[narrator] Jan Canty always had a deep fascination with the human mind.
All my school counselors were interested in
was telling me to be a teacher or a nurse or a housewife,
and I wasn't interested in any of those occupations
[narrator] And in psychiatri Dr. Alan Canty,
she finds the perfect mento and partner.
[Lowell Cauffiel] He was a a great therapist,
very aware, very astute.
[Jan] He introduced me to a prodigy of Freuds.
I felt lucky to be with him
and very confident of that we were gonna make it.
[narrator] But behind the pedigree lies a dark secret
that will captivate a city.
A bizarre twist to the disappearance of Dr. Alan Canty.
I walked into his home office, frantic,
I looked in the mirror, and I said out loud, "He's not coming home."
[narrator] Her husband's hidden urges have led him down a dark path.
[Ti-Hua Chang] He was supposed to be a respected psychologist,
while he was actually feeding drugs to a young prostitute.
[Cauffiel] She said, "Wait a minute,
I don't even know who my husband is anymore."
[Gregory Osowski] She says, "I want you to be very careful."
And I said, "Why? Does he carry a gun?"
And she says, "He doesn't need a gun."
I felt as if I'd walked into a movie set.
Then I see blood in the bathtub.
Someone was murdered here.
[Jan] I grew up in Detroit in the 50s...
...and it was perfect.
I mean, that sounds ridiculous maybe,
but I wouldn't have traded my childhood for anybody's.
It was a wonderful time,
and I felt very safe,
and very happy, carefree.
If there is one thing I can fault my parents with
it would be that I couldn't have a serious discussion with anybody
about an occupation.
Because all my school counselors were interested in
was telling me to be a teacher or a nurse or a housewife.
[narrator] Defying the odds 20 year old Jan Canty
gets accepted into nearby Wayne State University.
Now she just has to figure out a way to pay for school.
I arrived at Wayne State around 1972 approximately.
I looked at the school catalogue, and I just poured over it.
Well, here in anthropology, and here is psychology.
It was exhilarating, I loved it,
I was challenged.
But if you were to go within half a mile
to the east or the north,
you were in one of the highest crime areas in the country.
I lived on West Grand Boulevard,
my rent was $80 a months, I was on the third floor,
it was a tiny studio apartment,
my building had rats in it,
and I put my mattress on the floor below the windo
because of all the gunfire outside.
[narrator] In search of a jo to help pay tuition,
Jan is given the name of respected psychologist, Dr. Alan Canty.
[Cauffiel] He came out of a very formal family,
and he was bit of an odd duck.
He was bit of an odd duck in school,
but he was a great therapist
very aware, very astute,
so he found his niche in, in that.
[Jan] I walked into Al's office,
and it wasn't at all what I expected,
he didn't have a suit on even.
Didn't make good eye contact kinda bumbling,
but smiling and encouraging
And I explained what my goals were and what I wanted,
and why I was there,
and he gave me the job.
[narrator] Jan goes to work for Alan,
and finds herself intrigued by the enigmatic psychologis
When he asks her out on a date,
she says yes.
[Jan] He took me to dinner.
From the street, it looked like an abandoned building,
it was an old big, big house,
painted drab green
with a yellow small sign that said Lelli's.
And it's the kind of place that
you would drive by thinking, "Ooh, that looks kinda creepy."
But when you drove through the alley that led to the back of the house,
men in tuxedos parked your car.
He knew how to do this stuff Like, how do you order of a menu like that.
I was just amazed how expensive it was.
[narrator] The first date leads to a budding relationship
based on shared academic interests.
And he kept telling her, "You know, you're college material,
you're a lot smarter than you think you are."
She saw him as almost a bit of a cheerleader.
He introduced me to Richard Sterba.
Richard Sterba was a prodigy of Freuds.
And he said, "If you want to I can get you in.
You can come to one of our seminars."
And here I'm an undergraduate student, and I'm, like, "Yeah."
It was my first time on a plane.
First time I've been to New York.
We stayed at The Plaza Hotel
That was phenomenal.
I can't even describe how magnificent that was.
I had a chandelier over my bed,
they came with bathrobes, it overlooked Central Park,
it was, had doormen, it was like a castle.
I fell in love with him because of the kind of perso I viewed him to be.
I viewed him as having the best qualities of my dad.
That he was loyal and smart
and funny and supportive,
and I felt lucky to be with him
and very confident of that we were gonna make it.
[narrator] Jan is thrilled when Alan decides
it's time for her to meet his parents,
but her delight fades rapidl
[Jan] His parents were stiff and formal,
and inquisitive to the, to the nth degree.
[Cauffiel] His mother was the president of Detroit School Board,
which is very lofty positio in, in Detroit.
Father was a bigger than life self-trained psychologist
who headed the Criminal Psychopathy Division of the recorder's court.
He used to love to come home and tell storie
about the criminals that he was evaluating.
They showed me to a chair,
and they just, particularly his mother,
flared questions at me one after the other.
"Do you plan on having children?"
"Why are you in college?"
"What do you wanna do with your degree?"
And I quickly looked over in the corner,
and Al was sitting in the corner biting his nails.
And I'm like, "This is really weird."
The subtle message being sen to me at the time
was how fortunate I was to be there.
That this was the Canty Family,
and we screen people carefully to become one of us.
We're out for breakfast one morning,
and I asked him to marry me
'Cause I got to thinking, "He's so shy and awkward,
he'll never get around to the point,
so I better do it."
I had a paper calendar on me
And I had a fork in my right hand
and the calendar in the my left hand.
I just stuck it on a date, and it was a Saturday,
and I said, "How about that? And he goes, "Okay."
So we did.
I asked my mom if I could wear her wedding dress,
she said yes.
I asked my best friend to stand up for me, and she said she would.
And he had a best man.
We didn't go on a honeymoon.
I had a lot of stuff to do for school, so I couldn't get away.
It wasn't important.
What was more important to me is a commitment.
And I thought, he was the ma that could keep a commitment
that he was honest and supportive,
and genuine.
We were house hunting,
and all I told him I cared about was having an old house.
He took me to Grosse Point.
I mean, I knew it was a nice area,
but beyond that I didn't know much about it
I'm looking at this house and I'm like,
"This looks like a public building, it's huge."
Six bedrooms, six bathrooms and a carriage house.
And I'm thinking to myself, "Why would anybody want this much space?"
It represented he'd made it,
that his parents could be proud of him.
Living under those parents had to be very difficult for him.
They were, you know, high achievers,
and his father rarely ever complimented him, if ever.
[Jan] His dad died of a heart attack abruptly.
And I remember him just sobbing,
and he put his head in my la
and I'd never seen him that vulnerable.
He kept saying thing like, "I'm so glad I have you,
and thank God, you're here,
and what would I've done without you."
I didn't need the big house I didn't need all that.
That was enough, just to be...
...vulnerable with one another,
needing each other, and have each other's back.
[narrator] Flushed with wealth and status she never really craved,
Jan is surprised when the support she desire from Alan starts to fade.
When I wanted to go on for my doctorate, I was surprised,
'cause up to that point of time he's been very supportive.
And he was withdrawn, he was pouty almost.
I'm like, "Well, this is weird."
I thought he'd be fine with it.
I said, "Look--" I said, "It's, it's important to me,
I think it does make sense financially to continue,
and I can do so much more with a doctorate than a masters."
And he said, "Fine, whatever." And he got up and left.
[Cauffiel] He liked to be in the roll were you needed him.
As Jan matured
and learned more about psychology, he was adrift.
She no longer needed him the way she had early in the relationship.
[Jan] He increasingly got more edgy, more easily irritated.
I felt we were drifting apart, I didn't know why.
[narrator] In November 1983
Jan comes down with mononucleosis,
and she considers going to her parents in Arizona to recoup.
[Cauffiel] It was his 50th birthday,
and she asked him would, you know, "Would that bother you if I went there?"
He goes, "Oh, absolutely not."
In fact, he insisted that she go.
[narrator] Jan's happy to get away,
but she make sure not to forget her husband's birthday.
[Jan] I set my timer and I woke up and I called him,
and it was difficult to talk 'cause my throat was so raw.
And I started singing "Happy Birthday" to him over the phone,
and he started crying.
And I said, "I don't have the plague, it's just mono, I'll be fine."
I said, "I hope you did something special for your birthday."
And he said, "Oh, yes, I went down to, to Chung's Restaurant."
Which I hated, it was in a lousy neighborhood.
[narrator] The birthday marks a terrible turning point for Alan.
Soon, Jan will learn that she'd never really knew her husband.
This rich, white psychologist from Grosse Point,
was leading a double life.
He was the kinda guy who wanted to play on the dark side.
[Chang] He wanted the excitement
of hanging out with bikers and prostitutes.
Unfortunately, it, it came up short for him.
It was a chain of events that got out of control.
[narrator] A fully recovered Jan Canty
returns home from Arizona,
but she's noticing odd chang in her husband.
He started dressing better.
He'd never taken much interest in his appearance,
and one day he came home in a pretty nice suede jacket.
"What do you think of this? And I'm like, "Whoa! That's really nice."
He never spent any money on his clothes.
He seemed really happy about it.
I was surprised, but...
...I didn't take it as meaning anything more than what it was,
'cause he's not a ladies man
he's kinda bashful and awkward,
and he was working all the time.
[narrator] Over the next yea
Alan becomes even more withdrawn and focused on his work.
And he'd see the patients in the evening at his home,
and he'd see patients on Saturday,
and then he told her that he was spending his lunch hours
evaluating criminals at the jail.
Then there was no time for me basically.
She thought he was working himself to death and drinking too much coffee,
and was, uh, actually suffering from
some anxiety disorders from all the work he was doing.
[narrator] But Alan refuses to slow down,
and then in April 1984, Jan gets frantic phone call
His mother would call him at work
and he'd pick up and hang up.
He wouldn't talk.
And this happened multiple times within an hour,
so she asked me to go downtown, see what was up.
The office was unlocked, I walked in, all the lights were off.
He was in, sitting in his chair,
mute, and looking like he had a 10,000 mile stare,
and kinda mumbling at times but real soft.
He was saying, "Snow,
I've been bad."
"Am I a good boy, am I standing tall?"
"Birthday, Cass."
Just this jumble.
I couldn't make heads or tails of it.
I don't even he recognized I was in front of him.
And I'm like, "What the heck?"
So I called my mentor at the medical center,
which was very close, maybe 10 minutes away,
and I asked him if could bring Alan,
and I said, "I don't know what's going on."
It was like leading out a mannequin, he was, just came with me.
They did some blood work,
and agreed with me he was having a psychotic break.
I mean, we've been together 10 years, almost 11 at that point.
I had never seen him like that.
I hadn't ever seen anybody like that.
[narrator] Alan is hospitalized
at the University of Michiga in Ann Arbor.
She wanted him to slow down.
And so when he did have that psychotic break,
it was easy for her to attribute that
to the fact that he had been working so hard
[narrator] But as Jan digs deeper,
she starts uncovering thing
that are not so easy to explain.
I found out that the admitting psychiatrist and his mother
talked separately without me around,
and he had been hospitalized twice before, psychiatrically.
One occurred while he was in basic training,
he couldn't take the military life, so to speak.
The next time was at the tim of his divorce.
I was angry.
I wouldn't have thought les of the family or her or him or anybody.
It's just information that was critically important.
[narrator] Alan's previous breakdowns had been
triggered by major life events,
prompting Jan to question the cause of this one.
[Jan] So I made it a project of mine
to go to his office and to straighten it up.
I found a receipt with my forged name
on an account paying rent for some person I had never heard of.
Then I found unpaid bills.
Handfuls of unpaid bills.
And I'm like, "He's working night and day
there shouldn't be any unpaid bills."
I totaled it up, and it came to $6,000,
which is in 1985 dollars,
so I got the bills organized
and paid for with the help of his mother,
and then I decided to clean up his office.
I went to his appointment book,
and he had all these names that he's written in.
Sometimes five times a day.
One o'clock, three o'clock, it'd be the same name.
They were made up, it was silly names,
like, Peter Pan and Willy the Goose and--
I'm like-- And it was his handwriting.
That was the turning point.
I felt cut of at the knees, I felt I had been overwhelme
I didn't know that it was gonna get worse.
[narrator] After six weeks of uncovering evidence
that suggests Alan is suffering from mental illness,
Jan picks her husband up from the hospital.
[Jan] He was real quite.
And he says, "What have you done
or what have you been doing since I left?"
And I told him I started cleaning up his office.
I wasn't ready yet to get into what I'd found.
"What do you mean, you're cleaning up the office?"
I said, "It was a pigsty."
I said I went through the paper-- Oh, he was not happy,
I didn't even get to finish the sentence.
He was incensed, he wouldn't talk the rest of the way.
We didn't talk that night.
There's more going on here that I can't figure out.
But never in a million years did I imagine what would happen.
Last time I saw him was July 13th.
He left, and I didn't say anything to him.
[Cauffiel] When he left in the morning,
he was dressed a little different,
he looked like a person
that was determined and sur as, as to what he was doing
[Jan] That day was awful,
high winds, rain, hail, slee in the middle of summer.
I was watching Live Aid, which is a three hour special,
so I lost track of time,
and I look up, and all of a sudden it's, like,
he's way overdue, he was never one to be late.
I'm like, "That's odd."
[telephone ringing]
So I called his office, his answering service said they had no information.
And, um, there's no cellphones in this time,
so I couldn't reach him that way.
I was frantic.
The storm was raging, there was lightening, it was awful outside.
And I walked into his home office,
I looked in the mirror,
and I said out loud,
"He's not coming home."
I finally, very reluctantly, called my neighbor next door,
and I said, "Jim, could you take me down to his office?
He hasn't come home."
Al wasn't there, and he had signed out at 6:3
[narrator] Alan is missing.
Soon his absence will become the subject of macabre speculation.
[Chang] I got a call from a source,
and the source said, go to this address.
And it turned out to be 2518, Casper Street, in the Cass Corridor.
It was as if I'd walked into a movie set.
You realize it's not like the movies.
They were arrested by a next door neighbor.
Someone was murdered here.
[narrator] Alone in her Grosse Point home,
Jan Canty still has no idea where Alan is gone.
[Jan] I didn't sleep that night.
The next morning, I went down to the police to report him missing.
And so they took a report, nothing happened, nothing came of it.
Oh, I called his mom and told her,
and she, of course, was understandably frightened and frantic.
And I told her,
"If you have any connection in the police department, would you call somebody?
'Cause I can't get them to do much."
She said, "I'm on it."
[narrator] The political connections held by the Canty Family
trigger a quick police response.
[Osowski] The very first da of the investigation, I went to the Fisher Buildin
and I'm saying to myself, "If a person is overworked as he is,
how does he relax if he's not home,
if he's always working?"
A person must find something to unwind with.
And I happened to look outside,
and I saw that Second's Aven
and it was going south, goes right towards the Cass Corridor.
And I said to myself, "Well, it wouldn't hurt
to go down and see if there's a guy that fits
the description, a john in the neighborhood.
Detroit's the most stratified city
that you'll find anywhere in America.
Back in the early 80s, it still is.
The very bottom even beyond poverty,
'cause you mix poverty and criminality,
was the Cass Corridor.
This sort of no man's land where there's a lot of empty lots,
skid row hotels, tenement housing,
hookers on the street, dope fiends,
[Osowski] So, I went over there.
and I was very fortunate that I ran into a couple of my informants.
One of them was Suzie Q.
Since I didn't have a pictur of Dr. Canty At that time,
I just had a description of the car.
She says, "There's a guy that's driving around
and when he saw us, he would always ask,
"Have you see Dawn? Have you seen Dawn?'"
I says, "Dawn, Dawn who?" and she says, "Dawn Spens."
Suzie Q told me that John Fr was Dawn's pimp.
So I says, "Where can I find John?"
She says, "They live on Casper."
"Just a few blocks from here She says, "Yeah."
She says, "I want you to be very careful, John's very violent."
And I said, "Well, does he carry a gun?"
And she says, "He doesn't need a gun."
[Cauffiel] John "Lucky" Fry was kind of a funny guy, actually.
Charming, like a lot of psychopaths are.
Also, seemingly very fearles
[Osowski] He had, uh, a small stable of young ladies
that eventually, uh, dwindled down to one person,
which was Dawn Spens.
[Cauffiel] Dawn was horribly addicted to drugs, to opiates.
She seemed to have the kind of eyes that said, "Help me."
In the context with Al, of the guy who needs to be needed,
she was the perfect match for that.
[narrator] The next day, Detective Osowski's informan calls him with startling new
[Osowski] She said, "I hear on the street that maybe
Dr. Canty's car was toasted already, which means arson.
Somebody tried to get rid of his car for a reason.
The reason is simply that I think that something bad had happened to Dr. Canty.
[newscaster] There's still a lot of unknowns in this case.
For example, police still aren't sure exactly what happened
after Canty left his downtown Detroit office.
[Jan] It was not long after that the news starting breaking.
And I refused to watch it.
[narrator] Police get a search warrant for the Casper Street location
where John Fry and Dawn Spens live,
and find evidence pointing to a crime scene.
After they process the location,
reporter Ti-Hua Chang gets a tip about the case.
[Chang] Thursday, July 18, I was in the newsroom
and I got a call from a source within the Detroit City Government.
And the source said, "Go to this address."
And it turned out to be 2518 Casper Street in the Cass Corridor.
"The house is still open, but you gotta get there soon
otherwise the police are gonna close it up."
So, I ran to the assignment desk
and I said, "Give me a crew, now."
I went to the back door, the back door was open.
And it was a surreal scene.
I felt as if I'd walked onto the movie set.
Except a more realistic movie set.
The house was a mess. Beat up old couch.
And then I saw a blood trail
from the bedroom that went all the way to the bathroom
Then I see blood in the bathtub.
Little specs of blood, 'cause it had, someone had apparently tried to wash it.
And there was a search warrant.
It had all the basics of the story.
The missing psychologist, Dr. Alan Canty,
the suspect they were looking for, John Fry,
and a prostitute named Dawn Spens.
All that was on the search warrant.
So, he was missing and there was worry that there was foul play,
but there's no ransom that's been issued.
It unnerved me, I felt scared.
And I got a call from Officer Landeros.
She asked me to meet her down at police headquarters.
So, we get up there and we got off on Floor 5 and it says, "Homicide."
This is becoming very real.
[narrator] Waiting for them is inspector Gil Hill.
So, I went into, with my parents, to the waiting room
to meet with Gil Hill and he's just like he was in Beverly Hills Cop.
He played Eddie Murphy's bos Inspector Todd.
He sat me down and he started asking questions which made no sense to me.
He asked, "Have you felt followed lately?"
I had been followed twice coming home from work.
He also asked me, "How's your finances?" And I'm like...
Has he been listening in our kitchen window?
And I said, "Matter of fact, yes."
I said, "I can't get him to open up about it."
And he's, why? What does this got to do with my missing husband?
He said, "We know he's been seen multiple time
on Casper Street handing out lots of money."
I didn't even know where Casper Street was.
"And he's been seen in the company of a pimp and a prostitute."
I'm like, "He's got the wrong guy."
That doesn't make any sense.
So, by the time we get home my dad is frantic.
And I had never seen him like that.
He's a very Steady Eddie guy.
He went into action. He said, "We don't know what's going on,
so you and your mom are gonna sleep upstairs,
I'm gonna sleep downstairs with the dog."
And I said, "Dad, you're scaring me."
And he goes, "I'm scared."
[newscaster] And tonight, reporter Ti-Hua Chang
has exclusive details on allegations
that Dr. Canty led a double life that ended in violence.
[Chang] We waited till 6 o'clock to break the story
'cause we had a bigger audience at 6 o'clock.
[newscaster] And now police are releasing photographs of the pair.
Detectives believe this man John Fry, probably killed Dr. Canty.
He was reportedly sworn he won't be taken alive.
His companion, Dawn Spens,
described by authorities as a known drug addict and prostitute.
Heavy blood stains were foun in their home yesterday.
It's believed to be where Dr. Canty was killed.
My dad said, "I know it frightens you,
but information is power."
"I want you to know what John Fry looks like.
I want you to know what Dawn looks like.
'Cause if you ever see them, you call 911 and then you call me, in that order."
I was so tired and I was so frightened.
I was numb.
[narrator reading] Six days after Dr. Alan Canty is reported missing,
lead investigator Marlyss Landeros
gets a surprise visit from an informant named Frank McMaster.
Frank McMaster. was this trucker up in Northern Michigan
who knows John "Lucky" Fry
and he and Dawn come in and says,
"Frank, I gotta get rid of something."
"I was cutting these bad checks,
and there's some evidence I gotta get rid of.
Is there some place we can go?"
So, they got back on this old logging trail
and, uh, Lucky's got this, this bag.
Lucky admits to Frank. He says, "You know,
I, I killed somebody last night."
So, because Lucky was always bragging about, "I killed somebody, I did this."
You know, he had all these big stories all the time.
He doesn't believe him.
But he's got this bag and he still thinking there's, like, bad cheques in there.
And Frank digs this hole and Lucky takes the bag
and drops it in the hole and goes, "Bye-bye, Al."
[narrator] Investigators hea to Northern Michigan to check out the bizarre story
Less than 24 hours later, Jan is called down to the morgue.
[Jan] So, we got to the morgue and it [scoffs] reeked in there.
And then we walk into the chamber,
and I close my eyes.
My dad on one side, Detective Landeros is on the other side.
And so I open my eyes and I saw what I saw.
[gasps]
[Jan] A head.
His head.
On a table.
With a sheet wrapped around its neck.
I thought I was gonna heave at that point.
And we walked to the, towards the front exit.
And like I said, I was kinda out of it,
and I saw these herd of reporters outside the door.
But Officer Landeros was on top of it
and she twisted me around and we went out the back
and she had me lay down in her squat car and we went out that way.
But that was just the beginning of my nightmare with the media.
When Al was missing,
the reporters, the media, the daily media was your friend.
You wanted to get the word out, the police did, uh, her family did.
But once the missing loved one is found,
and if they happen to be murdered in a very strange situation as her husband was
now suddenly, the media is an inquisitor.
[Jan] I went through the funeral like a robot.
And the media showed up and intruded to the point where arguments broke out.
Calling 'em bastards, and get outta here.
[scoffs] Oh, my.
Whose life did I step into?
[narrator] Early on the morning of July 22, there's a break in the case
[Chang] Fry and Spens were arrested just after midnight
in front of this house in Northwest Detroit.
Fry's aunt lives here.
They were arrested by a next-door neighbor, who's a policeman.
Sergeant Ray Brewer says a neighborhood resident
recognized Fry from the media reports
and told the policeman Fry was on their block.
And at that time, I pulled my revolver
and told him that he'd have to stay there.
And when I would allow him to move around, he wasn't giving no resistance
that if he was trying to run or anything,
like he was just about ready to give up, that's all.
[Chang] A grim-faced John Fr walked to court this afternoon
to be charged with the first degree murder
of Grosse Pointe Park psychologist Alan Canty.
It was all over the news at that point.
I could not escape.
I had nightmares for a long time, very vivid nightmares.
I thought, it could have been worse, I could have died along with him.
Because Fry knew where we lived.
[narrator] Lucky Fry's tria is held on December 3, 1985
but a mentally exhausted Ja chooses not to attend.
It was probably one of the most crowded trials I've ever been to in Detroit.
The courtroom was packed and, and you had to get there early
otherwise you wouldn't get a good seat.
So the reporters, you know, all lined up early and...
To make sure that we could get close enough to see the, uh, defendants.
I got in the front row.
And I was able to, you know get a close-up look at Dawn Spens.
I saw her lips, they were moist and pouty
and actually quivering a little bit in court.
And I could imagine how Dr. Canty, when he saw her and met her,
you know, would have seen that, and would have been obsessed with her.
[Cauffiel] She's much better looking than many of the prostitutes
in that area who are badly addicted to drugs.
She's fresh, you know, she's young.
[Chang] Dawn Spens had this wounded bird quality.
It's more than just a damsel in distress.
It's more like a siren in distress.
[narrator] As the trial moves forward,
the extent of Alan's obsessi with the young prostitute becomes clear.
He paid regular visits to Dawn Spens for over a year and a half.
He was a respected psychologist,
you know, working in Detroit, living in the suburbs,
while he was actually spending most of his time
in the Cass Corridor, feeding drugs to a young prostitute and her pimp.
I think he got well over his head with all the money
that he had, that supported Dawn Spens with over the time that he knew her.
She knew how to play Al, you know, she knew how to play him for money.
She was very much in love with John "Lucky" Fry,
because he was almost like a father figure, a protector for her.
But while he was in the middle of his addiction,
they needed to have that money.
And so, he was always looking for possible ways to get money from Al.
Al was the, the golden goose that laid the golden eff.
The question that has puzzled police from the outset of the investigation,
is why would Spens and Fry kill the man who, reportedly, over the last year and half
had given them as much as $150,000 for what police describe as
a social relationship that included sexual favors?
"Why," one policeman asked, "Why would they kill the goose that laid the golden egg?"
In Grosse Pointe, he's Alan Canty,
but then he goes into the inner city of Detroit,
and he's Dr. Al Miller and he's copping drugs for her,
he's, he's become as dark as they are, in a sense, you know, morally dark.
[Osowski] It's, it's, very easy to integrate
into this, uh, subculture in, uh, Cass Corridor, but it's so hard to get out.
And I really think that Dr. Canty got in over his head
and as he's trying to control, he was being controlled.
[narrator] Dawn has become an addiction for Alan,
even though he hasn't been using drugs himself,
he's drained his bank accoun to fund her habit.
His plan that evening was that was going to be the last night.
That he wasn't going to see them anymore.
Meanwhile, Lucky Fry's got another plan going.
And that is, "Okay, Al, you're gonna give me 5,000, 10,000, 20,000."
We're not quite sure what the amount was.
"And I'm going to leave Dawn to you
and I get that and a plane ticket to Venice, California to live.
So, Al leaves the Fisher Building at 6:35
and he goes over to see Dawn and Lucky
on the Southwest side, the bungalow on Casper.
And Dawn wants drugs, so he buys drugs for her.
According to Lucky, he came home and saw what was going
and he said, "Can't you see we're trying to get clean?
And now you're buying her more drugs?"
And Al said, "It's my money, I don't have to justify anything I do to you."
And pushed him out of the way.
Nobody laid hands on Lucky Fry.
If you laid hands on him, he would explode into a rage.
John picked up the baseball bat that happened to be there
and hit him on the head.
[gasps]
And even after Al fell down he screamed at him,
"Get up mother [bleep], get up."
[narrator] At a crowded courthouse in Detroit,
the story of Dr. Alan Canty' downfall and demise is being revealed.
The most shocking testimony comes from the killer himsel
[Chang] Probably the thing I remember the most about the trial,
was when John Fry took the stand.
The first question his defense attorney asked him was,
"Did you kill Dr. Canty?"
"Yes." "Did you cut off the head of Dr. Canty?"
"Yes." Fry should have stopped right there.
But right after that,
with a little smirk on his face,
John Fry said, "Yeah, I used that Ginsu knife.
You know, the one where you buy one, get two for free."
And when he said it, it was so cavalier and cold.
Here's a guy that cut off the head of somebody
and all he can remember or add is that it's funny,
"I used a Ginsu knife like in the TV commercial."
[Cauffiel] Lucky doesn't wanna get any blood on his clothes
and he ends up naked in the bathtub with Al and dismembers him.
He puts him in garbage bags they get in the car,
and they head to Northern Michigan,
where Lucky's former girlfriend is living
with, uh, this guy, Frank McMaster.
[narrator] At the end of Fry trial on December 11,
it takes the all-female jur less than two hours to decide his fate.
51-year-old John Fry was found guilty
of beating Dr. Alan Canty to death with a baseball bat,
then cutting the doctor's body into pieces.
Fry was sentenced to life in prison for the killing.
He will never be eligible for parole, ever.
I don't believe that Lucky Fry killed Alan Canty
in a planned, first-degree, premeditated murder kinda way.
I believed it was a fit of rage.
[narrator] Five days later in a separate trial,
Dawn Spens is found guilty of being an accessory after the murder.
But she's awarded a much different sentence.
The judge went easy on Spens, she could have gotten five years in jail,
instead she got ten months in jail with three years' probation.
[Chang] I'm glad she didn't go to prison.
She's a participant, but also a victim.
And if she had gone to prison, I think she would have been brutalized in prison.
So, the fact that she went to rehab,
and I've heard that she's, you know, turned her life around.
So, I guess it turned out to be the right decision.
[Jan] I just decided I gotta leave. I gotta start over.
The media was not gonna let me go. They were on me all the time.
And I was tired of being "the widow."
I loved Detroit, there was many things about the city I loved.
But it wasn't home anymore.
About eighteen months after the murder,
I met with Lowell Cauffiel, who was writing a book.
When I contacted her, she was pretty traumatized.
[Jan] At first, I didn't want to meet with him.
But my attorney said to me, "This is the only way you're gonna find out.
You said you don't understand it, well, here's your golden opportunity."
He filled in so many of the blanks.
I would never have pieced it together had it not been for him.
[narrator] For Jan, Lowell's research provides a clear picture
of Alan's double life that all began when Jan was at her parents' in Arizona,
recovering from mono in 1983
So, here he is on his 50th birthday and he's alone
and on his lunch hour, he takes that drive
from the Fisher Building towards downtown into the Cass Corridor,
and he sees Dawn Spens.
They went to a seedy motel and that's where they had their first sexual encounter
He paid her a hundred dollars, which was a lot of money in 1985.
And then he called Jan in Arizona
and they chatted a little bi on the telephone.
That's how he spent his 50th birthday.
And that is what initiated this relationship with Dawn Spens.
It's no coincidence that he meets Dawn Spens,
who's, like, 19 years old, approximately Jan's age when he met Jan.
And he's telling Dawn the same things, "You're college material."
"I'll put you up in an apartment, you'll be able to go to college."
So, Dawn Spens is almost like a David Lynch-ian version of Jan.
I didn't have a name for it then, but it's called conflicted grief.
There was a part of me that was glad he was gone.
Had he not died, I would have left him in a heartbeat, I know that
But on the other hand, it's still a loss, it's still a...
...a murder, it's still a terrible death.
Of somebody that was my companion for ten years.
You don't walk away from that easily
without feeling loss and sadness.
My life feels very different now.
Um, of course I'm a lot older, that makes a difference.
After 30 years of trying to piece it all together and make sense of it,
I adopted two daughters.
It was a new role as a mom and it gave me new purpose.
They're full biological sisters.
Then I met Rich and...
...let him in slowly. I was very much at arm's length.
We dated for a year and he proposed to me and I didn't answer him.
I just stared at him.
I'm not retired yet.
I've written a book, I've got one on the way, I've got a podcast.
And I do public lectures.
And I'm trying to take all that I've learned
and use it to the benefit of other homicide survivors,
because there is still so few resources out there.
And so little understanding of what people go through.
So, they need all the help they can get.