Unsolved

Stories walk into the Toronto Star newsroom every day. After all, that’s our business. And that’s the endlessly interesting river that feeds our ideas at Star Dispatches. Once in a while, a story lands on our desks that was not generated in our own newsroom, one that we feel is compelling and important and that we believe our readers will enjoy. This week’s story of a cold-case murder awaiting a rare fourth trial is one of these stories. Welcome to the first of our new Editor’s Choice picks.

 

More than three decades ago, pretty nursing assistant Diane Werendowicz was found facedown in a Hamilton ravine, strangled. She was two days short of her 24th birthday. Since then, steelworker Robert Badgerow has tried to prove his innocence in the face of compelling evidence. He has been tried three times, and a possible fourth trial looms. Is he the unluckiest man in the world — or a killer? Veteran Hamilton Spectator journalist Susan Clairmont has followed the case for a decade as it worked its way through the court system. In Unsolved: One Murder, Three Trials: The Robert Badgerow Case, she weaves together the threads of this fascinating case to offer us an insider’s take on one of the most unusual criminal cases to grip Southern Ontario.

Star Dispatches is a weekly series of quality journalism in ebook form from the newsroom of the Toronto Star, Canada's largest newspaper.