David Ridgen

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60 appearances 3 recordings 3 series first heard Nov 2024 last heard 9 Apr

David Ridgen’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 1.

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Sea of Lies from Uncover · Uncover Introduces: Someone Knows Something Season 9 · 16 Nov 2024 podcast

I would take several more months of information gathering before I contacted Chrissy's mother, Mary Ann.

I've got Marianne framed up in my documentary camera on a cool windy day. Pale-skinned in glasses with meticulous makeup and shorter hair, Marianne stands in front of the small brick two-story she'd been renting back in the spring of 1993 at the time Chrissy disappeared. Marianne gestures to where she says Chrissy walked away from home that day.

Marianne says she watched from an upstairs window as Chrissy turned the corner. On the way, Marianne thought, to grade 9 classes at John Diefenbaker High School, not that far away. It was sometime between 1.30 and 2 p.m. Chrissy had not felt well that morning, so stayed home. She'd been known to skip classes and didn't want to go to school that afternoon either.

She and her mom had argued about it, and Marianne suggested that perhaps Chrissy should get a job instead. Chrissy walked out, saying, "'See you later,' and slammed the door." She was wearing blue jeans, a jean jacket, black running shoes, plastic glasses with a broken nose piece on one side, and possibly a silver bracelet.

There were other tensions in the household at the time as well. Chrissy had been deeply troubled by her parents' divorce years earlier. Her father, Lorne, lived in Western Canada at the time of Chrissy's disappearance and has since passed away. Chrissy got along with her younger brother named Sean, but did not always see eye to eye with her stepfather, who was also named Sean.

Sean Russworm, who was then age 26.

Russworm is a large man in a t-shirt sporting a mustache and smudgy blue line tattoos on each shoulder. Back at their current home, he and Marianne are settled into a couch. Two chihuahuas named Chloe and Angel sit on their laps.

Marianne hands me Angel, the extra small one, so she can get used to me and stop barking. I walk around the room a bit with the dog in hand, looking at some photos of Chrissy spread out on a coffee table, with a yellow lunch pail on her first day of kindergarten, blowing out birthday candles in red-ribboned pigtails, and Christmas tree moments.

The dogs seem calm, and we start talking about Chrissy.

I see Chrissy seeming to watch me through her big glasses in the photos.

Sean admits that his relationship with Chrissy was sometimes strained, and he says that he is bipolar and sometimes can be aggressive. But he says that one of his last memories of Chrissy is her helping him replace the spark plugs in his car.

Grandma Phyllis Sachs at her home.

Christine sits around a Christmas tree with her family in 1990. I watch the grainy archival video as she quietly makes sure that everyone has a gift to open before she does. Then the footage shifts to a Santa theme park and Christine's pretending to be a reindeer in front of a big red sleigh. A mischievous strength to her every move, just three years before she walks off into oblivion.

Marianne reported Chrissy missing to Hanover police at 9.21pm on the day she disappeared, May 18th, 1993. Chrissy was known to have a poor sense of direction and would get lost easily, but despite this and her habit of skipping classes or sleeping over at friends' houses, Marianne and others say that Chrissy would always call home and never go far.

The story of Christine's case, at least in the beginning, is a familiar one. A teenager leaves home, supposed to be somewhere, school, but never makes it. Local police, investigatively inexperienced, finding nothing and flying in the face of what a mother knows about.

There had been an antique car show on at the park that coming Victoria Day weekend, and police were concerned about disrupting it, according to Mary Ann. The Hanover Police and Fire Department did eventually coordinate and conduct a single search using volunteers on May 23, 1993, five days after she disappeared.

The search encompassed the Hanover Park, the south shore of the Saugeen River going east, and the town water tower. No trace of Christine was found.

No. Marianne and Sean didn't have any suspects, but almost a year later, they had to be ruled out as suspects themselves.

Paul Bernardo was a serial rapist and murderer in Ontario in the 1980s and 1990s. He and his partner Carla Homolka horribly murdered two young women. Bernardo had been arrested and jailed months before Chrissy disappeared, so using his name here was a tactic to get Sean talking.

Russworm had been at work until 3 p.m. in Durham, Ontario at the time Chrissy disappeared, about a 15-minute drive away from Hanover. After work, he drove to Mary Ann's, where he heard that Christine had left for school shortly before he arrived.

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