A conversation with David Ridgen about the Angel Carlick case

In the long-awaited eighthseason of Someone Knows Something, David Ridgen chases justice for Angel Carlick, a vibrant young activist who was killed at 18 years old in Whitehorse, Yukon. It's been more than 15 years since the tragic death, and her case remains unsolved. Ridgen travelled north to join Carlick's loved ones in the search for answers. Below is part of a conversation he had with CBC Podcasts about that experience.

How did you first hear about Angel Carlick's case?

I actually first heard about Angel's case back in the late 2000s when I was working for the CBC news program The National. I was doing documentaries about Canadian cases at that time, and Angel's case came across my radar. I was interested in it. I was interested in going there and looking into her case. Other cases that I was working on were taking priority though, in the South, and there were a lot of different kinds of parameters that were at play, and it just never came together. So I wasn't able to actually engage with Angel's case until SKS was developed. And eventually I was able to get up to the Yukon.

Can you tell us a bit about Angel? What did you learn about her in conversations with her family and her community?

Angel was a young 18-year-old woman from the Kaska Nation. She and her family, including her brother Alex and her mother Wendy, lived their younger lives in Good Hope Lake, which is in northern B.C., a beautiful community nestled beneath some pretty spectacular mountains and amazing forests. And eventually, Angel and her family moved from there to Whitehorse, which is in the Yukon, to further their schooling. And in Whitehorse, Angel was a community volunteer. She worked at a local youth center called Blue Feather, where she ran programs and assisted in the kitchen as a cook. And she was just about to graduate high school in Whitehorse in May 2007 when she disappeared.

What was known about Angel's case before you headed north?

There's only a few things that were known. Angel was getting ready to graduate high school and attended several graduation ceremonies and parties and barbecues. But over the weekend of May 26, 2007, Angel left one of these celebrations, and sometime after that, she met the person or persons who killed her. And several months passed with no real leads in the case. RCMP were eventually working on it. They did get tips. And then finally, Angel's remains were found by a hiker at a newly-developed suburb of Whitehorse about 20 minutes from downtown, called Pilot Mountain.

There were very, very few other details other than some rumors around town about what happened to Angel. There was some American serial killer who had been around and people were trying to connect that to Angel. And there was another fellow who had been beaten to death in Whitehorse who people were trying to connect to Angel's disappearance.

In the podcast, my aim was to look at some of these rumors and see if I could dispel them and then also find out what Angel's timeline was. Because the timeline is the most important thing to set up before you start walking down the road of any investigation. Where was Angel? Who saw her? Who was available to see her last? Who did police talk to? Who are police willing to tell me they talked to that said they saw Angel in those last moments? And basically just trying to figure out where Angel was across that weekend of May 26, 2007.

Who were the central characters in this story that helped you understand Angel's life and death?

Coming into the Yukon I engaged with a few communities who were very helpful: Angel's family and friends, including Alex, her brother who was very helpful over the phone and in person. Also, one of Angel's friends and kind of mentor, Laurie Strand. Both of them helped me in the podcast and I spend time investigating with members of the community looking into various tips that I receive. I go around with them into the communities and we kind of work together.

It's a tough thing for people that live there. It's one thing for me to come into these communities and say, 'Hey, I'm here, I'm going to help.' And it's another thing to engage with people to help on a case where they know the victim, but they also know everybody else I'm talking to. So there's some struggles involved is this person that I see every day a suspect? This person that I'm smiling at and engaging with on a community level, do they know something about what happened? So those kinds of questions come up and it's a sort of ongoing struggle, an ongoing story that we tell throughout the season.

Where does this season take us? Tell us a bit about the landscape of the Yukon and the town of Whitehorse.

Whitehorse is one of the more beautiful places I've seen in Canada in terms of physical layout and physical beauty. And the people are welcoming and of an independent stripe. There's all these different kinds of people coming together. It's a very small city. Very rugged, amazing place, surrounded by white capped mountains and boreal forest, raging streams and rivers. So that's the place that we're looking at this case. These are people that are very independently minded. They live in their communities, fiercely protective of their communities. And they know each other. They all know each other. So it's kind of like going into a huge small town, which is the size of a province, and doing a case.

What questions stand out to you about Angel's murder that weren't answered by police?

Number one, how did Angel get to Pilot Mountain? How did she get out there? And that's not been answered. Who was Angel last seen with? The other, of course, is how many people might have been involved. And the question has come up during the investigation. And it's something that I talk about in the case, because I don't believe that it was just one person.

In your experience, what are some challenges when investigating unsolved cases from many years ago?

Memory is the top problem. People can't remember what happened yesterday, let alone 30 years ago or 20 years ago or ten years ago. They can remember maybe what they might have told police over and over again, which is kind of helpful, but even that can be problematic. I mean, memory rewrites itself. Investigations have shown that every time you remember something, you rewrite that memory again. And in that translation process, you can imagine, it's like broken telephone. There's going to be something that's not perfectly rewritten. So over time, as you try to remember things over and over again, the memory can become corrupted. So it's difficult to sort of trust memory. And it's not something about trusting the person. This is trusting the nature of our biology because memory is very difficult. So what's great is if you can find documents to compare to memories.

What other challenges did you encounter while investigating Angel's case?

One of the challenges in approaching Angel's case is that it was so far away. So I had to engage on the phone for the first while, talking to Angel's brother, Alex. Also, the RCMP engaged with me on the case over the phone and I've had great success over the phone for investigations. In fact, sometimes I think the phone is superior to in-person meetings with people. But I really felt that for Angel's case in particular, it was important for me to get up to the Yukon on the ground and engage with the different communities face-to-face. I think there's great value in seeing the person in the flesh in front of you.

Trust needs to be built, and especially since I'm from the white settler community, I need to be available to do a lot of listening to people who have suffered immeasurably in this country over the years of its development from the beginning of European influence to now. It's been a very horrible, culturally-altering experience for them. Indigenous land taken, Indigenous children stolen, religions forced upon them, racist subjugation. I'd be an idiot to think I could just walk in as Mr. White Saviour.

Thankfully, Angel's family and friends are very gracious, amazing storytellers, and some of the most beautiful people I've met. And I was privileged to be able to work with them on Angel's case. Nothing that the audience will hear for Season 8 would have been possible without that trust and acceptance.

I wish I'd been able to stay longer. There's something about the Yukon. There's something about the people and the communities that made me want to stay. And I really wish that I'd met Angel. I really wish she was here.

Q&A edited for length & clarity.