‘The Shell Lake Massacre’ podcast to replay starting on Boxing Day

A true crime podcast that captivated more than a million listeners this year will be replayed on CKOM and CJME this week.

“The Shell Lake Massacre,” a Rawlco Radio podcast, chronicles one of the worst random mass murders in Canada’s history. It takes listeners back to August of 1967, when James and Evelyn Peterson and seven of their children were brutally murdered at their Saskatchewan farmhouse.

In the six-part series, host and producer Brittany Caffet takes listeners on a guided tour of the killings and the aftermath with the help of Kathy Hill, the only surviving member of the Peterson family.

The series also covers the manhunt for the killer, Victor Hoffman, along with his confession and the lasting impact his crime left on Saskatchewan.

Each part of the series will be aired on 650 CKOM and 980 CJME from Boxing Day through Jan. 1 at 6 p.m. If you can’t tune in live, you can hear all six parts of the podcast below.

The podcast first launched on Aug. 14, and passed one million plays on Apple Podcasts just over a month later.

Caffet said she thinks her focus on the Petersons rather than only worrying about the killer helped make her series stand out from most other true crime podcasts.

A large headstone marks the site that holds the bodies of the Peterson family in the Shell Lake cemetery. The monument bears a quote from American writer Robert Green Ingersoll: “In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.” (Brittany Caffet)

“Something that separates ‘The Shell Lake Massacre’ from a lot of other true crime podcasts is the fact that we really paid attention to who the victims were,” Caffet explained.

“You got to see them as people and understand what a loss that was, and I think that might be what’s kind of separating this podcast from the pack.”