Whatever Happened to Adrien?

When it comes to tech stuff, I tend to be late arriving to the party.  I lived without Internet & Netflix in my home until several years ago, I didn't get a PVR until years after everyone else had one, and most people had cell phones a decade before I eventually got one.

So...no surprise that I'd never listened to a podcast until this week, right?  I've heard about podcasts forever, but I had no idea what they were, how to "get" them, how to listen to them... I decided this week to figure it out, because I thought it might be nice to sit and crochet and listen, without having to keep an eye on the TV like I do with my shows.  And there was a podcast I've heard about over the past few years that really interested me:  the CBC's "Someone Knows Something".  In particular, the first season, which focused on the disappearance of a little boy from Arnprior, Ontario, a town just across the river from mine, forty-some odd years ago.

Adrien McNaughton was five years old on that day in June of 1972, when he went out fishing with his father, brothers, sister, and a family friend on Holmes Lake near Calabogie.  Tired of fishing, Adrien was playing up on some rocks, not far from the rest of the group, when his father turned around after a few minutes and discovered his son was no longer there.

Adrien vanished without a trace that day.  His father, his father's friend, and Adrien's older siblings, all called for him, searched for him, as the evening stretched towards night.  Eventually they called the police and a search party began.  Over the course of two weeks, 9,000 volunteers from across the Ottawa Valley and troops from CFB Petawawa combed the woods surrounding Holmes Lake, and divers searched the deep waters of the lake itself, looking for a little boy who seemed to have disappeared into thin air.  No remains, no clothing, nothing was ever found.

In 2016, over 40 years after Adrien's disappearance, documentarian David Ridgen, who grew up in Arnprior and is about the same age as Adrien would be now, decided to return to his former hometown and see if it was worth digging a little deeper into this cold case that hit a little too close to home, so long ago.

I have listened to 6 episodes over the course of 2 evenings as Ridgen investigates the tragedy that happened not very far from where I live, and yet I don't think I'd ever heard about it until this podcast came to light.  I feel totally immersed and gripped by this story.  I try to wrap my head around it.  What would it have been like to be at the lake that day when Adrien's family realized he was gone?  How would it have felt to be his parents sitting by that lake keeping vigil as the search party went out day after day, turning up nothing?  How would I feel as the days went on and life started to return to normal for everyone else, but my little boy - my son or my brother - was still missing?  How would it feel to be the McNaughtons now, over 40 years later, ripping the bandage off an old wound they hadn't expected to be opened back up again?

Of course, as I listen to David Ridgen's interviews and his findings, I can't help but become an armchair detective.  In the first episode, he touches on how people in the area talked, as they are so apt to do in small towns (don't I know it).  Rumours went around at the time.  Some of his interviews have me suspicious of some of the people he has spoken to that were there that day, and some of the situations surrounding Adrien's disappearance.  I don't like to say anything "out loud" on this blog; because what do I know?  Armchair detectives aren't usually worth a grain of salt, I can admit that, and I'm not going to start pointing fingers.  But I've developed some theories of my own, and I just have to wonder

I still have a few episodes to go in the first season, and I've already snooped ahead and read some of the updates that came after the podcast aired.  I know they are leading us towards the assumption that Adrien drowned in the lake.  Yet, I can't help hearing his dad saying, "But how can that be? I would have heard him. There would have been splashing and cries for help."  Valid point, right? I think so...

From what I've heard so far, the family seems to really lean on the hope that Adrien wandered away, back to the road, and was picked up by a person or a couple who were desperate for a child.  Kidnapped, but into a good family who loved him and raised him well.  I suppose, if put in the same position, I might hope for the same thing; pray for it, even.  But what are the odds, really?  What are the chances Adrien was whisked away, given a new name and a new home and new parents who raised him as their own?  It seems like a long reach to me, no matter how much you might wish for it.

A drowning.  An animal attack.  Death due to the elements.  A kidnapping.  An accident.  All are possibilities when it comes to what happened to Adrien McNaughton when he disappeared at Holmes Lake that day.  And over 40 years later, people are still asking questions.  Wondering what happened.  An unsolved mystery that has riveted me this week, and really makes me wish someone did know something, so that his family could finally have some peace, and we could finally know what happened to the little boy who vanished into thin air.

I highly recommend this podcast "Someone Knows Something", and I'm looking forward to future seasons as David Ridgen explores other cold cases he's come across during his time as a documentarian and filmmaker.

And I look forward to hopefully more updates on Adrien, because I don't see myself forgetting this case anytime soon.  I can't tell you the number of times I've thought of his mother's voice, saying, "A few weeks after the search ended, Murray was sleeping on the couch.  Taking a nap.  And he got up and said he was going back to the lake to look, because he dreamed of Adrien.  And he was saying, 'Come get me, Daddy.  I'm still here.'"

Just the thought of it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.