File:Island-Crime-s1e11-Red-Jag-Guy-2.mp3

Summary

Island Crime s1e11:Red Jag Guy #2 (64m) Tue June 28, 2022 (Laura Palmer)

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[Reproduced under Copyright Act (Canada) s.29.2 - Fair Dealing for the purpose of news reporting]

Transcript

Island Crime s1e11: Red Jag Guy #2

Possess credit card.
Fraud under $5,000.
Breach condition recognizance.
Assault.
Theft under $5,000.
Mischief damage under $5,000.
Mischief obstruction.

These are just a few of Christopher Adair's charges in Alberta.

Assault.
Obtain/possess identity.

In earlier episodes, I outlined the nature of some of Christopher's criminal record here on the West Coast, but he also has an extensive record in our neighbouring province of Alberta, a place he lived for years after Lisa Marie Young vanishes.

Choking with intent.
Attempt sexual assault.

I'm Laura Palmer and this is Red Jag Guy — Part Two. An update to Where is Lisa? Island Crime — Season One.

"He comes across as a very nice guy and he fools people."

"He talks a good day. He talks like somebody who is well to do and has a good head on his shoulders. Yeah, that's how he comes across."

"That part just baffles my mind, because he's not that smart of a person."

"I know afterwards he was involved in a couple of multi level marketing companies where there was some allegations of fraud and things like that. But then he could sort of use his charms, right? He was his charming salesman sort of fellow soul."

"He didn't like the word no one didn't like if a woman made him feel dumb, and if they made him feel dumb, he would react very violently."

"I thought he was handsome and charming. Tall, blonde, short hair, always well kept, very charming, and told me exactly what you wanted to hear."

In the episode ahead, you will hear perspectives on Christopher Adair from two police officers — one retired and one still on the job.

Shannon — former lead RCMP investigator

I'm driving to Parksville. It's a cheerless overcast day as I head across the island, over the hump, and down the steep stretch of highway, past the giant stands of Douglas Fir trees of Cathedral Grove. The day brightens as I reach the east coast of the island. Parksville, known for its sandy beaches and as a home to young families and urban professionals.

The woman I'm here to meet fits both those bills. Shannon is a successful business woman and mom. She's athletic, with blonde hair tied back in a ponytail. She's a runner. And when she runs the trails around Parksville, Qualicum or Nanaimo, she is also searching, searching for Lisa.

"I listened to the first episode of your podcast on Lisa Marie, and then the one interview with the active members, but I couldn't listen anymore just because of I literally was on the side of a trail, and I was bawling my eyes out. And I thought, like, it's just so frustrating and disheartening for investigators and family. I can't even imagine the family, I mean, it's not about us, it's about her. But you're so close to bringing her justice and bringing her home."

I'm meeting her at her business office space. But Shannon's connection to Lisa came from her former career.

"I was in the RCMP for 2000 to 2018, northern BC, and then on Vancouver island for the last, I guess, 14 years. And I left the RCMP in 2018 and got into business for myself. Shannon stands sipping coffee, talking with work colleagues. She comes to meet me, and we sit down in a small client meeting room. Privacy. She's dressed casually today in a light blue top and jeans. I started it with the Nanaimo Serious Crime unit in 2006 and 2007, I believe the lead investigator, Murray Conway, transferred. And so I took over from his position as lead investigator. And essentially held on to that case for two years because I went on maternity leave. So somebody else took it when I left my maternity leave in 2008."

Before we begin to record our interview, we talk for a while. Shannon doesn't want to say anything to harm the investigation. And yet Lisa's case was a big part of her career with the RCMP, and Lisa still occupies a place in her mind.

"This is the one case that was always active. It was kind of at the top of everyone's mind in the community, in the police office, no matter what unit you worked in. It was one of those ones where everybody was very emotionally attached to it and wanted to find out what happened. So I think this one was one of those ones that was active all the time."

Why do you think that is?

"Just the emotional attachment to a true this was a true victim."

One of the questions that I think gets raised sometimes is, like, were there connections with gangs or drugs or anything like that that would have made her more vulnerable in that situation? Were you ever able to find anything like that?

"There was nothing ever to suggest that Lisa was involved in criminal activity or drugs or anything like that. She was just a kid going out for, like, a lot of girls her age at the time, going to the bars, having some drinks. I don't know if she ever tried any drugs, but that was nothing to do with her disappearance. I mean, there was no criminal element or gang element ever substantiated. I mean, in a case like this, especially, too, there was just street rumours. And every rumour that comes into the police office in a case like this, well, in any case, has to be cleared or through investigation. So there's a lot of wasted time. But it's important to not get the tunnel vision either and clear everything.";;

Snuff film

I want to talk to Shannon about Christopher Adair, but first I take the opportunity to ask that she give me her perspective on some aspects of the case. Shannon no longer works for the RCMP and it's possible she'll be able to offer a little more context than serving members have provided so far — this idea that a film was being made on that evening and that in some way that is what sets the scene for whatever happens that night.

"That was a hot thing on that time. That was one of those things that now it's like TikTok dances or challenges. That was just a hot topic. And maybe there were other people in the community, like street workers, that that had happened to. I mean, there was no indication from the timeline of events that night that there was any indication that a snuff film was involved. Until you actually have her, we find her — I'm hopeful that happens one day — no one's going to know 100% what happened to her, but there was no indication that there was any truth to the snuff film at all."

Police informant

And what of that persistent rumour that someone involved in the case was a police informant, and that's what has prevented the case from being solved?

"I've never heard that before, and that's not the way police informant situations work. Most police informants are somehow in the criminal element, otherwise they wouldn't have the information to provide you. Not all of them are, but most of them are typically. But there is no protection from committing crime as a police informant. There just isn't. It's not built into the system. If somebody was ever charged with a crime and they were a police informant, the only way to ever possibly get rid of a charge would be to apply through the court system on public record. It wouldn't. There's not, that's not — too many movies."

Lisa's mother at the interrogation

There was also a story about Lisa's mom, Joanne being taken to the station by police to plead with Chris for information. This has already been confirmed by the RCMP, but I asked Shannon about it anyway, to see if there is more to the story.

"Joanne went and pleaded for him to tell her what happened to Lisa. It's terrible. Yeah, I mean, she did because I think she would have done whatever she needed to do to try and get answers for Lisa. No matter who the person was. It could have been the President of the United States. She'd be at his feet begging for the truth. There are so few answers at that point. So I think that's called an emotional plea in an interview. And some people have, it works for some people because they actually see how their actions have impacted somebody and then, if they're not sociopath, then they may provide some of the answers if they have them. Sometimes they don't. But she did go in and ask him to tell her what happened."

Throughout this series I've tried to follow up on all and any leads. It's taken up a lot of time, but has it also clouded my investigation?

"There's nothing else to talk about at the time. So everybody's talking about it, did you hear this? Did you hear this? And then the police have to follow up, but they become you just run amok not wanting to display tunnel vision. Some things seem very compelling that come in, and then as you look them up and follow up on them, they're not credible. So they may be compelling, but they're not credible. And a huge topic of conversation down to the courts, this case law about this tunnel vision being stuck on one person. And so I think sometimes police officers, investigators, are too afraid to do their job the way that they want to do it because they're worried about the perceived tunnel vision, which is a real thing, and you want to avoid it at all costs, but it's hard to weed out the bullshit that coming out in the courts and the heightened, like, we can't have tunnel vision. We can't be perceived to have tunnel vision. And they didn't. It was every little thing that came in was investigated."

Timeline

I ask her now to walk me through what is known, to look at the timeline and the people and the facts and follow the chain of evidence.

"Her and her friends are outside The Jungle, and they get into the maroon Jag and they go to a party or a friend's house. Lisa is hungry, wants to eat, and nobody else at that place wants to go, or is sober enough to drive, or I'm not sure why they don't, no one else goes. And then she goes with Chris in the maroon car and nobody else goes with them. I don't know if they make it to Subway or not. I think she called her friend to come get her, that this Chris guy was being weird. And then I think they were sitting in the driveway of his friend — Chris's friend. And then I think on the phone that she's talking to someone and they tell her, just walk. But they're quite a long ways away, I think, from where she needs to be. And then that's it. That's the last time, I think that's the last time anyone has contact with her. I think Chris elaborated a little bit on that, but in a statement that he gave, but otherwise there is nothing outside of her and him being together at the very end."

Is it your recollection that he says she gets out of the car and just leaves, like she's going to call a cab or she's like...?

"Yeah, he says that she gets out of the car and he drives away, sees her in the rear view mirror or something dramatic like that, something that's just, he puts himself, he's trying to give himself distance to her. So, well, last I see her, I'm driving down Bowen Road and she's standing on the road."

Chris Adair

So, what can Shannon recall about Chris's circumstances at that time?

"I think that when this happened, when Lisa disappeared, his grandmother was out of town. He was at the house alone, staying there, like house sitting for her. I don't even know if he was living there at the time, and if he was, it would probably be very intermittent. The investigators looked at the car, but it had already been cleaned. And that's all I'll say about that."

The red Jag is central to the case, to what happened that night, so I press her further.

"Chris said, yeah, she was in the car with me. Everybody else says she's in the car, right? But she got out of the car. It's like, if I have this cup of coffee and I go put it down and then somebody picks it up, my dirty cup up, and takes it home and then washes it, but it doesn't wash it very well and my DNA is still on there, and then smashes somebody on the side of the head and then they're like, 'Why is your DNA on the murder weapon?' Because I used that cup of coffee. So he puts her in the car. People put her in the car, so she was in the car. It kind of ends there."

Behavioural science reports

Shannon spent years trying to learn about Christopher Adair, and I'm anxious to hear her views on the last person known to have been with Lisa the night she vanished.

"I'm not a psychiatrist. I was just a cop with some university. But from gathering all the evidence and the information about him and then some of the behavioural science reports that were done up on him, which were based on a variety of different things, he was not well taken care of as a child and was put out on his own as early as seven or nine years old and was treated poorly by the women in his life. I don't know about his sisters. I think he had a decent relationship with them, but was treated well by the women in his life and didn't have a male role model at all growing up and was really forced to literally survive on his own, creating somebody with a lot of street smarts and ability to talk with in and out of situations and to survive. I think that he became a bit of a con, well, he's a con artist, criminally, like, the criminal record is there to prove it, but it was part of, like, there's no excuse for what he's done but it was part of his upbringing. He had to learn to think on his feet and talk his way in and out of situations, and it just carried on to his adult life as far as the way he does his business and different things, because that's how he survived as a child and so that's how he's going to survive as an adult."

Relationships with women

Here's what she has to say about her understanding of the nature of Chris's relationships with women.

"He has a propensity towards women of ethnicity, that's like Turkish women, middle Eastern women like women. Even though Lisa Marie was First Nations, she looked very dark and very pretty. So I think he would have been attracted to her physical appearance. And that was the types of women and girlfriends that he typically had that we knew about were women who weren't Caucasians. So I think he would have had an attraction to her just based on how she looked. There was some number of incidences in Alberta when he went out to Alberta, violent crimes against women. Women that escaped where he would attempt a sexual assault, choking, knife to a throat, he had hidden inside him and his partner's house one time when she called the police and escaped, they had a domestic and she left and called the police. The police came back with her to the house and they found him hiding in the basement and arrested him. But it was a pattern of violence against women, consistent. And he didn't like the word 'no'."

I'm interested in all of this background, about the last person known to have been with Lisa Marie Young the night she disappeared. But what does it mean practically when it comes to Lisa Marie Young's case? If police want to obtain a search warrant or a wiretap, does a pattern of behaviour form grounds for something down the road? It's known as the totality of circumstances, the analytical framework where decision makers are not bound by rigid rules, but instead are free to consider a range of evidence when making decisions. It's why Shannon talked to investigators in Alberta each and every time Christopher had contact with law enforcement in Alberta. But ultimately, there is one thing that Shannon believes will be key to cracking Lisa's case.

"We need to find her. It gives me goosebumps, even just thinking about it. It's silly that, I mean, it's been 20 years, I've never met her, but she deserves to be found. Her family deserves answers. She's out there and it's just so disheartening not being able to bring her home, really. I mean, I hike and run and walk and ride my bike almost every day in the trails around Parksville, Nanaimo, Qualicum, and every single time I look for her, every single freaking day, like, I just keep looking for her."

I made contact with a number of different people, men and women who allege they have been victimized by Chris Adair. Three of the women alleged assault. In a couple of cases, they agree to an interview but then pull out after scheduling times to meet.

Cst. Brian Rutherford — Edmonton Police

And so I take a different attack, I look at some of the crimes Chris was convicted of and reach out to police to see if anyone is willing to speak to me about crimes which he has already been charged and found guilty of, crimes which are part of his criminal public record. Meet Constable Brian Rutherford.

"I'm Brian Rutherford. I'm a Constable with the Edmonton Police Service and I've been in that role since 2009. Before that, I had sort of an interesting lead up to policing as my formal training's in musical theatre, so I did that for six or seven years. Sort of had a strange entry into policing. Yes so I don't really fit the mould, I guess you would say, of what you would think of a typical police officer."

Constable Rutherford has a background in music and acting. He's written a novel he describes as a Sci-Fi Western, which sounds great, by the way.

"I've always told people it takes all types. It's not a service anymore where we just want some big angry looking guy with the moustache who's going to write tickets, and that big, angry looking guy might be great in a fight, but how is he at talking to a complainant of a sexual assault? And that's where we need people who have, who are compassionate, who can be empathetic, who can write great reports, who are cool under fire. So really, I tell people all the time when they ask me, like, hey, I always thought of becoming a cop, but I'm not 6ft tall, or I'm not, I've never shot a gun or something like that."

Domestic disturbance

Constable Rutherford agrees to talk to me about his dealings with Christopher Adair, under the stipulation that he will not comment on Chris's involvement in Lisa's disappearance.

"So it would have been November 2009. I was in the recruit phase of my training, so I was out on the street with a training officer, going to calls and kind of learning the ropes, and so you take a variety of calls, you take anything that comes in to sort of learn how to do these things. So went to a dispatch to a domestic disturbance — we called them family fights at the time — and we got the call and we were heading to meet with the complainant who was at her friend's house. And I remember reading the call and this is a testament to how things have changed in the way that we evaluate calls over time but at the time, the call had said the suspect had messed up the complainant's hair and pinched her. So we were kind of looking at each other like, 'What is this?' This doesn't seem like it's like a call for service. It seems like something silly."

Brian meets with the complainant. A woman we'll call Mary in order to protect her confidentiality. Mary is at her friend's house.

"So I met with Mary. She's this tiny, little, slight girl, very friendly, but obviously very scared about what had happened. She was quite young at the time. She was in her early 20s. She was a dental hygienist. I just remember her being, I don't want to say meek, I think meek is the wrong word, but quiet. Certainly seemed like the attention was a lot for her, to have this whole thing happened to her. I think she was very overwhelmed by it. She explained that she was in a relationship with Chris Adair. They had been in a relationship, I believe, about six months at that time, and in meeting with her and going through the background of a relationship, we always try to get how long you've been together, has there been past violence, things that might help us to inform what kind of person he is and what kind of danger he might present. And she had said, well, they were in a relationship for about six months. He was very charming, and she had liked him right away, and he had kind of moved in about three months into the relationship, while she was gone away for a weekend, which at the time was a bit of a red flag for her, that he had just suddenly moved in. That's a big deal in our world where somebody intrudes like that, and because it's a controlling behaviour, it's something that says that I'm just going to move in and you're just going to deal with it."

Even though they have only been together for a short time, Mary and Chris were already arguing about other issues, including his Saab.

"There had been some other issues between them where he had had money trouble, and so he couldn't make his car payments, and so she had assumed the car payments for him so that his car wouldn't be repossessed."

It is finances which are at the heart of the disagreement, which escalates into a physical altercation.

"And then what started the fight that we were investigating was that she had wanted him to sign a tenancy agreement, basically saying that he would pay her rent, and this caused a huge argument between them and it had been going on for, I think, several days before we got there, and essentially that day, there had been an argument over this tenancy agreement. She had left it out on the kitchen table or something, which made him upset, and then there was some back and forth between them and she had gone to her friend's house to cool off. And then she came back about an hour later, and she explained that Chris was still very upset. He was screaming at her, she was trying to ignore him and had said, 'I'm going to go for dinner with my friends. I don't want to talk with us anymore. I don't want to fight anymore.' But he followed her around the house, trying to engage her in this argument. When he realized she was leaving, he had taken a big scoop of that pomade hair gel and started mashing it on top of her head and, like, forcefully trying to rub it around her hair, basically to mess her hair up so she wouldn't leave the house. And then he had picked her up by her arms and walked her to the bed and sat her down on the bed to continue this argument. And again, she wasn't having it. Her friend was waiting outside. She was going to leave. And so she got up to leave. She went to the front door, and he had reached around behind her, or reached around from behind and grabbed her stomach and squeezed her skin. And she was a very skinny girl. When I asked her to show me the injury, she had clear finger impressions on her stomach where he had grabbed her and some scratches. Immediately afterwards, he was apologetic. He left the front entryway, gone to the kitchen. She had gathered her things and realized her wallet was missing. So he had taken her wallet. After he assaulted her, he threw the wallet at her and she picked it up, but later realized that she was missing about $190 from the wallet. So she got in her friend's car and they left, went to her friend's house and phoned police."

After the police take Mary's statement at her friend's home, they head back to her residence to see if they can find Chris. Here's what happens next.

"Initially, she was going to stay at her friend's house for the night, and we went back to her residence to see if he was there. So at that time, we went back to her residence. She had seen him leave. She had seen him drive away in the Saab. When we got there, it was in the driveway and so we thought he was home. We banged on the door, called his phone number, but he didn't come to the door. And so we thought, well, maybe he's gone. And we let her know and she said, well, I want to come home then if he's gone, I'd like to come back home. My dog is there. All of my stuff is there. So because the doors were locked and she didn't have a key, we called a locksmith, and the locksmith came and unlocked the door for her, and we cleared the residence on her behalf. So very common, right? She's scared that he's still in there, so we'll just search the residence and see if he's there. So I believe there was four of us, four members, and we search the residence. The way that we're trained is to search in a pattern where each of us will take a couple of rooms, and then when we're done searching, we switch and we search somebody else's rooms, and they search ours to make sure we didn't miss anything. So I initially searched upstairs bedroom, and Chris had torn the attic door out of the walk in closet and broken a shelf, like he was trying to climb up there. So initially we thought he was hiding up there, but it turns out he wasn't up there. And another member had searched the basement, and we did our switch, and when I went down to the basement, it was a washer and dryer against the wall and a pile of garbage bags or a pile of garbage bags next to the washer. And when I pulled the top bag off, there was Chris hiding behind the washing machine."

I tried to imagine what's going through Chris's mind as he hides in the basement laundry room beneath some trash. Is he still angry at Mary? Is he fearful of police? Does he simply have nowhere to go? Here's how Constable Rutherford recollects the moment they meet face to face in those strange circumstances.

"So he scared me, he startled me because I didn't expect to see anybody down there. So, I mean, your first thought is that he's going to wait for her to come back. Now, what his plans were or whether he just wanted to talk to her, I have no idea. He never said what he was doing down there. He really didn't have anywhere else to go, very little money. He was probably just trying to avoid being arrested. Maybe he thinks, if I hide here, the police will go away, Mary will come back and I'll be able to talk her out of calling the police. So at this stage, Chris had been arrested numerous times and so he knew the game. He knows that maybe if he can just evade police for a little while, maybe he'll slip under the radar. We'll issue some warrants for his arrest, but he can wander off somewhere new and start a new life."

But Chris is going nowhere that night, except to the police station.

"We called him out and he was, he resisted but he didn't fight with us, really, but he wasn't complying. And so we had to pull him out and handcuff him, and I remember the complainant telling me afterwards, when she saw him coming out in handcuffs, she said he looked like a puppy dog and she felt really bad, like it was her fault that she had done this to him, which is a very typical kind of reaction, right? So even though this person has just assaulted her, she's now feels bad that this has happened to him. But ultimately he was arrested and taken to our police station to be processed. I arrested him, I put handcuffs on him and we took him back to the police station. He really didn't make any statements. Like I said, he's been arrested numerous times to this point, and so anybody arrested by police has the right to not to talk to us. They don't have to incriminate themselves or say anything. I think the only thing he did admit to was that he had damaged the attic. I don't think he said how, but when we asked him later whether he tried to crawl up there or something, he had said that he had done that, but he was always — because I arrested a couple of times on different occasions — and he never made any statements. It was usually just responding to the police charter. Does he want to call a lawyer? That sort of thing, he would answer those questions, but then he wouldn't make any statements after that."

While Chris is considering his options and getting legal advice, constable Rutherford is checking into Chris's background.

"The other part of the story was obviously when you get back to the station and you run everybody, you look at their history, and I could see that he had previous convictions out of BC for choking, overcome resistance, assault, assault police officer, B & E's, things like that, and so that all helps us to form our, what we call a bail package, where I would then say why I believe this person should be released or should not be released, and in doing so, I could see that he had been linked to the RCMP Nanaimo, and you could call them 24x7 to alert them if he had been arrested or dealt with, and so I did, and I woke up a Staff Sergeant in the middle of the night and he let me know about the investigation into Lisa Marie Young, and that's how I found out about that connection."

So what happens to Chris after this incident?

"He pled guilty to the assault and I think he was given a 90 day sentence, which he served, I believe, on weekends. We call an intermittent sentence, so you would basically check yourself in Friday evening and get out Sunday evening, and that's your 48 hours, and if you do that over 45 consecutive weekends, then you've done your 90 days."

Mary goes forward with charges, but turns out, even if she hadn't, the police would have laid charges on her behalf.

"...because we know that domestic violence situations are, it's so easy for them to escalate into extreme violence, and even to homicide, so we know that most of the homicides that we have, victims and the perpetrator know each other and very commonly are in a relationship together. So we would have laid charges against Chris even if she had said, 'Listen, I'm not participating because of the injuries that we had seen and the statement that she had given.' Of course we would have asked him what happened here and given him a chance to give his side of the story. But at the time, our policy was to locate what we call the dominant aggressor, which is the person that we believe is the perpetrator of the violence in the relationship, and to lay charges if we can determine that somebody committed a crime."

I don't know Chris's side to this story. I've tried repeatedly, for years, to get Chris to share his perspectives with me. I would very much like to inform this narrative with information and observations from him. That offer is still open, by the way.

I asked Constable Rutherford how he weighs the credibility of Mary's story at that time, and looking back now.

"In almost every domestic assault, almost every time women take dozens of incidents of domestic violence before they'll report to the police. There's just that rare woman who says, well, this happened once, but I'm not putting up with it. And she had taken some coaxing, I think, from her friend to come forward and say, okay, I'll phone the police. But even then she was kind of reticent to lay charges and go forward with everything. Looking back, I had no reason to doubt her. I think the finger marks on her stomach were probably half or double again the size of her own hand. I mean, nobody else could have done that except for a man, and he's the only one in the house. And so I don't recall disbelieving her in any sense."

Chris Adair

And what observations and opinion does he form based on his experience with Christopher Adair?

"I think he was always well put together. He usually had a collared shirt on. Well, I don't think he was a bad looking guy. I think I put in his report that he was 5'11" and 175 pounds, because it's important that I let the judge know this isn't two people who are the same size assaulting each other. Right? Like Mary is 5'4" and 105 pounds, and Chris is 5'11" and 175 pounds. And so there's that difference in size and so but from a police perspective, and having dealt with them a few times, there was always a bit of a sheen of — and just my personal opinion — that he's just kind of a little slimy, just get that feeling, which maybe I shouldn't say, and that's partly maybe just because of coloured by having dealt with him and sort of knowing what he was like and the different victims that he had in his past."

Constable Rutherford also learns more about Chris as he looks into his criminal record at that time.

"I did review a bunch of other convictions that he had had in Edmonton. They were almost entirely Frauds. And so he had a propensity for Identity Theft and things like that, but there wasn't necessarily women, it was just whoever he could defraud. He was convicted of one where he set up a fake business or a business under a fake name and then rented a pin pad for that business as if he was going to start, I think it was a chocolate company. And then he basically just refunded his debit card, his own debit card, to the tune of $20,000 to this business and then just walked away from it. That was the sort of I don't know, I think he would try to make money legally. He was in these multi-level marketing companies and trying to do sales and things like that, but it seems like when things didn't go well, he resorted to Identity Theft and Fraud."

After we finished the interview, we chat for a few moments. I share with Constable Rutherford some frustration that people who know Chris don't want to talk to me about him, especially those who consider themselves his victims.

"It is incredibly common. A lot of women blame themselves, even really, I can't comfort them as much in that scenario. If you were a stranger on the street and somebody stole your purse, I can say with almost 100% certainty you're never going to see that person again. You're going to go home. He has no idea where you live. And I will tell people who are the victims of those kind of crimes. He has no idea who you are. He doesn't remember what you look like. He doesn't know where you live. You're going to be fine. The odds of you seeing that person again are one in 100,000 — 1 in a million. But with victims of these intimate partner disputes and violence, that's all wrong. He knows everything about you. He knows where you live. He knows your phone number. He knows what you're scared of. And those fears will keep people quiet, and I can hardly blame them. There's enough fear there that some people just think, 'Well, why bother? Why put myself through that?' And so it's a terrifying thing to go through."

When it comes to Chris Adair, this is a tactic Brian believes Chris is capable of.

"That was something he had threatened Mary with, was that he was going to phone her family members and slander her, essentially, and make them hate her. But she knew better. She knew that was just garbage and he could never turn her own family against her. But I'm willing to bet that has worked in the past for him with some people where they honestly believe that this guy is capable of anything, and he knows secrets about me. And once he knows them, then he just has to spill his guts and I'll be ruined."

Ahead: where Chris is now, and the anonymous donor who's offering $50,000 to anyone who can tell police where Lisa's remains will be found.

Chris' past with Multi-level Marketing

"Hey, guys, this is Blake Mallin right here with co-founders Nick Sonicola, Ryan Blair, and a bunch of crazy founding Canadians. Yeah!"

That's what it sounds like inside a multilevel marketing gathering.

"You are plugging in to the single world's largest Canadian party, launching the 'Body by Vi' challenge right here, all throughout Canada, we are helping people lose weight, get fit for free, make money, promoting a challenge. We are starting a movement and a revolution."

This one is for ViSalus. Chris Adair is one of their distributors for a time.

"Information at the right place at the right time of some of the very first people in this entire country."

I make contact with one of the founders of that company, Nick Sarnakola. I asked him if he can recall anything about Chris's time with the company. He gets back to me immediately, but he doesn't remember Chris, and he has sold the company and its database.

Chris is also involved with ACN, another multi level marketing organization. He is listed as one of their top earners, allegedly making $360,000 a year. ACN claims to be the world's largest direct seller of telecommunications energy and essential services for home and businesses. Chris also works with Nirium, a skincare product multilevel marketing company. If you aren't familiar with the idea of multi level marketing, think Avon or Tupperware. Members promote and sell their offerings to other individuals and bring on new recruits into the business. Distributors are paid a percentage of their recruits sales. It's a global industry that is rife with fraud.

Fethiye

At the time of recording. I believe Christopher William Adair is living in Turkey. People say the past has a way of catching up with you, and in this case, that's demonstrably true. One day, an old business rival wonders, "Whatever happened to Chris Adair?' ...and that fleeting thought leads to his discovery of Chris's connection to the night Lisa vanished and to his decision to help track down Chris' current whereabouts.

"Fethiye, land of lights, find freedom, lose yourself in the blue..."

I've never heard of Fethiye before learning that this has been Chris' home for the past few years, but it looks like an absolutely gorgeous place to live. But, hey, don't take my word for it.

Bill Gates celebrated a recent birthday in Fethiye. His buddy Jeff Bezos came for the private beach party. Chris, it turns out, has been living quite the high flying life here, quite literally so.

I knew Chris loved the outdoors. We've heard about his joy of cycling and rock climbing. He's also an avid para-glider and a well known member of Fethiye's expat community. Chris's social media accounts are filled with pictures of him soaring above the stunning coastal landscapes, dining out at hip beachside cafes. And he's in business once again, this time offering help, and I quote, "to people who want the expertise of an immigration lawyer and not the price tag." His company offers services in the area of residency, real estate, insurance, business, and citizenship.

"Anonymous" US$50k donor

There is now a $50,000 reward for information leading to finding the remains of Lisa Marie Young. The man you're about to meet is responsible for putting up that money. Although I know who he is, he wishes to remain anonymous.

"I live in Victorville, California, and I sell life insurance for a living. Yeah, it's 50 miles from the world's tallest thermometer, so it gets hot. It's in the middle of the desert, and it's not what you think about when you think of California. When you think of California, you think of beaches and palm trees and waves and all that stuff."

So why would an American businessman, a man who never met Lisa Marie Young, never met any member of her family, decide to put up his own money, making this anonymous donation to help support those advocating for justice for Lisa? The answer lies, in part, in this man's connection to Christopher Adair.

"So I met Chris Adair on the telephone years ago in 2011, 2012. I can't remember exactly what a year, but it was around then. And I was working with a direct sales company that sold skincare, and he was in the direct sales industry. I don't know what you would call it in Canada, but here we'd call it multilevel marketing. And he worked with a company that sold vitamins, and he had a big distributorship at this particular company. And he found me on the Internet and contacted me and said that he wanted to start working with us to launch this product in Canada."

He is working for Nerium, a skincare multilevel marketing venture. And Chris, it would seem, is interested in a piece of that action for Canada.

"So we sold a skincare product that was sold through multi level marketing. So we recruited agents, and they would recruit agents, distributors, and we would do, like, in-home parties and sell skincare. I know I'm a guy, and it's a little weird, but whatever. It was a fast growing company in America at the time, and I was part of it. He had had a pretty big distributorship at this other place where he was, supposedly. The company he was with was a company called ViSalus. It was made famous in direct sales circles by their "Body by Vi Challenge". So it was like a weight loss thing. And the company that I worked with was a company called Nerium, and that's where he was joining at the time."

What begins as quite a positive business conversation develops into something of a friendship, over time. They have 40 to 50 conversations. Here's how he describes Chris.

"He has a gregarious personality. He's a little definitely self absorbed, and he definitely thinks more highly of himself than he should. So very egotistical, I would say. The conversations, in depth, what I remember was he did talk a lot about his grandmother after she died and how close he was to her and what a special role she played in his life. A bulk of the conversations were about the fact that he had just broken up with a girlfriend, but he seemed to talk about that a lot. We were kind of becoming friends. These are the personal conversations that were going on around it. Just developing a relationship where I'm finding out about him, he's finding out about me, and conversation comes up. Are you married? You got kids? No, I had a girlfriend. We just broke up. I'm devastated. I mean, it kind of turned to that real quick."

Then the burgeoning friendship and professional relationship goes sideways.

"Over the course of, I don't know, 40, 50 conversations, I suppose, I started to really not believe a lot of the stuff that he was saying. So some way or another, he went to a higher up above me and decided that he was going to work with them. Basically created a problem in that organization between me and my life long best friend as an adult, and it caused us not to talk for several years because of this problem that started with Chris. I basically had gotten on the phone with him, and I kind of called them out on what happened, and we got in an argument. We both started cussing each other out. It was a heated argument. I probably was louder than he was. He probably stayed a little bit more calm in that situation than I did. And shortly thereafter, on my website, where I sold those products, there was $25,000 worth of fraudulent purchases. Now none of the products were ever shipped, for whatever reason. I think the company figured out that they weren't real or whatever, but it was all these charges that went in that were on somebody else's credit card. And so I remember sounding the alarm like, hey!"

The conflict leaves such a bad taste in his mouth, he leaves the organization.

"I ended up leaving that company. I didn't even work with them after that, really shortly thereafter, being within a few weeks. And I didn't feel like everybody's taking me serious when I had said anything. So I just decided, I don't want to do it anymore, and so I went on and did something else."

Travis Alexander

It's clear this former business rival could be viewed as someone with an axe to grind, but he maintains his decision to put up the reward is rooted in a different motivation.

"I have a friend that was murdered, okay? And it was a big case here in the US. Anything like that I have a lot of sympathy toward. Travis Alexander was a murder victim in the US, in Phoenix, and he was murdered by his girlfriend, former girlfriend, Jody Arius, and I was there when they met, and I knew them both, and it was just a really tragic thing. And I saw his closest friends, it really messed up their lives. But she got convicted. She got life in prison, and there was a sense of justice, and it didn't heal it. It's still a tragedy, but at least there's some sort of closure to it. And so it just kind of stuck with me when I realized that this girl went missing, and the last person she was seen with was Chris."

And so a chance googling of an old business foe sparks an active interest in the case of Lisa Marie Young and a decision to offer a ^$50,000 reward.

"In the last couple of years, we've been really blessed financially, and I give a lot of money to different places, and I just felt like, if people know stuff and it's been a long time, and it's not as scary as it was years ago to say something for someone and they actually have an incentive to at least say something, maybe that opens the door. And so I just felt like it was the right thing to do."

If his former business acquaintance Christopher Adair knows something, then he is convinced Chris would have said something to someone.

"I feel like there's a lot that could be answered if the right people were to get talked to. I just feel like when I started talking to him, this was ten years in his past, where he was loose-lipped and prideful and just thought he was on top of the world and he can get away with anything, because he was brazen then, like he thought he could get away with anything. I just feel like whoever was around him then, who was close to him, he probably said something. I'm sure he said something to somebody. The thought of the conceit and mockery of justice, that's what gives me an issue with it. I think people should be held accountable when they do something wrong."

Cpl. Markus Muntener — lead RCMP investigator

When Where is Lisa? first dropped a few years back, there was a sense from family and friends that their cries for "justice for Lisa" were just not being heard, that the community had somehow turned its back on Lisa and her family. Today, that's changed.

"...something that hasn't happened in years: an RCMP news conference about the investigation..."

"...we have completed numerous searches last year trying to find Lisa, and that's based on new information coming in and based on historic information. And those searches were extensive in detail, and we have more of those searches planned in the future...."

"Yeah. My name is Marcus Muntener. I'm a Corporal with the Serious Crime Unit and I'm the primary investigator for the Lisa Marie Young missing person/homicide investigation. It definitely is still open and active. We are still following up on witnesses and tips and, when we have the resources, potential searches. We just talked to some people earlier this week in relation to this investigation, so it is something that we're actively still working on."

You said some people. So has more than one interview been done recently?

"Yeah, we've had multiple people. I would say I have at least two or three people a month sometimes calling in that we're investigating a statement for, or at least calling back, discuss what they have to say and documenting that in our file."

So two or three people a month in a case that's 20 years old, is that unusual?

"Well, I'd say it's certainly a lot more than we had when I took the file on in 2018. Realistically, at that point, there wasn't really an active, I mean, the file was open, it was being investigated, but there weren't significant active actions being taken unless there was something urgent that came in. I've seen a big increase in the last couple of years, for sure, and the amount of people that are calling to talk to us about it."

And is any of that helpful or I think you've described it at one point, is it a lot of noise and is it helpful?

"There's always components, I would say, that is helpful. Connecting the puzzle pieces slowly with the information that does come in."

Videotape & hair sample

A while back, a guy named Bob came forward with a tape he thought might be connected with the case, and I believe a hair sample. Did anything ever come of that or what came of it.

"I guess what I'm willing to say is that we viewed the tape and have definitively confirmed that it's not related to Lisa's investigation. It doesn't have any evidence on it. If there is a tape that's out there that is related to this investigation, this is a way for me to confirm that we don't have a copy of that. We don't have that tape. If someone out there does have that, then it would be helpful if that was turned over to us."

What about the hair sample, what happened with that?

"Yeah. At this point, I can't really comment more about that specific piece of evidence."

We talked earlier, not recorded, about how the term "person of interest" has kind of fallen out of favour, I guess. What would you say is Christopher William Adair's connection to Lisa?

"We have, I think confirmed that we spoke to the driver of that Jaguar and are satisfied that we know who that person was and is. So just relating back to the 'person of interest' part of it? Yeah. That's something that we don't use when we discuss people that we talk to. I guess ultimately, I can't confirm that name that you provided the person you spoke to, but I can just confirm that we did talk to the person who was driving that Jaguar and know who that person has and know the identity of that vehicle."

I know that he's the driver of that vehicle, and we know now that he lives in Turkey. Have you been able to speak with him there?

"We haven't talked to him recently."

Do you want to talk to him?

"So ultimately, if the person was willing to talk to us, we wouldn't say no."

Right. So if he happens to be listening, you would be open to speaking?

"100%."

Corporal Muntener is being careful here. A reminder to American listeners: Canadian police are far less likely to speak about an open investigation, and he is clearly choosing his words with care.

Nanaimo Mayor Leonard Krog

I knew there had been an uptick in activity in Lisa's file, but to hear that they're conducting multiple new interviews monthly is heartening. There is a lot more interest now in Lisa's case. There is an annual city wide proclamation to mark the day she disappeared. And the yearly marches draw hundreds of people and include speeches from leaders.

"Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Leonard Krog. I'm the mayor of Nanaimo. For those of you who are parents or grandparents, I speak to you especially. The loss of a child is an event that most people find very difficult to survive. That Lisa's family chose to survive to honour her, what we presume is memory, by year after year, ensuring that for now, basically a full generation, people don't forget they have moved forward year after year with hope and faith. Hope that they would find the truth someday, and faith that justice will someday be done. I met the two young officers today from the RCMP who were here in some number who have charge of this file, who will carry on doing what they can to ensure that those who perpetrated this horrible act, this presumed death, will in fact, be brought to justice. I'm mindful of an old saying my grandmother taught me, and I thought it was from the Bible. It actually goes back to the Greeks. 'The mills of the Gods grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine.' And what that means is that no one will escape justice, and I live in the hope that for this family and this community where Lisa was born and raised, there will be justice someday."

It's been 20 years since Lisa Marie Young vanished from her hometown of Nanaimo. Over the years, the rumours, the mythmaking around Lisa's disappearance has spiralled out of control. Part of that mythology has been around Chris, a rich, privileged, young, handsome white guy. We now know that image tells only part of his story.

I'm Laura Palmer.

Thank you for listening to this two part update on Island Crime: Season One — Where is Lisa?

If you have information on Lisa's case, please contact the RCMP in Nanaimo. And if you can't do that, you can reach out to me. I will update here when there are significant developments to report.