Milkshake Murderer: The dutiful husband & the Dying Wife
Rene Castellani
Rene Castellani stood above the city of Vancouver in the summer of 1965. Literally, as he waved to people on busy West Broadway from a car atop the 29-metre neon sign at BowMac Motors. Within two years, he was sentenced to stand on a different kind of platform. A gallows. Castellani was a star with CKNW. He was the Dizzy Dialer, king of prank calls and stunts, broadcasting live when the Beatles made their only Vancouver experience in the summer of 1964. He fooled - and outraged - Vancouverites with another stunt, pretending to be an Indian maharajah who wanted to buy British Columbia, swathed in robes, surrounded by bodyguards and beautiful women. In June 1965, he pledged to stay in a car atop BowMac’s landmark neon sign until every vehicle on the lot sold. It took eight days. (The dealer’s sales manager was young go-getter named Jimmy Pattison, who went on to become a billionaire and British Columbia’s most successful entrepreneurs.)
But while Castellani was waving to the crowds, his wife, Esther, was stricken in a hospital four blocks away, suffering from symptoms that baffled doctors. By July 11, she was dead.
Who knows how Castellani, married almost 19 years, got the idea. Maybe it was the times. The Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Who all released their first albums in 1964. Protests against the Viet Nam war broke out. Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters set out in an old bus to bring LSD to America, and long-haired young people started arriving in San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury. Castellani was 40, and no hippie. But maybe he decided the old rules didn’t apply anymore. Or maybe it was just a more familiar story. A man wanted out of a marriage because he had met someone new, younger, prettier. And decided on a deadly solution. And Rene almost got away with it. . .