My Life as a True Crime Spectacle

For reasons that will become clear, I shouldn’t have enjoyed Serial, the viral podcast series. But I did. I devoured it. When my co-worker recommended that I tune in to season one, a journalist’s months-long investigation into a Baltimore student convicted of killing his girlfriend in 1999, I was skeptical. But, by the second episode, I was riveted. I quickly became one of the millions of people who eagerly awaited the weekly episode drop.

I usually have nothing but deep resentment toward the true crime genre. And on January 27, 2025, I got a stark reminder of why. I was drinking my morning coffee when my phone pinged, directing my attention to a Google Alert in my inbox. The subject line read: “Sea of Lies - CBC. Albert Walker was once Canada’s most wanted man.” The words hit me in the gut, and for a minute, I felt like I couldn’t move.

To most people, Albert Walker is the infamous Rolex Killer—a man who embezzled millions, fled to the UK and then committed murder to cover his tracks. Before being captured in 1996, when the police identified the victim’s body via his watch, Albert was indeed the most wanted man in Canada and the fourth on Interpol’s global list of most wanted criminals. The sensational nature of Albert’s crimes made his story true crime catnip: it has been the subject of at least three books and seven dramatized TV retellings, plus a seemingly endless slew of podcasts. But, to me, Albert Walker isn’t a source of arm’s-length fascination. He’s my dad. The choices he made affected my life in profound and painful ways—and I’ve never been able to fully escape the consequences.

I used to run to my dad every morning, and he’d hold my hand while I ate breakfast. Our morning routine brought me so much joy, but he had a real Jekyll and Hyde personality. One minute, he’d offer a treat—a much-coveted invitation to accompany him to the video store to pick out a movie. The next, he’d peel out of the driveway and leave four-year-old me weeping in the dust. The lesson: never make him wait for even a minute. He had no patience for anyone, but especially not for children. Another time, he threw my favourite toy, my stuffed Glo Worm, in the fireplace and made me watch it burn. He said I wasn’t being quiet enough. When I cried, he dragged me upstairs and hit me with a leather belt until I couldn’t cry anymore. The next day, it was like nothing had happened. We’d eat breakfast together, holding hands, and I’d do whatever it took to make him happy.

We lived in a century farmhouse on the outskirts of Paris, Ontario. When my dad and my mom, Barbara, separated in the summer of 1990, she kept the house, but a court had to decide what would happen to me and my three siblings: 18-year-old Jill, 15-year-old Sheena and 11-year-old Duncan. By then I was eight, an eager but pensive kid with the physique of a rake, and my dad had sold me on the idea of living with him. My mother didn’t like cats, he said, not like he did. But, despite my stated desire, the courts put my brother and me in the care of my mom. My sisters were considered old enough to make their own choices, and they went with our dad.

Duncan and I were supposed to see Dad every other weekend and on Tuesday nights, but it didn’t always work out that way. One evening when Dad was picking us up, he tried to force his way into the farmhouse. When my mom locked the door, he flew into a rage. It was nothing new—usually he would lunge right at whomever had set him off and drag them away for a beating. This time he couldn’t touch us, but somehow his disembodied voice was scarier. He kicked and punched at the heavy farmhouse door. I wanted to believe that he was upset because he loved us so much, that he couldn’t stand us being apart. Afterward, my mom filed a forced entry charge, and my dad was taken in to the local police station and fingerprinted.

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To me, the Rolex Killer isn’t an arm’s-length fascination. He’s my dad

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My parents’ separation left my mom in a precarious financial position. Together, they had built a financial services business, Walker Financial, and she had been forced out as their relationship broke down. Her new job paid much less, which became especially obvious at Christmas. My mom gave me a paperback book, but when I read it, she scolded me for playing with it “too hard.” She told me she wanted to be able to wrap it up and regift it the next year. My dad, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have any money troubles. After the break-up, he showered us with candy and new clothes from the Gap. That same Christmas, he took Sheena for a ski holiday and left elaborate gifts for the rest of us. I got a Swarovski crystal bunny in an ornate wooden egg, a massive stuffed bear and an Aerobie flying disk. He’d also been spoiling himself: he was driving a sleek new Jaguar.

A few days after Christmas, my mom came into the living room flustered. Albert and Sheena hadn’t come back from their ski trip as scheduled. No one knew where they had gone. My mom had a hunch that my dad was committing fraud at Walker Financial but didn’t have any evidence. Now that he was missing, she figured that she was right and he was on the run. But she’d never imagined that he’d take Sheena with him. Within days, Sheena’s Grade 10 photo was on TV and in the papers. Alongside it were reports that my dad had abducted her—and that he’d taken $3.2 million embezzled from clients with him. All the gifts and expensive clothes were starting to make sense. But, as I put it all together, a new concern emerged: if all of this was true, was he ever coming back?

My mom wanted us to tune in whenever there was a mention of Sheena or my dad on the news. She wanted people to know who he really was: a violent sociopath. I know she was worried about Sheena, but her overall perspective was that my dad being out of our lives was a good thing. I didn’t share her enthusiasm. When he wasn’t in a rage, he was warm toward me. I missed him.

After the initial flurry of news reports passed, an eerie silence took hold. There was a new normal: we barely spoke of Dad and were instructed to pray for Sheena’s safe return. In the months that followed, my mom pursued a master’s degree in math. Duncan and I were often alone. Food was sparse. We couldn’t afford heat. Anyone who left an unnecessary light on would get a stern talking to, but in the evenings, my mom started putting a plastic candelabra with electric bulbs in my bedroom window. She was hoping that Sheena would see it and come back to us. Something about that never made sense to me. Why would Sheena be so close that she could see into my window? My heart hurt at the thought of her choosing to stay away.

Everyone in our area knew who I was: one of the kids from that family. I tried with all my might to be normal. When picture day came, my instinct was to hide any hint of melancholy, so I swapped out my customary black tights and black sweatshirt combo for a shirt covered in pink roses and matching pink pants. At home, I tried to dull my mind. I would spend entire evenings playing solitaire on the computer until my eyes hurt. By the time I was 12, I’d learned that cannabis could bring a little brightness back to my dark and dreary life. I started taking twenties from my mom’s billfold and using them to buy two grams of weed at lunchtime.

Now and then, without warning, there would be a burst of renewed interest in my father and Sheena’s whereabouts. My mother eventually got Sheena’s story on Global’s Missing Treasures series. She made us watch the 10-minute segment together and recorded it on a spare VHS tape. The foreboding music in the opening credits gave me full-body shudders, and I got them again any time I saw the tape on the shelf in our living room. It was bad enough that the whole town knew I had a horrible dad—now anyone who watched Global would know my family’s awful history.

One evening, two OPP officers knocked on our door. My mom spoke quietly with them in the kitchen while I eavesdropped from the stairs. They shared that they had found some remains, and they wanted to look at Sheena’s dental records to see if they were a match. By the time they’d ruled Sheena out, I was spiralling. Would we find Sheena in pieces? Was my dad capable of murdering his own daughter? But we, and the OPP, didn’t realize that everyone was looking in the wrong place. My dad had taken Sheena with him to the UK, where he’d befriended a man named Ronald Platt. After helping Platt move to Canada, my dad assumed his identity in order to evade law enforcement.

My mom was constantly trying to get the OPP and the RCMP to do more to find Sheena, but their investigation went nowhere. Eventually, she hired a private investigator named Mike King. His lobbying helped get Interpol to issue a Red Notice, which meant that my dad’s name, his mugshot and the fingerprints taken the day he’d tried to bust down our door were distributed to police globally. By 1995, my dad was the fourth most wanted person in the world. In order to pay the hefty fees, my mom organized a pig roast fundraiser at our local fairgrounds. I hated being exposed like that—the freak family—but we needed the attention and support of the local farmers and townies.

Then, in 1996, Platt went back to England unexpectedly, which jeopardized my dad’s cover. So he invited Platt out on his boat, murdered him, tied his body to an anchor and threw it overboard. Eight days later, Platt’s body was found by a fisherman off the coast of Brixham. The serial number on Platt’s Rolex helped investigators identify his remains, which in turn led them directly to Albert and the Interpol notice. In October, we got the phone call we’d been waiting almost six years for: Sheena was alive and finally coming home.

My mother arranged for two cars to arrive at the airport when Sheena landed. One was a decoy: it would drive straight to our house, but without Sheena in it. The second would pick Sheena up, then take her to stay in Guelph for a few days. I thought it was excessive, but it turned out to be completely necessary. As news of my father’s arrest broke, journalists started calling incessantly. A dozen photographers stationed themselves on the dirt road outside the farmhouse. Keeping Sheena away was the right thing to do, but I begged my mom to let me stay with her. I couldn’t possibly focus on school. I was still coming to grips with the fact that my dad was a murderer. She allowed it, reluctantly, but chastised me for failing to be “a normal kid” during this stressful time.

Those first few days with Sheena were quiet. We bonded over how annoying the press was, but we didn’t really talk about the previous few years. I was scared to ask too many questions or say the wrong thing. Sheena had clearly grown into someone new. The sister I used to know wasn’t the one who came home. During that time, I also reckoned with my new reality. Albert’s actions were violent and sociopathic, and they brought on a new fear. Was any of this genetic? Would I become a sociopath too?

When Sheena and I eventually returned to the farmhouse, we were bombarded. Outlets that had never once shown any interest in Sheena’s abduction started scrambling to get her photo. Inside, even the tiniest flutter of our curtains would trigger an avalanche of camera flashes. Our phone rang almost non-stop every day. Some journalists wouldn’t even say hello—they would just launch into a litany of questions. No one seemed to care about how their aggressive calls or constant presence outside our home would affect a house full of abuse victims. The stakeout lasted five weeks, straight through the holidays. It ended only after some local farmers drove their massive hay wagons onto our yard to block the photographers’ view. The phone calls went on for much longer.

I turned to weed and alcohol to cope with the chaos. During lunch breaks at school, I snuck out to my grandma’s assisted living facility. When she left the room, I’d drink a few swigs of peach schnapps, then head back to science class. I was noticeably high every day. I took whatever drugs I could get from my brother or dealers around school. The only times I felt any lightness were when I was high.

Even after the media circus left town, our family was fractured. My mom was often emotionally and physically absent, and my dad was in jail. It seemed like my mom and siblings had come to a silent consensus: if they behaved as though everything were normal, they might feel normal. I was the youngest and had spent the least time with my dad, which my siblings viewed as a luxury. But clearly something was wrong with me. I was imploding. The more I tried to act normal, the more I fell apart and the more drugs I needed to quell that inner storm. Thoughts of suicide were never far away. If life is always going to be this painful and dysfunctional, can I really stand it indefinitely? I would sit in the pasture beyond the barn, holding a bright-red Swiss Army knife. The only thing that kept me from going through with it was that my mom had already been through enough.

Related: “I gave up everything to rescue my kidnapped child from my abusive husband”

In Canada, my dad was charged with fraud, theft and money laundering. Two years later, a British court convicted him of Platt’s murder and sentenced him to life in prison. He served the first few years in the UK but was eventually transferred to Kingston Penitentiary, then to William Head Institution, near Victoria, BC. Interest in my family died down but never faded completely. Every now and then, CBS or the New York Times would request an interview with Sheena, or another book would come out. There was even a play that premiered at the Blyth Festival in 2000. I’m not sure why my mom thought it was a good idea to attend, but she convinced me to go with her. I took a few friends and sat near the back so I could leave if it got too uncomfortable. My mom sat in the balcony, where I could hear her booing at parts where my sisters were portrayed unkindly or my dad was made out to be some sort of criminal genius. It was hard to know which was more embarrassing: her behaviour or the play.

Afterward, we went to a local pub to debrief, and to my shock, the cast surrounded our table. With eyes wide, they asked how we felt about their performances. “You’re fine,” I said. “It’s fine.” I tried my best to wave them off before my mom could sink her teeth in. No luck. For several minutes, she laid into them as if they’d written the thing themselves. After a while, I went outside, where my friends and I could smoke a joint in peace. The whole evening had been surreal; why not get really high to even it all out?

In my mid-20s, I discovered cocaine. I’d moved to Toronto and was working as a bar manager. Coke matched the chaotic feelings I’d had for so long. I kept my drug use hidden behind a stable job, a clean home and a busy social life, but most nights, I was attempting to master the art of mixing a box of red wine, a gram of coke, half a dozen joints, a pack of smokes and two tabs of MDMA. Then I’d bike around, hitting up after-hours clubs. It wasn’t until I tried ketamine that I met my match. I woke up one day to find my knee stuck to my bedsheets. When I pried it free, I saw that the adhesive was dried blood. My knee was crusty, swollen and deep purple. I learned from a friend that I had been found lying in the snow. Feeling out of control was my normal, as was the grey, pervasive bleakness that came afterward. I knew both feelings so well from growing up; it was no wonder I had sought them out again. But it finally hit me that I was at risk of hurting myself in ways that couldn’t be undone. I had only two choices: stop the cycle or be consumed by it.

I brought the same intensity to my sobriety that I had to my addiction. Despite my doctor’s advice, I went cold turkey. I continued working full time even as my body went through withdrawal. At 26, I was the youngest person in the 12-step support group I’d found for people from dysfunctional families. In the meetings, I would often hear, “You’re so lucky that you’re figuring this out so young!” No part of me felt lucky. But it was there that I learned about generational trauma, the personality types that drive dysfunction in families and common roles people fall into, like the scapegoat or the golden child. This was also the first time I heard of people going no-contact with their families for the sake of their own healing. It was generally considered a last resort, but sometimes it was necessary.

Related: “I spent eight months locked up in an Ontario reform school. The abuse I endured almost destroyed me”

My mom continued to make me feel like a failure for not figuring out how to mask my pain. I tried to talk to her about my feelings, about the impact our family’s dysfunction had on me, but she just crossed her arms and said, “I did my best.” So she was the first family member I cut off, and I found a tremendous therapist who helped me sift through more than two decades of pain, sadness, loss and depression. She eventually taught me about complex post-traumatic stress disorder, which is caused by trauma that occurs over sustained periods. It’s common in children from abusive homes, where danger is inescapable. But, when I told my brother that I might have complex PTSD, he laughed and asked if I’d been in a war. I never mentioned it to him again, and I didn’t dare bring it up to my sisters. They never questioned my decision to cut contact with my mom, but in their eyes, I’d spent the least amount of time with our dad and got through my childhood largely unscathed.

By my 30s, I regretted telling my siblings about my drug addictions. For them, it was another reason to remind me that I was a disappointment. But we all lacked a stable foundation, and because of that, everyone in the family struggled to get their footing as adults. Between the car accidents, divorces, overwhelming debts and rampant workaholism, one of us was always going through something. In those moments, I’d bring everything I was learning in therapy to family meetings. Eventually, I started initiating conversations about our shared traumatic past—until I was told to stop ruining the vibes with my bummer talks.

If our shared trauma was going to define our relationship, I wanted to be able to talk about it. My heart broke at the thought of losing them, but if they weren’t willing to do that, I knew I’d have to put some distance between us. In 2016, I told them I needed some space. After four months of separation, I texted each sibling individually asking to talk. Sheena didn’t respond, and we haven’t spoken since. Jill and Duncan both agreed to meet with me but then insisted that the past was no longer relevant. If that was how they felt, I said, I couldn’t continue having a relationship with them. After those conversations, I felt completely adrift—but I also had a new sense of peace. Now that I didn’t have to deal with their expectations, my path to healing was much clearer.

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The media was least interested in my family when we needed them most

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After all my time in therapy, I was better equipped to deal with the occasional updates I received about my father. In 2015, an officer from the Brant County OPP detachment, which oversees Paris, called me out of the blue. He shared the results of my dad’s psychological evaluation. Spoiler alert: he’s a sociopath who is highly likely to reoffend. It was disturbing to hear but also bizarrely reassuring to know that they finally understood what they were dealing with. I’ve seen journalists imply that he’s some sort of criminal mastermind, which makes me chuckle. From what I’ve seen, he’s totally unable to comprehend the scope of his crimes.

I have my own life now, completely separate from my family. I have a well-established wellness business in Roncesvalles. But, still, I’m often reminded that the past never dies. In June of 2023, my dad was given two months of day parole. When I heard, the fear and dread came rushing back. It was a stark reminder that he could return one day, and it brought up a new series of complications. My efforts to move past the trauma had been so successful that I had honestly forgotten to mention my dad to some of my closest friends or to the person I was dating at the time.

There is apparently no end to the appetite for the sensational story of the Rolex Killer. I know people love true crime. No one can quite figure out why, though many have theories. It may be morbid fascination, an instinct to prepare for the worst, a desire to see justice served. The genre’s popularity, though, is undeniable: 84 per cent of Americans consume true crime media, and it’s the most popular type of podcast in Canada. But, after everything I’d been through, I found that I couldn’t stomach it. To keep a steady nervous system, I avoided almost all of it, and certainly everything about my dad. Then I received the email notification about the CBC’s Sea of Lies series. I don’t have the luxury of easy access to updates. I was curious about whether there was any new information that, as Albert’s child, I should know. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, so I decided to listen to it all in one go.

I started in the late afternoon, and my listening session lasted until 11 p.m., with a few breaks to get fresh air, clear my head and shake out my body a bit. There is nothing more disgusting to me than being immersed in the world of my dad’s crimes. One of the most difficult moments was hearing my own name. One of my dad’s victims in the UK recalled how she had been told all about his kids. Knowing that he had spoken about me, that he had told people my name, was deeply unsettling. I had always told myself that, as the youngest child, I would have been the easiest for him to forget. It gave me some reassurance, a small sense of safety. That suddenly fell away. The distance between me and his penitentiary in BC, the lengthy prison sentence—these things no longer felt like buffers. It was as if he were standing right in front of me again, looking me straight in the eyes.

The next morning, I woke up feeling off. Before I could figure out what was wrong, I ran to the bathroom and threw up. By the time I crawled back to bed, the room was spinning. I went back and forth between the bathroom and my bed for the next four hours before the nausea finally let up. It wasn’t until the fifth hour that I managed to walk upright and take a couple of sips of water. It was three days before I fully recovered. I chalked it up to a bad case of food poisoning until, days later, I recounted the story to a trusted peer and wellness practitioner. “It wasn’t food poisoning, babes,” she said. “It was a trauma response.” I hadn’t wanted to see it, but in hindsight, it was so obvious. I have built a rich, full life, one I am extremely proud of, trauma and all. It’s been more than 30 years since I last saw my father, but I still vomit at the mere thought that he remembers me.

The more I thought about it, the more baffled I was. How could multiple journalists have spent hundreds of hours on a podcast series without reaching out to Albert’s family, his other set of victims? I wondered how they could mention me by name without even giving me a heads-up. I was struck by the fact that all of the fallout—the toll on my body, the income lost while I was sick, the clients I couldn’t support—was simply the price of someone else’s entertainment. The costs of trauma already run pretty deep. Twenty-plus years of therapy fees could have easily added up to a downpayment on a house.

There’s a distinct line between ethical journalism and exploitative trauma porn. At its best, true crime can be like Serial: a way to pursue justice where the police and courts have failed, to inform people of the many flaws in our criminal justice systems. A well-handled story can galvanize people into righting wrongs and fighting for justice. But a lot of true crime content is just a cheap bid for clicks that retraumatizes people who are already reeling. Victims often feel torn: they’re grateful for media attention if it helps solve their case or gives them a voice, but they also grieve the loss of privacy. They have no control over how, where and when people talk about their personal experiences in excruciating detail. Instances of journalists stalking victims at their homes or harassing them on the street are less common now, at least in Canada, but the internet has introduced a whole new way to invade someone’s privacy. Some true crime fanatics turn into self-styled sleuths, treating people’s personal lives as fodder without fully registering that they’re dealing with fellow human beings. I can see why fans of the genre want to avoid thinking about the impact it has on the people involved—it’s a bummer! But I tend to want to look at the hard parts of things. I suppose I’m wired that way from trauma.

In my experience, the media was least interested when my family needed them most. When Sheena had been missing for years and the police had all but given up on us, my mom had to beg news outlets to put her on the air. But, after word of my dad’s arrest broke, they hounded us. Now that I’ve finally found some peace, I feel like I’m getting kicked in the teeth with each retelling of my father’s crimes, years after they’ve lost their novelty. In writing this piece, I will lose the anonymity I’ve painstakingly built. But I felt strongly that it was important to speak up about the ugly side of true crime. I do think there are versions of my family’s story that still need to be told, that might actually deliver some justice. I’ve never seen a deep dive that tried to locate the millions of dollars my dad stole from his investors, the majority of which was never recovered. I’ve never seen a series that explored why the OPP and RCMP failed to push the case forward despite my mother’s pleas. It’s always immensely difficult to hear retellings of my father’s crimes—I doubt that will ever change. But, if someone made a podcast like that, I would gladly devour the story of the Rolex Killer.

This story appears in the April 2026 issue of Toronto Life magazine. To subscribe, click here. To purchase single issues, click here.