HUNTER: Whispers, innuendo hover over Smiths Falls murders
· Toronto Sun
See more Toronto Sun on Google — save as a Preferred Source
For years, there were whispers but no real proof of anything untoward. Just unsettling innuendos and deeply troubling rumours.
Visit playerbros.org for more information.
And the cops? They weren’t about to tip their hand.
That was then.
Bodies discovered at same address
But the situation has blown up in tiny, hardscrabble Smiths Falls, Ont., population 9,200. Over the course of eight years, three men vanished and a fourth was found dead by the side of the highway.
Small towners will tell you: These sorts of matters are never coincidences. Lives in a place like Smiths Falls are wildly interwoven, often over generations. The word stranger is not in the Podunkville dictionary.
And those three men who vanished? Their remains were all discovered at 572 Kelly-Jordan Rd. in Montague Twp., just off Hwy. 15 north of the town. On Monday, cops announced they had found the third set of remains on the property.
He was Lawrence Bertrim, 42, last seen in downtown Smiths Falls in September 2022. In July, investigators discovered the body of Robert Lambert, 75, an American expat who relocated to Smiths Falls for love in 2004. Cops believe he was murdered. Again, 572 Kelly-Jordan Rd.
Last October, the remains of missing Robbie Thomson, 34, were also found at the same address. Bertrim and Thomson reportedly knew each other. They were also friendly with a man named Steven Tate, 34, whose lifeless corpse was found in a ditch on Hwy. 15 in November 2023.
Cops called that one a hit-and-run. Tate was discovered not far from 572 Kelly-Jordan Rd.
Victim was property owner
Since last October, OPP investigators have been digging up the property except for a brief respite from the winter cold. In the spring, they returned to their digging.
The owner of said property? The very dead Robert Lambert. The co-owner of the property on the deed is a dude named Christopher Philip Fenton, 48, who somehow, oddly, took possession and lived there with his common-law wife, Erin Lynn Mackie , 41, and their two young sons.
Even before Thomson’s remains were discovered, Fenton and Mackie had been charged with first-degree murder, and Joshua Joseph Belfiori, 35, of Bath, is also charged with first-degree murder. Fenton’s younger brother, Mark, 42, is charged with accessory after the fact to murder in connection with Thomson’s death.
Mark Fenton is out on bail. Former real estate agent Erin Mackie wasn’t so lucky. She cried out in court last March after having her bid for bail torpedoed: “I wouldn’t hurt anyone! I never hurt anyone! No, no, this isn’t fair!”
Cops have pooh-poohed any connection between the victims. This is difficult to believe. Not impossible but unlikely.
Motivation remains unknown
As for what drove the murders, that’s a blank at this point as well. Drugs? At least two of the victims struggled with drug and booze problems. Was it some kind of real estate scam that came off the rails?
Smiths Falls has endured years of indignity and economic hardship that included the shuttering of Hershey’s chocolate, Stanley Tools, and the Rideau Regional Centre, an institution that once housed more than 2,600 residents.
Even the cannabis bonanza the town banked on became a bad trip.
‘Who are they?’
And now, on top of economic hardships, Smiths Falls has a quartet of murders to deal with. Vile. Cold. Troubling.
“There was no inkling that they even suspected where he was or anything,” Bertrim’s mother, Linda Mindle, told Postmedia News.
“And where he was found is, like, baffling to us, because the people that lived there, their names don’t mean anything to us. They never have. It was like — who are they?”
Indeed.