The Man Without a Will

0:00Support for Criminal comes from Ollie. Your dog's well-being starts with their food. And that's why Ollie delivers fresh human-grade food that your dog will love. Head to ollie.com slash phoebe, tell them about your dog, and use code PHEBE to get 60 % off your welcome kit when you subscribe today. Plus, they offer a happiness guarantee on the first box. So if you're not completely satisfied, you'll get your money back. That's O-L-L-I-E dot com slash phoebe and enter code PHEBE to get 60 % off your first box. Support for this show comes from strawberry.me. Be honest. Are you happy with your job?

0:36Or are you stuck in one you've outgrown? Or never wanted in the first place? Sure, you can probably list the reasons for staying, but are they actually just excuses for not leaving? Let a career coach from strawberry.me help you get unstuck. Discover the benefits of having a dedicated career coach in your corner. Go to strawberry.me slash unstuck to claim a special offer. One day, a 26-year-old woman named Adeline Balgobin was at her job with the Ontario government when a co-worker came up to her. A co-worker said there was a cute officer downstairs that she should go down and talk to him. This is reporter Catherine Laidlaw.

1:21Adeline's co-worker knew how much she wanted to meet someone. So Adeline went downstairs to introduce herself to the police officer. They started talking. His name was Robert Kanasiewicz. They exchanged numbers, and a few weeks later, they went on their first date. It went well, and so they kept seeing each other. They partied a lot. They went out to eat with his friends. They traveled a lot. They went to Puttukana for his birthday, for example. She had a photo of the two of them framed on her desk at work. you know and I think after about a year of them going steady that she started to think that things weren't quite right she had met a bunch of his friends they were going out regularly he was available some of the time but she couldn't shake the feeling that it was strange that she had never met his family and that sometimes he would have to cancel plans with her at the last minute out of the blue with very little explanation.

2:29Earlier on, she asked why he never invited her to his apartment. So he had confessed that he was still living with his ex-girlfriend, and that was why he'd never had her over, but insisted that they were no longer romantically involved and were living together as roommates. As expected at the time, her friends were not approving of this situation. They thought that their friend was having the wool pulled over her eyes. And so she started getting suspicious and she did what everyone is able to do in this day and age and went online and tried to vet some of those suspicions and see if there was actually something going on.

3:11And what did she find? She discovered that her boyfriend was very much together with his other girlfriend, his longtime live-in girlfriend. It didn't take very long for her to find Candace Dixon's social media accounts. Her Instagram account was full of pictures of the couple at events, on family vacations, things like that. And this time, when Adeline asked him about it, he didn't deny it. He leveled with her and said that he was with Candace and he had no intention of leaving. The way that he framed it at the time was that it was a financial decision. You know, he'd brought debt into that relationship, and he couldn't afford to live the same kind of life as the one he had with Candace if he left her, and so he wasn't planning to.

4:06Adeline decided to try to make it work. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

4:22Tell me a little bit about who is Robert Kanasiewicz. Where did he grow up? Who is he? So Robert Kanasiewicz grew up in a city called Oakville, which is its own city proper, but sort of also acts as a suburb of Toronto. His father was a police officer from the Toronto Police Force. And he, from what I understand, sort of has always had a penchant for flashy cars and sort of ran with harder party and crew in high school, as it were, before growing up and applying to college for police work himself. Robert graduated in 2008 and got a job with the Toronto Police. He made decent money. But Catherine Laidlaw says he had expensive taste.

5:15He liked to go out to clubs and restaurants. And one night, when he was in his late 20s, he ran into an old classmate at a club, Candace Dixon. When they were younger, they had jokingly made a pact that if they were both still single at 35, they'd get married. And when they ran into each other again, Knašewicz recognized her and mentioned the pact. And he assumed she was married. And she corrected him. And he said, so I still have a chance. And they developed a relationship very quickly. They started traveling together. Candace had always traveled widely and often. So they went to New York together.

6:00They went to Turks and Caicos together. Candace's family takes an annual family vacation there every year. So she brought her new boyfriend along. You know, he quickly became her plus one for things like the Powerball, which is a prominent gala here in Toronto. And a few months after that, he moved in to the condo that Candace was renting. And I think she thought that there was real stuff there. I remember her saying that he felt like her people, that they had known each other for so long. And she likened talking to her boyfriend to going to confession at times because he was so quiet and composed and felt to her like a vault.

6:47And so I think he felt like a very safe space for her for a long time. How did they handle finances? She had more money than him. She did have more money than him. And in her telling, that wasn't an issue necessarily. She didn't expect him to keep up. That just didn't sort of seem possible or fair to expect. She, of course, when they first met, he was still living at his parents' home in Oakville, and that didn't appeal to her. She did expect him to change that living situation, which is when he moved in with her. But I think that she did notice early on that he managed money poorly. he brought some debt into the relationship.

7:36He hadn't been saving in the time before they had met each other. You know, he was traveling, going out with his friends, eating out, clubbing, living large. That said, she also observed that he didn't seem particularly stressed about it, and it became more of a pressure point for her. After a few years of dating, they bought a condo together, a penthouse with two bedrooms. Candace made the down payment, and Robert paid the monthly mortgage. Candace was working in marketing. Robert was still with the Toronto Police, and sometimes signed up for paid gigs on the side. Part-time positions, working security to sort of supervise different things.

8:17At concerts, sporting events, or sometimes government offices. One of those offices was a place called the Office of the Public Guardian and Trustee. They sort of bill themselves as the decision-maker of last resort. The OPGT, as it's called, quote, provides services to protect the financial, legal, and personal care of mentally incapable Ontarians. They take care of the decisions for people who don't have others to help them, family members to help them make those decisions. And that can be health care decisions. It can be financial decisions. managing the affairs more broadly of people who are alone and can't manage them for themselves.

9:07It really is an agency that acts for some of society's most vulnerable people. That's where Robert met Adeline Balgobin, who worked at the OPGT. Did Robert's friends know that he had both of these relationships going on? Yes, they absolutely did. And the way that he explained this circumstance was that he was staying with Candace for the lifestyle, that their relationship had never been a positive one. but he was really attracted to her lifestyle and so why would he leave? And with Adeline, he just had this crazy sexual, physical connection that was undeniable and oftentimes, you know, he would sort of take her out and show her off to his friends and no one ever said anything about it.

10:06Candace had no idea. Robert used burner phones or Snapchat to communicate with Adeline. Until about a year in, when Adeline discovered that his relationship with Candace wasn't in the past, like he'd said. And that kicked off a series of several years of going back and forth of tumult. Several years of romantic tumult. Catherine Laidlaw says Adeline confided in friends and co-workers about the situation. At one point, she texted a friend, I'm not doing this anymore. I'm ready to move on with my life. But still, she didn't end the relationship. By 2017, Adeline and Robert had been seeing each other about three years.

10:53Adeline was assigned to look after a new case at work, the estate of a man named Hein Sommerfeld. Hein Sommerfeld had been entered into the OPGT system years earlier. He'd been diagnosed with dementia, and when his doctor asked if he had any family, Hines said no. He later died in a nursing home. As his client representative, Adeline was in charge of arranging for his burial and canceling Hines' pension benefits and insurance coverage. The OPGT would also figure out what to do with his money. Usually their clients didn't have huge amounts, but Hines' case was different. He had an estate of nearly one million Canadian dollars.

11:37And he had no will.

11:42We'll be right back.

11:58Every story you love. Every invention. That moves you. Every idea you wished was yours. All began as nothing. Just a blank page with a blinking cursor. Asking a simple question. What do you see? Great ideas start on Mac. Find out more on apple.com slash Mac. Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start? Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin? Or what that clunking sound from your dryer is? With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top-rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app.

12:51Download today. Heinz Sommerfeld had grown up in Germany. When he was 11 years old, he and his family, his mother, stepfather, and half-brother, moved to Canada. And for much of his life, Sommerfeld really kept to himself. He was devoted to his family. When he had nieces and nephews, he was deeply involved in their lives and was always present at family events, birthday parties, holidays, things like that. But he had very few friends. He lived a very quiet life. In fact, he shared a room with his brother until well into his 20s until his younger brother got married and moved out. And that was the impetus for Sommerfeld to get a house of his own.

13:40He worked as a draftsman for the Ministry of Transportation here. And so he was sort of drawing detailed maps. He worked there for 36 years. And some of those years, he was actually commended for having perfect attendance records. And so he He was a very sort of orderly, fastidious person, and he spent a lot of his life and his time alone. At one point, Heinz got mad at his half-brother, Peter, and Heinz stopped talking to him. And eventually, the fissure deepened, and Heinz went so far as to stop answering the phone and stop answering his door. You know, they lived 15 minutes away from one another, and his brother described driving by the house on his way home from work just to check to see if he could see a flutter of blinds moving in the window so that he knew his brother was okay, like there was a period of deep estrangement.

14:41arrangement. Catherine Laidlaw says Heinz's neighbors tried to keep an eye on him. He was getting older and seemed to struggle with his memory. Over the years, he became more and more paranoid. And in 2008, that culminated with an incident where he went after a woman in the neighborhood with a hammer because he thought that he was being spied on. And the police were called when that happened, and they took him to a nearby hospital under the Mental Health Act. And that was when he received unofficial diagnosis of dementia caused by Alzheimer's. And that was also where he was declared incapable of managing his own affairs.

15:33So that's when he was entered into the OPGT system. So during that experience at the hospital, he was asked whether he had any family, who they should put down as next of kin. And he said no. And whether that's a decision that was born out of estrangement or forgetfulness or anger, we will never know. But it set a course for his affairs to be handled by the OPGT. They began to review Hines' medical and financial records and also sent someone to his house to look for paperwork. And what they found was a home that was fairly sparsely furnished inside. He did have, in keeping with his fastidious nature, a set of meticulously kept records, you know, letters that he had sent to his family when he was a child, a stack of expired passports.

16:31You know, there were tons of information about his retirement funds, things like that. Hines' estate was worth$834 ,000 Canadian dollars. And he had told everyone he didn't have any family. After he died in 2017, Adeline Balgobin was in charge of starting the paperwork. And then she would have, in an ideal world, passed the file on to the trust department to sort of handle the estate. And that's not what happened in this instance. She decided to hang on to the file for a little bit longer than she should have and saw an opportunity. Adeline talked about it with her boyfriend Police officer Robert Kanasiewicz And then she reported to the OPGT That Heinz had left a will That she'd received a voicemail from someone Who said they had a copy of it According to that will All of Heinz Sommerfeld's money Would go to one person A close friend of his Robert Kanasiewicz Of course, at no point during this process does Val Gobin indicate that Karnasiewicz is her longtime boyfriend.

17:57Robert signed an affidavit describing how he knew Heinz Sommerfeld. You know, he alleged at the time that he, when he was 22 and working a security job at a racetrack in the East End, that he had met Sommerfeld, who would have been 66 at the time, and that the following year the elderly man gave him the will, he went so far as to sort of plant Christmas cards in the file at the OPGT. A card dated 2008 and signed, Robert appeared in the file that wasn't there before. But one of Adeline's colleagues, also working on Heinz's case, had discovered something. Hines actually did have family, his half-brother, Peter.

18:46This colleague phoned Peter and delivered the news that his brother had passed away, that he had a sizable estate. And both of these pieces of information were shocking to him at the time. Adeline's colleague had put all this together and spoken to Peter without telling Adeline. The colleague didn't know about the will appearing. Peter was told that he would be inheriting Heinz's money. However, the following day, he got another call from the OPGT and was told that, in fact, there was a will, that there was a beneficiary, and that the half-brother wasn't in it. Peter had not seen or spoken to his half-brother in over 10 years.

19:33He had never heard of Robert Kinasowicz. He figured that in the later years of his life, his brother must have met someone who he connected with enough to leave his estate to. But he and his wife, after talking it over, did decide to consult with a lawyer. Their lawyer examined the will, determined that it looked to be credible. The will had been signed by two witnesses, John David William Leminski and Jonathan Stephen Asseltine. It had been notarized. Their lawyers seemed satisfied. Peter and his wife didn't know what to think. And the way that he characterized it at the time was, you know, if the lawyer says it's okay, it's okay.

20:17Like, you have to trust someone, right? And so they decided not to pursue it from there. Once a will is submitted, it needs to be verified by someone who works at OPGT. Adeline Balgobin was there to do it. Eventually, Robert received nearly$800 ,000, all of Heinz's money, minus legal fees. And so, effectively, what he did with the money when he received it was he paid down$92 ,000 in debt and then dumped the rest of it into an investment account. He wasn't spending it. And, you know, acting as an estate trustee isn't as simple as collecting a paycheck. There are actual decisions that have to be made.

21:06And so Knesswitch began to make some of those decisions. He even went as far as to approve the design of the headstone where Sommerfeld was laid to rest in the cemetery. And at this point, he is aware that Sommerfeld has family and still makes that decision, acting sort of as a state trustee so as not to rouse any suspicion. At one point, Robert decided it would be good to call Heinz his half-brother. He becomes aware of his half-brother's existence and thinks, oh, this is a kink in the plan. That, you know, this is not quite as simple as we'd initially thought, but all of these things are in motion now.

21:48So he, at one point, calls his half-brother and says that he's interested in holding a memorial service for Sommerfeld. and his half-brother can tell at this point that something is not quite right. He'd messaged him on Facebook and asked him if he had time to talk and he just was suspicious of the whole thing. And he said to Kanasewicz on the phone, who are you to my brother? And Kanasewicz didn't answer, hung up the phone and the memorial service never came to pass. And then, Candace Dixon, the woman Robert had been living with for years, got a concerned phone call from her uncle. He'd gone to a hair salon and chatted with the receptionist, whose husband worked at the OPGT.

22:44They started talking when she learned that his last name was Dixon. Oh, did he have a niece named Candace? Yes, he did. But she was insisting that his niece's longtime partner had another girlfriend. So Candace's uncle calls Candace. Candace, outraged, goes to the hair salon to confront this receptionist. And she was demanding and demanding to know this purported girlfriend's name. And the receptionist finally said, Adeline. Robert said he didn't know what the receptionist was talking about. But Candace took his phone and searched for the name Adeline. What came up was a photo of a business card with Adeline's name and place of work, the OPGT.

23:35And Kanasewicz, meanwhile, is denying everything. No, no, this is crazy. This is a lie. I only got the business card during one of my work shifts at the OPGT. So Candace, who is a very assertive individual, decides that the two together are going to get in a cab and go to the OPGT and confront this woman. And so they do. And as they're standing at the front desk and Candace is demanding to see this woman, Adeline, Kanasewicz is texting her upstairs, telling her not to come down. So after that, Candace, undeterred, decides to email Adeline. And she says, you know, I know you know who I am. Like, please call me.

24:36and Adeline writes her back very distantly sort of feigning ignorance and just saying that she couldn't help her and Candace wrote back sort of expressing disbelief that this could possibly be true and so could she please help clear this up and I remember she signed that email I wouldn't be the first person to be taken for a fool right and I think at that point she really was just sort of desperately examining the last seven years of her life and trying to think, like, is this even possible given how much time we spend together? Adeline Balgobin stopped responding to Candace's emails. But later, she did call.

25:20So she calls Candace one night and leaves this long, rambling, teary voicemail That sounds like a minute-long sentence and explains that she met Rob years ago at work and really liked him and wanted him to notice her and found out that he had a girlfriend but got jealous and told people that they were dating even though they weren't dating and that was a lie and effectively claiming that she had made it all up. and that if she could get the two of them to break up, then Rob would ride off into the sunset with her. And so Dixon then starts to panic for a different reason. To her, the idea that her longtime live-in boyfriend, who she spends inordinate amounts of time with, could have a stalker seemed more plausible than he could have a mistress at the time.

26:26And so she starts feeling very nervous. And Kanasewicz, meanwhile, is sort of perpetuating this stalker idea. He sends cease and desist letters to his own mistress in an attempt to get Candace to believe this sort of cover story, that in fact they are together writing themselves. Robert also sent cease and desist letters to Adeline's colleagues. The letters threatened them with lawsuits if they didn't stop claiming that he was involved with Adeline. Candace wanted to call the police about Adeline being a stalker, but Robert convinced her not to. To make her feel better, Robert showed her a photo of what Adeline looked like, so she'd know her if she saw her.

27:15But the photo wasn't of Adeline. It was of one of her colleagues at the OPGT. The relationship didn't last much longer. Candace broke up with Robert and asked him to move out. He did, and moved in with Adeline. But he didn't change his mailing address. So all of his mail is still going to the condo that he shared with Candace until very recently. She starts collecting the mail. This was something that he had always done in their relationship. she begins to take this on and notices a letter from TD Bank addressed to her ex care of the estate of Heinz Sommerfeld. This didn't really register with her.

28:02She threw the letter in a pile of other mail that was coming for him and, you know, flew off to St. Bart's for the holidays. And in January when she came back, she got a call from her ex saying that he missed her and wanted to see her and could he take her out for dinner. And when they arrived at dinner, he asked if any mail had come for him. And she said, in fact, it had. Candace showed him the letter. And did he know anything about this? He said he had no idea. He made a joke about Heinz ketchup. And he tucked the letter away in his pocket. And a few weeks later, another letter arrived from a law firm this time.

28:54And it was also addressed to the estate. And this time, Candace decided to open the letter.

29:06We'll be right back.

29:18Fox Creative. This is Advertiser Content brought to you by Nature's Sunshine New Marine Glow Collagen.

29:30If I surf in the morning or if I get in the ocean, my day is always better. It's amazing. This is amazing right now. It's early morning, just past sunrise, and we're out at Rockaway Beach in Queens. The beach is empty except for the surfers, like Tracy. The only surfing beach in New York City, and it's pretty awesome. My name is Tracy Obolski, and I am the owner of Rockaway Beach Bakery. The ocean is very powerful. There's also so much beauty to it. Being in the ocean makes me feel really connected, more confident, motivated, energized. I come out and I'm smiling. You just feel on top of the world.