‘He fooled a lot of people’
BROTHER DISCUSSES ROBERT NADLER’S TROUBLED PAST
HE WAS VERY MANIPULATIVE. BOB WAS NOT WHIMSICAL. HE WAS VERY PLANNED, VERY CAREFUL. VERY CONTROLLING, MANIPULATIVE; HE MUST BE IN CONTROL OF THE SITUATION. — FRANK NADLER, BROTHER OF ROBERT NADLER
Robert Nadler had two occasions to be on the front pages of the newspapers and leading the television newscasts, and neither is at all pleasant.
On June 28, Nadler’s house in Mississauga, Ont., exploded, flattening it and damaging dozens of neighbouring homes in a spectacular blast that is still under investigation. Nadler was found dead in the wreckage, along with his wife, Dianne Page, both 55.
In 1982, it was a conviction for the brutal murder of his childhood friend.
Nadler’s brother, Frank, believes there is a link between these incidents: Nadler’s psychological problems, including paranoia and anti-social personality that went untreated.
When Nadler was released from prison on parole on Dec. 12, 1991, he was ordered to “follow psychological counselling as arranged.”
However, on Oct. 26, 1994, he successfully had that requirement removed by the National Parole Board, according to parole records.
Frank Nadler, when told this week of the parole board’s decision, said it was a huge mistake.
“He’d already had a lot of issues. He still had issues. I’m surprised the professionals in the system didn’t catch on and realize that. But Bob is very good at that — I can see Bob fooling them, he fooled the whole system,” said Frank.
“He fooled a lot of people for a lot of years.”
Including, he believes, Nadler’s wife. If she was not exactly fooled, she would have been manipulated and controlled, like everyone else in Nadler’s life, Frank said.
Frank believes the massive explosion wasn’t an accident.
“I have a sense of it that they were at their wit’s end and it was some sort of a suicide pact,” he said.
That sickening sense for Frank began soon after the explosion. He felt the concussion from the Hickory Drive blast while he was at work at a warehouse three kilometres away. He turned on the radio for information.
When he heard it was in the area of his brother’s house, his mind soon went to the idea of Robert Nadler deliberately causing the blast because of his continuing problems and past comments he made about suicide.
“Bob was obviously troubled from an early age,” said Frank.
Frank speaks bluntly about the roots of his brother’s problems. It started with his parents.
“World War Two really messed their heads up. They were ripped out of their families when they were teens,” he said.
His parents were Germans living in Yugoslavia at the time. It put them in an awkward place, seen as German by the Slavs and as Slavs by the Germans.
“Nobody wanted them,” he said.
After the war, his mother, Kathe, was imprisoned in a camp but escaped and came to Canada. She met her husband, also named Frank, in Toronto. They had similar backgrounds and found comfort in that.
“They came here and were kind of dysfunctional. Felt very alienated. Came to Canada with a weird us-versusthem kind of mentality with the Western civilization having been persecuting Germans,” he said.
“They were all part of this conspiracy theory … and end-times speculation. Our dad kept telling us that we weren’t going to write the year 2000.”
In 1999, as others joined the paranoia over the possibility of a Y2K bug that would bring down the world’s computers, Robert and the parents stockpiled food and covered their windows in tinfoil, to protect them from radiation.
“That’s when the tinfoil went up and it stayed up,” said Frank. “It filtered down to us.” Bob most of all.
“He picked up on some of that paranoia — don’t trust the government, don’t trust your neighbour, don’t trust anyone. Don’t trust, period.
“I didn’t really pay attention because I was a kid doing my own thing and he was always my little brother. So I just knew he was shy and quiet but I didn’t know that shy and quiet meant psychological problems — until later.”
It became clear in 1980 when Nadler was arrested for murder.
In June 1979, Nadler was in his parents’ house, a different house in Mississauga, and had been up much of the night taking drugs, Frank says.
Robert Nadler’s best friend, Eric Pogson, came busting in, woke him, and confronted him over an $800 drug debt. Pogson faced drug trafficking charges at the time and had a pending court appearance. Frank said Pogson was demanding the $800 Nadler owed him.
Nadler “was still out of it,” at the time and his psychological issues kicked in — paranoia, a need for control, a facade of toughness, an inability to back down, said Frank. “Bob had a big attitude.” There was shoving and a fight. Pogson, 20, apparently had a hockey stick. Nadler, then 18, took a hammer and swung hard, fracturing Pogson’s skull.
Nadler later confided to a mutual friend, John Dyminski, who told the press at the time what Nadler had told him.
“He told me that after he had hit him with a hammer, he went outside to smoke a joint to calm his nerves,” Dyminski told the Toronto Star in 1982. “When he got back inside, he saw the body was still writhing, probably from nerves, so he got a knife and stabbed him. Then he used a towel to finish the job.”
Nadler wrapped Pogson’s body in garbage bags, lifted it into a wheelbarrow and pushed it across the street and buried it in a shallow grave amid thick bushes.
It remained hidden, and Pogson a missing person, for a year until Dyminski told police of Nadler’s confession. Dyminski secretly wore a wire for police and recorded Nadler’s conversations.
In June 1980, police and archeologists found Pogson’s remains. Nadler, then working as a machinist, was charged with his murder.
On March 5, 1982, Nadler admitted in court he bludgeoned Pogson with a hammer, stabbed him in the chest with a kitchen knife, then strangled him with a towel. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was given a life sentence, with 10 years to be served before parole.
In 1994, the parole board was satisfied with his progress.
“You have been on full parole since 12 December 1991 and all reports indicate positive performance,” parole records say.
“You have not been referred to psychological counselling since 1990 and your Case Management Team determines no need for the maintenance of the condition,” the board said when lifting the requirement for Nadler to follow psychological counselling.
On Aug. 20, 1998, the parole board made a further change to Nadler’s release conditions.
Surprisingly, given the role drugs played in his offence, it lifted his condition to abstain from drugs.
Despite the confidence of the parole board, Nadler’s re-integration was quiet, but not smooth. His brother was still a control freak, said Frank.
“That’s why he had a hard time getting a job or keeping one because he had to lose control for that, someone else had to be in charge and that didn’t rub well with him.”
After Nadler’s arrest, the family moved to Hickory Drive and, when Nadler was released from prison, he moved back in with his parents. He helped care for them as they became infirm. His mother died in 2001 and his father in 2011, Frank said.
“When he knew my dad’s health was failing, he decided to take matters into his own hands and managed to manipulate the house away from my dad’s will. So he didn’t really inherit it, he kind of stickhandled, manhandled, his way to it,” he said.
Frank was not allowed into the house after their father died and they briefly had a legal tussle over it.
“I tried, but the phone was off the hook, no one answered the door, so it was clear I wasn’t welcome. That was Bob’s way of shutting out the world.”
Nadler married Page around the time of their father’s death, Frank said. Frank wasn’t invited to the wedding so he isn’t sure exactly when. It was a first marriage for Nadler, a second for Page.
She moved into the Hickory Drive home.
Neighbours said neither Nadler nor Page mixed with them socially. Some found the tinfoil off-putting, and said the house and yard were unkempt.
Paul Camilleri, Page’s nephew, said his aunt was “a good woman” who became depressed and unhappy in her marriage. Nadler seemed nice at first but grew increasingly depressed.
Page was a former parttime elementary school teacher who met Nadler at church about 10 years ago, Camilleri said. Her two adult children from a previous marriage did not like Nadler, said Camilleri.
After the explosion, disturbing handwritten notes fluttered about the debris. Some were found by neighbours and turned over to police.
The notes detail financial ruin, personal pain and mental suffering, as well as hint at suicide and appeal to God for forgiveness.
Police are studying the notes to determine their authorship.
Both Frank Nadler and Paul Camilleri, however, said the notes were written by Page and document the couple’s deteriorating state.
Frank is also confident Page wrote them.
“It rang true. It just sounded like things they would say. … I’d be shocked if that wasn’t her writing,” he said.
There was wide speculation the papers were meant as suicide notes.
“Is it possible? Absolutely. But investigators have to go into this with an open mind,” said Sgt. Josh Colley, spokesman for Peel Regional Police.
The notes are odd, sad, personal and apocalyptic.
“Dear God,” begins one. “As of next week everything will fall apart for us.
“We owe mortgage company, house taxes, water bill, gas bill, hydro bill, TV bill ... Our outside looks like crap, unkept lawn, overgrown plants, bricks on wall cracking, weed growing through concrete. The upstairs bathroom electricity is off, the back bathroom shower has problems and we have No Money to fix or Pay anyone.”
“It’s time to check out of this unfoefilled (sic) life of sorrower (sic) and pain,” reads another.
And a third, also addressed to God, says: “Thank you for keeping us safe in this house until you call us home. Why are we still here God?” It then lists three passages from the Bible.
“It doesn’t need much explaining,” said Frank.
“If anything happened, he would have been the instigator and she would have been ‘Yes, Bob,’ ‘OK, Bob.’ Bob would have dreamed it up, he would have planned it out.
“He was very manipulative. Bob was not whimsical. He was very planned, very careful. Very controlling, manipulative; he must be in control of the situation.”
Page’s family has turned to a public campaign to help fund a Catholic funeral service for her.
About 700 homes were evacuated and, on Wednesday, the last of the families were allowed to return to their homes.
The cause of the explosion and the causes of death for Nadler and Page are still under investigation.