Past & Present

by Judy Penz Sheluk

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying we need to find out as much as we can about the murder. Perhaps we even end up clearing Horst Frankow’s name.”

  Chantelle took a sip of her wine. “It complicates things, but I’d like to try.”

  We clinked glasses, toasting the decision. I hoped clearing Horst Frankow’s name didn’t come at the cost of discovering Anton Osgoode was guilty.

  “One other thing,” Chantelle said. “I don’t know exactly how to say this but…doesn’t it seem more than coincidence that our first case involves your family?”

  “The thought crossed my mind,” I admitted, and recalled trying to find my mother, the planted clues, the information withheld. “Then again, maybe Louisa was onto something. Maybe Anneliese is reaching out from beyond. All I know is that I need to see where this goes.”

  “Fair enough, but where do we start? How does someone go about investigating an old murder?”

  “The murder of a young mother of a three-year-old girl, husband accused and convicted, that must have made headlines, especially back then. I’m planning to go to the Toronto Reference Library next week.”

  “Good plan, but what about other resources? Do you think Leith Hampton could steer us in the right direction?”

  The thought of calling Leith Hampton didn’t sit well with me, but then again, neither had the idea of calling on Olivia, and look at where that had led. If I wanted to do Louisa Frankow’s case justice, I had to set aside my personal feelings. “I’ll call him tomorrow. Now enough business for today.

  We ordered pizza and opened a bottle of Chardonnay; another was chilling in a terracotta clay cooler, a housewarming gift from Royce Ashford. I felt my face flush at the thought of Royce. We hadn’t seen each other since he’d completed the minor renovations on the house. Our friendship hadn’t really gotten to the relationship stage, but I missed him, missed knowing he was next door. I made a mental note to call him and invite him for dinner. He loved my lasagna. The old adage, “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” seemed impossibly old-fashioned, but I found myself planning the meal.

  Leith wasn’t in the office when I called him in the morning, but his receptionist assured me that he would be available in the early afternoon, after he returned from court. I hopped onto the Past & Present Facebook page and was pleased to see that Misty’s first tarot message had already produced dozens of Likes and Comments. Misty was prompt at responding, and her answers were both articulate and entertaining.

  Inspired by Misty’s success, I decided to create a website page I titled Research. I included a clickable sidebar widget on our main page, and called it research help wanted. My plan was to prepare a new Facebook post, and duplicate it on the website.

  I’ve learned Facebook posts have to include animals or video to produce results. I googled “1952 trains, Canada” and found a few possible photographs. I selected a copyright-free image of an old train, along with a photo of the Gare du Palais train station in Quebec City, and included a message asking for any information on train travel from Quebec City to Toronto in 1952.

  I wondered if Chantelle had heard back from the Canadian Museum of Immigration. We’d been so busy talking about Olivia and Anton that we hadn’t discussed anything else. I was just about to give her a quick call when my phone rang. I checked the call display. Leith Hampton.

  “Leith, thanks for returning my call.”

  “How have you been, Callie? I know you sold the house on Snapdragon Circle.”

  I filled him in on buying the Edward Street property and starting Past & Present Investigations. His silence while I prattled on spoke volumes. Leith wasn’t a huge fan of my sleuthing adventures.

  “I assume this call has something to do with this new business venture?”

  “You assume correctly. I’d like to find out more about a murder that took place in 1956. I thought you might be able to assist.”

  “Nineteen fifty-six. You aren’t kidding about the past part. Unfortunately, it’s not my area of expertise, and I’ve got a big case going to court next week. I can, however, recommend someone who might be able to help. Fellow by the name of Howard Portland. He’s been retired for years, but at one time he was one of the best criminal prosecutors in Toronto. Beat me more than once, not that I hold that against him. I had dinner with him a few weeks ago. He’s writing a legal thriller set in the 1950s, and if anyone can help you, it’s Howard. Tell him I referred you.” Leith rattled off the phone number and wished me luck.

  I called the number. A baritone voice answered after three rings. “Portland.”

  “Mister Portland. Howard. My name is Callie Barnstable. I’m the co-owner of Past & Present Investigations. Leith Hampton gave me your phone number.”

  “Did he? In that case you can call me Mister Portland.” He chuckled. “Just kidding. Howard is fine. What can I do for you?”

  “We’re working on a case that involves a murder which took place in 1956. Leith seemed to think you might be able to help.”

  “Help you with what?”

  “Research, resources, whatever tidbit of information or insight you might be willing share. The information we have right now is sketchy and superficial. I was hoping to fill in some of the blanks.”

  “I’m willing to try, however, I prefer to do so in person. If you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all, in fact I’d prefer it. Where would you like to meet?”

  “Where’s your office located?”

  “Marketville.”

  Portland laughed. “Well, I’ll be damned. That’s where I live.”

  We set up a meeting for ten o’clock the following morning, me promising to offer unlimited refills of black coffee, Howard insisting that no food was required. I knew I should call Chantelle and invite her, but I wasn’t ready to talk about Anton Osgoode’s possible involvement and I didn’t know if his name would come up. I justified my decision by telling myself she had plenty to do already, what with her job at the gym, and her genealogy research.

  Denial can be a wonderful thing.

  14

  Howard Portland was a clean-shaven, athletic-looking man in his late sixties, with close-cropped steel gray hair, bushy white eyebrows, and piercing gray-blue eyes magnified by no-nonsense wire-framed glasses. He was wearing a blue and gold Boston Marathon T-shirt, and I recognized him as one of the warp-speed runners from my Sunday running group, not that we’d ever exchanged more than a few words in greeting. He smiled in recognition, set his brown leather briefcase down on the floor, and shook my hand in a firm, but friendly grip. We chatted briefly about the run club, the insanity of getting up at the crack of dawn every Sunday regardless of weather, and our future race plans. It turned out we were both planning to run in the 30K Around the Bay road race in Hamilton come March, his fifth time, my first. I figured Howard would be halfway home by the time I finished.

  The running pleasantries out of the way, and coffee made and poured, we got down to business.

  “First, tell me everything you know about the case,” Howard said. “Don’t leave anything out. The smallest detail could be significant.”

  “I only know what my great-grandmother, Olivia Osgoode, told me, and she’s ninety-one years old with an axe to grind when it comes to the woman who was murdered.”

  Howard grinned. “How sharp an axe?”

  “The woman who died had an affair with her husband.”

  “That’s one sharp axe. Tell me what you know about the victim.”

  “Her name was Anneliese Ruth Frankow, née Prei. She was originally from Germany, immigrated to Nottingham, England, after the war, and subsequently immigrated to Toronto in July 1952 to marry a man named Horst Frankow. I don’t know much about Horst yet, but my guess is that they were German expats that met in Nottingham. The marriage took place in October.” I paused, knowing that I was treading into the point of no return.

  Howard picked up on the hesitation. “What aren’t you telling
me?”

  “My great-grandfather, Anton Osgoode, Olivia’s husband. There’s reason to believe he’s the one who had the affair with Anneliese.”

  “Maybe you should start at the beginning.”

  I updated Howard on Louisa’s quest to find out more about her grandmother, the train case, and how the Certificate of Baptism for Sophie Frankow listed her parents as Anneliese Frankow and Anton Osgoode.

  “I’m not close to my grandparents on either side, a long story with no bearing to the case at hand. Until I met Olivia, I’d never met any of my great-grandparents, but I’ve been dabbling at creating a family tree. I knew that Anton Osgoode was my great-grandfather. Finding his name on Sophie’s Certificate of Baptism, that was…unexpected.”

  “I can imagine. Is Anton still alive?”

  “He died in 1987 at the age of sixty-six. I visited Olivia at the Cedar County Retirement Residence, hoping for the best and expecting the worst.” I smiled. “I actually found myself enjoying her company. She told me Anton was a serial cheater, and she chose to ignore it.”

  “That’s not as uncommon as you might think, especially for that generation. Divorce was a dirty word, and divorcees viewed with great suspicion. Did Olivia know about the child?”

  “Not at first.” I told him about Anneliese’s visit with young Sophie in tow. “Anneliese left when Corbin came out of his room to see who was at the door.”

  “So Anneliese had been unaware of Corbin’s existence.”

  “That’s the general consensus.”

  “Where does the murder come in?”

  “Anneliese was killed in her own home two weeks after she visited Olivia. Three-year-old Sophie was in the house, though whether the killer saw her is unknown. What is known is that she ran to a neighbor’s house, crying and talking about a bad man hurting her mommy. The medical examiner determined the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the back of the head. The murder weapon was never found.” I left out my thoughts about the vase. I needed Howard to help me find out the facts, not get embroiled in speculation.

  “Did the police make an arrest?”

  “They arrested Anneliese’s husband, Horst Frankow. Neighborhood gossips called him jealous, with a temper, and Anneliese often had unexplained bruises. He was charged with murder, convicted of manslaughter, and sentenced to life imprisonment in Kingston Penitentiary. He died in prison less than a month later. Stabbed in the shower, according to Olivia.”

  “Kingston Pen was a maximum security prison. Horst Frankow may have been a jealous husband, but he wasn’t a hardened criminal. He would have been ill prepared for life there. Whoever stabbed him might have done him a favor. What’s interesting is the conviction of manslaughter.”

  “How so?”

  “Manslaughter would indicate that the defense claimed Frankow committed the murder in the heat of passion as a result of sudden provocation.” Howard opened his briefcase and pulled out a yellowed document titled Statutes of Canada 1953-54. He flipped through the pages, opened it to Section 203, and handed it to me.

  There was a lot of legal jargon, but the bottom line was that sudden provocation meant the accused had lost self-control and acted upon it before there was time for his passion to cool. I stifled a grin. No politically correct pronouns used back in the 1950s.

  “My read on it is that the defense used Horst’s hot temper to their advantage,” Howard said as I handed the document back to him. “Premeditated murder would have almost certainly resulted in the death penalty.”

  It was a plausible explanation. “Where can I go to find out more about the murder?”

  Howard paused to consider. “Old newspapers would be the easiest. In Toronto, that would mean the Toronto Star, Toronto Telegram, and, because we’re talking about a murder, I’d also check the Globe and Mail, even though it’s a national paper. A young mother being killed in her own home, especially in 1956, would have garnered country-wide attention.”

  I’d been planning to check out the Toronto Star archives, but I hadn’t considered the Globe, and I’d never heard of the Toronto Telegram.

  “I’m not familiar with the Telegram,” I said.

  “No surprise, given your age,” Howard said. “The Tely ceased publication at the end of October 1971. Everyone talks about the dire state of print publishing today, but even then, it wasn’t a license to make money. The Telegram closed after ongoing financial difficulties. That didn’t stop the Toronto Sun from publishing its first newspaper that November with many of the same writers and staff. The Sun continued to support a Progressive Conservative Party political agenda in the manner of its predecessor, whereas the Star has always been staunchly Liberal.”

  I remembered Royce telling me the best way to get the true story was to read the various versions of it in different newspapers, a reason he subscribed to the Sun, Star, and Globe. “Where would I find archives for the Telegram?”

  “I don’t believe there are newspaper archives available to the public for the Telegram,” said Howard, “but the Toronto Telegram Photograph Collection is held by York University Archives and Special Collections. The collection is quite extensive. Even without having access to all of the university’s collection, there are well over ten thousand photographs online.”

  I felt a stir of excitement. Surely there would be at least one photograph, if not more, in the Telegram collection. It would take a lot of time, but at least I could do it from the convenience of 300 Edward Street. I was writing down the information when Howard made my day.

  “I’m sure you’re aware that the Toronto Public Library now has a comprehensive online reference library which includes the Star and the Globe and Mail.”

  Online records? Meaning no microfiche? “I wasn’t until just now, but thank you. Is there anything else you can recommend?”

  Howard nodded. “The Archives of Ontario holds a continuum of criminal justice records created from the time the police undertake an investigation into a criminal act, to the court trial and sentencing, to the resulting incarceration, probation, or parole.” He gestured to my computer. “How about I find the link for you?”

  I turned the screen and slid the keyboard toward him.

  Howard’s typing speed was as impressive as his running. “Here you go,” he said, after barely a minute had passed.

  The PDF was titled Criminal Justice Records at the Archives of Ontario. A Table of Contents offered an Introduction, along with six search categories: Investigation Records, Prosecution and Indictment Records, Court Records, Judges’ Benchbooks and Judgments, Correctional Records, and Probation and Parole Records.

  I wanted to jump up and hug Howard, but something told me he wasn’t the demonstrative type, unless you counted a high five after a run.

  “This is a great resource. I had no idea it existed.”

  “You would have found it eventually. I just saved you a bit of time.” Howard rose and made his way to the front door. “Call me if you need any help navigating the system, or better yet, call the Archives of Ontario. The reference archivists are extremely helpful.”

  “I’ll do that. Thank you for everything.”

  “Anything for a fellow runner, but I will caution you not to get your hopes up. A lot of early files didn’t make the transfer from wherever they were stored originally to the Archives of Ontario. But you might get lucky.”

  Get lucky? For the first time since learning about the murder of Anneliese Frankow and Horst’s incarceration I felt back in control, and luck had absolutely nothing to do with it. I was doing this investigation thing, step by step, past to present, and I was doing it with a little help from my friends, old and new.

  15

  The Introduction in Criminal Justice Records at the Archives of Ontario made it clear that permission would be required to access any of the documents. A quick review of each category defined the criteria, narrowing my potential search. First, however, I’d have to find out which documents I wanted to access. There was a link to an onli
ne database to be used in conjunction with the PDF. Fair enough. I’d start at the beginning and see where it led me.

  The first category, Investigation Records, was a dead end:

  The Archives of Ontario holds records of investigations and inquests conducted by the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), local coroners, the Centre for Forensic Sciences, and the Fire Marshall’s Office. Please note that the Archives does not hold the records of any municipal, regional, or national police (i.e., RCMP) services.

  Since the murder took place in Toronto, the Toronto Police Department would have investigated it. Or would they? Maybe, in 1956, the OPP would have been in charge. I opened a new window, searched for Toronto Police, and found a Wikipedia entry:

  The Toronto Police Service is the police force servicing Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Established in 1834, it was the first municipal police service created in North America and one of the oldest police services in the English-speaking world.

  I checked the Toronto Police Service’s website next, disheartened to find that copies of police reports were available only to those parties involved in the incident or their representatives, with consent.

  The next section under Investigation Records was the Coroner’s Records. Listed by area and date range, there was nothing for Toronto, per se, but there was a listing for York County. I knew that Toronto had seceded from York County to become Metropolitan Toronto. A quick Wiki search revealed the year to be 1953, not that it mattered. The available coroner’s records ended in 1955, one year before the murder of Anneliese Frankow.

  The Centre for Forensic Sciences case files came next, and the details were encouraging:

  Provides forensic services to police forces across Ontario. The files usually contain a police report describing the crime scene and the evidence found, the notes taken by Laboratory staff while examining the submitted samples, and the Laboratory’s report to the police.