counts of distribution of a controlled substance, two counts of insurance fraud and two counts of mortgage fraud. So it's going to be so interesting to see what unravels with this. I do feel like they do have plenty of evidence to take this to trial. So really looking forward to August 26th, 27th and 28th to see what ends up happening. Okay, moving on to Long Island serial killer. So I came across this article and I feel like it's worth talking about, worth mentioning. You never know in a case like this how many people Rex Huerman has targeted and cross paths with and how many murders he's really orchestrated 'cause they are still in the process of trying to find everything out. So the sister of a murder victim, Alicia Showalter Reynolds, she was murdered in 1996. She was a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University and she was in the process of working on a vaccine for a parasitic infection at the time that she disappeared. She was 25 years old. She ended up being murdered by who they called the Route 29 Stalker while she was driving from Baltimore to Charlottesville. So in all of the stuff that has been going on, of course back when Alicia was killed, there was a composite sketch that was come up with and Alicia's family is noticing similarities between Rex Huerman and the sketch and they think that this could be a potential lead and they are asking investigators to please look into this because it really does look like him. I will say it oddly looks like him. So the circumstances surrounding Alicia's disappearance, she was in the process of driving a 150 miles to meet her mom to go shopping and they had planned to meet around 10 30 in the morning. Alicia of course did not arrive and her mom waited at the mall and she thought that maybe some bad weather had delayed Alicia. So around 6 p.m. Alicia's car was found abandoned along the shoulder of Route 29 near Virginia and there was a white paper napkin placed under the windshield wiper which is a sign of there being issues with the vehicle like having car trouble or something. They later discovered that there was nothing at all wrong with the car. There were three witnesses who came forward to tell police that they saw Alicia talking to a clean cut white male. He was driving a dark colored pickup truck coincidence. I don't know. They did not find Alicia's body for another two months but they did end up finding it and it had been dumped in the woods 15 miles east of cold pepper Virginia. This case remains cold and it does still remain open. The Virginia state police are of course actively investigating Alicia's case but when I tell you that the police sketch even down to how the person in the sketch's hair is parted is eerily similar to Rex's, the way he wears his hair today. Now this happened in 1996. I get a lot of things could be of course different. This is all speculation but I think dealing with someone like Rex Heurman we have to look at all of the possibilities and the fact that he could be connected to so many of these cold cases because he is a sadistic horrible human allegedly and I think the more that we can try to connect to him and actually prove that he was involved is involved, the more we can get closure and justice for these families. So also really interesting to note that Rex Heurman's mom resided in a part of Virginia since 1994. This is about 50 miles from where Alicia was last seen alive and of course during some different depositions Rex had admitted to traveling to Virginia on multiple occasions throughout 2018. Alicia's sister is hopeful that this could be the break that they need hopefully to question Rex and try to see if there is any connection between Alicia's murder and him because they have gone for a long long time without figuring out what happened to Alicia and they deserve to get justice just as much as anyone else does. There's also reports that between February and March of 1996 23 separate women said that they had while they were driving they had lights flashed at them or horns were honked at them near Route 29 and an attempt to get them to pull over and it really makes you wonder first of all who this person was and if they have pulled over what would have happened to them. Now there was a woman who did stop and she stopped under the ploy that something was wrong with her car. She was driving along and this person was honking his horn flashing lights saying hey something's wrong with your car. She ended up stopping and she ended up getting into his car, his truck and then he attacked her with a screwdriver. Luckily she was able to escape because she jumped out of the car and it really just makes me wonder who this person was. Was this person Rex? Because Rex is the kind of person I think from everything we've learned that we'll stop at nothing to get what he wants and this could have been something that he did initially to try to get victims and it really didn't work out very well for him so then he turned to attacking sex workers because it was easier for him to get these victims to come to him. The things that are going through my mind right now, I don't know of course this is all speculation. There was no confirmation yet but I do feel like it's a conversation that we should be having and at the end of the day, Alicia's case is important and we need to get justice for her and closure for her family so I did want to bring it up just to kind of talk about it and just put it out there that there are a lot of other cases that they're going to be looking at. That Rex could very much be connected to. Okay, that's all I have for right now in true crime. I have been tirelessly trying to catch up on the crime concessions that I missed. If you guys are interested in listening to these sessions and watching them, they load all of the sessions from this year and past years, crime cons to an app that is called Crime HQ. And they have a lot of other stuff too that they have like book club and different things throughout the year that you can participate in. It's cheap like $5 a month or $6 a month. So if you're interested, I would highly suggest you join because it is so worth it. I enjoy very much being able to watch all of the crime con sessions that I didn't get to attend because you can't be in two places at once when you're at crime con, even though you want to be. Crime HQ is a way to really be able to watch all of the different things. So if you're interested, I highly suggest that. This is not an ad. It's just me saying, I really enjoy crime HQ. And if you don't get to come to crime con, it's the next best thing to being there. So we are going to go ahead and get started with today's episode. Okay guys, finally, I am back with a unsolved case. I feel like it has been such a hot minute since I've officially done a unsolved case. I know that's what my podcast is about, but sometimes your girl needs to take a break. So today we're going to be talking about the North Bay Psychiatric Hospital disappearances. This is such an interesting rabbit hole that I have gone down. I've actually had this one on my list for a bit. So we're going to talk a little bit about the hospital itself and then we're going to go into some of the people who mysteriously vanished from this hospital. And it's just going to be very, very interesting. So North Bay Psychiatric Hospital was located in North Bay, which is a city in Ontario, Canada. The hospital housed patients from 1957 to 2011 and the units were sometimes locked units and sometimes unlocked units. It depends on the reason that you were there. In 2011, the patients that were at the facility ended up being relocated when the former Northeast Medical Center and North Bay and District Hospital merged into one site. They ended up becoming North Bay Regional Health Center and this is located on a highway 17 West and the original North Bay Psychiatric Hospital location ended up being torn down in 2013. And that's the one we're going to be talking about today. So over the span of the time that they were open, they had six people who mysteriously disappeared. Now these people had no connection to one another other than the fact that they were all patients at the North Bay Psychiatric Hospital. And they all disappeared under different circumstances, different years. They all were there for different reasons, of course, but six people literally vanished from this hospital and were never seen or heard from again, which I think is so wild and a testament to how they needed to do better with their security and considering it is fairly common for people to try to escape psychiatric facilities, you think that there would be something more in place to prevent this. But nonetheless, we are going to talk about three of the people that disappeared from the North Bay Psychiatric Hospital today and then in part two, I'm going to talk about the other three. I really wanted to break it up because I wanted them all to have kind of their moment for their story to be shared. And I didn't want the episode to be too much talking about six people versus talking about three. So today we're gonna be talking about three different cases. I'm going to be telling them in chronological order. Like I said, these people have no connection other than the fact that they were patients at North Bay Psychiatric Hospital in North Bay, Ontario, Canada, and they all disappeared under odd circumstances and were never seen or heard from again. So first up, we have a young man named Philippe Guerin and he disappeared in June of 1966. So Philippe at the time of his disappearance was 27 years old. He had polio when he was only 10 years old. So this left him with some physical disabilities. He walked with the limp and he just kind of had some lingering physical disabilities. He was a patient at the North Bay Psychiatric Hospital at the time that he disappeared. He was, like I said, 27 years old. Now the details of his disappearance aren't really clear. There's not really a whole lot that the hospital was able to provide as far as what the circumstances of his disappearance were, but he ended up disappearing. And the hospital at the time had sent a letter to the Woodfield Police Department to report him as missing. So this department, Police Department, was only in operation for 10 years from 1958 to 1968. And eventually this Police Department would be annexed to what is now known as the North Bay Police Department. Now because of this, a lot of things were lost in translation as far as some of the details of Philippe's disappearance and what exactly was going on and any potential leads or anything like that. So there was a lead that had come in from a clergyman who had picked up a hitchhiker and he kind of matched the description of Philippe, which we'll talk about in a little bit. And they did follow up on this lead, but they ended up coming up empty-handed with it. And as of right now, Philippe's case is the oldest missing person's case from North Bay. And sadly his parents both passed away without knowing what happened to their son. They always wondered, they never got answers. So in 2016, there was a press conference that honored the 50th anniversary of Philippe's disappearance. Three members of his family were at disappearance and his sister-in-law who is named Dora said that when Philippe disappeared, she was en route to North Bay to tell Philippe that she was going to be marrying his brother who is named Omar. But when she got there, they said that Philippe was gone and he hasn't been seen since. She said that Philippe's disappearance was really, really hard on the family in general, but very hard for Philippe's parents who never knew and never gave up hope of figuring out what happened to their son. Philippe was 5'7", he had a medium build, he had short brown hair, brown eyes, and he had no upper teeth. That is the description of Philippe. Now he disappeared, like I said, in 1966. So Philippe would be 85 years old today and that really puts this into perspective how long ago this happened and how much time has passed with no clues, no leads, nothing as to what happened to Philippe. No remains have been found. And most of his friends and family have passed on, of course, and the people that were present at the North Bay Psychiatric Hospital around the time Philippe disappeared have also passed on. So anything that they knew or were holding in or hiding for whatever reason died with them. So I always say it's never too late to solve a cold case and I like to believe that. However, in Philippe's case, that might really be the honest truth that all the people that knew something that could have helped with his case have passed on. And also the fact that his missing persons was through this police department that only existed for 10 years and then ended up being changed into something else. So a lot of things got lost in translation. And again, it was 1966. Things were a lot different back then. So that is the story of Philippe. Of course, if he does have any family that are still living, I think it's important to honor them and tell Philippe's story because you truly never do know if someone out there knows something. Okay, the next story I'm going to tell you is of a 31 year old man named Norman Welsh. So Norman and his mother were on a vacation in Sturgeon Falls from their home in St. Catharines. So for whatever reason, July 13th, 1975, Norman was walking along the highway in Sturgeon Falls by himself and he ended up being picked up by police. I don't know why. If they thought that he was suspicious, they were concerned for him. Whatever the case may be, they ended up picking up Norman and they thought that he could be a safety risk and they took him to a local hospital. And from there, he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. So of course, in this, Norman got very, very upset. He was demanding to go back home, said he wanted to go back to St. Catharines. I don't know where his mom was in all of this. If they had contacted her, I'm really not sure. It was 1975. So things are a heck of a lot different than they are today. So on July 19th, the nursing staff brought Norman outside for just some fresh air. And he ended up running towards the wooded grounds that surrounded the hospital. And from there, he was never seen again. He didn't really have anything with him when he ran away. They do think that he had about $14 in his pocket. But Norman definitely wasn't set up to be able to survive on his own. He was in a strange place. He didn't have any of his possessions on him. And he also had epilepsy and required medicines for seizures. And without these medicines, he would not do well, would obviously go into a seizure. And he wasn't able to handle that on his own typically. When he first disappeared, North Bay Police Department and the hospital staff conducted several searches in the hospital grounds, but they were unsuccessful in locating him. And he was never seen again. His remains have never been located. I would love to know what his mom says about all of this. I am super intrigued by it. I really wasn't able to find anything much more on Norman. There's not really a whole lot out there, but I am sure that his mom lived in this constant state of sadness and wanting to know what happened to her son. And the fact that she was with him, they were on vacation. It was supposed to be a good time. And he ended up being admitted to the psychiatric facility. And then he ended up being completely gone and missing. And no one could give her answers as to what happened. When Norman went missing, he was wearing dark blue and gray checkered plants and a black and white checkered shirt and slippers. Norman would be 80 years old today in 2024. And it really is astonishing to me that you can be missing for such a long time. And nothing is ever found. It really makes you wonder what became of these people. All of these stories, I'm gonna tell you, it really makes you wonder what happened. After they left the facility, what happened? And we're gonna talk about it a little later, but why were they allowed just to leave? Like there was obviously hospital personnel around. So how does someone like Norman, who's obviously upset and agitated, he wants to leave. And he is outside surrounded by hospital personnel. And he's just able to run off and there's nobody around that can go after these people. Like psychiatric facilities, especially in today's age, a lot of times they're locked down. But when they're not locked down, you have trained professional staff that are able to help wrangle these people if they do try to escape. I don't know, it just completely and totally blows my mind. And this next one is also going to be infuriating and it just makes me wanna rage 'cause I feel like all of these could have been so, so preventable. So the next one we're gonna talk about is a 18 year old guy named Terry Zubko or Zubko. He was of course a patient at North Bay Psychiatric Hospital. He was living with his parents at the time and ended up being admitted to the hospital in May of 1982. It with all of these stories, especially these first three, there's not really a clear description of why they were admitted, what they were struggling with, but mental health was a lot different back then than it is now, of course we know that. So on July 21st of 1982, Terry was granted privileges to walk around the outside hospital grounds unsupervised. Now, anyone knows if you are a patient in a psychiatric facility, you should not be and you're a danger to yourself or others, you should not be allowed unsupervised anywhere, especially on hospital grounds, but they let him walk around for an hour unsupervised on hospital grounds. He ended up not returning, big shocker, and the hospital ended up searching for him, nothing ended up turning up and they did end up filing a missing persons and police also did some searches for him and they came up empty handed, they found nothing. There was also like in the first case with Philippe, there was some sightings of him in the weeks following his disappearance, but nothing really ever turned up and Terry has not been seen or heard from since. So like I said, Terry was 18 at the time of his disappearance and he also suffered from catatonic amnesia. This could be part of why he was hospitalized, although I don't know the real reason, the full reason that he was hospitalized. And at the time of his disappearance, he was taking medicine for this catatomic amnesia. So he could have wandered off and not even know who he is because he has this amnesia situation going on. So Terry had long, straight brown hair, hazel or blue gray eyes, a thin build, a fair complexion, a scar on his lower forehead, a scar on his left nostril, a 12 to 14 inch long scar on his inner forearm, his teeth were in good condition at the time of his disappearance. He was wearing a blue t-shirt, blue jeans or brown cordary pants. He had a beige and brown striped v-neck sweater or an off white pullover with a black stripe at the collar and he was wearing blue running shoes, which were a size nine. And if Terry is still alive and out there today, he would be six years old. Again, it really shows you how long time has passed since these people went missing. And this is a perfect example of somebody who could have truly been suffering from a mental health crisis. He had this catatonic amnesia. He might be out there and not even know who he is. And that is really sad and scary. He could have started a whole new life and you just never know. He was a really, really cute kid. I'll be sure to post a picture of him as well. These three people that disappeared, they all disappeared under different circumstances, but I think one thing remains. And that is over the years from 1966 when I highlighted the first disappearance of Philippe to 1982 when we talked about the disappearance of Terry. They obviously didn't have personnel on staff or enough staff to make sure that they were keeping the people that were patients at their hospital safe. That is at the end of the day, the most important thing about any type of hospital, but especially in a psychiatric setting. When you're dealing with people who are a lot of the times they danger to themselves, a danger to others, suffering from these different types of things that could cause them to not be in their right frame of mind to be a harm to others or a harm to themselves or require hospitalization for some type of mental health issues. And I know nowadays things are a lot different and things are taken a lot more seriously, but back then it just seems like they weren't really taken that seriously and they were allowed to just kind of wander and do their own thing or they didn't have enough personnel on hand to make sure that they were keeping these people safe. So we have six people in total that we're gonna talk about. I wanted to do these first three, really highlight them, talk about them, but there isn't a lot of information out there and their cases are extremely old and extremely cold. And that is why I felt the need to do this episode. And it just is wild that after these three went missing, we still have three more tragic stories to share about three additional people that went missing. And one of the ones I'm sharing in the next episode tried to disappear from that facility nine separate times and she was finally successful on the 10th attempt. How does that even happen? So I think this opens up a conversation. Hopefully different facilities around have learned from the mistakes that the North Bay Psychiatric Facility took part in and they were able to make things better for current patients because they do still see psychiatric patients is just in a different location now. So hopefully they were able to learn from this and there's not six additional people who were gonna go missing over the next couple decades because all of this is super, super preventable and it's just really sad and unfortunate that these people had to mysteriously disappear. It's not necessarily that they lost their lives 'cause their remains have never been found. We just don't know what happened to them. And it was very easily preventable, in my opinion. So that is the story of part one of the North Bay Psychiatric Hospital. And we are gonna pick that up next week for part two. I will tell you about three more different cases and then we're just gonna talk a little bit about the stigma attached to mental health and how things have changed since back then and how things are now 'cause I think it's a good important conversation to have. But as always, I appreciate you guys. I will see you on Friday for possibly almost maybe close to the last summer series episode. I think I have Friday's episode and then one more and then we'll be on our official last episode of the summer series, but I will see you then and I hope you have a great week ahead and you guys stay safe. Bye. 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