Some Diabolical Family Lore

This is a crazy thing to write about, but what's more wild to me is that this bit of insanity isn't just a widely known thing about me as a person, considering how much it shaped who I am.  

TW: Violence, Domestic Abuse, Rape, Murder, Gaslighting. 

Maybe if you're from Cape Breton Island, you know about the Big Ben's murder of the 90s.

Here's what I know for sure...

Back in March of 1992 in Sydney, Cape Breton, during a severe snowstorm, 24 year old Marie Lorraine Dupe was brutally stabbed 40 times and passed away during her first backshift at Big Ben's Convenience Store. 

The case went cold for 11 years because there were no witnesses or footprints. In 2001, DNA extracted from a discarded cigarette butt at the scene was matched to a national database.

Investigators utilized an elaborate undercover operation (known as "Mr. Big" sting) to elicit a confession from the suspect, Ernest Gordon Strowbridge, who was only 17 years old at the time, who later passed away of natural causes in 2013.

This is all googleable, I pulled the facts here off of google basically word-for-word, even though I know the details all too well at this point after revisiting the case every few years. 

Here's How This Case Affects Me Personally

I've never met my biological father. 

I was told stories as a child about how terrifying of a person my biological father allegedly is, how I was never to seek him out, never speak about him to anyone, and if I ever saw him in public I should run.

When I was a very young child I was told a story about how my mother moved to Ontario with my biological father and that he was incredibly, viciously, abusive. I was told how my mother's decision to conceive me was solely so that he would allow her to move back to Nova Scotia to be with family so they could have support while raising a baby at twenty one years old (why my mother couldn't pack up her belongings in the middle of the night and run away instead of having an actual literal child I will never know, but in any case at least I get to say I'm alive).  

I was told how after they had me, and were living in Sydney, when I was just three months old he apparently tried to rape my mother and when she wouldn't let him he chased us down the road (me in her arms) with a twenty-two shot gun, and by some miracle I just happened to stop crying when he was near and he never found out where we were hiding. 

Later, when I was about twelve years old I was told another story. About how the following year when I was just an infant, months after this attempted taking of both mine and my mother's life, there was a brutal murder at a convenience store in Sydney and it was my biological father's doing. No, my biological father wasn't Earnest Gordon Strowbridge, if that's what you're thinking... this is where things get extra strange.

I was told that the night of the murder, my biological father went to work during the snowstorm and just never came home again. I was told that the police had taken my mother into questioning but they couldn't use anything she had said in court because of the way the police were wording the questions. I was told that my biological father had idolized his brother who was a convicted murderer in prison, and he wanted to be just like him someday. I was told that the police sketch of the suspect looks incredibly like my biological father (and it did, I saw it years later and the resemblance was uncanny). I was also told it wasn't 40 stabs, it was 47, that he cut off her breasts and penetrated her with the knife if you know what I mean. 

I was also told that the reason we moved to East Hants from Glace Bay was because my biological father had found out where I lived, and he had been looking for me for my entire life so that he could murder me the same way he murdered Marie Lorraine Dupe. 

I was instructed to tell no one because word could get around and he could find out where I lived again, and since we had just barely gotten away this time who knows what would happen if he found us again. The school was informed, it all seemed very real. 

So from twelve years old until I was in my late twenties I was living in a reality where I was looking over my shoulder for someone who allegedly wanted to brutally end-my-life constantly, not allowed to tell anyone for fear that they could spread word of who and where I am, and I changed my last name on social media and in person (not legally, because it has to be printed for public record) to decrease the chances of being found. 

Until I was found.

Just a few weeks before I had first moved to Dartmouth my biological father found me on Facebook. We started chatting over text for a while, and he seemed emotionally unintelligent but not violent (who knows though really) and I had spoken to police officers in East Hants about the case to get the official perspective about what happened and what records my biological father had. A few drunken fights, a little tough angry man... but they didn't suspect him to be a killer. 

They reassured me profusely that my biological father wasn't someone to fear so long as I don't get him wasted drunk in a bar and start an altercation. 

I don't speak to any of my family at all because of this and SO many other things. Because what was made to look like was protection all those years, was actually just an elaborate story used for control, gaslighting, psychologically messing with a child, and weakening my connection to any type of support network for the entirety of my upbringing, and greatly affecting the way I see the world and people who are supposed to be emotionally close to me.  

The weirdest part now is that this isn't exactly get-to-know-you fun banter to share at parties and gatherings, and even if it was most people can't handle the reality of it (believe me, I've tried to share). So I've essentially lived this entire experience for thirty plus years that no one really knew about, and grappling with things that most of my peers couldn't even fathom, while completely alone in it.

This is the shit movies are made out of I swear, except it's my life. 

I wrote a song about it called 22, it'll be on the album whenever I get around to recording. 

Natasha MacIsaac