If Kingston, Ontario electrician Roger Gipson had known about Caron Oderbien’s shady past, he wouldn’t have lost $140,000 and most of the family farm. What Gipson didn’t know was that his about-to-become girlfriend had a criminal record for fraud, and had taken at least two other men for hundreds of thousands of dollars. W5, Canada’s #1 documentary series, blazes a trail across Canada as Victor Malarek hunts for “The Grifter,” premiering Saturday, Nov. 13 at 7 p.m. ET on CTV. Also in this episode and just days after Remembrance Day, Paula Todd shares the incredible tale of two Canadian veterans, who’d suffered horrific injuries while serving in Afghanistan, but who refuse to give up and compete in a two-thousand kilometre road race across Newfoundland.
W5 repeats Sunday, Nov. 14 at 12 noon on CTV and at 1 p.m. ET on CP24, and Monday, Nov. 15 at 8 p.m. ET on Investigation Discovery, and then on demand on the CTV News Video Player at CTV.ca (visit CTV.ca for local listings).
Official documents obtained by W5 paint a picture of serial scammer Caron Oderbien as a woman who “has a pattern of getting in a relationship, stealing her partner’s money and running away.” W5’s Victor Malarek follows her trail from Kingston, Ontario, to New Brunswick and across the Prairies, and discovers that Gipson isn’t the only man Oderbien duped: she served time in Colorado prison for defrauding her friend, Craig Carpenter, in 2003; even earlier she took Saskatchewan business owner Daryl Lowenberg for hundreds of thousands of dollars, including his house – which she literally stole, loading it onto a flatbed and moving it to Manitoba!
W5’s Malarek pieces together an incredible “catch-me-if-you-can” tale that includes a trail of broke and broken-hearted men. But there are other victims, like 16-year old Katlyn and the town of St. Stephen, NB. When Katlyn was diagnosed with leukemia, Oderbien promised to raise money to help. She enlisted the entire town to support a charity concert, sold tickets – and left town with the proceeds.
In the second story, W5 reports on Andrew Knisley and Jody Mitric, two Canadian soldiers who sustained catastrophic injuries while serving in Afghanistan. In January 2009, Corporal Knisley lost his right leg after stepping on an improvised explosive device (IED). Mitric’s life changed forever in 2007 when a bomb he stepped on was detonated, resulting in the loss of both of his legs below the knee. They are among the more than 500 Canadian soldiers who have been severely wounded during the war against the Taliban. Back in Canada, these brave soldiers are on a new mission – to raise money for their fellow wounded vets. And the way they plan to do it is to race in The Targa, a wild, 2,000 km road race on Newfoundland’s cliff-hanging highways. W5 follows the amputee amateurs in the months before the race, as they set out to learn how to race a car with just one leg and three arms between them, and through to the dramatic, surprising finish line. In “Road To Recovery,” Paula Todd takes viewers on an emotional and inspiring tale of two remarkable heroes who have not allowed the horrors of war to define their lives or their goals.
