Transcript
Narrator/Host (0:00)
Let's be real. When it comes to your health, authenticity matters. For nearly 30 years Iherb has quietly built one of the world's leading online wellness destinations trusted by millions of customers in 180 countries. At iHerb, every product comes from verified top rated brands stored, handled and shipped directly from our own climate controlled, state of the art facilities. No third party sellers, no shortcuts, just the highest standards of quality and transparency from cart to doorstep. That's why more and more people are turning to iHerb, where wellness and integrity meet. Visit iHerb.com trusted wellness delivered worldwide.
Sponsor/Ad Voice (0:45)
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.
Narrator/Host (1:06)
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/Host (1:26)
Hi everyone and welcome back to Canadian True Crime. This is part one of a two part series. It's a deadly tale of sex, lies, betrayal and corruption, a case considered so sensational that onlookers lined up around the block to score a seat at the 10 week trial in Toronto. The non stop courtroom drama did not disappoint. Neither did the unexpected twist. This episode has been pieced together from the news archives of the Toronto Star, which covered this case extensively. We've also relied on the incredible behind the scenes insights of famed Canadian criminal defence lawyer Edward Greenspan in several publications, including his 1987 book The Case for the Defence. Part two will be released in a week and for everyone listening on our premium feeds on Amazon Music included with Prime, Apple Podcasts Patreon and Supercast. It's available right now. So with that it's on with the show. On Monday, March 20th of 1978, a parking lot attendant at a suburban Toronto subway station set out on his early evening rounds. Warden Station is located in the city's East End near the Scarborough suburbs and is a drop off point for commuters working downtown. Just after 6:30pm on that dark, icy evening, the station's parking lot attendant came across an odd sight. Protruding out of the driver's side window of a tan Mustang was a pair of legs belonging to a Tall man. One leg was bent, the other straight up in the air. The parking lot attendant assumed the man was fixing something under his dashboard and carried on with his rounds. He wasn't the only one. Several other drivers in the parking lot saw the same odd sight. That pair of men's legs protruding out of the driver's side window. Some of them said they also saw a second man standing on the other side of the car who seemed to be helping the man into the front seat. It was dark outside, so visibility wasn't great, but they speculated it was probably just a drunk driver sleeping it off. When the parking lot attendant came back around to the scene, he was spooked by the fact that the pair of legs hadn't moved in an hour. He alerted his supervisor, who took a closer look. The man wasn't sleeping. He was dead. They called the police. Officers arrived at the Mustang in question and saw the body reclining in the driver's seat, face up with a pair of long legs hanging out the window. Here's how they described it. The head was resting on the console between the bucket seats and one hand was clutching a blood stained wad of tissue paper. There were many bloodstains on the interior of the car. The door on the driver's side was partly open and the key was in the ignition. A briefcase and a newspaper were lying on the back seat. The victim wore a gold watch, his wallet containing $200 as well as a check and some credit cards still in his pocket. There was no weapon to be seen anywhere in or around the car. There was a lot of blood, a pool of it where the man's head was. The console of the car between the bucket seats was filled and overflowing with blood. There was also blood on the outside of the car and drops on the pavement. It was an icy night and the police came to the conclusion that this man had likely stepped on some ice in the parking lot and fell to the ground where he sustained a grave head wound. He then tried to make his way into the front seat of his car, but he succumbed to his injuries. The Victim was a 36 year old real estate lawyer named Bruce Lorenz. Police drove to the Scarborough address listed in his wallet. There they met his wife, 33 year old Laura Lee Lorenz, and broke the news that her husband had died of a tragic accident. They handed her all his belongings, the wallet and his watch, glasses, briefcase and pen. A friend visiting Lauralee at the time said she seemed shocked. She sat down at a table and muttered, I don't believe It. Deciding it was an accident was not the last mistake police would make in this case. It wouldn't even be the worst one. After the police delivered the bad news to Laura Lee Lorenz, a morgue attendant examining her husband's body discovered something both the police and the coroner had missed. As the attendant felt underneath the blood encrusted head, he discovered a small hole behind the victim's ear. Bruce Lorenz had not stumbled and died. He'd been shot in the head with what looked like a.22 calibre bullet. The police made their way back to Laura Lee's house to correct their mistake and retrieve her husband's personal belongings. Because now they were looking at a murder investigation. What they didn't know was that Laura Lee had already picked up the phone twice. First, she called her husband's brother Brian, who also happened to be a police officer with the nearby city of Waterloo. He would tell Toronto investigators that Laura Lee told him that Bruce had been shot dead. It was an odd statement for Lauralee to make, since the police hadn't yet returned to let her know that Bruce had in fact been shot dead. They'd only told her that her husband's death was an accident. The second person Laura Lee Loren spoke to on the phone that night was a man named Gordon Allen. Investigators would soon learn that Gordon had once been Laura Lee's boyfriend. In fact, a few years earlier, she left her husband Bruce for him. Lauralee and Gordon lived together for almost two years, but the relationship soured and she decided to reconcile with her husband. And now he was dead. A sordid tale was beginning to emerge, as well as a possible motive for the murder of Bruce Lorenz. But as the investigation proceeded, everyone would make a series of bad decisions, including Laura Lee Lorenz, Gordon Allen and the police. The story of Laura Lee Lorenz and Gordon Allen starts three years earlier, in 1975, in a dark bar along Toronto's airport strip. It was a seedy, glittery stretch of road on the western outskirts of the city. A mix of motels, nightclubs and strip bars, the area attracted a transient crowd, mostly pilots, flight attendants and businessmen in town during brief layovers. Gordon Allen was in the last category. He was an insurance agent who worked for his father's insurance agency in the town of Orillia, almost two hours drive north of Toronto. A confirmed bachelor in his early 30s at the time, Gordon often travelled back and forth from Toronto and Montreal and he frequented those airport bars. One night, an attractive blonde nurse caught his eye. Her name was Laura Lee Lorenz. And she was 30 years old at the time. Almost immediately, they began a torrid affair. Gordon knew that Laura Lee had been married to a Toronto lawyer for almost 10 years at the time. They had two young sons and owned a house in the city of Mississauga in the Greater Toronto area. He also knew her marriage was an unhappy one. Laura Lee spilled her heart out to Gordon, telling him that her husband Bruce had a volatile temper, that he was disappointed that they couldn't have children of their own. He had a hard time accepting his adopted sons, especially their second son, who they only recently adopted and was still a baby. It appeared that Bruce Lorenz was so distracted by his work and disconnected from his sons that he had little to no idea he was losing his family. Laura Lee was able to accompany Gordon on business trips to Montreal and even introduced him to her sons, who she said loved spending time with him. Gordon also introduced Lauralee to some of his own family members. By the following summer, Laura Lee's marriage to Bruce Lorenz was officially over and he moved out of their home. Then Gordon Allen moved in. Even though Lauralee never filed for divorce from Bruce, she changed her last name to Alan and the boys began to call Gordon Dad. By most accounts, Bruce Lorenz took the separation hard, but was pragmatic about it and got on with his life. He and Laura Lee sold their Mississauga home, but stayed in close contact with an amicable relationship. She took her share of the money from the sale and invested it in a franchise for a furniture refurbishing company. Naming herself as director and her boyfriend, Gordon Allen as president, Bruce agreed to help the new couple out with the legal work for their company. Lauralee and Gordon purchased a new house in Toronto, and for a while, everything seemed okay. The new couple had made it through the volatility of their affair, the end of Laura Lee's marriage to Bruce Lorenzo, the sale of her house, starting up a business, and forging a new blended life with the children. Bruce Lorenz's life, meanwhile, wasn't as rosy. He spent time in a rooming house and eventually bought a house for himself in Scarborough, close to the Warden subway station in the east end of Toronto. The same station where he would be found dead during just a few years later, Bruce Lorenz had put his hand in the ring for a much coveted partnership at his law firm. When he was denied the promotion, he blamed it on his separation from Laura Lee. The firm wanted family men as partners, and he had lost his wife to another man. Around this time, Laura Lee and Gordon's new business started failing. The honeymoon was over and real life was coming for them. The stress of it caused them to argue a lot. Then their franchise's parent company went bankrupt, leaving them with a hefty $22,000 debt and a lot of legal issues. Bruce Lorenz was called in to help the woman, who was still technically his wife and her new boyfriend, to sort through the mess. Before long, he and Lauralee were speaking daily about various business and legal issues. They were getting along well compared to her relationship with Gordon, which was now strained. When the couple eventually had to file for bankruptcy themselves, they were arguing constantly, mostly over money. They had to start from scratch. Gordon would say that Laura Lee, as a lawyer's wife, had grown accustomed to living a certain lifestyle, and having to be on a budget bothered her. Then, almost two years after they first moved in together, Gordon returned home to find Laura Lee packing her bags. She told him she and the kids were moving back in with her mother until she could get back on her feet. Within a few months, Laura Lee Lorenz had in fact reunited with her husband Bruce, and the family was now living together at his Scarborough home. Gordon Allen would later say he believed it was a business decision, that Lauralee didn't love her husband Bruce anymore, but reunited with him so that he would make partner at his firm. It was for financial security, he said. But Bruce Lorenz's parents told a different story. So did his co workers. As far as they knew, this was a happy time for the reunited couple. The Gordon Allen era was over, and Bruce and Laura Lee were keen on repairing their marriage and raising their two young sons together. But as the months ticked by, Lauralee claimed that her husband began to sour on her. As she would later tell the court, quote, bruce was just not happy with me as a person, as a woman, especially as a lawyer's wife, he seemed to think I could do better than I was doing. It came to a point where I was being compared to a lot of women that Bruce had gone out with when we were separated. By September of 1977, Lauralee felt their marriage had begun to deteriorate again. So she reached out to her old boyfriend, Gordon Allen for comfort and reassurance. Again. They began to talk three or four times a week. Laura Lee Clara claimed it was because they were still dealing with the aftermath of their failed business and bankruptcy, and her husband knew about their contact because he was also helping them out with legal issues. But it was more than that. She was also reportedly spending weekends with Gordon in Orillia, sometimes even bringing their sons. When she had to have a routine surgery, he visited her in hospital several times. Although Lauralee's reunion with Bruce wasn't going very well, they had booked a two week family vacation in Florida that was coming up fast. Bruce approached his bosses at the law firm about the partnership again and was told he'd get an answer when he got back from vacation. This was early March of 1978. In just a few weeks, Bruce Lorenz would be dead.
![Bruce Lorenz [1] - Canadian True Crime cover](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.pippa.io%2Fshows%2F61b7653d169562084ee95064%2F1731430114338-003a49d2-5669-4190-b634-23a136f67d18.jpeg&w=1920&q=75)