Dead Ends (2 page)

Esther confronted Rene, who denied having an affair.

Soon after, Esther was struck by a mysterious illness. Stomach pains, then back pains and nausea and diarrhea. Her hands went numb, and she could scarcely lift a book or feed herself. She started to miss work, and made worried visits to doctors. Doctors ran through the usual suspects—gallbladder problems and other ailments were diagnosed, and ruled out.

And Esther became sicker, and sicker, with increasing visits to the hospital. Finally, early that summer, she was admitted for a long stay. Still, doctors were baffled.

Rene was the dutiful husband. He even brought Esther food he had prepared, at home and in the hospital, and her favourite White Spot vanilla milkshakes, one of the few things she could stomach as she got sicker and sicker.

But Rene Castellani, despite his denials,
was
having an affair. Lolly was the nickname of Adelaide Miller, a receptionist at
CKNW
. She was much younger than Rene and Esther, attractive and stylish, with upswept hair and artfully made-up eyes. And available—Lolly had been recently widowed when her husband drowned while they were boating.

Esther wasn't unattractive, with a friendly face and short, permed hair. But she was no Lolly.

The relationship began in the fall of 1964. Within months, the couple's lack of discretion was making waves at the station, and rumours spread quickly.

Lolly was fired in May because of the relationship; Rene was spared, supposedly because Esther was sick. (That Lolly, single mother of a six-year-old son, was not entitled to similar compassion says a lot about women's place in the workplace in 1964.)

Their recklessness would ultimately prove much more costly.

On July 11, 1965, five days before their wedding anniversary, Esther died. An autopsy at Vancouver General Hospital the next day found the cause was heart failure and an unknown viral infection. Her body was released, and buried two days later in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Burnaby.

And Rene and Lolly might have lived happily ever after.

Except the case nagged at Dr. Bernard Moscovich, the internist who had cared for Esther. He wanted—needed—to know why she had died. And after poring over the charts and evidence, he concluded something toxic had killed her, perhaps arsenic. He ordered tests on tissue samples—and the results found lethal quantities of arsenic, hundreds of times the normal levels.

Moscovich reported the findings to police, and they searched the Castellani home and found a box of Triox weed killer under the kitchen sink. The main ingredient—arsenic.

On August 3, Esther's body was exhumed from its concrete vault, and an examination confirmed poisoning by arsenic, administered over a period of months.

There was still no direct link to Rene. But police suspicions were certainly heightened when they found Rene had left on a Disneyland holiday with Lolly, her son, and his daughter five days after his wife's death. And that the couple had already applied for a loan to buy a house together.

Police began building a case. They learned of the affair, the long, lingering illness, the arsenic poisoning, and the unseemly activities of Lolly and Rene after Esther's death. (By September, they were living together.)

And witnesses began recalling those milkshakes Rene had encouraged Esther to drink every day, the meals he sometimes brought to the hospital—and the way the milkshake containers and any leftovers always seemed to disappear when he left.

The noose was tightening.
CKNW
fired Castellani in October. In December, a three-day inquest heard about the affair, the arsenic poisoning, and the partially emptied box of weed killer under the sink. And the inquest jurors heard about the milkshakes, and the way the containers always disappeared from the hospital room.

Coroners' juries can't assign guilt. But someone killed Esther, they concluded.

It was just a matter of time after that. Rene was charged with murdering Esther on April 7, 1966, just days after he and Lolly had applied for a marriage licence. He couldn't make the $15,000 bail.

The trial began on October 31, 1966—Halloween. He pleaded not guilty. But over nine days, and with more than forty prosecution witnesses, the case was built against Castellani. Witnesses described the suspicious milkshakes, and a nurse testified that Rene had given her a ride home and casually asked when she thought Esther would die—a question she found chilling from a supposedly concerned husband.

Other witnesses testified about the affair, and that Rene and Lolly had told them about their marriage plans even before Esther was dead.

That, the prosecutor said, explained the motive. In 1965, divorce in British Columbia was still covered by the terms of the British Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857. Unless Esther was cheating, or guilty of cruelty to Rene, he couldn't divorce her. She wasn't. The marriage plans meant Rene knew he was going to kill his wife, they argued.

Doctors and experts testified the arsenic was administered over at least five months, ruling out some one-time mishap. The poisoning was consistent with Triox, the weed killer found under the kitchen sink. (Its presence was never explained; Triox killed everything, including lawns. It was for clearing brush, not tidying a home garden.)

And analyst Eldon Rideout testified that Esther's hair samples showed a significant drop in the amount of poison she was consuming during the eight days Castellani was atop the auto dealer's sign.

That could have been good news for defence lawyer Al Mackoff. If Esther had been given arsenic while Rene was on top of a giant sign for a week, he couldn't have been the killer.

But prosecutor P. G. Bowen-Colthurst quickly produced witnesses to confirm that Rene hadn't really remained on top of the sign, slipping down regularly and even visiting Esther in hospital. Even the landmark publicity stunt was a hoax.

Rene didn't testify. The defence called no witnesses. It took the jury, twelve men in suits, four hours to find him guilty, and only ten minutes to decide against leniency—meaning Castellani should hang for the crime.

It wasn't over. He appealed, saying the judge had made errors in instructing the jury. The British Columbia Court of Appeal agreed, and ordered a new trial.

When it began, on September 25, 1967, new defence lawyer Charles Maclean tried a different approach. Castellani took the stand and denied killing Esther, pleading his complete innocence. His daughter, also a defence witness, testified that an aunt had threatened to kill her mother.

But the doctors and the analysts and the nurses and the friends told the story.

It took the jury a bit longer—six hours of deliberation. But Rene was again found guilty, and again sentenced to death.

Castellani appealed to the British Columbia Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada to overturn the verdict. Both turned him down.

But Rene was spared the noose. In 1967, under then prime minister Lester Pearson, the government introduced legislation providing for a five-year moratorium on capital punishment. (The death penalty was abolished in 1976.)

Instead, Rene Castellani went to prison, and stayed there until 1979.

He always maintained his innocence. And he remained convincing. After being released from jail, he went back into the radio business, first in Abbotsford and then as promotions manager at Nanaimo's
CKEG
, a new country radio station trying to break into the market. He was even married again—though not to Lolly.

But freedom was short-lived. Castellani died of cancer on January 4, 1982, in Nanaimo.

It had been a long, hard fall from his perch on the top of the BowMac sign.

T
hey called him Crazy Eddie in the Okanagan Valley.

Eddie Haymour complained constantly that powerful forces were conspiring against him, plotting to steal his land and his dreams, ruining his life.

The provincial government, police, and bureaucrats were part of the conspiracy, he'd tell anyone who would listen.

By 1972, most people dismissed the former barber as paranoid, a nut.

But Haymour was right. Powerful politicians and bureaucrats
were
conspiring against him, using and abusing the courts and coercion to kill his dream and force him to sell his beloved Lake Okanagan island to the government at a desperately cheap price.

What nobody realized was how far Eddie would go to get justice.

Haymour was an outsider in the small Okanagan community of Peachland, about thirty minutes south of Kelowna, when he came to pursue his vision of the Canadian dream in 1970.

He was born forty years earlier in the Beqaa Valley of Lebanon, an area of rich farmlands, hills and lakes, and spectacular Roman ruins. His family—his Muslim father and Christian mother—decided to move to Beirut when he was a young man, and Haymour became a barber.

But he wanted more. And in 1955, he emigrated to Canada, where his sister was already living. Haymour didn't speak English, and arrived with seventeen dollars in his pocket. He got
a sign that said “Me Barber,” learned to pronounce the two words, and walked around Edmonton until he got work.

Haymour worked hard, with tremendous energy. He started his own barbershop, bought a home, and opened hair salons and stylist schools in Calgary and Edmonton. It was the Canadian dream.

He was charming, handsome, captured in a photo in white tux and black bow tie, a cigarette in one hand, black hair shiny and swept back, a strong cleft chin.

In 1960, when he became a Canadian citizen, Haymour was so proud that he threw a lavish Mideast-themed celebration for 250 people, complete with belly dancers. Edmonton mayor Elmer Roper and the lieutenant governor were on the guest list. “The best day of my life,” he recalled later.

But as he neared his forties, Haymour started to reflect on his life. He had married a Canadian, Loreen, and they had four children. But Haymour worked constantly and the marriage was increasingly strained.

It was time for a change.

In 1970, Haymour decided the Okanagan Valley offered a new start. With the fruit trees and gentle hills surrounding the large lake, it reminded him of the Beqaa Valley.

The Okanagan was a conservative place in 1970. Kelowna had 19,000 residents, less than one-sixth today's population.

Haymour—with his Lebanese background, self-made wealth, and a big personality—stood out. Especially when he built his dream house on a rocky ridge overlooking the lake. It was enormous, and defied architectural labels, part Moorish castle and part German chateau.

The site offered spectacular views across the valley. Which meant the towering house, with seven bedrooms, three living rooms, and two elevators, was visible for miles. People called it an eyesore, sniffed at the ostentation.

Haymour had more plans. He dreamed of a Mideast-themed amusement park to bring people to the Okanagan. On a Sunday afternoon drive, he spotted Rattlesnake Island, in front of Peachland. It was empty, just rock and scrub and grass, and, at 1.8 hectares, a perfect place to build his dream.

Haymour was a doer. He found out the unzoned property could be developed any way he wanted. He presented his ideas to Peachland council, which agreed to help with an onshore dock for the water taxis that would ferry visitors to his attraction.

And he bought the island, drafted his plans, and started building. Haymour didn't hire architects; he walked the island and started sketching—a dock to welcome visitors here, an eighteen-hole miniature golf course, each hole celebrating a different aspect of Mideastern culture, here, two pyramids, a swimming pool, restaurants serving delicacies from his homeland, a twelve-metre-tall concrete camel children could play inside, a cave, and a pretend submarine.

But some well-connected locals weren't happy—including W. A. C. Bennett, the legendary Social Credit premier who represented the riding.

Suddenly, Haymour started having problems. Approvals he needed for things like a sewage system were stalled in the bureaucracy. The Highways Ministry blocked access to the ferry dock. The provincial government retroactively zoned the island as ‘“a forest and grazing reserve,” even though it only had one tree.

When he tried to welcome several hundred guests to a preview in June 1972,
RCMP
officers spent the day at the water taxi dock discouraging people from attending.

Haymour pressed on, despite the enormous challenges and mounting costs. He became increasingly convinced he was the victim of a conspiracy.

But the Royal Bank heard about the problems and delays and pulled his loans.

The project was dead, and the $170,000 he had spent on it was lost. Haymour couldn't pay his bills. His marriage, not surprisingly, began to fall apart, and in July 1973 Loreen and the children moved back to Alberta. The government made a lowball offer of $40,000 for the island.

But Haymour wouldn't sell. He complained of the conspiracy, pleaded for help from anyone he could reach, even flying back to ask the Lebanese government to intervene. No one believed him. In fact, people thought he was nuts.

But Haymour was right. Behind the scenes, Bennett, provincial cabinet ministers, local officials, and at least six government departments had been secretly conspiring to make sure the project would never be built.

Then Haymour went too far. He started to talk about using violence to force the government to address his case. The
RCMP
put him under surveillance, and an undercover officer befriended him and listened to his angry rants.

On December 19, 1973, police arrested Haymour and Crown prosecutors laid thirty-seven criminal charges, including manufacturing letter bombs, plotting to blow up a bridge, and conspiring to hijack an airplane. He spent six months in jail awaiting his day in court, passing some of the time by trimming other inmates' hair.

Prison was a nightmare. He learned Loreen was filing for divorce and the bank was foreclosing on the island. His dream home was destroyed in a suspicious fire. The insurance renewal form hadn't reached him in jail, so he had no coverage.