MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF: Holly Bartlett

[00:00] Hi, Crime Junkies, it's Britt, and I have big news. One of my favorite seasonal shows, CounterClock, is back with a brand new season, and it is wild. Host Delia D'Ambra is digging into the 2008 Lane Bryant murders. I mean, this isn't just a recap. It is a reinvestigation. She's talking to law enforcement, people from the community, even sources who have never spoken publicly until now. And you know I love a show that asks all the questions. Listen to CounterClock Season 8 now, wherever you get your podcasts. [00:31] Hi, Crime Junkies. I am your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And the story I have for you today, buckle up. It is a long one, but it's one that I think is going to stay with you because it has stayed with me since I first heard about it. [01:01] Nova Scotia, Canada. The police investigation that started at that moment was short. I mean, to them, it's obvious what happened. But her friends and family, they disagree with the police's theory of what happened that night. And more than a decade later, they still disagree. [01:19] This is the story of the mysterious death [01:22] of Holly Bartlett. [01:24] Music.

[01:55] It's a cold Saturday morning in March 2010, and a metalworking crew is headed down to the base of the McKay Bridge in Halifax, Nova Scotia. This is on Canada's east coast. It is a freezing cold day, minus 10 degrees Celsius or 14 degrees Fahrenheit with the wind chill. And this is very early in the morning. The sun is just coming up. [02:25] immediately something red on the ground near the bridge abutments. Now, abutments are these like enormous concrete wedges, essentially, that connect the bridge cables to the ground. So as they walk closer, they realize what they're seeing is a person. It's a woman. And at first, they think that she must be dead. But as they get closer, they realize she's still breathing, unconscious, [02:55] One of the guys quickly wraps his jacket around her and they run back to the bridge commissioner to call 911. [03:02] Police and paramedics arrive within minutes and the woman is rushed to the hospital. Her face is covered in bruises and she has cuts on her hands and knees. Not only that, but she'd been out there in the cold so long that she's dangerously hypothermic. The woman's purse had been lying on the ground next to her. And when police look inside, they see no wallet, no phone. But there is a student ID and that tells them who she is.

[03:32] 31-year-old Holly Bartlett. And there's another ID card too. This one from the Canadian National Institute of the Blind. [03:44] So Holly is blind? Holly is blind, like completely blind. And she had been since she was 13. But even before that, like from when she was a little girl, she never had full sight. According to interviews with her friends and family that I listened to on the What Happened to Holly Bartlett podcast, the fact that Holly was blind, it was part of who she was for sure. But it was far from all she was. I mean, she was super independent. She had her own place, this condo that she purchased with a friend. [04:14] She took the city bus on her own everywhere she went. She had a full time job with the government and was finishing up a master's degree in public administration. This girl's doing more than I am with my life. Yeah, same. So you can see Holly didn't let anything slow her down, including the fact that she was blind. Like this is bananas to me. She did swing dance and went skydiving. Two things that I definitely cannot do. Again, yeah, way more than me. [04:40] But the thing is, the police on the scene that morning didn't know any of this. They don't know what a zest for life Holly had. So one of the first thoughts that crosses people's mind is that this could have been an attempted suicide. But they're actually able to rule this out pretty quickly because, you see, you can't actually walk across the McKay Bridge in Halifax. It's for vehicles only and there's no sidewalk.

[05:10] really obvious. Like drivers will call and report pedestrians on the bridge. And according to a story by Tim Busque for the Coast, no one had called in any pedestrians that Friday night. And when police check the bridge's surveillance cameras, they don't find any sign of anyone. [05:27] The other thing, though, is that Holly was alive when she was found that morning. And realistically, a jump from that bridge deck to the ground below just isn't survivable. Once Holly is transported to a hospital by emergency services and her family is notified about her condition, [05:45] Police do a preliminary search of the area, but they don't find anything that points to anything. The thing that they're looking for most is Holly's cane. When they talked to Holly's mother, she said Holly didn't go anywhere. [06:00] anywhere without her cane, but it wasn't on her when she arrived at the hospital and police didn't find it in her purse or anywhere near where she was found that morning. What they do find though, that very morning that Holly was found is her wallet and her phone. [06:17] But they don't find it anywhere near the bridge where she and her purse were found. A security guard who lived in Holly's building was on his way home from a night shift that morning and found her phone, wallet, lip gloss, and some loose change in the parking lot near the front door to her building. Which is like, basically he found it on the ground between two parked cars. Okay, so she and her purse were found under this bridge.

[06:47] to find inside her purse, minus her cane at least, that's all found by her apartment building? Like, how far are we talking between these two locations? So this is where this case gets so messy. Understanding the geographical layout of this scene is so important to this case. It makes it a little hard to tell in audio, but I don't want that to stop us from telling Holly's story. So I'm going to try and explain it [07:13] the best I can. And for those of you who are able to, you can go to our website on the blog post for this episode. I basically did like some back of the napkin, like hand drawings to help kind of like lay this out. Like, listen, I'm for sure no artist. They're not to scale, but they'll at least help you understand what's going on. So Britt, I'm going to send you the first one, which I'm calling Map A. Okay. So if you're looking at the map in front of you, the top right corner is [07:43] Right. [08:01] Now, if you're standing at the bottom of Northridge Road at Novali Drive, straight ahead of you is another apartment building. It's called Kencrest. [08:11] You can go on Novali Drive, like if you're in a car, you can drive on Novali. And then to the left is actually a walking trail that takes you to this local park. So if you're driving, you can only turn right. But if you're walking, you can go either direction. So at the bottom left of the map you sent is a fenced in area. And at that...

[08:31] very corner of the page, that's where you have it marked that Holly was found. But it kind of seems like a long way from her apartment building, is it? It totally is. Like I said, the map is not to scale, but the distance from where her stuff was found, where her apartment was, to where she was found that morning was roughly 350 meters or 1,150 feet. That's almost a quarter mile. [09:01] get from the parking lot of her building, [09:03] all the way down to this fenced-in area. Well, that... [09:06] That's the million dollar question. How did she get there and why? And right now, none of this is making sense to the police either. So they want to try and trace Holly's last steps. [09:20] Police find out from her family that Holly had been out the night before, which was a Friday. Okay. [09:26] She'd been with a few friends from her master's program for this like end of the year party. She spent most of the night with another girl in that program, a friend named Moira. And they went to the Fireside restaurant first and had a bite to eat, a couple of drinks. And then they headed to this guy named Gabriel's place for a house party. Now, he's actually also in the same master's program as them. [09:46] Now, on the way, they stopped to buy a bottle of wine, which, according to the AMI documentary, Holly paid for with her credit card. Now, this is kind of important because her friends say that she always paid with everything that she could with a credit card. She way preferred that over cash. Now, Moira wanted to go splitsies on the wine, so she gave Holly a $5 bill, which Holly shoved in her pocket. Police get the surveillance footage from the liquor store and confirm this series of events and the timing.

[10:16] After that, Holly and Moira stop at Gabriel's party from... [10:20] an hour before leaving for the university club at Dalhousie for this end of the year party that I was talking about. And again, it's not just the three of them. There's like other people from her master's program. Mm hmm. [10:30] Just before midnight, Holly decided that it was time to head home. She had a bunch of things to do the next day. And so a friend called a cab for her and walked her out. That is the last time anyone saw Holly until the next morning under the bridge. OK, but that's not true. Who was this cab driver? I mean, they would have at least known if she got her place OK. Yeah, so you're right. So he is the actual last person to see Holly. [11:00] police do track him down pretty easily. [11:04] He tells police that he did have a fare that night and that the passenger was named Holly. [11:10] The driver says that there was nothing unusual about the trip. Her friend walked her out to the car. She sat silently in the back. And when he dropped her off at Convoy Towers, her apartment complex, he says that she paid him, got out and left. Like, that's it. But the interesting thing police learn is that the driver says he had no idea that Holly was blind. But he did say that she was pretty drunk. [11:40] that she's blind. His first reaction [11:43] is oh no. Because he tells police that when he pulled into that circular drive at her apartment complex, Holly got out on the driver's side of the car. Okay, so why does that matter? Well, this is the thing. So when he pulled in, he went in the circular drive like counterclockwise in this loop around the driveway. So the passenger side of the car would have been closest to the

[12:13] side where she got out faced away. And so here again, this is where the maps are super helpful. I've got one called map B. So when she gets out of the cab, [12:23] Instead of walking toward the front door of her building, she's walking away from it in completely the wrong direction. [12:35] For decades, some cold cases have been reduced to files in a cabinet, but not anymore. I'm Ashley Flowers, and me and my team on the deck have been traveling across the country to report on these forgotten cases. And in some instances, it's resulted in these cases being solved after decades. [12:55] Join me every Wednesday as we revive these stories one card at a time. Listen to the deck now, wherever you get your podcasts. [13:05] By the time police speak to the taxi driver that day, the day Holly was found, they already have a pretty good idea of what they think happened. And the driver has all but confirmed their theory for them. And here, Britt, I am going to have you read straight from the police report that was posted online as part of Tim Boozkay's article in The Coast. [13:27] Okay, it says, quote, [13:29] It is possible the victim got disoriented after getting out of the cab and somehow made her way to the fenced compound. [13:36] She likely fell and crawled a few times, and it's possible she either fell over a low spot of the fence that borders a footpath, or somehow made her way through an opening.

[13:46] Once inside, had she felt the concrete posts, she may have mistaken the ramp to the top as a path up and fell from the top of the concrete base. [13:56] End quote. [13:57] So they're basically saying that they think Holly was super drunk, got turned around when she got out of the cab, walked almost a quarter mile to this area under the bridge, which BTW was surrounded by a fence. Yeah. Remember, because the commissioner had to let the guys in in the morning. But then they're saying she found some way into that fence. Then there are these big concrete bridge abutments that I was talking about earlier, those like wedges. [14:25] Then police think she like felt the concrete from these abutments, crawled up this angled concrete fixture and then fell off of it and then laid there until she was found the next day. Now, again, our maps don't really help you visualize this, but we do have some pictures on our website. And even more importantly, if you go to our Instagram, which our handle is at Crime Junkie Podcast, we actually have a walking tour of this whole thing. [14:55] Special thanks to our friend Sarah, who actually lives right by this. She helps consult for our show. And she's the one that does the walking tour for us. You can actually see the path that Holly is presumed to have taken. You can see what these look like. I'm telling you, I went round and round and round with this case until I got to see it with my own eyes, and it made everything make sense. Yeah, the visual really, really helps. Yeah, go to our Instagram, at Crime Junkie Podcast. I guess what I don't understand, though, is...

[15:21] how they're saying that Holly even got on the inside of that fence to begin with. Like, [15:26] even if she was completely disoriented and wandered this quarter a mile from where she was being dropped off. You said, you know, at the beginning of the story that people working on the site had to be let in. So how on earth did she stumble in by herself? Well, enter my map C. So here you go. I'm gonna have you look at this one. So again, and I'm kind of just just so you guys know, I'm like building off of the original one I had. So whatever you've got pictured, like we're still looking at that thing. [15:52] So I just told you that the taxi driver said that she walked away from the building when she left his car. [15:59] Police think this is when Holly got disoriented. And instead of going into her building, she, according to them, traveled down the parking lot, which again goes down the page, then along Northridge Road, which is that long street that goes left across the page. And then she goes left again down that walking trail that takes you to the park. [16:21] Now, for those of you listening, remember, the fence is at the bottom left-hand corner of the map. And my hand-drawn thing doesn't show you the whole fence. It just shows you, like, the top of the fence and then, like, the right side of the fence. And it's there on the right side of the fence that police find a two-foot by three-foot hole that they think she crawled through to get into the otherwise locked area under the bridge.

[16:51] something to try and wrap their heads around until Holly recovers enough to tell the truth for herself? Except that never happens. She doesn't recover. And on Sunday, March 28th, Holly dies from her injuries. [17:08] And you have to just... [17:09] think for a second what her family is going through. I mean, what any family who loses someone so suddenly in such a strange way goes through, like your whole world is turned upside down. I mean, in an instant, nothing makes sense. So the more they try to grapple with this new reality, the more they can't accept police's explanation of what happened to Holly, which is [17:39] Bridge later that afternoon. This is the very Sunday that Holly died. They're out there hoping that maybe seeing it for themselves might help make sense of this story. It's just for them. They can't wrap their heads around it. None of it is adding up. [17:53] So they're walking around the entire outside of the fence around the area where Holly was found. Like I said, I mean, they're wanting to see how it all could have gone down. But more importantly, they're looking for something like something really important. They want to find Holly's cane because remember, they said she didn't go anywhere without it. And the fact that police didn't find it, they find to be super strange. Yeah. [18:18] Now, these friends that are out there, they don't have the details or the exact locations of where Holly was found or anything or like how she got in, just that she crawled through a hole somewhere in that fence. So they're kind of going around the whole thing. And I have another map for you to look at. Again, I'm kind of just building off of the same maps, but I'm calling this one Map D.

[18:39] What police are saying, like I said before, is like the right side of the fence. That's where they found their hole that they think she went into. Well, while they're going around because they don't know where it is, they're searching everywhere. They're on like the top of the fence, not the side where police found the hole. And that's where it happens. [18:57] They find the cane. Wait, how? Didn't you say police searched that area, though? They did. They say that they searched it four times with four officers. And two of those times were with canine units looking specifically for the cane. But now civilians have found it along with a $5 bill. Presumably, remember, the one Moira gave Holly the night before. Remember for that bottle of wine. [19:27] Now, this discovery is big. There are a lot of really important things about it. So first, like I said, the cane is nowhere near where police are theorizing Holly crawled through the fence. And you can't see it on my map because my map's like 2D. But the side of the fence where her cane is actually found, so the top of the fence, above it, basically, it's at the bottom of this steep embankment. And [19:54] Then there's like at the top of this hill is that apartment building I mentioned before, Kencrest, the one that like if you're coming down that long road is like facing you. Now, if all of this isn't strange enough, the cane is found. [20:07] standing upright, like leaning against, wait for it, the opposite side of the fence, standing upright,

[20:16] from where Holly's discovered. Like she's outside the fence. Yeah. So she's on the inside gated area and the cane is leaning against the fence. [20:24] on the outside. So looking at your map, we're supposed to believe that Holly... [20:28] What? Like, went up to the top edge of the fence first, abandoned her cane, which, like you said, she never went anywhere without, just leaves it against the fence. [20:39] walked around to the side of the fence till she found a hole and crawled through it? Well, it turns out there is another hole in the fence right near where her cane is found. So it's possible that the police's theory was right now. [20:58] but they just had the wrong... [21:00] location. Like maybe she propped her cane up. [21:05] crawled through the fence. [21:06] near where her cane was, and that hole that they found on the side has nothing to do with this. Okay, but... [21:12] I'm honestly having trouble buying this. Like, that cane is her lifeline. Wouldn't she take it with her after she crawls through? And if the cane was there the whole time, why didn't police find it in the first searches? That is the big question. The guy who found the cane that day said it was definitely not super easy to see. Like, you know, mind you, it's winter. It's really gray. There's no leaves on the trees. And the cane is white with a black handle at the top. [21:42] it could have blended in with the surroundings. But I don't know. Again, kind of like you, I'm not really buying it. And there's something about how it's found, right? Like leaning up against the fence, not like she was like, set it down as she crawled through and then couldn't get it again. Yeah, that seems...

[21:56] almost deliberate. Yeah, I agree. So at this point, is there even an investigation like continuing to happen? Like now that Holly's passed away, are they even considering or trying to rule out foul play? Or is it just confirmed an accident and case closed? You know, I'm not exactly sure when their investigation officially wraps up. But I mean, I know it didn't last very long. Like by the time her friends find the cane, which is Sunday afternoon, I mean, this is maybe like 36 hours after Holly was initially found. The police tape's [22:26] have their theory written into a police report. And for them, there was no crime. Holly was blind. She was drunk. She got disoriented. [22:35] It was an accident. You know, they said tragic, absolutely, but in their minds, not criminal. But the version of events police put forward that Holly walked almost a quarter mile in the wrong direction away from her front door, pulled herself through a small hole in the fence, then crawled up a concrete abutment and fell over the end of it. It never sat right. [23:05] would have mistakenly walked that far from her front door. The same front door that she went through thousands of times and the same walk from her apartment to the end of Northridge Road. I mean, this was a path that she walked every single day to get to work and to her university classes. Right. And one of these friends that can't believe it is Holly's friend, Peter. And

[23:29] He was an orientation and mobility specialist at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, which is how he met Holly. [23:38] According to Tim Buskay's piece in The Coast, Peter called Halifax Regional Police to say, OK, listen, this is my whole life. This is my work. This is like everything I do. I worked with Holly and lots of people like Holly and nothing about this chain of events that you've put forward makes any sense. Something isn't right here. You have not gotten all of the answers. But the police honestly weren't interested in talking to him. What? [24:08] specialty is actually a really critical part of this story. Orientation and mobility is basically all of the things someone with vision loss would need to know in order to get around safely. Right. And you mentioned the cane, but I assume there's... [24:25] so much more to it than just that. So much more. And one of the examples they use in the docuseries is traffic cues and how you can use the sound of traffic either, you know, in front of you, behind you, to the left or right to understand where you are. Now, remember, so Holly lives right near the McKay Bridge, which runs parallel to North Ridge Road, that long road that I keep [24:55] I'm building off of it. Here's map E to show you. I promise this is the last one. The McKay Bridge is always busy with traffic. So that noise would have been one of her most important orientation cues. And listen, I cannot stress this enough. You have to see the video on our Instagram because I read about this over and over and over again. I was like, yeah, okay, you can like hear some cars,

[25:25] walking the path that Holly would have had to walk, you can barely hear Sarah talking. The traffic is so stinking loud. So drunk or not, trained by a mobility specialist or not, you know the traffic is to your left. And for Holly, traffic to the left meant I am walking away from my house. There is no way that she made that walk thinking that she was heading to her apartment. [25:55] ends up mentioning his concerns to his dad, Brian. And Brian is actually an ex-military investigator and PI. Like, good to have a dad like that. And he agrees that maybe the police closed the case a bit too quickly. So he decides to start his own investigation. [26:14] And it doesn't take long for Brian to get a big break. Holly's condo building is at the end of a major bus route in Halifax. And the bus actually stops right at the bottom of her street, like right before you get to that parking lot or driveway or whatever. And basically, the bus waits there until it's time to start the route again. And what Brian is wondering is if it's possible that the bus was parked there when Holly was coming home in the cab. [26:44] saw something. Brian strikes absolute gold on this one because not only was the bus stopped at the bottom of Holly Street at the right time, but it also has a dash cam. So he's able to work with the Halifax police to get the tape and it shows the taxi going up to convoy towers to drop Holly off.

[27:14] So this is exactly what the cab driver said happened. Yeah. And that would be fine. [27:21] Except a few minutes after that. [27:24] When the bus is like getting ready to go, it pulls out, goes down that long path. And remember, if you're in a car, the only way you can go is right on Nova Lee. So it's going right on Nova Lee for its last run of the night. And on its dash cam, it catches the same taxi again. [27:46] But this time, the taxi is coming off of Kencrest, which is, again, straight ahead of you. And he's wanting to make a right-hand turn. And if you're going right, you can't go down the walking path. The only way you can be going is back to the left. [28:01] to Holly's apartment. [28:04] When they learn this, Halifax police sends officers back to talk to the taxi driver again. [28:11] And at first, he tells the same story he told them on that first day, that it was a normal night, a normal fare. He dropped her off at her door and left. End of story. [28:24] But then the officers confront him. They say, listen, [28:27] That's not the end of the story, because now we have this video footage of your car looking like it's heading back to Holly's place. So what's up? [28:37] And that's when the cabbie says, fine. [28:40] You're right. I did something that night that I'm not proud of.

[28:47] For decades, some cold cases have been reduced to files in a cabinet, but not anymore. I'm Ashley Flowers, and me and my team on the deck have been traveling across the country to report on these forgotten cases, and in some instances, it's resulted in these cases being solved after decades. [29:07] Join me every Wednesday as we revive these stories one card at a time. Listen to the deck now, wherever you get your podcasts. [29:17] The cabbie tells police that everything he told them the first time is totally true. Holly did get out of his car, through the driver's side door, and walk in the wrong direction that night. But what he left out the first time was what happened next. [29:33] The taxi driver tells police that before he drove away from Holly's building that night, he saw her trip and fall onto the curb. Huh? [29:43] He says he didn't really think a lot about it at the time. And at first he just drove away because like drunk people problems. But then he says after he drove away, he felt really guilty about it. And so he went back up to check on her. He says that's why his car was heading back up in that direction. [30:01] Okay. So are the police at all concerned that he had left this detail out of his story in the first place? Apparently not really, because to them, this whole thing about her falling actually helps support their theory. Like first, if she fell, she could have hit her head on the pavement, which could have started the whole cascade of events that followed.

[30:31] her bizarre behavior, like taking this long path in the wrong direction. The disorientation, stuff like that. Right. Not to mention, if she tripped getting out of the cab, that might also explain why her wallet and phone were way up there by her building instead of being in her purse that's found with her. Right. Like maybe they fell out when she tripped or whatever. Right. But I mean, the taxi driver is telling a totally different story now. So police are just like, oh, that's weird, but OK, see ya. [31:01] Pretty much. Apparently, police felt like they sized this guy up the first time they talked to him. But, you know, it seems purely based on the fact that he's this older guy, really soft-spoken and friendly. I kind of get it. I mean, I watched an interview with him that aired on CBC's The Fifth Estate in 2014. And you can maybe kind of see him as this, like, sweet, old, fatherly type. [31:31] stop right there. When have you ever described someone as the sweet old fatherly type who wasn't actually your dad? No, I mean, listen, [31:42] I think he has major creep potential. But to me, and I think this is just like a crime junkie rule, like it's almost like the sweeter you are, the more I'm like, probably there's some secrets there. But again, I'm not Canadian police. And apparently they consider him like salt of the earth kind of guy. This is the way that they put it in the podcast. And basically they think that he left the trip and fall out of his story because he was like ashamed of the whole thing.

[32:12] the sweet old fatherly type and helping her up. Yeah, that he apparently looks like, right. But this is not Brian's first rodeo, our PI. And he's not ready to just take this guy at his word. So, you know, Brian is our people. And when he talks to the taxi driver, [32:28] he gets a very different kind of vibe because right away the guy is shifty and evasive and just something seems off. He tells Brian the same story he told police during their second visit, that he dropped Holly off, he saw her fall, left the building, had a change of heart, came back to check on her. [32:51] He even says that he got out of his car and looked around for her but couldn't find her anywhere. But Brian's like, no way. And he tells the guy, I think you know more than you were letting on. And then he just... [33:05] Weights. [33:06] Like total interrogator move. Oh my God. And it works. The driver fills the silence and says, you're right. There is more. I didn't give police the whole story. [33:20] What he left out is that he stole from Holly that night. [33:26] that when it was time to pay the cab fare, Holly gave him like $75 in cash, way more than this like 13 some dollars that it actually cost. But he only gave her back like $1.50 and change. So she was pissed and there was some sort of altercation or what? He doesn't say. Here is my problem with this.

[33:50] Either you stole from her and she knew it and there probably would have been some kind of like fight or altercation or... [33:58] You stole from her and took advantage of her because you knew she was blind and drunk and might not notice, which means that you lied the first time and you said you didn't know she was blind. So, yeah, I don't trust this guy for a second. Right. And well, if she was as intoxicated as he said, maybe he just thought, you know, he was pulling one over on a drunk girl. Yeah, but that doesn't make me dislike him any less. Like, that's still like a shady thing to do. [34:25] But... [34:25] Apparently, me and you and Canadian police are not on the same page because they talked to him again after his conversation with Brian, because obviously Brian's like, OK, something else happened here. He's not being truthful with you. Let's pass him back to the police, please. Yeah. And so they talked to him again. And once again, they seemed satisfied with his story. [34:48] The chief of police at the time sort of brushed off the driver's behavior, saying, quote, he didn't want to admit to taking money from a blind person. [34:59] End quote. Okay, but this is now the third version of this guy's stories. That's like so many red flags for me. Totally. [35:08] Now, Halifax police do revise the official case file to add in the trip and fall. But that's about all that happens. They don't reopen the case. And the taxi drivers shifting stories don't change their minds about Holly's death being a fatal accident. And I assume that's what the autopsy found, too, then, like for the manner of death. Just accidental.

[35:38] Polly's head, consistent with a fall and the manner of death to be accidental. And she was also severely hypothermic. So that was a contributing factor. But she had other injuries too, like scrapes and cuts on her hands and knees, which I think I mentioned earlier, tons of bruises, even fractures in her lower leg. But again, even all of this was nothing inconsistent with a fall. [36:08] led to her death. Was it the fall that happened last [36:11] up by her apartment that the cab driver saw or down by the bridge? I think they're saying... [36:17] Both of them did. I think that they're saying maybe she potentially hit her head in this fall that caused her to be disoriented. But most likely the deadly fall, according to the police report, was the one she took off of that bridge abutment. [36:30] Maggie Rahr and Peter Parsons, who worked together on the AMI documentary and podcast, took the Emmys files to another forensics expert for a second opinion. And same thing, blunt force trauma and other injuries consistent with a fall. [36:47] But Holly's friends and family find the police's story still impossible to comprehend. They knew Holly and they knew how capable she was. And even with a belly full of booze, they think she couldn't possibly be so disoriented as not to find her way to her own front door from her own driveway. Again, traffic queues from the bridge would have been enough to get Holly anywhere she needed to go. And her friends and family just knew it in their gut.

[37:17] They really believe that police didn't take any time to learn how blind people move around in the world. They didn't try to understand really important things like orientation and mobility. And frankly, they underestimated Holly. They made a note in their report to quote, [37:37] Locate Victim's Full-Time Caregiver. [37:41] End quote. But she didn't have one. Exactly. I mean, this just goes to show how little they understood about Holly and her life. She didn't need a caregiver. She was totally independent. She had a job. She owned her own place. She was going to school. She got around completely on her own. [37:57] So because they still have so many questions, shortly after she died, Holly's friends formed a group called Justice for Holly, and they met from time to time to talk about the case. Peter Parsons, again, he's the orientation and mobility specialist, is part of that group. There's just no closure for them in police's theory of what happened that night, and they just can't. [38:19] Shake it. [38:21] Eventually, Holly's family goes to meet with police to share their concerns about the investigation. But nothing really happens with the case as a result. The battle between Holly's family and police up until this point is really quiet. Like the public doesn't even know anyone is questioning the findings until Tim Booskay's article that I mentioned earlier. It's called Holly Bartlett's Unlikely Journey.

[38:51] That's really the first time anyone in the public is like, oh. [38:54] Didn't know there was questions. [38:56] It is the first detailed, in-depth recounting of the case, and it brings up a lot of questions. [39:04] So that's released in December 2013. Then in the spring of 2014, four years after Holly was found barely conscious under the bridge, Halifax police finally succumbed to the mounting pressure and announced that they're going to review Holly's case. And actually, they've asked another police force, the Quebec City SPVQ, to do an independent review of the original investigation. [39:34] opening the case? Well, not exactly. So they call this an operational review. So it's not about questioning the findings necessarily or the conclusions police came to, but more looking at the process police followed from the time Holly was found until they closed the case. Basically, they're looking to see if there is anything more they could have or should have done. So almost like comparing the investigation to a checklist. Yeah, essentially. Now, [40:04] It's something. And at least Holly's friends and family feel like their concerns are being taken seriously after four long years. [40:12] And, you know, the real issue is not necessarily that they disagree with the medical examiner's findings or even with the conclusion police came to in the end. Right. Their point is more like we're telling you this doesn't make sense to us. You're not listening instead of trying to understand Holly's.

[40:31] unique experience, police just kind of assumed it would be like if they were really drunk and were blindfolded or something, not that Holly had lived this full experience of an independent person. Exactly. Right. And really, this was Peter's point all along was to the police, like you never took the time to try and understand Holly's lived experience, even when we offered to [41:01] just saying, there's no way we feel like you could have gotten to the truth without all of these pieces that you didn't even take the time to understand. [41:09] So anyway, this work begins in the spring of 2014. And in July of that year, SPVQ comes back with their final report. And it's not awesome for Halifax police. They call out a bunch of things that should have been done better during the investigation, like how the taxi driver was never formally interrogated. [41:39] sitting in his own taxi. [41:41] And we find out officers didn't canvass the neighborhood for potential witnesses until... [41:47] wait for it, four months after Holly's death. What? Why? That, like, makes no sense to me. And the most important thing for Holly's family and friends is that SPVQ validated their concerns. They agreed that Halifax police didn't do enough. They didn't do anything, really, to try and understand what it was like to be blind, something they would have needed to know as a baseline to investigate Holly's death. Yeah.

[42:16] But. [42:17] Despite all of this, SPVQ's report says that based on the evidence and the information available at the time, they would have come to the same conclusion the Halifax police did. That Holly's death was an accident and that while the initial investigation could have been stronger, could have been more thorough, it wouldn't have changed the outcome. [42:43] So, yes, this review is a big moment because it validates what people have been saying all along, but it doesn't give anyone answers to the questions that were still lingering after four long years. [42:56] Maybe Holly's death was an accident, but what happened? [43:01] actually happened to her. [43:03] There was a huge chunk of time missing from the official timeline on Holly's case, basically from the time her friends put her in that cab around midnight until she was found under the bridge early the next morning. Yeah. But again, no one could answer those questions. [43:20] Four more years pass, and then... [43:23] In 2018, Accessible Media Inc. starts working with a new private investigator, putting together the documentary series and podcast that I've been referencing today. And it is that work that finally gets us the closest we may ever come to really understanding life. [43:45] What? [43:46] happened to Holly Bartlett.

[43:51] For decades, some cold cases have been reduced to files in a cabinet, but not anymore. I'm Ashley Flowers, and me and my team on the deck have been traveling across the country to report on these forgotten cases. And in some instances, it's resulted in these cases being solved after decades. [44:10] Join me every Wednesday as we revive these stories one card at a time. Listen to the deck now, wherever you get your podcasts. [44:20] In the summer of 2018, a private investigator named Tom Martin picks up Holly's case where Brian Parsons left off back in 2010. [44:31] Tom's a former Halifax homicide detective, seasoned and well-respected, and he's working with Holly's friend Peter and investigative journalist Maggie Rahr on the documentary series about the case. [44:45] So Tom starts digging into the case, interviewing people, looking at the police records and Brian's notes and going back to the scene where Holly was found. [44:55] Now, we've talked a lot about the walk Holly is said to have taken from her condo building down to underneath that bridge. But the other part of the police's theory hinges on Holly crawling up one of those enormous concrete abutments on her hands and knees, trying to get back to the main road. They think she's like thinking it's some kind of walking trail. And as she gets to the end, falls like 20 feet onto the frozen ground.

[45:25] Again, their whole theory is based off this chain of events. Right. So they actually go up onto one of these abutments, Tom, along with Peter and Maggie. And right away, just based on the angle of this thing, they're like, [45:42] There's zero way Holly mistook this for a walking trail. [45:47] One of the things Tom is saying is if she crawled up this thing on her hands and knees, we should see evidence of that on her clothes and boots. Like it'd be really hard to just like walk it up normally. It's so angled, especially if you're drunk. She had to have crawled. So you'd expect to see rips or frays or even concrete dust on the knees of her jeans and scuff marks on the toes of her boots. [46:17] that probably would have happened to her clothes from going through one of those small holes in the fence. Because this is like a barbed wire fence. [46:24] Now, there are rips in her pants, one on the back between the pockets, one just below her left knee, along with dirt on the seat of her pants and on the front. Her boots are scuffed, too, but not in the way you would think that they would be if someone was climbing. It's more like regular wear and tear. So ultimately, no real evidence that Holly had crawled up there on her hands and knees? Not really, no. [46:54] consistent with a fall. And Tom says maybe more than one fall. Right. But that's more or less what the police are saying, too. You know, she fell once up by her condo building and then again from the abutment. So, yes, that's what police are saying. And Tom's saying there's

[47:12] More than one fall. But here's where things get a little wonky. [47:17] Because falling 20 feet off that enormous concrete cable abutment should have done a heck of a lot of damage to her body. [47:27] And again, it's not that Holly's injuries weren't severe. I mean, she had two fractures in her left leg, one in her right. She had a considerable amount of bruising, especially on her knees, her buttocks, and one of her arms. And she had blunt force trauma injuries to her face, like her mouth in particular. [47:44] According to the What Happened to Holly Bartlett podcast, that was the most obvious and most severe of Holly's injuries, her mouth and her face. She was hardly recognizable because of the swelling and bruising. So I get the bruises and fractures when it comes to a fall. But did Emmy think that the blunt force trauma to her mouth and face was amazing? [48:04] also caused by the fall? What they said was that it was consistent with injuries sustained in a fall. Yes. So like you could be injured this way in the event of a fall, possibly. Possibly. Yeah, but there's something about the way that these injuries are described that makes it seem, I don't know, like more violent than that. But the other strange thing is the palms of her hands, which you'd think would be in terrible shape on someone who'd fallen at least a couple of times. [48:34] Well, and I was also thinking on your hands and knees of a concrete abutment, you'd have some sort of abrasions. Yeah, but Holly's poems had no injuries. I mean, nothing. It was actually the backs of her hands that were covered in cuts and scrapes. Now, one of the things that they talk about in both the podcast and the documentary is could she have had her hands up?

[48:58] Like she was protecting her face from something. You mean like from someone? [49:04] It could be someone or really could even be some thing. [49:09] Now, I haven't seen photos of her hands, so I don't know what the injuries look like to describe them to you. But I think about being in Holly's position. One of the natural instincts we have is to protect our head and our face. So imagine you're in complete darkness. You're falling and then crawling through a rough area. I'm just thinking about going through the fence. It's not like super clean. It's like a lot of brush and stuff. Like you're physically going through rough branches and sticks and thorns. [49:39] my face. And to your point, if someone was coming at me, I would for sure be covering my face. [49:45] But I think if someone was coming at me, it's almost like my natural instinct. You know, you see defensive wounds. It would be like to do that with my palms out. However, if I was more vulnerable like Holly, I don't know if I would react the same way and have those normal defensive wounds that you'd expect. Like maybe the instinct to push away or even fight back happens when you can see your attacker. Right. And if you're in complete darkness and someone starts attacking you, you might just go into that immediate defensive position. [50:15] her face. Why is that the place where she sustained the most severe injuries? Yeah. So see, this is where I spiral on this case. [50:24] Either way, it was an interesting observation that Tom makes, that she has these wounds on the back of her hands, but not the palms. Something that wasn't called out at all during the initial investigation. So, again, to me, it's one of those things that is like, how can you say what happened when there are unanswered questions still? Or things that aren't even mentioned. Right. But here's the thing. I mean, Tom's finding all of this new stuff so many years later.

[50:54] all of his work in 2018 is actually the same one Halifax police came to in 2010. He says Holly's death [51:04] was an accident and her injuries were the result of a fall. At least one, but more likely a few. Wait, so we went through all of this and he agrees with the police's theory of what happened? So here's the catch. He doesn't agree with their theory, just the conclusion. Okay. So the theory [51:34] for a bunch of reasons. Most importantly, it doesn't have Holly walking all that way from her front door down to the bridge abutments on that night, that behavior that never made sense to anyone. And that's because Tom doesn't think that's what happened. [51:49] Tom's theory is based on the idea that the taxi driver could have been a little more involved than he let on. [52:00] The guy's changing story is definitely a red flag, but Tom thinks that there are kernels of truth in every version. [52:08] He thinks Holly did sit quietly in the backseat that night, just like the driver said. But at some point, likely just before they turned on to that long street, so like right around that Kencrest building, she piped up or maybe he did to talk about paying for the fare.

[52:24] Remember, all of Holly's friends say she didn't like to use cash. She used a credit card pretty much all the time, and it would be unlikely for her to even have cash on her. Now, we don't know for sure if she did or did not have cash on her that night. Lots of people carry emergency cash, for example, so I don't know. But let's say, just for argument's sake, for Tom's theory's sake, that she didn't have any cash on her. [52:54] have debit or credit machines in their cars. [52:57] even in 2010. And even when they did, most of them would much rather take cash. [53:04] So... [53:05] What if, Tom supposes, just as they were coming up to this Kencrest building and right before turning onto Northridge Road, that long road that leads to her apartment, what if Holly said that she needed to pay with a credit card? And what if the driver wasn't able to or didn't want to take a credit card? [53:26] Remember, he says at the time that he didn't know she was blind and that he didn't find out until the police came to speak with him the next day. So to him, she's just another drunk girl who isn't going to be able to pay the fare. [53:39] Now, we can't confirm this, but it's highly likely that when Holly called taxis, she'd probably say up front that she needed someone who could take a card. But if you remember, it wasn't her who called the taxi that night. It was her friend who called the cab. So Tom's theory is that something happened in the cab and that Holly actually didn't make it all the way to the circular driveway in front of her condo.

[54:05] We've already talked about how independent Holly was, but she was also really stubborn and she was no like shrinking violet either. So if she was threatened or felt threatened, she'd stand up for herself. So what if there was some kind of confrontation between Holly and the taxi driver that night, maybe over cash, credit, whatever, and she was either forced from the cab or bolted from the cab right there in front of the Kencrest building? [54:35] but not off the bridge abutment. He thinks that she fell down. Remember, at the top of that fence on that map I was talking about is like this steep embankment from the Kencrest apartment all the way down to that fence. He thinks that she like bolts out of there and falls down that thing because this is where they find Holly's cane, the $5 bill, and that second hole in the fence. So, [55:02] Tom thinks the cane was there the whole time and was just completely missed by the police during their searches. No. So actually, in Tom's theory, police didn't find anything during their initial searches because he says it probably wasn't there yet. His thought was maybe it fell out of Holly's hands or out of her purse and slid maybe somewhere in the taxi and that the driver potentially didn't discover it until later and then brought it back. [55:32] it's the same thing he thinks with the wallet and the phone that were found up by Holly's front door. Maybe he tossed those out the window or out of a moving car. I mean, there's no proof, really, that Holly was ever up there at all. Because even with that bus camera footage, they saw the taxi, but there was not enough light. They couldn't actually see inside to really even see if there was a passenger in the car.

[55:53] So remember how Tom thought, again, there's like a little bit of truth in every version of this guy's story. Well, that includes the part about seeing her fall. He just doesn't think that the fall that the driver witnessed was up by her condo. He thinks that the fall that he actually saw was the one she took down this embankment. So the bridge abutment, though, that's just an incidental part of the story? In Tom's version of events, yes. [56:23] happens to be the place she ended up. It was as far as she got given the injuries she sustained going down that embankment. Okay, so was Tom able to get any traction with this theory in terms of the police? Like, was it enough to reopen the case? Well, I mean, in the end, I mean, he still feels like Holly's death was accidental and reopening the case wouldn't change that. And [56:48] Really, I guess he's saying that even if the driver of that cab saw her fall, [56:52] Is it a crime not to help her? I mean, you could go to civil court. It's a whole thing. But I don't know that it's necessarily a criminal charge in the eyes of the Canadian law. [57:02] Really, there aren't any solid answers to be had in Holly's case. And I think the likeliest scenario actually goes back to the core of the police's theory that Holly potentially was, in fact, quite drunk. Most of the people who were with her that night insisted that she wasn't that bad. Like they didn't think, oh, yeah, she was wasted. They said she's not that bad. But at least one of her friends says that it was the drunkest they'd ever seen her.

[57:30] During their investigation, police found that she had at least five to six drinks, two martinis, like a half bottle of wine, maybe another martini and then another drink in the span of like six hours. I mean, I think that's a lot of alcohol, especially for a small person. And we haven't talked about Holly's stature, but she was only four foot eleven and just a little over a hundred pounds. [57:52] But the other thing I wonder is, I mean, have you ever heard anyone talk about how often like drunk drivers are – [57:59] often way better off in a collision than the other people in a vehicle that they might hit. [58:04] Yeah, I have actually. There's something about how being drunk kind of protects you from some injuries and like... [58:10] reflexes, if you will. Yeah. So like when you're sober, your natural instinct is to like brace for impact. Like you get really tight and that can actually make your injuries worse. People don't do that in the same way when they're drunk. Like all of their reflexes are dulled. So it can actually have a protective factor, which is how you hear of some drunk drivers walking away from an accident unscathed. Okay. But Holly didn't walk away from that fall unscathed. She didn't. No, but let's [58:40] For one second, let's just say it's right that she did climb up that cable abutment and fall down. Again, maybe she fell down. [58:48] and didn't get as injured as she might have because she was drunk, because she didn't have those instincts to brace and potentially make the injuries worse. But honestly, I think the hardest part about this story is that hazy place between...

[59:03] What we know. [59:04] And what we don't [59:07] It's not hard to imagine how it must have felt to be Holly that night, lost, injured, freezing cold, maybe one too many drinks, just trying to get home and never getting there. I mean, the fear and anxiety she must have been feeling during those hours. [59:22] It is hard for me to even think about it. [59:25] Okay, but something I can't get over in Tom's theory is the stuff from inside her purse, right? So she was found with her purse. It was empty, but her stuff was all found up by the complex. I... How? Yeah, I can't either. I mean, so we know for sure that night, right? Like the one thing we have on surveillance footage is the taxi driver coming back. I think a lot of people in their theories think that potentially he came back to drop the stuff off there. But here's my problem with this. [59:55] Maybe I'll give the driver a benefit of the doubt. Maybe his story is real because to me if she goes off the embankment right at the end of this like long road before we even get to the bus before we even get to the driveway of her place. You only need to go up that way one time to drop off her stuff. Right. So why would he leave and then come back? Yeah. So let's say Tom series right. They get in some altercation. She goes down. He sees her fall and he's like oh crap. [1:00:22] Why not just then like turn around and leave? He went all the way down, actually went to her apartment, went back down the road and then was like coming back a second time. To me, if she falls at the Kencrest building, he's not going to go all the way up to the convoy towers. Yeah, you only need to go back.

[1:00:40] one time to drop off the stuff. And if you do go drop off the stuff, like that's a lot of premeditation to say, like, I'm going to make up this whole story about a fall, which he didn't even do the first time that he talks to police, right? Like if you're going to make it up, you make it up from the very beginning. So it's consistent or whatever. Yeah. So I think Tom's theory is more believable because of where she was found. You know, all of her friends say she would have made that walk. The traffic cues were too much. It didn't make sense. And I believe that. But [1:01:07] To me... [1:01:08] There is still... [1:01:10] something big. There is a big piece of this puzzle that is still missing. Why did Holly have her purse, but all of her stuff is there? Why did he make two trips if one of them didn't have Holly in the car? Despite all of this, all of the physical evidence points to Holly's death being a tragic accident. [1:01:30] Halifax police, SPVQ, and the PI all came to that same conclusion. And maybe that's true. I think the hardest part of this is potentially how preventable her death could have been. I mean, what if someone had convinced her to stay at the university club a little bit longer? Or what if they had noticed she was drunk and as a friend gone with her? What if the taxi driver had acted differently? [1:02:00] She was blind. Maybe he would have been more likely to help if he saw her fall, make sure that she didn't just get out of his car, but got to her building, to her front door in one piece.

[1:02:10] If any one of those things had happened, this story could have had a much different ending. We may not be telling it at all. [1:02:18] And that's why, you know, we talk about on the show, it's important not just to look out for yourself, but to look out for those around you, your friends, even if you don't know them, the people you come in contact with. I think whether someone is a friend, acquaintance, or we don't know them at all, I think we all have a responsibility to one another, no matter how we come in contact. Holly was an incredible person. [1:02:42] person with an amazing spirit. There is no question that her death was tragic and the people who love her are still trying to make sense of what happened that night. [1:02:52] Holly refused to be defined by her blindness, and I don't think she'd want to be defined by her last days either. [1:03:01] Holly packed a lot of life into her 31 years, and I think that is how she would want to be remembered. [1:03:09] you guys really i can't stress it enough please go to our instagram at crime junkie podcast to take a look at this walking tour and to tell us your three what do you think happened and be sure [1:03:39] that Ashley put together, they really are

[1:03:42] incredibly helpful in visualizing this case. Yeah. And on our website, that is where you can find all of our source material as well. [1:03:49] We will be back next week with a brand new episode. [1:03:54] Music. [1:04:03] Bye. [1:04:04] you [1:04:05] *music* [1:04:09] Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production. [1:04:12] What do you think, Chuck? [1:04:14] Do you approve? [1:04:18] Okay, crime junkies, you know I absolutely love a twist and a turn, especially when it comes to people who turn out to be someone they're not. That's why I have been obsessed with the podcast Chameleon. Every Thursday, host Josh Dean deep dives into a scam so bizarre, it will leave you wondering, how did they get away with that? [1:04:36] It is truly one of my favorite podcasts right now, and I've been listening for years. [1:04:40] I think you'll love it too. [1:04:41] Listen to Chameleon wherever you get your podcasts.