Did you hear about the B.C. radio disc jockey who murdered his wife and was given the death penalty?
It's true.
Rene Castellani had been a former nightclub owner, who tried to become an actor, and who had yet another career change when he was hired by New Westminster radio station CKNW in 1964 to do promotion.
Among other stunts, he dressed as a 'Mahorajah', and he and his entourage 'arrived' in Vancouver and began a series of high profile 'appearances' around town.
CKNW management then cast him as 'The Dizzy Dialer' at the radio station, where he would telephone unsuspecting 'victims' and make outlandish requests. Yes, old schtick now, and even then, as a lot of it was taken straight off the TV shows of the time, including I Love Lucy, and Steve Allen, but, that was a simpler time, and Rene was considered - by some - to be quite the comedian.
Friends and acquaintances had mixed opinions about Rene, though. Described as being talented, outgoing, and funny, some of his co-workers privately, and not so privately, thought he was weird and even crazy. A couple thought him warm and even lovable. One found him very 'lovable' indeed.
Rumors began circulating that the long-time married man Rene was having an affair with the station's all-night switchboard girl; "Lolly" Miller was a 22 year old widow with a young child and an insurance policy from her drowned husband. Rene who was much older, had not only a wife, but an 11 year old daughter. As Rene and Lolly didn't bother to hide their affair, people were naturally beginning to talk.
The situation escalated when Rene's long-suffering wife Esther became suspicious after finding a love letter from Lolly stuffed in her husband's coat pocket. The talk heated up. Both Rene and Lolly were asked to resign from the radio station.
Lolly quit CKNW then, but Rene refused to resign, playing the sympathy card, claiming that his wife was ill. They reluctantly let him stay, feeling it would be callous to let him go when he was looking after his 'sick' wife. Esther in fact began feeling unwell, so much so, that she was taken into hospital at VGH a few days afterward. Extensive medical tests were begun, and completed; there seemed to be nothing wrong with her. So why was she so sick, and, after she got into the hospital, why was she getting even sicker?
During this time Rene started one of his most elaborate, and most publicized, stunts. For days on end, he was, in effect, 'flagpole sitting'; supposedly 'staying' in a car 'parked' adjacent to the top of the ten story tall Bow Mac sign on West Broadway, while broadcasting regular live reports of the experience to his radio audience. As Esther grew ever more ill, some at CKNW grew ever more horrified by his callousness, and begged him to end the 'gag', to get down from there, and go look after his wife. Poor Esther's health was deteriorating daily, all the while Rene was supposedly, and publicly, 'away' from her.
Rene was, in fact, visiting his wife, coming down from the tower, and going to the hospital, hiding out in the hallways if her mother happened to be there, and waiting until she left, before bringing his wife her favorite flavor of milkshake to try to get her to 'keep her strength up'. She drank the milkshakes. But it wasn't working. She kept getting worse.
Rene thought the best thing he could do for his ailing wife would be to buy a house with Lolly. Rene and Lolly began the process, and applied for a mortgage while Esther still lay in hospital, still drinking the milkshakes that didn't seem to be making her any stronger. Days after the mortgage application, Esther died. Her death came under circumstances that still mystified the medical staff. She was only 40 years old.
After Esther was buried, Rene took his 11 year old daughter to Disneyland, days after the funeral of her mother. He also took Lolly, and her child, along for the ride. They drove down to California in style, in a borrowed CKNW cruiser - a marked car - the same one that Rene had left parked in plain view many nights outside Lolly's house, while Esther had been sitting at home waiting for him. But Esther was gone now - six feet under - although no-one knew quite why.
Esther's family doctor was stumped. He couldn't get it out of his mind. He began reviewing her case, going back through all the files. The only possible conclusion he could come to was a suspected poisoning. The symptoms, if added up altogether, suggested an old-fashioned poison that had been out of 'fashion' since Victorian times: arsenic. Other officials couldn't see it, and thought it too outlandish; some hadn't seen an arsenic poisoning in their careers, as that sort of thing had seemed to have largely fallen off some fifty years before. But Esther's doctor requested that the coroner exhume her body to test it to find out if his theory of the mystery was correct. It was. The coroner needed the permission of the dead woman's husband to dig up the body, but Rene refused to give it. The unsuspecting legendary radio personality Jack Webster had been a friend of Rene's, and he said he talked Rene into changing his mind and letting the exhumation take place; he told Rene it would look suspicious if he continued to refuse, so, in the end, Rene gave in.
Poor Esther didn't rest in peace for long. She was dug up, and her body tested for arsenic. It tested positive. There was so much in her poor body, they could tell she'd been fed that poison for many months prior to her death. The amount of arsenic her body had been given had not fallen during her hospital stay; it had risen, and risen dramatically, during that time. Milkshakes! The coroner called for an inquest. The jury sat through 4 days of evidence, and brought in the verdict: death was "unnatural, a homicide". It may be true that dead men tell no tales, but it is also true that women like having the last word. Esther had pointed a finger straight at Rene from beyond the grave.
Rene and Esther's house was searched by authorities. They found an arsenic-based weed killer down the basement. The bottle had several ounces gone out of it; enough to kill Esther several times over.
Rene thought the best thing he could do for his dead wife was to immediately marry the young Lolly. He got the marriage license, but before he could take himself a new wife, he was arrested for the murder of his last one.
Rene Castellani was found guilty. The death penalty was still in effect in British Columbia. Rene had a date with the hangman.
In desperation, his lawyers appealed, and a new trial was begun. He was found guilty again. This time he went to prison, his last stop on the way to the gallows. But Rene cheated the hangman after all; the death penalty was abolished, and everyone on death row had his sentence commuted - Rene included. He would stay in prison for 12 years, but he wouldn't be hanged.
After he got out of prison he went back to the radio station and wanted CKNW to give him his job back. Strangely enough, CKNW had never admitted that Rene, who had been very high-profile, had ever worked for their own station during their coverage of his trials; they were understandably not anxious to have him back. Grim laughter greeted his request, as he was told to just walk away Rene ... and don't let the door handle hit you on your way out past the new receptionist. He never did marry Lolly. She got married to someone else while he was still doing time. Rene died relatively young not too many years later, after briefly reviving his 'career' in radio at a station on Vancouver Island.
Well, anyway, that's the way I've always heard it. Mercifully, I never met Rene. I went to work for 'NW around five years after Rene went to prison, and he never darkened the doors there again after he got out.
But I've heard other pieces of the puzzle down through the years.
Did someone lie for Rene at his trial? If so, it hadn't seemed to have done him any good. Since Rene had been nabbed by the police just before he could actually marry Lolly, she could have been forced to testify against him - did she? And who started the dark and whispered suggestion about the girlfriend's dead husband, or was that all just an ugly rumor?
A New York city tabloid printed the story about Rene, as they knew it, a few years back. Are there still unanswered questions? We're all about to find out.
A new book is coming out about the case of the infamous Rene. Vancouver writer Eve Lazurus has penned her latest, called : " Murder by Milkshake : An Astonishing True Story of Adultery, Arsenic, and a Charismatic Killer ". It is coming out this week, published by Arsenal Pulp Press. Although I am dubious about the word 'charismatic' in the title, I am definitely going to read it.
~ by Glen Livingstone
( with a little help from his friends )
{ In the photo below, Rene seems uncharacteristically shy about showing off his new bracelets as he is led away. }