Cursed! Blood of the Donnellys

by Keith Ross Leckie

  At this news, Will leaned against Fitzhenry’s porch railing, head down, catching his breath. Had it all really happened? He felt trapped in the nightmare.

  “There was a surviving eyewitness,” Fitzhenry told him quietly, and Will’s head snapped up, his eyes locked on Fitzhenry’s.

  “An eyewitness? Who is the witness?”

  “The young lad, Johnny O’Connor.”

  * * *

  Will was standing with Fitzhenry on the porch of the Queen’s Hotel in Lucan when the two horse-drawn paddy wagons from London arrived, flanked by four mounted constables. Several more policemen emerged from the wagons and more were coming, they told them, plus a couple of police detectives from Toronto by train. Will had described the events and the murder at his own house to Fitzhenry and named those he recognized and Fitzhenry had written it all down. They also had the list of men that Johnny had clearly identified by name. There were six. Four were on Will’s own list. Judge MacPherson had laid out the charges that would be executed in Will’s name.

  * * *

  Four constables, Fitzhenry and Will Donnelly arrived at the door of Jim Carroll’s rundown rented house just off Main Street in east end Lucan. Neighbours came out of other little frame houses, mothers and kids and old men, to watch. Will stood back behind the constables with a slouch hat down over his eyes. A sleepy Jim Carroll came to the door to face them and Will watched him startle at the uniforms. The fool had actually thought himself safe.

  Fitzhenry had never liked Carroll, Will knew, and there was a clear note of satisfaction in his voice as he said, “Jim Carroll, you’re under arrest for five counts of murder.”

  “What? On what evidence?”

  “An eyewitness.”

  Carroll appeared to be trying to keep calm. “Who brought the charges?”

  “Will Donnelly.”

  Will was delighted to see the look on his face.

  “Will Donnelly is alive?”

  Will stepped forward so Carroll could see him and he truly looked at him as if seeing a ghost.

  “Remember? ‘We’ve done what was needed, men. Let’s go home.’ Well, you didn’t finish the job, Carroll.”

  His jaw slack, staring at Will, Carroll was cuffed and shackled by the constables and they marched him away to the lockup.

  * * *

  Their next visit took them out to John Kennedy’s family farm, the house painted white and the barn new with two hands in the yard loading some fine cattle stock into wagons. It was his pretty wife who came to the door, with a young girl underfoot and a babe in her arms. “We’re looking for John Kennedy.”

  “He’s having his breakfast with the other John. I’ll go get ’im.”

  Kennedy came to the door and for a second he was as startled as Carroll, hearing the charges against him and seeing Will alive.

  Will looked Kennedy in the eye and said, “Brother-in-law does not lie easy now, Kennedy. Brother-in-law is going to see you hang.”

  Kennedy quickly overcame his initial panic, calmed himself and remained silent as Fitzhenry read to him his rights and the constables cuffed and shackled him.

  Kennedy’s “guest,” on the other hand, was not so composed. John Purtell made a wild run out the back door and into the arms of two constables Fitzhenry had placed there.

  Reassuring his wife it was all a mistake, Kennedy kissed her and the children goodbye, stared at Will with a moment of unconcealed hatred and went quietly. Purtell fought the cuffing and babbled, “Please. It wasn’t me. I didn’t do anything. It wasn’t my fault.”

  Kennedy snarled at him.

  “Purtell! For God’s sake, shut up!”

  They loaded Kennedy and Purtell into the wagon they had brought from town and continued on their mission.

  At the ramshackle Ryder farm, the constables found, arrested and cuffed Thomas and James Ryder and Martin McLaughlin, who was with them. Like Purtell, James made a break for it out the back door where two constables waited. The weak attempt at flight would not help his case. All chose silence as the Ryder children and wives and elderly parents looked on while they were led to the wagon, all but the youngest child shocked and growing tearful. Will stared into the eyes of each of the accused. They were going to hang for what they did and he hoped they knew it. As they glared back at him, he happily helped load them into the wagon.

  * * *

  In the constable’s office in Lucan, under the eye of Fitzhenry, the six prisoners waited in three small cells. Purtell was obsessively rubbing his hands on his shirt and pants as if to clean them. He was blubbering, at the point of panic, and it was infecting the others.

  “They’re going to string us up. We’re all going to hang! You got us into this, Carroll. It was your idea. They won’t execute us if we confess.”

  There was a quick movement and Purtell’s body was thrown and held against the wall. Carroll had him by the throat.

  “Shut up, you little shite! No one’s confessing to anything!”

  Outside the jail, Will was approached by Frank Simon of the Toronto Mail and asked politely for a statement. Will remembered Simon’s reporting from the spring assizes where the journalist had coined the phrase “Lucan Lambs.” Humour was not required at this point but Simon seemed a sincere man to Will, unhurried and sensitive to the emotions swirling in Will’s brain.

  “Only if now is a good time.”

  Will took a deep breath. “They have killed most of my family and tried to kill me. The truth will be known and they will pay the price.”

  * * *

  About noon, Nora and Will found Patrick. Will was so relieved he was alive. Having found no nemesis in the town the previous night to accept his invitation to fight, Patrick had wandered the streets and someone out back of the Central Hotel had finally handed him a bottle to calm him down. Not long after that, he had passed out on the Central’s porch—it was amazing he hadn’t frozen to death. Pat sobered slowly to the harsh reality of the night’s horrors. He kept repeating that he should have been there. Nora and Will held him and they wept as the pent-up emotions of all of them, previously frozen in their shock, began to melt. They had to get word to Robert in prison and, an even more terrible prospect, to Jenny in Goderich before the newspapers got hold of the story. And Will had to make a visit to St. Patrick’s.

  * * *

  Nora, Patrick and Will entered the sanctuary of the church just after the four o’clock Mass and walked toward the confessional, where a line of parishioners waited for Father Connolly to hear their confessions. They all pulled back from Will as he went forward and opened the confessional door. Inside, Connolly stared at him in fear as he had done at the burned house, only this time he was trapped. Will apologized to the current confessor and placed his hands on the material of Connolly’s vestments, took hold and dragged Connolly out into the sanctuary on his knees.

  “You can confess to me!” Will shouted at him.

  The priest began screaming, “Help! Help me, my children! Protect me!”

  The lineup of parishioners had come apart. They all stood there staring at Connolly but made no move.

  Will dragged the priest to his feet, shook him and demanded an answer. “Why is my family dead?”

  Connolly did not want to look at him. Nor did he look toward heaven.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. Leave me alone.”

  Will shook him again. “You told them to murder.”

  “No…no,” he was almost whimpering.

  “You gave them your blessing, didn’t you?”

  “No, it’s not true. I never meant to…”

  “The blood of my family is on your hands!”

  Will shook him again. Connolly put his guilty hands together in supplication and tried silently to pray. Will finally pushed the priest away from him and Connolly sprawled on the floor in front of the wide-eyed parishioners, his lip
s still moving in prayer.

  Will stood back to look at him. “And on your soul.”

  Father Connolly’s prayers ended. He stared at Will, then suddenly broke down and wept. Will realized the tears were not for his family’s dead but for the priest himself. He turned away in disgust and together with Patrick and Nora left the church.

  * * *

  Several more police detectives came in from Toronto on the train to join the first two and put together evidence for the Crown’s case. They operated out of the Central Hotel and interviewed scores of community citizens, including many Peace Society members. To hear it from the citizens of Lucan, no one was anything but a friend of the Donnellys. Two physicians did autopsies on the incinerated dead, which they admitted offered little information.

  Only John’s body could tell them a story. They found and identified the calibre of two rifle bullets and the pistol shot in his chest, as well as the distinctive pellet spread of Kennedy’s shotgun blast that had torn into him. The Crown detectives and the constables searched the homes of the vigilantes and found a rifle above the hearth in Martin McLaughlin’s house that matched one of the bullets they found in John. And they found Kennedy’s shotgun and, though it was difficult to determine a match, they could prove the weapon had been discharged in the last forty-eight hours. And they found pants with substantial human bloodstains hidden in John Purtell’s shed.

  Though the sadness of his family’s loss was deeper than he could ever have imagined, Will was confident the men who committed the murders would pay.

  * * *

  Jim Donnelly had purchased two small plots of land in St. Patrick’s cemetery many years before. Two coffins would be buried side by side in one plot, one holding Jim, Johannah, Tom and Bridget—for what was left of them, one was all that was required—and John had his own. The other plot a short distance away would hold Michael and James. The grave digger had worked hard and fast to give them safe places to put their loved ones in the frozen earth.

  At the interment on February 7, four days after the night of the murders, Father Connolly was not present. Will had decided to conduct the funerals himself, reading from the bible passages that his mother had marked. Two hundred people came, including the religious, their friends, the Keefes and Whalens, and of course the curious gawkers and several reporters from the newspapers: the London Free Press, the Toronto Mail, the Hamilton Spectator and the Detroit Free Press.

  “Rest eternal grant upon them, oh Lord, and let light perpetual shine upon them…”

  Will had done his best to calm Patrick, who was this day in a state of rage. Only for the sake of the family’s honour at the funeral did he contain himself. Winnifred Ryder, newly engaged to the dead John, whom her brothers had helped kill, wept openly beside his coffin.

  “…give rest, oh lord, to Thy servants with Thy saints, where sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing, but life everlasting…”

  Will stopped his prayer as he saw a wagon approach and draw to a stop. Jenny climbed out, holding flowers. Followed by her husband, she walked slowly to the coffins and tried to stand firm and straight in front of them but was clearly overwhelmed: she had lost most of her family. She picked out the light wood of the sarcophagus holding what was left of her mother and father and Tom and Bridget, their names written on a white ribbon, then laid her hands and face on the box and wept. Her husband, Jim Currie, placed a comforting arm around her as she keened for them, as her mother had keened for Michael and James. Will closed his eyes. All waited, heads bowed, until she had expressed her grief. When she regained control and stood back, her face red and tearful, Will studied his beautiful little sister, realizing how much she resembled her mother, as her blue eyes went from one coffin to the other. They formed a flotilla of her loved ones, about to set sail for a dark eternity. For her, Will began the service again.

  “Rest eternal grant upon them, oh Lord, and let light perpetual shine upon them.”

  Testament

  The first day of the trial at the London spring assizes was big doings for me. The courtroom was filled and many people was turned away. There was the men from the newspapers. One was named Frank Simon, who Will liked and had us shake hands. But Mr. Irving said I couldn’t talk to him, I had to save it for the trial. It were nearly three months since the massacre.

  Once I had told my tale to Judge MacPherson that early morning after, they took me to the Grand Hotel and I were under guard by two policemen. Just ’cause I had got myself out of that burning farmhouse didn’t mean I was safe. There was six men wanted me dead and probably a bunch more. The thing was, Ma and Da came to visit me and moved into the hotel for two weeks and started charging food and bottles of whiskey to the tab of the prosecution until they was told to leave, and then they threatened not to let me testify so Mr. Irving had to give them money so’s they’d go back home. It was so embarrassing. But the policemen guarding me were nice. And they stayed with me going to the courthouse.

  They also had extra police to look after the noisy crowd that waited outside the courtroom. The Crown prosecutor was Mr. Aemilius Irving, who had a bald head and a neck like a chicken and piercing scary eyes. But he was fair with me. He told me to just ignore all the crowds and tell my story. As the jury of twelve men listened to my testimony, I told the story again.

  “…and then Jim Carroll shouts out ‘NOW!’ and they all comes running in. It was Carroll and then Tom Ryder who first clubbed Mr. Donnelly.” And on I went again.

  At the front of the courtroom was Robert Donnelly, who they released from prison on what they called “compassionate grounds,” sitting with Patrick and Will and Will’s wife, Nora, and their new child, born in April, a boy named John William, and finally pretty Jenny Donnelly and her husband from Goderich, all listening to me. I was so sorry for my terrible story. I knew it were hard for them to hear it. I guess I talked mostly to the jury men, who listened very closely to me. They were important men, many in from London, farmers and businessmen in suits, some bearded, some clean shaved, a few moustaches, Catholic and Protestant both (united, imagine that!), who sat mostly with their arms folded and I were very careful in the story I told, I never talked about my feelings, but just the truth of what I seen.

  “A whole crowd of them jumped in and began hammering the men with clubs. At first no one would hit Miss Johannah ’til Jim Carroll done it. Then they all had a go on her. And I seen Martin McLaughlin finish off old Jim. Then they brought in big Tom’s body. Blood all over. James Ryder were one of them carrying. Think Tom Ryder were too, but I’m not sure. James for sure. Didn’t see the others clear.

  “Bridget was still screaming upstairs. Then she suddenly stopped and I seen it were John Purtell came down with others and he said she were ‘done.’”

  I looked over at John Purtell when I said this and he began to cry quietly. As well he should. The defendants were lined up off to my left so I didn’t look at them much but when I did, I saw they was all in shock at the doings I seen. I felt fine about that. These men done terrible things. Father Connolly was beside them and had a similar look on his face. It’d be fair if he had a similar fate.

  After me comes Will and his turn in the court. Mr. Irving didn’t want Will and me to talk leading up to the trial so we didn’t, but I could tell Will was happy I hadn’t been killed and could tell my story. He would smile in appreciation when I seen him. When Will Donnelly took the stand to tell his story, everyone were so quiet you could hear a fly burp.

  “When the shooting stopped, we could hear them through the broken window. John Kennedy said to Carroll, ‘Brother-in-law rests easy at last.’”

  Will looked at Kennedy. “But I didn’t. And I won’t rest easy until you’re dead. All of you.”

  There was some talk then in the room, and the newspaper men was making hurried notes and Judge Armour had to quiet everybody and say, “The witness will confine his comments to answering the questions.”<
br />
  Will apologized to the court but he got his point across to the accused.

  The court had ruled that Nora weren’t allowed to testify because of her being Will’s wife and one defendant’s sister so’s she’d be biased. It seemed much strange to me she’d be stopped—she’d know better than any of them—but even when the prosecution argued for her, the judge would not allow it.

  Next come the “cross-examination” of me by the defence lawyer, Mr. William Meredith, who were a kindly-looking man but he were a slippery one too.

  “Now Johnny…it was very late and you’d had a busy day. Isn’t it possible you just dreamed all of this.”

  “Those dead bodies weren’t no dream.”

  I seen he didn’t like this answer, but he was still smiling.

  “All right, but Johnny…it must have been very dark in the kitchen with only a candle…”

  “No sir,” I told him and talked to the jury. “Miss Johannah had lit the lantern and a few candles. It were like church at Easter. And later when they lit fire to the bed, their faces was bright as noon.”

  “But you said many of the men had masks or blackened faces. How could you possibly recognize them?”

  “The names I named had no black faces or masks or they’d taken them off.”