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This is Christy, and welcome to Canadian True Crime.

Episode 21, Ernest DeRosch.

Prince Edward Island, or P-E-I, is an eastern province of Canada and is one of four small provinces that make up what's known as Atlantic Canada, along with the provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland and Labrador.

PEI has a population of about 145,000 residents and is most well known for farming.

It might only be a small province, but it produces 25% of Canada's potatoes.

And tiny little Prince Edward Island is actually the location for the universally beloved book by Lucy Maud Montgomery called

Anne of Green Gables. Up near the northwestern tip of PEI is a tiny settlement called St Rock, said to be one of the safest places to live in Canada.

But in 1945, a farming family welcomed a new baby boy

who would go on to change all of that.

This is the story of a tragedy and a survival.

It's the story of a family called the Ellsworths and and a man who would change their lives, and not in a good way.

The Ellsworths consisted of two related families

who all lived together in the next settlement to St. Rock,

a town called St. Peter and St. Paul.

At the core of the family were two sisters, Gloria and Bernadette Ellsworth, two ladies in their mid-20s who were extremely close. They weren't just sisters. They were mothers and they were

best friends who shared their lives together.

They were lively and enjoyed all that life on PEI had to offer.

Bernadette was married to Ivan and had three young kids,

young daughters Janine and Krista, as well as an infant boy named Sean.

Bernadette's sister Gloria and her husband, Ronald, had a daughter of their own called Cheryl, and Gloria was pregnant with her second child.

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