(ominous music)
(phone beeping)
- [plumber] it looks like flesh type of stuff, meat,
And we don't know what it is.
- [narrator] a gruesome discovery-
- My goddaughter died in there.
She was chopped up.
She was filleted like a fish.
- [narrator] a development that changes the investigation.
- Police today confirming that they have found the dna
Belonging to a second young woman
Who went missing nearly a decade ago.
- To a logical person, it doesn't make sense
You'd keep all that evidence around.
- [narrator] a high-stakes interview.
- [narrator] investigators searching for answers
In the interrogation room.
(brooding music) (clock ticking)
(uneasy music)
- [darren] she was described as having
Some sort of a mental episode.
The mother made a decision to take her up to the hospital
To have her checked.
The mother and daughter that brought her there left,
Leaving rori in the care of the hospital.
(ominous music)
For whatever reason, she ended up leaving
Before she was actually seen by a physician,
And we see her exiting the hospital on her own.
That was the last known sighting we had of her.
(date clicking)
- I went over to her apartment.
Nothing had changed; she hadn't been there.
Nobody had heard from her.
I realized, "something's wrong, terribly, terribly wrong,"
And I just, I had a really bad feeling.
(uneasy music)
I went into panic mode.
I made thousands of missing persons posters.
There wasn't a place that you could go downtown oshawa
That you didn't see my goddaughter's face.
I made sure that every post had her picture.
Out 'til 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning talking to people.
You don't think about that environment,
You just think about finding your little girl.
- They had a massive search going on for rori.
Family members and friends had created a website
For people to go to.
There was all kinds of people going on the website,
Offering opinions and thoughts.
Rori was an 18-year-old, somewhat troubled, young female
Living in oshawa.
Rori had told family members that she was pregnant.
- I love rori.
She's the type of girl that found the good in everybody.
She was very inquisitive.
She was the kid of all knowing.
She was very active, she was in sports all the time.
And she had her own little way about her,
So beautiful.
(waves lapping)
- On the 11th of September, 2017,
We received a call from some fishermen
That were down on the pier.
(brooding music)
- They saw something in the water
And they thought at first it was a turkey carcass
And they began to cast their spoons.
But once it landed on the cement pier,
It became pretty apparent that it was the torso of a female.
(brooding music)
- I arrived there maybe just after 9:00.
It's not what I expected to see, as far as a dismemberment.
It was clearly not an accident.
The thoughts going through my head was,
Are we looking at somebody with a medical background,
Possibly a hunter, an avid hunter,
A butcher, somebody good with knives?
(uneasy music)
The community were coming up with a lotta their own theories
And their own speculation
And their own conclusion as to what happened.
- Little town, things like this don't happen,
And you now have to put it together for yourself.
You have a torso and your goddaughter's gone.
- There was no identifying marks on the torso
Such as tattoos or scars from surgery,
So we were dependent on dna.
- I submitted some clothing and such.
They got in touch with rori's biological father
And he submitted his dna.
It felt like this forever thing.
(brooding music)
- Tonight, a tragic turn in the search
For a missing teen in oshawa.
Durham police have identified a torso
Found on the lakefront in September
As that of 18-year-old rori hache.
- You don't know how your sweet goddaughter
Ended up dismembered and the rest of her is missing
And thrown in a lake like she's a piece of garbage
In our little town.
- The fact she was 18 years old, a beautiful young female,
And the horrific crime that had happened to her,
There was pressure from the people in oshawa.
They wanted answers.
(water trickling)
- The worst part is that they're still out there.
They're out there.
Whoever did this is not caught, we don't know who they are.
(pensive music)
- Really, at that point, everybody was a suspect
Until we eliminated them.
It was a case of delving into rori's background,
Who she was with, where was she,
And why would somebody wanna do this to her.
We had no suspects in September,
No suspects October, November.
We exhausted pretty much every avenue we could
Up until the break we got at the end of December.
(dramatic music)
(phone beeping)
(ominous music)
- The issue started several days before.
He didn't want any plumbers called.
He tried snaking the drain himself.
He was taking efforts to fix it.
By the 29th, it was getting so bad, the smell,
The pipes were backing up into people's bathtubs.
People upstairs just took it upon themself
To call a plumber.
The officers on the scene decided to knock on the door
Of adam strong's basement apartment.
They recall him putting his head down
And making a comment almost instantaneously that,
"the jig's up.
It's a body."
(tense music)
He commented to the arresting officer,
"if you want the rest of her, she's in my freezer
And she's pretty defleshed."
And there in fact was somebody in the freezer, as adam said.
- Good evening.
It has been a double dose of tragedy for an oshawa family.
Police once again confirming
That they have found the remains of 18-year-old rori hache.
- Rori had a distinct tattoo.
She had the word "alive" tattooed on her neck.
And when they looked through the freezer,
They found a human head
And there was a tattoo clearly displayed.
I knew right then, yeah, it's rori.
- You can't even think that rori
Would find herself in a position
That her demise was met this way.
You can't even correlate those two things.
You can't reconcile them.
And the worst is yet to come. (whimpers)
- [reporter] police say they don't have enough
To charge adam strong with murder.
- We need the evidence to lay the charge
And this will take time.
(siren wailing)
We didn't know at that point what the cause of death was.
To lay that charge, you need the grounds.
A decision was made to continue our investigation
To see where it took us down the road.
We had no idea what adam was gonna tell us.
Have a seat right here, adam.
(clock ticking)
- The team itself didn't have the opportunity
To plan and prepare.
They had no idea what they were getting into.
(ominous music)
- My goddaughter died in there.
She was chopped up.
She was filleted like a fish.
And she was disbursed in the most horrendous way.
- [reporter] the 18-year-old was last seen alive in August.
Her torso was found in the oshawa harbour a month later.
Then, the grisly discovery of more of hache's remains
In the basement apartment of this house on mcmillan drive.
(intense music)
- In canada, you don't have the right
To have your attorney or lawyer present with you
During the interview.
You do have the right to a phone call
To talk to them for advice.
But once that interview starts,
It's just you and the interviewer
And you have to navigate that yourself as a suspect.
You can choose not to answer questions,
But you can't choose to stop the interview
When you exercise that right.
So, the police essentially have the right
To continue to ask you questions, within reason,
Even if you choose not to answer them.
(brooding music)
(clock ticking)
- When we walked in the room, I thought he would be nervous,
Being placed under arrest
With the body parts of a young female in your freezer.
But he was a calm as a cucumber, which I didn't expect.
When he started feeling the pressure,
He would do certain things to relieve the pressure.
He'd change the subject quickly.
- He'll talk about any subject under the sun
Except for the reason why he's sitting across from us.
That's just the way adam's wired.
(clock ticking)
- Thank you.
Was pretty confident we had the evidence for the indignity.
However, our goal was to find out what happened to rori,
What caused her death.
It was strongly believed that adam either was involved
Or caused it or knew what happened to her.
He clearly wanted to engage in conversation,
Just not about the reason why he was there.
- The reason we're showing these photographs,
We're pulling on his decency as a human being.
It had little effect on him at all.
If you're sitting across from somebody
Who has no empathy whatsoever or no conscience,
It creates an uphill battle for us.
You can't play on those emotions
That you normally could with a decent human being.
- I didn't know what to make of adam.
I knew very little of him.
I didn't know if this was his normal way of acting.
If I had known then what I know now about adam strong,
It was clearly a game for him.
(brooding music)
(pensive music)
- You're trying to build that relationship with him.
I'm treating you with respect.
I'm making sure your needs are met.
There's a social interaction that's been put in place now
Where it's just two people, I've got you a meal.
(pensive music)
- After three hours of doing it,
It was clear we weren't gonna get anywhere.
(burping)
- We were just going in circles.
- Let's just shut it down now.
We could have sat there for another three or six hours,
I don't think we were gonna get any different results.
(intense music)
- Really, all I got from that interview
Was a sense of who adam was
To help us going further down the road
With the investigation.
- The hache case is still very much an active investigation.
Police say they're going to dig up strong's yard.
They've also seized his boat.
They're asking anyone with information about him
Or his boating trips on lake ontario to come forward.
(brooding music)
- Adam strong was not on the police radar.
He hadn't worked in several years.
He would bounce around from job to job to job.
And from speaking with his close friends,
The men had a different perspective of adam
Than the women did.
The girls painted a picture of adam, very sadistic sexually,
Was into bondage, violent sexual behavior,
Very dominating type person.
You talk to the male side of things from his friends
And the majority of them would describe him
As the kind of guy
That would give you the shirt off his back,
Would give you his last dollar,
Would let you stay at his place if you had nowhere to live.
- [reporter] police describing the crime scene
At this home on mcmillan drive as extensive,
So much so they've applied for a 30-day extension
On the original warrant.
- It was the worst apartment I've ever been in
For clutter and dirt and mess.
You could barely move
Because of a few little walkways in there.
- [paul] there was a number of sex toys
Located in the apartment, restraining devices,
Handcuffs and whatnot.
(tense music)
- There was a bent hammer we had located rori's dna on.
Rori's running shoes were located
In a bag in the apartment.
There was blood spatter located on the wall
And bottom baseboards leading into adam's bedroom.
(brooding music)
That knife's only designed for one use and one use only.
It's a knife used by hunters
For cutting and skinning animals.
To a logical person, it doesn't make sense
You'd keep all that evidence around,
But seemed to be the way adam thought.
The dna that was located on that knife,
It wasn't through blood, it was tissue-like material.
We sent that knife off for analysis.
We received the results back,
That knife contained the dna of a second female.
(sullen music)
- Disturbing developments in the murder investigation
Of rori hache, whose partial remains were found
Inside this central oshawa home late last year.
Police today confirming that they have found the dna
Belonging to a second young woman
Who went missing nearly a decade ago.
- The other remaining missing female at the time
Was identified as kandis fitzpatrick
From the oshawa area.
- The second victim was a 19-year-old female
Who went missing in 2008.
And very much like rori, she was out of the house on her own.
Both victims were in their late teens
And both victims were more of a petite build,
Longer brown hair.
- Almost a spitting image of each other.
She went missing 10 years prior
And adam went undetected for 10 years.
It makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.
- [reporter] strong is now charged
With first-degree murder in hache's death,
As well as the death of 18-year-old kandis fitzpatrick.
(brooding music)
- The dropping,
And then the newer charges was, I think,
A calculated risk on their part
Because the indignity to a body was essentially a slam dunk.
There's no evidence to suggest or to prove
That he premeditated killing the victim.
There's no suggestion that it wasn't just,
For example, an accident.
That does put a lot of pressure on that interview
Because this is essentially the one opportunity
You're gonna have to sit down with strong
And gather what you can gather.
And if you don't,
There's a very real risk that he is set free, essentially.
(brooding music)
- My preparation for the interview with adam strong
Actually began by watching his first interview.
It was apparent to me that adam strong
Shied away from any direct questions.
- So, I knew that wasn't going to be my approach.
I knew what I was gonna try and do in that interview room,
Engage him as much as I could in dialogue.
- You have the high stakes, obviously,
What's riding on the interview.
This entire interaction's being videotaped start to finish
And that will be sent to the defense,
That will be sent to the judge,
And they will watch every minute of it
And look for every possible violation.
- I spent probably three weeks preparing
And had everything as I wanted it
And just waited for the day to come.
(brooding music)
I certainly felt some pressure.
The reality is if there was no conviction,
Then he was a free man.
(clock ticking)
- I was wearing a suit.
I want the person across from me
To know they're dealing with a professional, set the tone.
The old expression,
"you only get a chance to make a first impression once,"
Rings true in any interrogation.
- Well, you know what?
Certainly checked into how he had been treated thus far.
That's important and it speaks toward admissibility.
Addressed any needs that he had
And he said he hadn't eaten, so we took care of that.
(adam gasping)
- I certainly knew we couldn't rush
Into talking to adam about the case,
Given the fact how it went
With the two detectives back in December of 2017.
Sharing a meal with somebody, breaking bread with somebody,
It's a chance to bond and talk.
- Talked about a whole bunch of different things
To get him into the mindset of just realizing,
"hey, I can talk to this guy
And build a little bit of a relationship."
- And then, once that had gone on
For an hour and a half or so,
I started to talk about the case a little bit.
(clock ticking)
- Paul importantly doesn't react
To what most people would perhaps react to,
Which is, again, a rather shocking thing to say.
- I'm not crazy about sucking in secondhand smoke
In a room that's only about eight-by-eight,
But, again, I wanted him to be comfortable.
I wanted him to like me.
If you do something nice for somebody,
Typically they feel some sort of obligation
To do something nice for you.
- Mother's intuition.
- I did shake his hand at that point,
And that can go either way.
That's a kind of a gamble on my part doing that.
I wanted to thank him for making an admission.
- It's one of the first times that adam has moved
From, "maybe I don't wanna talk about that,
Let's leave it at that," to actually disclosing something
He perhaps wasn't intending on saying.
- I can't waver.
When somebody does tell you something shocking,
You really can't react.
Every time there was a little bit of information
Given to me, maybe even unknowingly by adam strong,
Inside I was giving myself a little fist-pump
Only because I thought
We were advancing the case a little bit here.
(ominous music)
(brooding music)
- The whole purpose of laying out the evidence presentation
Is to make him aware that the case is built against him,
With the goal of maybe making
The person across from you realize,
"oh my god, they got way more than I thought they got."
It basically started with a case overview.
Basically, I think my first slide
Was a picture of the two victims,
Healthy-looking pictures from the media
That their families would have provided.
The next picture would have been a headline
About the torso being found.
I had a slide in there
About statements that adam made to the police
When they came to his door.
- There was some photos of rori's bruises
And I presented the photographs and asked adam about them.
- There is a strategy to this methodical unveiling
Of piece after piece after piece.
Goal is to build in the suspect's mind
That there's not a whole lot of point in denying
At least some aspects of this because we have these things.
- This is your opportunity to actually do the right thing.
That type of appeal to an adam strong
Certainly wasn't gonna work.
He had no remorse.
But he was very interested in what was on the laptop.
- He thinks, and they are,
Only talking about dismemberment and disposal,
But in fact it's allowing, in this case, the judge
Ultimately to make inferences about what must have happened
During the actual murders that took place.
(brooding music)
(clock ticking)
And his response was, "I'm doing good, yeah.
Good to keep going."
That just, inside,
I would give one of those little fist-pumps right there
Because I know that's something
That would be looked at in court.
He was there because he still wanted to be.
(clock ticking)
(brooding music)
He was still talking right up 'til the minute
I shook his hand and left that room.
There was no clear confession where he said,
"this is how I killed so-and-so
And this is how I killed so-and-so,"
But it was a series of inculpatory statements.
And I think, at the end of the day,
I'm sure he wishes he hadn't said as much as he did.
- 46-year-old adam strong has been held
In this police division overnight
As police laid two charges of first-degree murder.
He appeared via video link on a projector screen
In the courtroom just down the street from here,
His back to the wall,
His black hair stringy around his face.
When asked, he said his name and then,
"I'm tired, I just want to go to bed.
I've been up all night.
It's been a long day."
(brooding music)
- I think he thought he was a lot smarter
Than everybody that was sitting across from him.
(intense music)
- The judge watched the entire 12-hour interview,
Went through it, and the ruling came back quite clearly
That strong was well taken care of,
He seemed comfortable, his needs were all met,
There was no trickery, there was no oppression.
This was essentially a slam dunk in terms of admissibility,
Which is rare for a 12-hour interview.
(intense music)
- A video court appearance is set today
For the oshawa man now facing two murder charges
In connection with the killings of two teenage girls.
- Yes, there's forensic evidence,
But in order to move from that
To any type of homicide charge,
Particularly first-degree, which is planned and deliberate,
That's because of the interview.
That's because of the context
Of what he said during that 12-hour interaction.
So, it really was the linchpin of this case.
(uneasy music)
(dates clicking)
- [reporter] adam strong,
Guilty of first-degree murder and manslaughter,
Is now going away to prison for good.
- Adam was convicted of first-degree murder on rori
And ultimately convicted of manslaughter
On the second victim instead of first-degree murder.
I think it was really to do with the lack of evidence
On a murder.
- Detective mitton and the investigative team
Got a first-degree murder charge
And a manslaughter with no confession.
- He seemed shocked and put his head down.
Maybe he thought he was gonna be guilty on one
But not the other,
But to be convicted on both might have been a shock to him.
- I'm disturbed by what I've seen in the courtroom.
That man has no emotion.
You would think he was here
For running over a kid's basketball today.
That's the empathy he has for what he's done.
(uneasy music)
(dates clicking)
- [reporter] strong received a sentence
Of life in prison without parole for 25 years
And 18 years concurrently for the manslaughter conviction.
- There definitely was a danger.
They pulled the indignity,
So if things went south in that interview room,
He may have walked.
That would have been a travesty.
- The sentence he was given is the maximum sentence
You can receive in this country.
So, yes, I feel justice was served.
- [reporter] in his remarks, justice joseph di luca
Addressed strong directly, saying,
"your moment before us is done.
You are a dangerous predator
Who will never be seen in public again."
- Having the judge say what he said,
It felt right and it felt good
And I found a little peace in that.
I was ready to start mourning rori.
(sullen music)
(dates clicking)
- While adam was in custody,
Adam revealed the location of the burial
Of the second victim and even took the police to the area
Or general area where it was.
- Human remains buried underground
Were first located on Monday, November 8th.
I can confirm today that the remains found last November
Are those of kandis fitzpatrick.
- I personally think he's been incarcerated now
In that facility for a number of months
And maybe he felt like he needed some time out
And this was a way for him to go on a bit of an outing
Is to give up some information like that.
But I don't think that he found remorse all of a sudden.
- Anyone can do an interview,
But to be a high-level interviewer like this
Is incredibly complex.
You kind of forget just how difficult it is
And how few people can do it at that level.
(intense music)
- I think this case challenged me most.
This interview definitely was the highlight of my career.
- It's really tough to describe adam strong.
I have never met an individual like him.
It was a tough investigation, but we speak for the victims.
We're trying to bring them justice
And give the family answers.
- I'll always be holding my breath when it comes to this.
It'll never be over for me.
She had her entire life ahead of her.
That chance was taken from her.