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Transcript
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Canadian True Crime Disclaimer (1:05)
Canadian True Crime is a completely independent production funded mainly through advertising. You can listen to Canadian True Crime ad free and early on, Amazon music included with Prime Apple podcasts, Patreon and Supercast. The podcast often has disturbing content and coarse language. It's not for everyone. Please take care when listening.
Narrator (Lisa Gabriel) (1:25)
Alice Curtis was alone when her phone rang at 2:30 in the morning. She was at home on her family farm in Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia, and her husband Jim was a couple of hours away in Halifax with the Canadian military. Both were in their mid-40s and their 18 year old son David was away too, in the United States visiting his friend in New Jersey. Alice wasn't sure how long the phone rang that night before she woke up, but she was surprised to hear the local RCMP dispatch on the other end of the line. The person on the phone informed her that a squad car was parked outside her house. She was instructed to go downstairs and speak with the officers immediately. Alice would remember feeling a little startled, maybe disoriented, but not overly concerned. Nothing much ever happened on their Annapolis Valley farm. Why should this alarm her? The officers waiting For Alice wanted to know if she had heard from her son. They asked how long had David been gone for and when was he coming home. Then they told Alice Curtis the reason for their visit. The people her son was staying with in New Jersey were missing. Alfred Podgess and his wife Rosemary Podgess, along with Scott Franz, Rosemary's 18 year old son from her first marriage. Also missing was their son David Curtis. It's rarely good news when the police show up on your doorstep in the middle of the night and this was certainly alarming. But Alice Curtis wasn't worried. She she felt certain there had to be some explanation for the disappearances. The officers left and she went back to sleep. That morning she phoned her husband Jim in Halifax to tell him what happened but urged him to stay there. No need to return home to the farm, she said. That's how certain she was that this was all some big misunderstanding. After all, David had told them his friend was from a very wealthy family. They lived in a mansion by the Jersey shore. They had a housekeeper and maids and a driver. It was the week after the American Fourth of July holiday, 1982. Alice Curtis thought that maybe the parents just took the boys on a nice trip or something. The following day the RCMP called Alice Curtis again. This time the news was dire. Alfred and Rosemary Podgess, the people their son David had been staying with in New Jersey were dead. A couple of hikers had found their bodies in a random state park in Pennsylvania about five hours away from their home. An autopsy was being conducted. Alice was informed that the two 18 year olds were still missing. Her son David and his friend Scott Franz. Now the alarm bells went off. She called her husband again and this time Jim Curtis made a beeline to the Halifax RCMP detachment to find out what the hell was going on in New Jersey. They gave him the number of Rosemary Podgess adult daughter Barbara who lived in a nearby town. And when Jim Curtis called and spoke to her he found her to be friendly and helpful given the circumstances. Barbara knew that her youngest brother Scott had invited a houseguest from Canada to stay. But she asked Jim strange questions about his son, like what kind of kid David was and whether he had any experience with guns. Jim Curtis assured Barbara that his son was a good kid, a great student, someone who never did drugs or drank alcohol. And though they did have some guns on the farm in Nova Scotia, he told Barbara that David had never touched them. The 18 year old didn't even know how to drive. After that Jim and Alice Curtis could do nothing except wait for news about their son and his friend and hope they hadn't met the same fate as Alfred and Rosemary Podgers. A deep sense of dread crept in with each new day. This became the before and after moment for the Curtis family. There was life before their son went off to New Jersey to visit his friend. And life after they got the news that he was missing. But the real turning point had actually happened two years earlier when David Curtis started attending a private boarding school and met a new friend. Tall, slim and bookish with large eyeglasses, David Curtis was known to be sensitive, a thinker, someone who would rather free a housefly than swat it dead. He photographed wildlife on the family's 750 acre farm near the town of Middleton in Nova Scotia. He read philosophical Russian literature and dark Gothic poetry. He was also an avid writer, filling notebooks and diaries with his own poems and short stories in a similar style to his favourite author. Authors nihilistic and dripping with existential teenage angst. David got straight as at school and had dreams of becoming an astrophysicist. He was also close to his two older sisters who were both academics as well. But David Curtis was painfully shy and introverted. So after he finished grade 10, his parents, Alice and Jim, decided to send him to a private boarding school in Windsor, Nova Scotia, about an hour drive away from their farm. Established in the 1700s, King Sedgell School is the oldest private school in all of North America and the Curtises hoped their son would develop better social skills there. At first, David seemed a little removed, maybe even a little snobby as introverts sometimes appear. But he eventually started making some friends. The lanky teenager was the resident JRR token expert and even made the debate team that appeared on CBC's Reach for the Top, a trivia based game show for high school students. This TV appearance gave David some minor celebrity around campus and the fact that he also scored three top academic honours that year reassured his parents that they'd made the right decision to send him to King's Edgehill. It was a love of computers and board games that eventually brought David Curtis and Scott Franz together. Scott had been an international student at King's Edge Hill School for a couple of years by the time David started. He spoke with an exaggerated New Jersey accent and seemed to be popular and well liked. They both loved backgammon and a strategy game called Diplomacy, and their marathon sessions soon evolved into all night tournaments. Eventually the pair became inseparable. Scott told David his stepfather back in the US was A wealthy entrepreneur who owned a string of hotels. He showed him a couple of pictures of his home on the Jersey shore. It looked like an impressive mansion. Parked out front was a limo with a driver Scott said was named Jimmy. David Curtis and Scott Franz graduated from grade 12 in June of 1982. The pair said their goodbyes and returned to their respective families. Scott to New Jersey and David back to his family farm in Nova Scotia. They continued to speak frequently on the phone over the next few weeks. Then Scott had an idea. He urged David to book a flight to the US around the 4th of July long weekend and stay with him at his family home in Loch Arbour, a village on the Jersey shore. From the photos, it looked as though David would be very comfortable there. But the 18 year old had some anxiety about the trip. He told his mother it was too far away and too complicated to get there. He was reluctant to go. But Alice thought the trip would be good for her son and would make a great graduation present. She convinced him to go for 10 days. The Curtises in Nova Scotia knew nothing about Scott Franz's family in New Jersey. They'd never even met or spoken to Alfred or Rosemary Podgers. But they weren't worried. They assumed the family were solid, upstanding citizens. After all, they clearly had the means to send their child to a private boarding school in Canada. It would turn out to be something Alice Curtis would regret for the rest of her life. David's trip to New Jersey got off to a very bad start. His plane was more than an hour late and there was no limo to pick him up. Just Scott and his stepfather, who was clearly very angry about it. Alfred Podgess complained about the extra airport parking fees he'd racked up waiting for the flight to arrive. And worse, it caused him to miss an important appointment. The 58 year old was an avid collector of coins and baseball cards with a personal collection reportedly worth $20,000. And that day he was supposed to meet up with a fellow baseball card trader. But that plan had been completely derailed because of David's late flight and Alfred Podgess was furious. He swore and yelled at his stepson. This was all Scott's fault for inviting his Canadian friend to stay in the first place. David's trip to New Jersey had already started off on a sour note and he hadn't even arrived at Scott's family mansion yet. But when they pulled into the driveway, David suddenly realised that Scott had been lying to him. Scott Franz had always been a bit of a problem kid. Originally from Ohio. His father died when he was young, leaving his mother, Rosemary, a widow with six children. It wasn't long before she met and married Alfred Podgers, a gruff, stocky divorcee with grown children of his own. Scott was only 4 years old at the time, and he never got along with his stepfather. None of Rosemary's kids did. And the Podgeses were far from being wealthy. They were very much working class. Both had jobs at the local Lochaber post office. In fact, Rosemary's adult daughter Barbara, was their supervisor there. Alfred and Rosemary Podgess had been living in the same home for over 14 years, and the local police knew it well. They'd been called there dozens of times. Sometimes it was after the neighbours complained about noise, the family's German shepherd barking too much. Other times, police were called to deal with domestic disputes, often involving Scott's older brother, Mark Franz, who was said to be quite troubled. He regularly hung out with petty criminals and drifters at the New Jersey boardwalk and reportedly stole money from his parents. As a teenager, Mark Franz got into a lot of trouble with the law and had been charged with grand larceny, selling drugs, breaking and entering and possession of stolen property. So when the bodies of Alfred and Rosemary Podgess were found, Mark was one of the first suspects police started eyeing off. Scott Franz, the youngest of Rosemary's six children, had been troubled as well. In fact, that's how he ended up at a private boarding school in Canada. When he first started high school, Scott was a known runaway and a shoplifter. He stole the family car and drove it without a licence. At one point, he was sent away to live with his older sister, Barbara for a while, but she, too grew sick of the drama. He was sent back to live with his mother and stepfather in Lochaber. It isn't clear how the Podges heard about King's Edgehill School in Nova Scotia, or how they could afford to pay for it back then. In the early 1980s, it cost as much as 8,000 Canadian dollars a year to study there, the equivalent of about $25,000 today. Although it should be noted that international students today are actually paying more than $72,000 a year to attend King's Edge Hill. Or their parents are. Alfred and Rosemary Podgers spent a lot of money on Scott, money they didn't have, according to Alfred's older children, from his first marriage. But according to Rosemary's children, she was the one who saved the money from her own employment to pay her son's school fees. Regardless, they both thought the Expense was worth it and hoped sending Scott to school in Canada might bring some peace to their home. Scott Franz seemed to thrive at the regimented private school and soon made friends. Fellow students found him charming with his exaggerated New Jersey accent and his many stories of life back home in his family's mansion, complete with staff and a driver. Some students were under the impression that Scott's stepfather got his wealth from owning hotels. But others would report that Scott told them Alfred Podgess was in the Mafia or the CIA. Scott was also known to be a bit of a ladies man. He was fun to be around. He listened to their problems and seemed to care. Some of the stories he told didn't seem to add up, but they liked him so much that they were willing to overlook it as a minor character flaw. Scott's girlfriend Heather at the time would later tell author David Hayes that, quote, the only thing wrong was that he told a lot of stories that everybody suspected weren't true. It's hard to explain, but people knew that and accepted it. I accepted it because he was a nice guy and a nice companion. I mean, I wouldn't have continued to go out with him if I didn't think he was honest and sincere most of the time. He used to tell me he had problems with his father, that they didn't get along. He said his father had beaten him when he was younger. He had a bad past and I assumed he was trying to make something of himself. When David Curtis started at King's Edge Hill School at the start of grade 11, it was good timing for Scott Franz. The friendships he'd cultivated in his three years there had begun to sour on him. His once entertaining stories were becoming a bit annoying. The last straw for his girlfriend Heather was when she discovered he told lies about her and their relationship to others. She broke up with him. But that only pushed Scott more towards David Curtis, the squeaky clean newcomer who shared his interest in computers and board games. David seemed to be blissfully unaware about Scott's reputation for playing fast and loose with the truth. And as they spent more time together, he seemed to absorb the worst of Scott's personality. It was Scott who reportedly encouraged David to get drunk for the first time. And over time, teachers noticed that the once studious David had started to rebel against school rules and refused to participate in gym class. His grades suffered. One teacher said that he displayed a newfound contempt for authority. Fellow students noticed a change too. David went from being a shy, introverted nerd to an increasingly arrogant jerk.