On October 3rd, 1980, a bomb was detonated outside a synagogue on Copenhagen Street in Paris.

Three decades later, French investigators finally identified a suspect in the case.

A Lebanese Canadian sociology professor, living a quiet life on the outskirts of Ottawa, Canada.

Is Hassan Diab guilty?

Can you introduce to yourself?

Or is the scapego? Hassan Diev guilty? Can you introduce yourself? Or is the escapego?

Hassan Diab. From Canada land, this is the Copernic affair. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

This is a CBC podcast. It was Halloween, 1996.

While everyone was putting on their costumes, pretending to be Tickle Me Elmo or Baby Spice,

or whatever the fine folks of 1996 dressed up as,

there was a man in the back of a police cruiser in Essex,

apprehended for pretending to be someone he was not.

David Davis was arrested under suspicion of murdering Ronald Platt.

They had proof he'd been stealing Platt's identity

and that he'd been in Devon that July,

the same month that Ron's

body was pulled up from the seabed. But if Davis really was the one who put him there,

the police needed evidence. So with Davis taken off in the cruiser, all attention turned

to his home.

The quaintly named Little London Farmhouse on Little London Lane.

Out in the world, Davis had been acting in the theatrical role of Ronald Platt for months.

So now the police were anxious to peer into the backstage area

...