Canadian true crime is a completely independent production, funded mainly through advertising.

The podcast often has disturbing content and course language. It's not for everyone. Please take

care when listening. Hi there. I hope you're well. As I mentioned in the update a couple of weeks ago,

this is a carefully selected replay from the archives as we prepare to return with new episodes

in late April. Thanks so much for your patience. Many of us have watched Yellowstone, the glossy,

modern Western TV show about the fictional Dutton Family Ranch. There's a powerful family patriarch with a giant ego who becomes

the governor of Montana. There's high stakes family disputes, calculating power and land grabs,

and a lot of moral ambiguity. Eventually, all subtlety packed up and left the ranch.

The characters became self-parodies, and storylines spun in circles like that spinny horse maneuver that creator Taylor Sheridan seemed obsessed with.

Decades before Yellowstone, the TV show Dallas did something similar with the ruthless Ewing family's fictional oil and ranching empire in Texas.

While Dallas also leaned into melodrama, a real-life version of that story was unfolding just over the Canadian border.

And that's today's case.

Colin Thatcher came from a prominent ranching family in the prairies.

His father, Ross Thatcher, was the Premier of Saskatchewan,

and Colin followed him into politics.

Publicly, he was ambitious, influential, and a little chaotic.

Privately, his marriage was collapsing

into hostility, legal fights and escalating tension that eventually spilled into the public.

Then, his wife Joanne, mother of their three children, was found dead in her garage. The case gripped the nation. People drew parallels

to the TV show Dallas, comparing Colin Thatcher to the fictional oil tycoon J.R. Ewing,

scheming, manipulative, controlling, and always two steps ahead.

This case would turn out to be far darker than anything on scripted TV.

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