Major case updates: what happened next [2]

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Kristi Lee** (0:21)
Hi there, and welcome to part two of our major case updates from the last two years. We'll start today with a concise recap of the Hockey Canada Case for those who might have missed it. There's new information and player updates since the trial, and I'll share a personal update about how covering that case took a mental toll and what that meant for the production of the podcast after that. Then we've got a quick behind the scenes update about Jacob Hoggard, Paul Bernardo's latest sob story and some other parole updates, and then we'll return to Kevin O'Leary and his unexpected backflip. You can find the full list of cases we're covering today and the approximate time stamps in the show notes. So let's get into it.
The Hockey Canada Case and what's happened since the trial. It's now been more than a year since Justice Maria Carrascia released her decision and Canadian True Crime released our series breaking down the case and the outcome of the trial. Our five-part series ended up being much heavier and more detailed than I originally intended. So I'm going to go over a high level summary of the case and why I reached the conclusions I did before I get to what's happened since the trial. This is for those that might not have listened to the whole series because it was so long and detailed. Many people assumed that my conclusion was going to be that the hockey players should have been found guilty of sexual assault, but that wasn't the case. I understood why Justice Carassia found those hockey players not guilty. What I didn't understand was the clear double standard and how the judge assessed their evidence and credibility compared to EM. There were things in the decision that just didn't add up to me. So I started comparing it line by line with the evidence from the trial, trying to work out how some of those conclusions had been reached. The closer I looked, the more inconsistencies and patterns I found, and that sent me much further down the rabbit hole than I ever intended to go.
So I ended up spending the entire summer last year critiquing a judge's 90-page written decision from one of the most high-profile trials the country has seen. It was intimidating, and I needed to show exactly how I reached each of my conclusions step by step from the evidence. I'm obviously not a lawyer, but I know I've built trust with my audience, you, and I take that responsibility seriously. I've always tried to be careful about the facts, the legal language, and the limits of my own expertise, but the Hockey Canada Case took that to a whole new level. It was the most mentally taxing work I've ever done, having to triple check everything from multiple angles. It took a toll that affected everything I've done since, which I'll come back to. The series was long, and it was detailed, because it had to be. I had to show how I arrived at my conclusions, my workings, if you will. And in the year since the judge issued the not guilty verdicts, I felt validated to see legal experts independently raise many of the same concerns I did. It's also worth noting that I haven't needed to make any factual corrections or edits to the podcast series either. And the reason I say this is because of the nature of this case and the sheer vitriol that comes whenever anyone dares to speak about it in this way. So I want to stress that I've put the work in and brought the receipts. I've written the entire series up as a comprehensive case study document that shows all my workings. So if you want to have a look at anything I'm referencing, you can find that document linked in the show notes and on our website.
We all know it's centred around one night in June of 2018, when junior hockey player Michael McLeod met the woman known as EM at a bar in London, Ontario, where he was celebrating with some of his teammates after winning the Junior World Championship. McLeod and EM, both 20 years old, went back to his hotel room where they had consensual sex. What happened after that became the focus of criminal charges for sexual assault and then a trial. After having that consensual sex, Michael McLeod sent a message to his team group chat, inviting them to the hotel room for a three-way. Carter Hart was at another bar, and despite not knowing who McLeod was offering a three-way with, he replied a few minutes later, I'm in. McLeod also sent a direct message to one of his teammates offering him a blow job on EM's behalf. There was absolutely no evidence that EM knew about McLeod's efforts to shop her around to his teammates, let alone that she consented to it.