Bestial

by Harold Schechter

  A big grain elevator stood just off the road. Armstrong stopped his car, and he and Young got out to make a thorough search of the area. After satisfying themselves that the stranger was not hiding in the vicinity of the elevator, they got back into the Ford and proceeded to a nearby schoolhouse, where they asked the teachers and pupils if anyone had seen a man answering to the stranger’s description. No one had.

  Their next stop was the farmhouse of a man named Reg Noble. Neither Noble nor his housekeeper had seen the stranger that morning. Just north of Noble’s house stood a thick grove of trees, a perfect hiding place for the fugitive. Armstrong and Young spent almost an hour prowling through the grove. But they turned up no trace of the stranger.

  Still unwilling to summon reinforcements, the two men continued their search of the district. They questioned everyone they encountered—farmers, housewives, travellers, a group of Bible students out for a midday jaunt.

  But none of them had set eyes on the thickset stranger.

  Even as Armstrong and Young were scouring the countryside to the south, the “Gorilla’s” two most recent victims, Emily Patterson and Lola Cowan, were being laid to rest in Winnipeg.

  An enormous crowd—more than a thousand people, according to one estimate—packed Old St. Andrew’s Church on Elgin Avenue for Mrs. Patterson’s funeral service. Her simple gray casket—topped by a single spray of red and white flowers, a farewell token from her stricken husband—rested at the front of the church. It was surrounded by scores of floral tributes from the many citizens who had been stirred to their depths by the tragedy, her “sacrificial death at the hands of the most horrible murderer of modern times” (in the words of the Manitoba Free Press).

  The service was conducted by Rev. J. S. Miller, pastor of the church. He was assisted by Rev. W. L. Reese of the Church of Christ’s Disciples, who offered the opening prayer. Following the reading of Scripture, the choir sang an anthem, “The Souls of the Righteous in the Land of God.” Then the Reverend Miller spoke.

  Taking as his text the second verse from the fifteenth chapter of Jeremiah—“Her sun is gone down while it is yet day”—he referred to the “suddenness with which the dead has been snatched from the midst of her loved ones,” and how the “horror of the deed has exposed the awful depths to which a human being may sink when his life is lived in disregard of God and his fellow man.

  “Her passing has stirred the city as it has never before been stirred,” the Reverend continued. “You have been drawn here because you feel in your hearts that had chance brought you or yours face to face with the miscreant, you or they would be in her place.”

  Following the sermon, Miss Agnes McCullough sang “Shadows,” an old hymn that had been a favorite of Mrs. Patterson’s. Other hymns, sung by the entire congregation, included “God Moves in Mysterious Ways,” “Lead Kindly Light,” and “Forever with the Lord.”

  When the service was over, the coffin was borne to Elmwood Cemetery, while thousands of spectators lined the route, watching in silence as the motorized cortege made its solemn way along the streets.

  At the same time, a simple service was taking place for fourteen-year-old Lola Cowan in the little chapel of Thompson’s funeral home on Broadway. Only relatives and immediate friends had been invited, including a dozen or so of Lola’s schoolmates who huddled on the benches, weeping unrestrainedly. Outside the funeral home, at least 400 people milled about on the curbstones, waiting to pay their respects.

  The Rev. G. A. Woodside, minister to St. Stephen’s congregation, officiated, taking for his text the Twenty-third Psalm. Following the service, the people that had gathered on Broadway were permitted inside. Forming a somber line that snaked around the block, they filed into the chapel and, heads bowed, moved silently past the flower-heaped bier. It took more than an hour for the entire crowd to view the teenage victim in her open coffin.

  Afterwards, the casket was driven to the Elmwood Cemetery, where a brief service was held at the gravesite. Once again the Reverend Woodside spoke. Like Chief Detective Smith, he expressed absolute confidence that the “Gorilla” would be brought to justice. The reverend’s remarks made it clear, however, that his faith was entirely in the Lord, not in the local constabulary.

  “I know what is in the minds of those present,” he proclaimed. “They have a thousand questions. I am not going to say what is going to be the outcome of the one who brings tragedy to a home. I am satisfied that God will deal with that person. No one shall escape His eye. They may flee successfully from the law. But they cannot evade the reckoning day.”

  * * *

  Lola Cowan’s body had just been interred when Roy Armstrong and Joe Young finally picked up the suspect’s trail.

  After refueling the Ford in Boissevain, they came upon a farmer named Pettypiece, who had seen the stranger walking eastward at around 1:30 P.M. Another farmer named Hawkings was driving his team home at around 2:30 P.M. when he was approached by a dark-skinned man in bib overalls and a straw hat who asked to borrow some matches. According to Hawkings—who couldn’t oblige, since he wasn’t a smoker—the man had immediately headed off eastward. Hawkings had watched until the stranger disappeared around a hill.

  Armstrong and Young lost the suspect’s trail for a while but picked it up again at around 4:30 P.M., when they came upon a farmhand who had been plowing a field when he noticed the stranger hiking along the roadside about an hour before. According to the farmhand, the man had been “walking very rapidly, going east.”

  Continuing their pursuit, Armstrong and Young arrived at the farmhouse of a man named Doug Chapman, who invited them in for supper. It was already after 5:00, and both men felt in serious need of refreshment. After bolting down some food, they thanked Chapman warmly, hopped back into the Ford, and took off again.

  It wasn’t long before they came to Matthew Chester’s farm. As they drove up to the house, Mrs. Chester appeared on the front porch. “He just came by here,” she called to them, gesturing excitedly toward the south. “Keep on going and you’ll catch him for sure!”

  Two miles further on, as they approached the next farm down the road, the owner, Fred Kendrick, came out to meet them. “Go straight south, Roy,” he shouted. “He’s just ahead of you.” Apparently, Doug Chapman had phoned ahead to both Mrs. Chester and Kendrick and told them to keep their eyes peeled for the stranger.

  By then, the two men could barely contain their excitement. They were so close to their quarry that they could almost feel their pockets bulging with the reward money.

  They hadn’t travelled more than a mile or so beyond Kendrick’s farm, however, when the Ford got stuck in a mud-hole. Cursing, they climbed from the car and tried to wrestle it out of the mire.

  The time was approximately 5:45 P.M., and they were only a few minutes away from Wakopa, a tiny hamlet at the extreme southern edge of Manitoba province, just five miles north of the U.S. border.

  36

  †

  Mrs. Catherine Hill

  Thank God he is captured—the fiend, the animal!

  At the same time that Roy Armstrong and Joe Young were struggling to free their car from the mud, a stocky, olive-skinned man entered Leslie Morgan’s general store just a dozen yards from the train station in Wakopa.

  In a town consisting of fewer than ten houses, any stranger would have piqued the storeowner’s interest. But Morgan, who had been listening to his radio all afternoon, had particular reason to pay keen attention to the thickset fellow in bib overalls, brown khaki shirt, and wide-brimmed, white straw hat.

  Approaching the counter, the stranger asked for some cheese. Morgan sliced a healthy chunk from a brick of cheddar.

  “That’s about twice what I need,” said the stranger.

  Without a word, Morgan split the chunk, then wrapped one-half in brown paper. The stranger then asked for two bottles of Coca-Cola, a package of Millbanks cigarettes, and a box of matches. The total came to seventy cents. Fishing a handful of coins from his pocket,
the stranger counted out the exact change and handed it to Morgan.

  “You walking or driving?” the storekeeper asked casually as he dropped the coins in to his money drawer.

  The stranger said nothing. Popping open one of the bottles, he took a long swig, then stuffed the rest of his purchases into his pockets, turned, and headed for the doorway.

  There was another customer in the store—a commercial traveller named Mr. Martin. As soon as the stranger disappeared out the doorway, Morgan strode up to the table where Martin was just finishing up a ham sandwich and coffee.

  “You think that man could be the one that’s wanted up in Winnipeg?” Morgan asked.

  Martin, however, could only answer with a shrug. He had been immersed in his newspaper and had barely caught a glimpse of the stranger.

  Not far from the general store, a man named Albert Dingwall was working on the grain elevator beside the Wakopa station when he spotted the stranger. Like Leslie Morgan, Dingwall had been listening to the radio on and off during the afternoon and had heard several special bulletins relating to the “Gorilla.” If that is not the fellow, Dingwall thought, it looks much like him.

  The man was sipping from a Coke bottle—evidently purchased at Morgan’s—as he strode along the railroad tracks that led south toward Bannerman, a small town less than two miles from the International Boundary Line. Dingwall watched until the man was a few hundred yards down the tracks, then made for the general store.

  Morgan was standing by a window, peering out at the stranger’s receding form.

  “What do you think about that fellow?” Dingwall asked.

  “I think he’s the one,” Morgan replied.

  “So do I.”

  Telling Dingwall to stay by the window and keep an eye on the man, Morgan put in a call to the Provincial Police station in Killarney. The phone was answered by a constable named Wilton Gray. After identifying himself, Morgan asked if the constable could provide him with information on the suspect wanted for double murder up in Winnipeg.

  Gray described the suspect, reading from the only circular he had received, the one issued on Monday, June 13, when Nelson was still garbed in the clothes he had purchased in Winnipeg—pale-gray suit, fawn-colored sweater, fancy fedora.

  “The clothes are different,” Morgan said after hearing the description. “He was dressed more like a hobo or a farmhand. But that sounds like him, all right.”

  “Sounds like who?” asked Gray.

  “The fellow who was in my store just a few minutes ago. He’s hiking south along the tracks towards Bannerman.”

  “I’m on my way,” said Constable Gray.

  After hanging up the phone, Morgan and Dingwall held a hurried conference. They decided that Dingwall would trail the suspect, while Morgan rounded up some reinforcements.

  Borrowing Morgan’s revolver, Dingwall trotted back to the grain elevator, got hold of a co-worker named George Dickson, and quickly filled him in on the situation. Then, mounting Dickson’s buckboard, the two men headed south at a gallop, following the tracks.

  About a half-mile south of town, the railroad passed by the farm of a man named Duncan Merlin. By the time Dingwall and Dickson reached Merlin’s property, the stranger was nowhere in sight.

  “He knows we’re after him,” muttered Dingwall. Evidently, the stranger had left the open railway embankment and ducked into the bushes that ran along the opposite side of the tracks.

  Riding up to the farmhouse, Dingwall and his companion alerted Merlin, who immediately offered the use of his Ford. Piling into the car—Merlin at the wheel, Dickson beside him, Dingwall in back—the three men roared off in the direction of Bannerman, certain that the stranger was making a break for the International Boundary Line. They hadn’t driven more than a quarter-mile or so when they spotted him loping along the railroad tracks, about a hundred yards up ahead.

  Hearing the car coming up behind him, the stranger cast a quick look over his shoulder, then bolted for the undergrowth again.

  Dingwall shouted for Merlin to stop. As the Ford came to a halt, he and Dickson leapt out of the car.

  “You go on ahead,” said Dingwall, drawing the revolver he had borrowed from Leslie Morgan. “We’ll keep him in sight.”

  Merlin put his foot to the pedal and sped southward towards Bannerman, while his comrades headed for the bushes.

  Within minutes of receiving Leslie Morgan’s telephone call, Constable Gray had set out for Bannerman with a fellow officer named Sewell. Driving at top speed, the two men reached their destination about forty minutes later, pulling into town at approximately 6:45 P.M. Duncan Merlin was already there, waiting impatiently beside his Ford. Several minutes later, another car roared into town, carrying Leslie Morgan and several of his neighbors from Wakopa—John Whittingham, Jason Henderson, and Robert Gear.

  With Merlin leading the way, the three cars raced back to where the stranger had last been seen, about a mile-and-a-half northwest of Bannerman. As they approached the spot, Gray caught sight of the suspect—a squat, thickset man in bib overalls and a white straw hat. He was moving along the edge of a wide, muddy ravine, as though trying to figure out a way across.

  Gray ordered Sewell to stop, then leapt from the car. Keeping low behind some bushes, he made his way as stealthily as he could toward the suspect. When he was about twenty-five feet away, he drew his revolver and burst from the undergrowth.

  At the sight of the constable, the suspect threw his hands in the air. “Honest to God, sir!” he cried. “I’m not trying to cross the line.”

  Revolver in hand, Gray strode up to the suspect. He could see that the man bore a close physical resemblance to the person described in the reward bulletin, though—except for the brown boots with bull-dog toes—he was dressed in different clothing. Gray asked him his name.

  “Virgil Wilson,” he answered.

  To Gray’s other questions, the man replied that he was a native of Vancouver who had been in Manitoba for the past three months, working on the ranch of a man named George Harrison, about a half-mile south of Wakopa. He had never been to Winnipeg or visited the United States. He was just taking a hike through the countryside and planned to return to Harrison’s ranch later that day.

  From both the man’s accent and the fact that he used the term ranchers, not farmers, Gray could tell he was no Canadian. By then, his partner, Constable Sewell, had come trotting up, as had Albert Dingwall and George Dickson, who had been trailing the suspect from a distance. Dingwall, who knew every farmer around Wakopa, confirmed what Gray had already guessed, that the suspect’s ostensible employer, “George Harrison,” was a fabrication.

  Confronted with this fact, the man confessed that he had lied about being a farmhand because he was afraid of being arrested for vagrancy.

  While Gray kept his gun trained on the suspect, Sewell searched the man’s pockets and found a cheap watch and chain, a fine-tooth comb, a white cotton handkerchief, a map of Manitoba, and the items purchased at Morgan’s general store—the paper-wrapped cheese, Millbanks cigarettes, and wooden matches.

  Placing the suspect under arrest, Gray and Sewell led him back to their car. The time was 7:35 P.M., Wednesday, June 15.

  Word travelled fast. When Roy Armstrong and Joe Young drove into Wakopa twenty minutes later—having finally extricated their car from the mud—they saw a crowd gathered outside Morgan’s general store. Still dreaming of splitting the reward down the middle, the two men could feel their hearts sink as soon as they stepped from the car and heard the news: the “Gorilla” had been captured and was on his way to the Killarney jail.

  37

  †

  Old joke (circa 1927)

  A flapper who wants to force her boyfriend into marrying her decides to have sex with him. As they lay in bed after making love, she tells him that since she is sure to get pregnant they will have to get married before the baby is born. “What do you think we should name him?” asks the flapper. “Well,” says the boyfriend,
tossing a condom out the window, “if he gets out of that, let’s call him Houdini.”

  Sewell drove, while Gray sat in the back beside the prisoner. The squat, dark-skinned man, who continued to maintain that his name was “Virgil Wilson,” seemed as unconcerned as if he had been picked up for a minor violation. As the car sped towards Killarney, he chatted and joked and gave easy replies to all of Gray’s questions.

  He was a native of Britain, he claimed, born in Lancashire to an English mother and Spanish father. He had moved to Vancouver as a child. For the past few months, he had been travelling by foot around Manitoba, seeing the countryside and supporting himself with odd jobs, mostly as a “ranch hand.” Unfortunately, work had been scarce for the past few weeks. He was completely out of money—a fact that Gray had already ascertained during his search of the man’s possessions. Stroking his stubbled jaw, “Wilson” explained that he hadn’t had a shave since Saskatoon, or a decent meal in days. As if on cue, his stomach rumbled so noisily that Sewell, seated up front behind the wheel, could clearly hear the sound.

  By the time the car reached Killarney, Gray was beset by doubts. True, the prisoner’s height, build, and physical appearance tallied with the description of the wanted man. But he seemed so ordinary and affable that it was hard to conceive of him as the monstrous “Gorilla” who had slain nearly two dozen women across the continent. Besides, he was dressed in completely different clothes from the ones itemized in the circular Gray had received a few days earlier.

  Word of the arrest had already reached Killarney when the patrol car pulled into town. A cheering crowd greeted Sewell and Gray as they hustled the prisoner out of the car and into a little restaurant not far from the town hall. “Wilson” had prevailed on the officers to give him a solid meal before locking him up.

  Scores of townspeople crowded around the restaurant’s front window, jostling for a peek at the captive as he bolted down his dinner—steak, potatoes, carrots and peas, topped off with a dish of vanilla ice cream. Between mouthfuls, “Wilson” chatted and laughed, joking about the excellent service he was receiving.