[Laura LeDrew] It's one of the most horrific scenes
I think I've ever walked into.
There's missing body parts.
There was the axe mark on her head.
Who did this?
Harry did have a lot of enemies in town.
[Laura] The neighbor could hear loud fights
and screaming matches between the two of them.
[Stan McCutchin] While we're searching the property...
We see a truck. We shovel some of the snow away.
And there in the bed of the truck
is a bloody body.
He's frozen solid.
[John O'Donovan] If the bodies thaw too quickly,
valuable evidence can be lost.
[Laura] I'm very worried that there is
a deranged killer on the loose at this point.
Things like this don't happen in Ethelbert.
[narrator] Every day in North America,
dozens of people are murdered.
The key to solving the toughest of these homicides
lies in the final 24 hours of the victim's life.
To crack the case,
detectives must reconstruct that critical timeline.
The minutes and hours containing evidence
that can help unlock the mystery
and catch the killer.
Stretching 5,500 miles across North America,
the US/Canadian international border
is the longest and most peaceful in the world.
And right in the middle
lies tiny Ethelbert, Manitoba.
300 residents living 300 miles north of Minnesota.
Ethelbert is extremely rural.
It is the heart of the prairies.
[Laura] The people tend to all know who each other are,
and it's places that are passed down
from family to family,
so there's lots of related people within the community.
There's a lot of beef industry there.
There's grain farming.
There's also quite a bit of tourism in the area
because of the fishing and the hunting.
There aren't a lot of problems or disputes
that become a criminal issue.
[narrator] On most winter days in Ethelbert,
the temperature stays well below freezing,
and nothing much happens.
But January 19th, 2013
is not like most winter days.
[phone ringing]
[Stan] The Ethelbert mayor called the RCMP detachment
to check in on the wellbeing of one of his people.
[narrator] Royal Canadian Mounted Police Sergeant
Laura LeDrew responds to the call.
[Laura] The mayor asked our team
for a report of a wellbeing check
on a resident of Ethelbert, Elsie Steppa,
who is an elderly lady.
It's been four weeks since anyone has seen her.
[Stan] There's been no smoke
or heat coming out of the chimney.
And there are two dogs known to be in that house
but they haven't been seen either in the last two weeks.
[Laura] The mayor was calling to see
if someone could possibly
go check on her at her residence.
[John] This is a brutally cold morning.
The temperature is minus 40 degrees.
[narrator] At that temperature,
exposed skin can freeze in minutes.
Sergeant LeDrew and a team of Mounties
arrive at the Steppa farmhouse.
[Laura] There's no sign
of anything happening.
We open the door. It's slightly ajar,
which seems suspicious.
So at this point we don't know what we're going into.
In the house, it's dark.
There's no electricity. It's very, very, very cold.
There's no sign of anyone.
At first I don't actually know what to think.
Never seen a residence that looked like this.
The house is completely full.
It's a hoarder's house.
Items stacked every which way.
There are stacks of DVD players,
VCR players and cords hanging everywhere,
batteries everywhere.
In the living room of Elsie's house
there's a makeshift altar
and a whole load of religious artefacts.
[Laura] We don't know where Elsie Steppa is.
That's our main concern right now.
We see some blood, a couple of droplets here and there,
which is obviously never a good thing.
And we make our way to this door that's closed...
[dogs barking]
[Laura] ...where we can hear the dogs barking.
We try to open the door.
It was jammed on something.
Sp we had to really force our way in.
[narrator] Officers need to know if anyone is
behind the door with dogs.
One of the members found a hammer,
and he was going to use the hammer
to sort of bash the door to get us in.
And that's when we noticed on the head of the hammer was
some grey hairs, looked like human hairs, and blood.
[dogs continue barking]
[Laura] We were able to finally get the door open.
We notice there's another door
that looks to be made from a chain-link fence.
We push the door open
and these two dogs come running out
and they just ran outside.
That was a moment of terror.
When we get into the room,
it's one of the most horrific scenes
I think I've ever walked into.
There is a body lying on the floor,
face down.
I'm making an assumption at this point
that it is Elsie Steppa.
The injuries to the head were
something I've never seen before.
There's an ice axe
located under her head.
There is a hole in the back of the head.
There was multiple cracks on the skull.
She had her neck completely split.
There's no hair on the head.
There's an ear missing.
There is half of an arm missing
and another complete arm missing.
I see a tiny drywall saw
which are very, very, very sharp.
And that is covered in blood as well.
The hammer that we just about used,
that's a weapon.
I can see the hole that exactly would match
the size of the hole in the back of her head.
[John] The officers are able to find her identification
in her purse in the room,
and there's no doubt about it that this is Elsie Steppa.
[narrator] 81-year-old Elsie Steppa
who lived peacefully under Ethelbert Farm
most of her life
is now the victim of a brutal homicide.
[Laura] She's completely frozen,
and that's obviously due to the temperatures outside.
But she's inside and there's no heat in that house.
I've never seen anything like this.
And now we have to start the hard work
of figuring out what happened.
[narrator] Sergeant LeDrew calls in the Mounties experts
to help her sift through the evidence.
Our forensics team begins to bag all of the items.
I'm looking through the room with all of the clothing,
and most of the clothing is old, tattered.
But I do see kind of a sportier ski jacket.
It stands out because it's not underneath this pile.
It's sort of on top,
and potentially recently put there.
We seize that as well.
[narrator] Based on what investigators have seen so far
they piece together an initial sequence
of what may have happened to Elsie Steppa.
In a small community like Ethelbert,
most people probably don't lock their doors.
Is it someone that she might know and let in the house?
At this point I'm now thinking
maybe she was attacked in the living room.
Did they drag her, then, into the bedroom,
and then hit her in the back of the head
with the hammer
and then slit her throat with the drywall saw?
And I'm staring at her, the missing limbs,
and I'm thinking the worst things possible.
I'm very worried that there is
a deranged killer on the loose at this point.
Elsie's body is taken to the morgue
where her body is allowed to thaw out
under controlled situation.
[narrator] To solve the mystery
of Elsie Steppa's murder,
detectives need to reconstruct the last 24 hours of her life.
[Stan] We started to talk to everybody in Ethelbert.
[narrator] RCMP constable Stan McCutchin
joins the investigation.
Several people in Ethelbert report seeing her
on December 22nd,
maybe four weeks before her body was found,
going to the store and buying food.
[Laura] I speak with the local store owner
of the one shop in town,
and he confirms that
she hasn't been here for about four weeks.
[narrator] Investigators estimate that Elsie was killed
some time between December 22nd
when she was last seen buying groceries
and January 19th when her body was discovered.
Until her body thaws
and the coroner can confirm her time of death,
investigators gather background on Elsie
to find out who may have wanted to hurt her.
[narrator] One concerned neighbor Natalie Panto
goes on to describe Elsie as a recluse,
someone who doesn't really leave her house.
Friendly and pleasant enough.
[Stan] And she tells us Elsie has never been married
and she has no children.
And around town, she's known as the cat lady,
because at one point in the not-too-distant past
she had 20 cats living in her house.
[narrator] The sergeant asks Natalie
if she can think of anyone who might want to harm Elsie.
[Laura] Natalie mentions that
Elsie actually does live with her nephew,
a man by the name of Harry Jones.
About 50 years old.
[Stan] According to Natalie,
Jones is well-known in the community
and generally disliked.
[John] Natalie describes Jones as
aggressive and impulsive.
[Laura] I learn that he suffers from schizophrenia
and that he's delusional.
He has been banned from going to any church
because he causes disturbances
and questions the priest in the middle of the services
and tends to be very disruptive.
[Stan] Elsie and Harry live in a house without heat
and they live in a house without running water.
Neither one of them has a job
and they just manage to scrape by.
[Laura] The neighbor also speaks about loud fights.
She could hear loud fights and screaming matches between the two of them.
[narrator] The neighbor reports hearing
a vicious argument not long before she was murdered.
[Stan] Harry wanted Elsie to get rid of all of her cats,
and he wanted to keep his two dogs
that were very aggressive
and not well-liked in the community,
and that the two of them would argue loudly about this.
[Laura] So, Harry ends up winning that argument
and the cats are taken away by animal protection units.
[narrator] Elsie's nephew Harry Jones
is the RCMP's number-one suspect.
[Laura] Natalie then says she hasn't seen Harry
for probably about four weeks,
and Elsie about the same amount of time.
And she also hasn't seen the dogs
running around outside.
[Stan] We start looking for Harry Jones immediately.
We wanna find him, we wanna arrest him.
[Laura] Maybe Harry Jones is our suspect.
Maybe he's the one who killed his aunt.
[narrator] Just hours after Canadian police
in Manitoba find 81-year-old Elsie Steppa
murdered and frozen in her hoarder home,
Elsie's cantankerous 50-year-old nephew
Harry Jones becomes the number-one suspect.
[Stan] We are in that house,
and at no time does Harry Jones show up
to ask us what we are doing.
But investigators keep digging into his background.
They need to find out more about him.
[Stan] We know that Elsie lives with Harry Jones.
He has mental health issues
and he's been hostile to his aunt Elsie.
[narrator] Police fan out,
searching for Elsie's last known whereabouts.
We start to search the town of Ethelbert.
[Stan] There's no sign of Harry there.
We hear the same story repeatedly,
that Harry is a thief.
He's a petty thief, that's how he survives.
It's not just stealing food.
He's been caught breaking into
some of the closed churches in the area
and stealing things.
And basically nobody trusts him around the property.
Nobody wants him around them.
[Laura] All these religious items at the house,
these items belong to local community members
and they were stolen.
[Stan] We run Harry Jones
through the police databases that we have,
and he does not have a criminal record,
which is unusual given everything
we've learned about him.
[phone ringing]
[narrator] Then investigators get a tip.
[Stan] We received a phone call
from one of the people in the community
telling us that they had seen Harry Jones
driving his pick-up truck.
It was a silver Chevy Silverado.
He was driving around Ethelbert
just three days before we were asked
to go look and see if Elsie was okay.
[narrator] Two days after Elsie's body is discovered,
police return to her property
to make sure they didn't overlook anything
under the junk piles inside her home
or in the snow banks outside it.
[Laura] As we're searching the property,
there's a couple of sheds in the backyard,
we search those,
and we see a truck
parked quite a ways back behind the house.
Silver Chevy Silverado.
So maybe it's Harry's truck.
Upon approaching it, there's no footprints around this truck
saying that it's been driven recently or anything like that.
The bed of the truck is full of snow
and you can see a couple of wooden pallets, crates in there.
We shovel some of the snow away...
lift the pallets up,
and there in the bed of the truck is a bloody body.
It's the body of Harry Jones.
He's frozen solid to the base of the truck.
He's got numerous head injuries.
I can see that there's pieces of his skull
lying in the bed of the truck.
And very similar to the body of Elsie Steppa,
his throat has been slit.
[narrator] It's a double tragedy
for tiny Ethelbert.
The fact that Harry isn't our killer
makes things even more concerning.
'Cause now I have somebody in this community
that's killed two people
and hasn't been found yet.
[narrator] For investigators,
the state of how and where Harry's body is found
tells them a slightly different story
than the story of his aunt's homicide.
There's a little bit of blood in the bed of the truck,
but not... not a huge amount.
This would suggest that he had been killed somewhere else
and that then his body
was thrown in the back of the truck.
[Stan] And that then our killer drove back
to Harry and Elsie's house.
[Laura] We start to search
the area right beside the truck,
keeping in mind there is no footprints,
there's no activity around this truck at all.
We used a metal detector
and lo and behold,
our officer found a large wooden-handled axe.
Typical axe that you'd use for cutting wood.
And there was blood on the head of the axe
which was very consistent with
a couple of the injuries that we could see.
[narrator] Police continue their search
for any other secrets the truck may hold.
They check out the inside of the truck.
They swab the steering wheel for DNA.
[Laura] I notice that there's a paper coffee cup
in the cup holder right beside where the driver would be.
We decided to swab the lid
for any possible DNA of maybe someone
that isn't Harry or Elsie.
[narrator] Investigators send the swabs
and coffee lid to the lab for analysis.
They also bag Harry's remains
to join aunt Elsie's at the morgue.
[John] Just like Elsie Steppa,
it's impossible to determine when Harry Jones was killed
because his body is frozen solid.
If the bodies thaw too quickly,
valuable evidence can be lost.
An approximate time of death, fingerprints,
and even a cause of death can be distorted
and destroyed.
[narrator] On January 24th,
investigators receive autopsy results
for both Harry and his aunt Elsie.
[Laura] The medical examiner provided insight
into the injuries on Elsie Steppa.
Her limb from her shoulder down was missing
and her other arm was half missing.
The hair missing on her head, the ear missing,
that was due to the dogs
that were locked in the room with her
with no food.
The hole in the back of her head,
that was from the hammer
that was found with the blood and her hair on it.
She was probably attacked from behind,
hit in the head with the hammer.
Harry Jones's body,
very similar,
very violent head injuries with the skull breaking,
and then the throat, again, slit to the spinal cord.
Who wants these two people dead this badly,
that they would then in addition slit their throats?
[Stan] Harry's skull has been fragmented.
Our medical examiner thinks that this is from
being struck in the head several times
with a heavy, blunt object.
[Laura] The autopsy results
shows that they both died of blunt force trauma.
[narrator] The coroner's exam
also helps detectives form a timeline.
[Laura] The homicides occurred
within the previous four weeks.
[narrator] It's a finding that matches up with
what locals told detectives
about the last time they saw Elsie.
But it conflicts with what they were told about Harry.
[Laura] The neighbors saw Harry driving his truck
three days before the police were called
and the police descended on that house.
This makes no sense to me whatsoever.
[narrator] The mystery deepens when investigators receive
Harry's prints from the morgue.
They were run through our national police system,
and the person that we know as Harry Jones
was actually a male by the name of Clarence Harold Thornton.
I learned that Clarence Harold Thornton,
AKA Harry Jones,
is a wanted criminal from Ontario
for a crime he committed over 20 years ago,
where he stole an item from a big-box store.
He resisted arrest,
causing the police officer to break their arm.
[narrator] Police now believe that
the man who used the alias Harry Jones
relocated to Manitoba with his aunt Elsie
to escape charges in Ontario,
1,500 miles away.
[Laura] The neighbors tell us that they arrived
in Ethelbert about 18 years ago.
[Stan] We find out that Elsie is originally from Ethelbert
and was born and raised there, and then left,
and when she came back,
she came back with her nephew Harry.
The two of them fit into the community.
There didn't seem to be a lot of problems.
But as Harry's mental health issues
became more and more prominent,
there were more and more problems
with the people in the community.
[John] Harry was involved in so many disputes
with different people within the community,
that Elsie probably got caught up in one of these disputes
and that was the reason that she was killed.
[narrator] But the killer, or killers, of Elsie Steppa
and her nephew Harry remain elusive.
Investigators get a clue
when they receive DNA results
from the swabs taken at Harry's truck.
[Laura] We learned that there is DNA
that's not Harry and it's not Elsie's.
This is a profile of an unknown male.
[Stan] The DNA that's found in that swab
is compared against
the Canadian national data bank of known offenders
and it cannot be identified.
So at this point we don't know whose DNA that is.
[narrator] It could belong to the person
who killed both Elsie Steppa and her nephew Harry.
So now we begin to focus on Clarence Thornton,
AKA Harry Jones.
Who does he associate with? What does he do?
And who in his life may have wanted to kill him?
[narrator] After Royal Canadian Mounted Police
find 81-year-old Elsie Steppa
and her 50-year-old nephew Harry
murdered and frozen at Elsie's home
in tiny Ethelbert, Manitoba,
police learn that Harry had a criminal record
and a secret life.
We continued our efforts to talk to everybody in Ethelbert
about Harry's lifestyle.
[John] Neighbors say that
Harry regularly went dumpster diving
looking for something to salvage
with an associate named Marcus.
[Stan] We find Marcus.
[Laura] He confirms that
Harry and a couple of other associates
were always looking for items to pawn.
Marcus says they never stole anything
from anyone, it was harmless.
Marcus readily admitted, though,
that him and Harry would often have fights
and arguments about who got the most money.
Nothing out of the ordinary.
Now he starts to mention
that there's another person in their group
who Harry had conflict with.
He said, "Harry and I are fine.
But the other guy in our group, not so much."
He mentions the name Payton Saari.
[narrator] Payton, Marcus and Harry
had all scavenged together.
But Marcus says Payton had
a recent falling-out with Harry.
[John] 20-year-old Payton Saari
believed that Harry had stolen his snowboard.
[Laura] Payton was very, very mad according to Marcus.
Is this something that he would kill Harry over?
[Stan] So, we go to Payton's house
and we talk with his family.
And his family tells us
that they haven't noticed
anything unusual about Payton at all
since Harry was murdered.
We start to learn more about Payton.
He's a First Nations male.
We learn that Payton was removed
from his original home by child and family services,
and at the age of four,
he was adopted by the Saari family.
[Laura] He's never been charged with anything at all.
It wasn't the most stable upbringing for Payton,
but nothing really that outstanding.
[narrator] After speaking to Payton's family,
the Mounties return later
to speak to Payton himself.
[Stan] Payton tell us that he does know Harry...
and that he and Harry have been
going through people's garbage,
and they look for items that have some value
so that they can sell them to other people.
He tells us he has nothing against Harry,
and the last time he saw Harry was on December 22nd
when Harry offered to pay him 20 bucks
to help take some stuff to the dump.
He says that the last time he saw Harry
he was alive and well.
[narrator] Investigators press Payton on the dispute over his snowboard.
[John] Payton denied that he ever accused Harry
of stealing his snowboard.
Payton doesn't talk about any disruptions between them.
Their relationship is totally fine according to Payton.
[Stan] At this point, we have no evidence
connecting Payton to Elsie and Harry.
We have a reason to be curious and suspicious.
But that doesn't let us arrest anybody.
So we just step back from Payton
and continue with our investigation.
[Laura] Payton's family did say
Harry had an enemy in town,
a female by the name of Jessica
who made numerous complaints
that he was threatening to kill her.
[narrator] Investigators also learn that
Jessica lives just down the road from the Steppa place,
and she had been there recently.
Now police consider whether Jessica stopped Harry in his tracks,
before Harry could make good on his threat
to do the same to her...
then returned with his body and truck
and killed the loose end witness, Harry's aunt Elsie.
[Laura] So, I'm thinking to myself,
"Okay, well if we have a lady who's claiming that
Harry Jones threatened to kill her,
that's pretty interesting."
[Stan] We met with Jessica,
and she tells us about a confrontation
between her and Harry.
[Laura] Jessica told me that
she had seen the chain-link fence
locking a bedroom door from the outside,
and she was very concerned
that maybe Harry was locking Elsie in a room.
[narrator] Jessica admits she stopped by Elsie's place
to confront Harry in person.
[Stan] Jessica tells us that
she talked with Harry and Elsie about this.
[Laura] Elsie said that was to keep the dogs in that room.
[Stan] But Harry got upset.
And that's where the death threats came from.
[Laura] She was very fearful.
The incident went from her having a concern
to the point of Harry actually threatening to kill her,
because how dare she accuse him of that?
She left the house
and stayed away from Elsie and Harry.
Jessica went on to say that that's really the last time
she's had any interaction with Harry.
[narrator] Police find Jessica's story credible.
And with no hard evidence tying her to the crime scene,
they eliminate her as a suspect.
But when investigators look into local rumors...
they find that Jessica's story is not unique.
Harry had a long list of enemies
in tiny Ethelbert.
[Stan] We start to learn that
Jessica is just one of many people
that's been harassed or threatened by Harry Jones.
[John] The investigators learned that
Harry Jones had fought particularly with
a man by the name of Reggie Bakay.
[Laura] Reggie was also interviewed by local media
and said that he didn't really think it was strange
that Harry would be murdered,
because Harry was an unlikeable person
who had extremely strong views.
[John] In one report,
Reggie Bakay was actually mocking the investigation.
He's seeking the spotlight
for a very tragic event for a community.
Began wondering,
why is he saying these things?
Why would he do that?
It's not the information, or disinformation,
that these people claim to have that's important.
It's who they are to the victim or the suspect.
Why have they taken such an interest in this case?
Reggie Bakay, his flippant comments
raised suspicions among investigators
that he may be involved
in the murders of Harry and Elsie.
[narrator] Two weeks after the double homicide
of Elsie Steppa and her nephew Harry
in tiny Ethelbert, Manitoba,
Royal Canadian Mounted Police
suspect a man who's been badmouthing Harry in the news.
Reggie Bakay.
Reggie tells us how much he hated Harry,
and how Harry was constantly ranting and raving,
and it got to the point where he ended his friendship
and relationship with him completely.
He does say to me that,
"I really didn't like Harry. I didn't like him at all.
But I would never kill him."
[narrator] Reggie says he would never harm
Harry's aunt Elsie either,
and adds that he was out of town
when they were both killed.
[Laura] Reggie has an alibi.
He was not around during that time period.
[narrator] As with Payton and Jessica before,
investigators strike Reggie Bakay
from their suspect list.
[Laura] And that's when Reggie tells me about
another dispute that Harry had with a local resident
by the name of Clark Beach.
[Laura] Harry accused Clark of murdering
a local in town.
Does anyone have enough of an issue with Harry
to kill him over these confrontations?
Maybe.
So now I go looking for Clark Beach.
Clark Beach is a local homeopath,
and Harry did not take kindly to his naturopathic beliefs.
Harry referred to the homeopathic remedies
as satanic.
Clark Beach felt that he was now being targeted by Harry.
Harry had posted a message on the town bulletin board
accusing Clark Beach of murdering a resident
with his satanic remedies.
Harry followed up by sending numerous threatening letters
to Clark.
[narrator] Investigators consider the possibility
Harry's persistent threats may have driven Clark to violence.
Interpersonal conflicts in general
are the number-one cause of homicides,
so perhaps the threatening behavior
was something that Clark wasn't prepared to deal with
and so took matters into his own hands.
[narrator] But Clark insists
he never saw Harry as a threat.
[Laura] Clark tells me as much as the letters,
you know, obviously bothered him,
he chose to befriend Harry.
He always sort of felt that Harry was an underdog in the community.
Clark had an alibi for the timeframe
that I was now looking at, and I felt pretty confident
that he had nothing to do with Harry's murder
or Elsie's murder.
[narrator] With Clark Beach ruled out,
investigators aren't sure where to turn next.
But in a town of just 300 residents,
it doesn't take long for new suspicions to surface.
[phone ringing]
[narrator] One call grabs the Mounties' attention.
The call concerns an earlier suspect
named Payton Saari.
[narrator] Payton's girlfriend Jocelyn tells us
about a very strange conversation
that she had with Payton.
It was bothering her a lot
since the discovery of Harry's body.
[narrator] The detectives ask Jocelyn to meet them for an interview.
[Stan] She tells us that on December 22nd,
she and Payton were at the Snack Shack.
While they were outside in their vehicle,
Payton tells her that he had gone
to the dump that day with Harry,
and while he was at the dump with Harry,
he got into a fight.
And that the last time he saw Harry,
Harry was still at the dump,
and Payton walked home from the dump.
At first, Jocelyn didn't think anything about this.
And then when she hears that Harry was murdered,
she becomes concerned.
When she talks to Payton about it, Payton tells her
that the whole thing was a lie,
it was just a story he made up.
He wanted to test her to make sure he could trust her
to look after him if he does anything bad.
[Laura] This, to me, is incredibly compelling.
There's something here.
Our next step is, well, let's talk to Payton again.
So we bring Payton in.
And he laughs it off.
He says, "Oh, that? Yeah. That was a joke.
I made that story up.
I wanted to just prank her
and just to see if I could trust her
if anything ever happened with us."
So he kind of confirms what he told to her.
But it doesn't sit right,
'cause the story's just getting stranger and stranger.
[narrator] Investigators ask Payton
the same questions they asked him last time.
But now they listen for any changes in his story.
I ask Payton again when he last saw Harry,
and he says, "Oh, it was about a week before
you guys all came to the house."
So he's referring to when the bodies were found.
He says, "Yeah, I saw Harry driving around that week,"
just like everyone else said, in that truck.
[narrator] But that's not the story
Payton shared earlier.
Previously Payton said he hadn't seen Harry
since December 22nd at the dump,
several weeks before police discovered Harry's body.
[Dr. Arntfield] It's gonna naturally pique investigators' curiosity.
But let's face it, people get nervous,
uptight and annoyed frequently
having to speak with police investigators,
and don't necessarily remember things
as they normally would.
They often try to remember things
as they think they should.
[Laura] I let him know that, "You're acting suspicious,
and I think you know more,
or you have something to do with it."
[narrator] The Mounties have one way to find out.
We ask him to do a polygraph.
[narrator] To their surprise, Payton agrees,
and schedules to return in a week.
Now investigators consider whether their second hunch
about Payton has once again led them astray,
while the real double murderer is still out there somewhere.
We don't have any evidence
or anything else suggesting that
Payton is a suspect.
[narrator] While the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
prepare for a polygraph exam
scheduled for their double homicide suspect
Payton Saari,
Payton himself calls investigators, full of nerves.
[phone ringing]
[Laura] My phone rang.
Payton said, "Officer Laura,
I would like to confess to killing those two people."
[narrator] Payton also offers a reason.
[Laura] He says that Harry freaked out,
called him a racial slur.
Uh, Payton is of First Nations descent,
and he was very upset with that.
Payton says he was so mad,
he grabbed the closest thing nearby
which was a 2x4,
and he hit Harry in the head.
[narrator] Investigators are stunned,
unsure if they can really believe
Payton's unprompted claim,
and whether he could have done the same to Elsie
who didn't have a mean bone in her body.
Still, it's enough for Mounties to hold him
while they search for supporting evidence.
[siren wailing]
[Laura] Our team heads over to
the house where Payton Saari lives
with his family.
In speaking with Payton's mom,
she does talk about clothing
that Payton would normally wear,
and she does talk about
a red and blue Columbia brand jacket.
We did find that red and blue winter jacket
in the residence of Elsie and Harry.
[narrator] Confirming that jacket was Payton's
is drawing circumstantial evidence
linking Payton to the Steppa house crime scene.
Investigators now return to the Steppa house
to look for anything else that may link Payton to the crimes.
[Laura] As our identification unit
are going through Harry and Elsie's house,
searching in the basement of the residence,
they come across a snowboard.
And that is the snowboard that we believe
was stolen from Payton at some point.
Which starts to lend the fact
that maybe there was a real dispute
between Payton and Harry.
Is it something that he would kill Harry over?
[narrator] Payton now admits he was at the Steppa home
and also stole and sold electronics.
Surveillance video from local pawn shops
confirms his story.
[Laura] Payton was caught on video selling items
that were found actually in Harry's residence.
Gaming systems, electronics.
Things that Harry was known to steal.
[narrator] Payton sold Harry's stolen property
on February 15th, two months after
police believe Harry was killed.
With the evidence confirming his story,
Payton also confesses to killing Harry's aunt Elsie
and reveals the remaining details.
Investigators now know exactly what happened
the day Elsie Steppa and her nephew Harry were murdered.
[Stan] At approximately 2 p.m.
Harry asks Payton to help him take
some pallets and garbage to the dump.
Harry offers to pay him $20
and Payton agrees.
[Laura] At 3 p.m. Harry and Payton
are at the Ethelbert municipal waste site
and they get into a verbal altercation
which turns physical.
Payton hits him over the head numerous times with a 2x4.
[Stan] Payton is concerned
that Harry's gonna survive and tell the police
about what happened.
[Laura] He then slits his throat...
tosses him into the bed of the truck,
covers him with three wooden pallets
and some articles of clothing,
and he gets into the truck and drives away.
At 4:15 p.m.
Payton drives the truck back
to Elsie and Harry's home.
And as he's pulling into the driveway,
Elsie opens the side door.
He realizes that he's now been seen driving Harry's truck.
So he panics.
He sees an axe
just lying on the ground, so he picks it up
and bludgeons her.
He pushes her in the house
so that nobody will see what's happening.
He find a hammer and he hits her in the back of the head.
He then takes the drywall saw
and slits her throat as well.
[Stan] After Elsie was dead,
he put her into the bedroom where she was found.
And then he put the two dogs in there with her,
hoping that the dogs would just quietly die.
At approximately 5 p.m.
Payton looked around the house
to see what he could find
to steal and sell to somebody else.
[Laura] He accidentally leaves his red and blue coat.
Payton tells me that he would
frequently return to Harry's house,
he would drive the truck around.
All the while, Harry's body was in the back of the truck
covered in snow and pallets.
Payton tells me that he made the decision
to try to look like Harry while he was driving the truck
so he would wear a big, black toque
and Harry's sunglasses.
He talks about seeing people when he was driving,
and he knew people thought it was Harry.
[Stan] On May the 1st, 2013,
Payton is arrested
and charged with two counts of first-degree murder.
Payton was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
But the courts determined that he was criminally responsible
for the murders of Harry and Elsie.
Payton Saari is given
a mandatory life sentence
and his parole eligibility is set at 20 years.
This is a very tragic situation
'cause you can certainly imagine how
if these people had have had greater support,
how an outcome would have been different.
They're victims of a crime
which is almost like a horror movie.
It really highlights how we need to do better
to help people with mental health issues.
[Laura] Two homicides in the community of Ethelbert
really kind of destroyed a small town,
their peaceful, kind of, you know, country living.
It was very hard for people to understand
how and why and who.
[Stan] For five months nobody knew what was going on.
And to be able to tell people,
whether it's victims or community members, what happened,
that's a good feeling.
And that's why I do what I do.
[Laura] For Elsie, who I think is the most innocent in all of this,
she was trying to help her sister
raise a tough nut, and look how she ended up.