Practically Perfect

by Dale Brawn

  All of the officials involved with Farrell’s execution were greatly affected by what was about to happen. The sheriff was pale, and his hands trembled. The jailor principally responsible for caring for the condemned murderer was so overcome with emotion that he could barely move, and the prison guards who were required to be in attendance looked despondent. Outside, however, the atmosphere was very different. More than two hundred spectators milled about in the prison yard. Among their number were doctors, shopkeepers, students, labourers, lawyers, and reporters. The hangman inspected the scaffold before the death walk began. It was an imposing structure, erected in the prison yard a short distance from the door through which Farrell was to exit the jail. During his first visit the executioner fastened the rope in its place, and then returned to the prison. There he tied Farrell’s wrists behind his back, and pinioned his arms to his sides. That done, the once hot-headed farmer began his last journey, a priest on each side.

  When he reached the scaffold Farrell looked around, and to those whom he recognized he said goodbye. Then, without making evident the emotion he must have felt, he walked to the trap doors, and knelt in silent prayer. The spectators standing below him joined in. After a moment or two Farrell rose, and the hangman moved in to bind his feet. He then started to adjust the noose under the prisoner’s left ear, but could not get it right. His fumbling caught the attention of those standing in the yard, and almost in unison they began shouting. Throughout the turmoil Farrell stood quietly, staring intently at his priests. One of the spectators fainted, and several others turned away, perhaps anticipating what was to come.

  When the hangman finally pulled the lever, opening the trap doors, one of Farrell’s arms moved, and as he dropped, the rope caught on it, breaking his fall. Everyone watched in horror as the executioner rushed over and began shaking the rope. While he was doing that Farrell cried out, “Oh my God!” After what seemed an eternity the rope slipped off the poor man’s arm, and the two-time killer dropped. But he fell only a few centimetres, a distance nowhere near great enough to break his neck. For minute after minute he struggled, more alive than dead, then his efforts grew weaker, and he seemed to give up his fight for life. Twice his hangman began to cut the rope, but on each occasion the prison doctor told him to stop, that Farrell’s heart was still beating. After twenty minutes it stilled. The dead man’s body was allowed to hang a further five minutes, out of an abundance of caution, and a coroner’s inquest was immediately convened. Its verdict: death by strangulation.[20]

  After most executions, those required to examine the body of the hanging victim were surprised by how peaceful the dead man or woman looked. Such was not the case for Farrell. The misplaced noose caused his neck to become badly twisted to one side, and where the rope had rubbed, his skin was nearly black. One man however, was not repulsed by what he witnessed. Farrell’s body had not yet begun to cool when he pushed his way through spectators in an effort to take a picture. A few of Farrell’s friends quickly interceded, and put an end to the photographer’s plan to sell his execution photos on the streets of Quebec.

  Before the execution of Michael Farrell was officially complete, one last telegram was sent to Ottawa.

  Sheriff’s Office

  Quebec 20 January 1879

  Sir,

  I have the honor to report, that on the 10th of this month Michael Farrell was executed in my presence. I hereby certify that I, the undersigned attended the interment of Convict Michael Farrell at the Cholera Burying ground and saw his body buried in said Burying grounds on this Tenth Day of January 1879 in pursuant to order of the Government.

  R. Mulholland, Assist. Keeper[21]

  Emerson Shelley: A Neighbour Kills Again

  Emerson Shelley was a violent man who spent very nearly his entire life in trouble with the law. Part of his problem may have been environmental. His mother was charged with shooting her second husband during a domestic dispute, and the fact she was acquitted seemed to have inculcated in him the belief that it is not so much what you do that matters, but whether you are convicted. An early case in point was the way in which he treated his grade school classmates. One recalled that he was not yet a teenager when Shelley threw powdered medicine in his face, hurting his eyes. Another incident was more prophetic. Three of Shelley’s school mates, the youngest of whom was about twelve, were walking to school when Shelley jumped from hiding, a rifle in hand, and shouted, “halt, hands up, money or your brains.”[22] The youngest of the group immediately broke into tears, and Shelley’s assurance that he was not really going to shoot them did little to make him feel better.

  Shelley was barely fourteen when he took things further. During a heated argument with a female neighbour he took out a revolver and threatened to kill her. Others living near the Shelleys were subjected to similar abuse. A farmer who once hired the young man to help him around his acreage grew troubled by Shelley’s conduct, and told the young rowdy that he was going to have to change his ways or he was going to be fired. Shelly did not want the farmer to tell his mother what he was up to. “He threatened to fill me up with lead if I told his mother about it, so I promised that I would not tell.”[23] The farmer had good reason to be concerned. Shelley was widely known to skulk around area farms, firing bullets near unsuspecting neighbours. Many, including members of his own family, were concerned by his propensity to violence.

  On August 16, 1909, that inclination became something much more. The incident started when a week earlier a rifle left with a local blacksmith went missing. The gun’s owner used .22 calibre “long” shells, which substantially increased the power of bullets fired from the gun. This contributed to Shelley’s first killing. Michael Hall, partially blind and physically disabled, lived with his wife on the farm next to Shelley’s. The couple were both in their seventies, and from time to time they hired Shelley to help out. Occasionally Hall had words with the teenager, and in one heated exchange he called Shelley a liar. When Hall was found dead, shot in the head with a .22 calibre rifle, it came as a surprise to no one that within hours of the shooting the police took Shelley into custody. It was even less surprising that the gun he used was the one that went missing a week earlier.

  The fifteen-year-old was charged with murder, but the coroner’s inquest convened to look into the particulars of Hall’s death concluded that while there was no doubt that Shelley fired the shot that killed the elderly farmer, there was no evidence that he actually meant to kill Hall. With that finding, the Crown had little choice but to release Shelley from custody, and withdraw the murder charge.

  Between the shooting of Hall and the killing of Christian Shoup in 1915, Shelley kept busy. Less than four months after he was found not to be criminally responsible for causing the death of Hall, Shelley received a suspended sentence for stealing a gun. He was not yet twenty when he burned down a neighbour’s house, after stealing most of what was inside it. Although charged and acquitted of arson, he was convicted of taking the contents. This time he was sentenced to two years in jail. Within weeks of his release he again acquired a gun, and recommenced his life of crime.

  Shelley and an accomplice broke into a general store, and after threatening to kill the store owner, took a couple of cases of eggs and some agricultural feed. Before the day ended the police in a nearby town issued a warrant for his arrest on suspicion of raping a thirteen-year-old young woman. Shelley made no attempt to deny responsibility. On May 6, he and a group of acquaintances were standing on a Simcoe Street corner when a man he knew stopped to chat. In no time at all Shelley told him that he was in trouble over having sex with a young woman, and as he spoke he withdrew a revolver from one of his pockets. “This,” he said, “would make them produce.”[24] Whether he was talking about future rape victims, or the robbery he was planning, was not clear. But he told everyone within earshot that he was planning on using the gun to rob a mail carrier and a couple of hog producers. He said he needed money, and had every intention of unloading his gun on the men he wa
s intending to rob.

  On May 9, Shelley showed up at the home of a friend sometime after 8:00 p.m. and asked if he could stay the night. The next day he took out a revolver, and told his host and his friend’s housekeeper that he recently stole the gun and was planning on using it. He said that robbing people was how he earned a living, and suggested that the pair “would hear of a man being shot before the week was out.”[25] Just then a couple of farmers hauling hogs went by. They caught Shelley’s attention, and he asked if his friend wanted to help him rob the men when they passed on their way home. Before his friend could reply, Shelley told him that “he would just as soon shoot a man as a dog.”[26] That settled it; Shelley’s buddy said he wanted no part of murder. When Shelley left he started walking towards the farm of Christian Shoup, a local miller who lived some distance away. It was after 4:00 p.m. by the time he reached the home of John Carr, a man he had known all his life. He stayed the night, and late the next morning again set out towards the Shoup farm, now about two miles away.

  The miller was picking up roots in a field near his house when his wife passed him around 2:00 p.m. on the way to her garden. As she walked by she noticed a man in the near distance, but thought nothing of it. About five minutes later she thought she heard a shot. Thinking it was just a hunter, she continued gardening. In retrospect, she should have paid more attention. The milling business she and her husband operated was one of the largest in the area, and the couple was known to keep on hand a large amount of money. It was this rumour that attracted the attention of Shelley, and it was he who she saw walking towards Shoup.

  A little before 4:00 p.m. Mary Shoup started back to her house, expecting to chat with her husband on the way. She thought it a little odd that he was not in the field, so she walked to the farm nearest theirs and asked her stepson if he knew where his father was. He did not, so she returned home to start preparing the evening meal. She did not think much about her husband’s absence until he failed to show up for supper. She was now worried, and when she saw a man stop to water his horse, she rushed out to talk to him. He told her he had not seen her husband, and she walked out to the field where Christian had been working. That was where she found him, a bullet wound just to the right of his mouth.

  Almost as soon as the police were informed of the murder they suspected that Shelley was somehow involved. Finding him would not be difficult. With two fingers missing from one hand, and a habit of hanging around cafés and bars, he was seldom far from sight. In Simcoe, the largest town near the Shoup murder scene, the police talked to William Lambert, a friend of Shelley’s. What he had to say removed any doubt about the identity of Shoup’s killer. Lambert said that a little less than a week earlier he, Shelley, and a few others were standing outside a local hotel when Shelley asked if anyone wanted to help him out. He told them he was going to shoot and rob the town’s mail carrier, and “also mentioned a hog buyer and Mr. Shoup. He said the hog buyer came into a town where there was no bank, and that he always carried six or seven hundred dollars. He would get him first, then the mail driver, and then Mr. Shoup, after which he would beat it for Detroit.”[27]

  The officers investigating Shoup’s murder contacted their counterparts throughout the area, and less than twenty-four hours later a constable in Woodstock noticed a small group of men talking on a street corner. He noticed one of them was missing two fingers on one hand, and he walked over and arrested Shelley for rape. Once Shelley was taken into custody there was little talk about the sexual assault (Shelley admitted right away that he was guilty), but there were a lot of questions about Shelley’s whereabouts the afternoon Shoup was murdered. The young killer was arrested on suspicion of rape on May 12, and within forty-eight hours pled guilty and was on his way to begin a two year sentence in Kingston Penitentiary. His absence did nothing to slow the investigation into Shoup’s death, however, and when a coroner’s jury concluded that the miller almost certainly was killed by Shelley, the career criminal was charged with murder. Three weeks later he was committed to stand trial. The result was foreordained. Seven months after vowing that someone would be dead by the end of the week, it was Shelley’s turn to face his destiny.

  Although Emerson Shelley spent most of his life in trouble with the law, he seldom accepted responsibility for his actions. His conviction for murdering Christian Shoup meant that the stakes were much higher this time, but Shelley had little doubt he would survive his ordeal. When one of the jail’s spiritual advisers showed up the morning after he was sentenced to hang, he dismissed the unfortunate man at once. When a second man of the cloth appeared, he too was sent away. Turning to one of his guards, Shelley asked, “What the hell are these preachers coming around for?”[28] It turned out that the condemned young man had a plan in mind, which he firmly believed would see him released from prison. The plan: I didn’t kill Shoup, my buddy James Carr did. For it to work, however, Shelley required Carr’s presence. To obtain it Shelley told his jailors that he had something to say by way of a confession, and could they send someone to his cell to hear it.

  And so it was that two weeks after being sentenced to hang, Shelley confessed to taking part in the robbery of a general store. His accomplice — John Carr. By the way, Shelley added, it was Carr who actually shot Shoup. Carr was promptly arrested, and just as Shelley hoped, he was put in the cell next to his. The men talked freely, and with a guard within hearing distance, Shelley turned the conversation to Shoup’s murder. Speaking in a voice loud enough for there to be no doubt about what was being said, he discussed the killing as if it was planned and carried out by Carr. Shelley’s attempt to shift blame for the murder was sufficiently obvious that no one in authority was the least interested in what he had to say. Having lost his audience, Shelley moved on to Plan B. He began to act erratically, displaying what he no doubt thought were signs of mental illness. His efforts persisted, and in time jail officials asked that he be examined by “alienists.” The doctors, now referred to as psychiatrists, quickly concluded Shelley was faking, and there was no reason on the ground of insanity to delay his execution. The prisoner’s spiritual adviser had been telling him for some time that he would do better to make himself ready to die than play act at being unbalanced, and forty-eight hours before he was scheduled to hang, Shelly finally agreed.

  He wanted to make one last confession. This one, he assured his minister, would be the truth. And what a confession it was. He started by blaming his plight on his upbringing. “I was never sent to Sunday School or Church. [I was] taught that there was no God, and that sin did not amount to anything, except among Church people. That I might do what I wished and it was all right so long as I got off with it.”[29] Then Shelley turned to his best friend, John Carr, and described in detail the first serious crime he was asked to commit.

  When I was quite young John Carr wanted to kill his wife’s parents. He said I could do it with a shot gun, and that as John’s wife was the only child, he would get all the money. He offered me a hundred dollars and a black horse for the job. He said, “You go up to the old man’s through the night and lay for him at the barn when he comes out to do the chores. When he comes out you shoot him, and if his wife comes out to see what is wrong shoot her.[30]

  Reflecting on his past misdeeds seemed to energize Shelley, and he recalled crime after crime, almost all of which he committed with Carr. “The first thing we did together,” he said, “was to steal chickens,” and with that he launched into considerable detail. Then, he said, they stole a woman’s watch and purse. He thought that was one time Carr showed considerable ingenuity. The men were in a local train station when they noticed a woman sitting by herself, reading a book, her purse sitting nearby. Shelley told his listeners that the two sat behind her, and Carr took from his pocket a long copper wire, which he carried for just this kind of opportunity. Carr attached a hook to the end of the wire, and manipulated it through the seat separating the crooks from their target, and snagged the purse. “I got twenty-five dollars out of
that steal.”[31]

  Through his stories Shelley made it clear that he was not someone who took a slight lightly. After a quarrel with a relative of Carr’s, he burned down the house of the man’s father. “I understood there was no insurance on it, so I burnt it.”[32] On another occasion a friend offered him $1 to burn the home of a neighbour, with whom the friend was having a disagreement. Shelley did so.

  On a third occasion Shelley decided he did not like a neighbour, and burned his house as well.[33] However, it was not the use of fire that came to characterize the various crimes perpetrated by Shelley, but guns. A case in point was the robbery of an area storekeeper.

  The old man, who lived all alone, was in his house and had locked up for the night, but we saw some sign of light at a back window. I left the rig and Carr turned the horse round, and stood at the front door while I went round the back to the store door. When I rapped the old man asked my name and would not open the door. I told him I was Oran, one of his neighbours, but he would not open the door. Then I told him I wanted his money, and he said he had none. I flourished a revolver in front of his window and threatened to shoot if he did not open up. He ran out the front door and passed Carr who stood so surprised that he let him go. There was nothing left but to take what we could eat, for no money could be found.[34]

  Shelley’s recollection of his life of crime ended with a retelling of the Shoup murder. The recollection was chillingly brief. “I went up to him where he was picking up some sticks off the ground, and told him I wanted his money. He would not give it to me. I drew my revolver and told him I would shoot if he did not. He just looked at me and then ducked and ran at me, and I shot him as he came.”[35]

  The night before he was executed Shelley slept for about six hours and then ate a light breakfast. By the time he finished his spiritual adviser arrived. He was one of the men so curtly dismissed the day after Shelley was convicted for murder. The two spent forty-five minutes in prayer, and were still on their knees when the hangman entered. Without delay he pinioned Shelley’s hands behind his back, and then led the condemned man into an adjoining cell, where a wooden trap door had been built over a hole cut in the floor. Shelley said nothing as he took his position on the trap, and remained speechless when the executioner slipped a hood over his head and a noose was tightened around his neck. While this was going on the condemned man’s spiritual adviser was reciting the Lord’s Prayer. As he came to the end, the trapdoor was released. For the next twenty minutes Shelley’s body hung in the cell below, and before he was yet dead a black flag was raised over the jail house, visible evidence that a sentence of death had been carried out. No one outside the prison seemed to notice. “There was,” said a reporter who covered the execution for a local newspaper, “very little unusual stir about the square during or immediately after the hour of execution.”[36]