CBC's true crime feed tracing Cleo's case into cold cases across its investigative podcast network.
Missing & Murdered follows unresolved disappearances and killings with the patience of long-form public radio. The feed also introduces related CBC investigations into custody law, art fraud, pipeline activism, and other cases where official accounts leave families with unanswered questions.
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The show runs as narrative, single-narrator investigative journalism rather than studio interviews or panel discussion, with reporters travelling to the places where cases happened and interviewing family members, police, and witnesses on tape. Its own episodes trace the aftermath of the Cleo Semaganis Nicotine case, including a 2025 episode on Letitia Racine, an Indigenous child caught in a custody dispute that produced the precedent-setting Racine v. Woods Supreme Court ruling. A large share of the sampled feed, however, consists of 'introducing' episodes that preview other CBC true crime series, effectively using Missing & Murdered as a cross-promotional entry point into CBC's investigative podcast network. David Ridgen, host of Someone Knows Something, appears repeatedly reporting on cold cases like the 1993 disappearance of Christine Herron and the 2021 disappearance of Jacqueline Furlan-Smith in Costa Rica. Adrian Stimson, an Indigenous artist from the Siksika Nation, hosts Forged, a CBC/ABC series on the Norval Morrisseau art-fraud investigation also cross-posted here. Guests tend to be family members of missing or murdered people, investigating police officers, journalists holding archival recordings, and, in the Forged case, art world figures like curator Gerald McMaster and musician Kevin Hearn. Cases frequently involve police missteps, such as an early assumption that a missing teenager was a runaway, or interrogation tactics used on suspects who were later cleared. The production style favors scene-setting narration and first-person witness testimony over expert panels or news-style recaps. Listeners drawn to Canadian true crime, cold-case journalism, and Indigenous justice issues are the core audience, and the feed doubles as a discovery point for other CBC true crime shows they may not otherwise encounter.
Made for: Listeners of Canadian true crime and cold-case journalism who are also interested in Indigenous justice issues and want a way into CBC's broader investigative podcast slate.
What sets it apart: Rather than sticking to one ongoing case, the feed mixes its own Indigenous-justice investigations with cross-posted previews of sister CBC series like Someone Knows Something, Uncover, and Forged, functioning partly as a network sampler.
Where is Cleo? Taken by child welfare workers in the 1970’s and adopted in the U.S., the young Cree girl’s family believes she was raped and murdered while hitchhiking back home to Saskatchewan. CBC news investigative reporter Connie Walker joins the search to find out what really happened to Cleo. For the best in true crime from CBC, ad-free, visit apple.co/cbctruecrime.Watch Connie Walker's A Sister's Promise on The Fifth Estate's YouTube channel now.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Its clearest contribution is connecting first-person testimony with the institutional choices surrounding disappearance, custody, policing, and family trauma.
Missing & Murdered gives investigative stories room to move through testimony, records, and institutional decisions rather than rushing toward a reveal.
Like borrowing CBC's case-file cabinet, if your curiosity runs from vanished people to forged paintings.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A patient Costa Rica missing-persons opener, built around David Ridgen's fieldwork and the unsettled accounts of Jackie's final day.
Jacqueline Furlan-Smith vanished in 2021 in Playa del Coco, Costa Rica, and this Missing & Murdered introduction hands the case over to David Ridgen's Someone Knows Something with a slow, wary sense of place.
A restrained art-crime opener where one Morrisseau painting points toward a fraud story with deeper cultural stakes.
Forged opens with Norval Morrisseau's voice at ceremony, then pulls the listener into a fraud story that is also a story about ownership, belief, and what gets taken when an artist's name is put on work he did not make.
A sober, family-centered account of an Indigenous custody case with consequences that reach well beyond one child.
A custody fight over an Indigenous child opens onto something colder than one family dispute: a legal system deciding where a child belongs, and how much weight it gives to kinship, safety, and culture when they collide.
A chilling setup built around covert jailhouse calls from Clifford Olson and the reporter he chose to contact.
Missing & Murdered introduces Calls From a Killer with a grim, unnerving hook: a young reporter gets a prison call from Clifford Olson, the Canadian serial killer who murdered 11 children in the 1980s.
A restrained cold-case opener follows Christine Herron's disappearance from family alarm to a later confession.
This introduction to Someone Knows Something's Christine Herron case opens beside the Saugeen River in Hanover, Ontario, then moves into the night Christine did not come home and her family's fear that something was wrong.
NHPR's Jason Moon investigates the Bear Brook barrel murders and a New Hampshire wrongful-conviction case.
Payne Lindsey's season-long investigation into two disappearances from Nome, Alaska.
Journalists chase a decades-long trail through a coronial inquest and Rick Bloom's dozens of aliases.
A New York Times reporter reinvestigates Laramie's unsolved 1985 murder of Shelley Wiley.
Costa Rica opens lush and alive, then David Ridgen lands in Playa del Coco, where 41-year-old Canadian Jacqueline Furlan-Smith vanished in 2021 and no trace has turned up.
Norval knew his own hand.
A child is caught between homes.
This episode introduces the Drilled podcast's new season, which follows a legal trial involving Energy Transfer's lawsuit against Greenpeace over the Dakota Access Pipeline, featuring indigenous activist Cody Hall recounting the 2016 Standing Rock protests.
Clifford Olson called from prison.
A river returns.
This trailer for Season 3 of the investigative podcast Stolen explores the case of a missing Diné elder on the Navajo Nation, delving into themes of justice, violence, and survival in a place where people say murder goes unpunished.
Connie Walker investigates the unsolved murder of Alberta Williams, a young Indigenous woman, uncovering family secrets and police failures.
Connie Walker investigates the unsolved murder of Alberta Williams, a young Indigenous woman.
Connie Walker investigates the murder of Alberta Williams, a case involving Indigenous women and systemic issues.
Connie Walker investigates the unsolved murder of Alberta Williams, a young Indigenous woman, along the Highway of Tears.
Connie Walker investigates the unsolved murder of Alberta Williams, a young Indigenous woman, and the impact on her family.
Investigative reporter Connie Walker searches for answers in the unsolved murder of Alberta Williams and explores the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada.
Connie Walker investigates the unsolved murder of Alberta Williams, a young Indigenous woman, and tracks down a person of interest.
Connie Walker investigates the disappearance and murder of Alberta Williams, a young Indigenous woman, in Prince Rupert, British Columbia.
A journalist investigates the disappearance and suspected murder of a young Cree girl taken by child welfare and adopted in the U.S.