Practically Perfect

by Dale Brawn

  Barrett, meanwhile, used his apron to wipe blood off the blade of the hatchet, and then laid the murder weapon on the floor. After that he waited for the guards to arrest him, repeating over and over, “I wouldn’t have done it if the deputy warden had let me see the doctor.”[3] By the time the sixty-year-old officer was rushed to a hospital, it was too late. One month and two days later Barrett was again on trial for murder. This time no one suggested that the killing was an accident, and it took jurors only five minutes to reject his defence of insanity and find the two-time killer guilty of murder. Normally, condemned killers were held in a jail in the judicial district closest to where the murder took place, and hanged in that facility. Because Stedman’s murder occurred in a federal prison, however, it was decided to execute his killer there. That was just one of the anomalies associated with the execution of Barrett.

  In its history, Canada has had only one official executioner. That man was John Radclive. Barrett was scheduled to be hanged on June 22, 1909, but by that time Radclive had a serious drinking problem, and he often failed to show up at executions. As a result, sheriffs across the country were forced to use the services of other hangmen. On this day no one with experience was available. The man who appeared at Barrett’s cell was a novice. Although he wore a mask and a false moustache, he made no effort to hide his prison-issue boots, the footwear assigned to him when he became a guard. It took the known but unnamed executioner just seconds to escort Stedman’s killer to the scaffold, which was built in a hallway. Once Barrett was noosed and positioned on the trap, he was given a chance to say a few last words. Most of those present were friends of the murdered man, and had little sympathy for the killer who was about to forfeit his life. That did nothing to prevent Barrett from saying what he had to say. “Gentlemen, I am going to be hanged, but I killed the deputy warden in self-defence. Had I not done so, my flesh would not be food for vultures.”[4] When the prison chaplain realized Barrett was going to continue, he began reciting the Lord’s Prayer. When he did the hangman pulled the lever holding the trap door shut. Ostensibly, Barrett should have been dropped to a quick and certain death. For an inordinately long time it was neither.

  The normal procedure in executions by hanging is to position the knot of the noose under the condemned prisoner’s left ear, so that when the person falls a carefully prescribed number of feet, the weight of her or his body coming to an abrupt stop snaps the victim’s head back, breaking the prisoner’s neck. This immediately renders the person unconscious. After that it usually takes someone about eight minutes to die, whether by strangulation or as a result of a broken neck. If the knot is tied properly, there is virtually no movement of the rope. In Barrett’s case, things went very, very wrong. The knot moved as he dropped, so that when his neck snapped back it was not broken, and the killer’s heart continued to beat. Twice the inexperienced hangman started to cut the rope suspending the two-time murderer, and on both occasions the prison doctor stopped him. Finally, a full fifteen minutes after he plummeted through the trap doors of his makeshift scaffold, Barrett was declared dead.

  By tradition an executioner was entitled to keep the rope he used to hang a killer, and as soon as the noose was removed from Barrett’s neck, his hangman began cutting the rope into pieces. He quickly began handing them out to the guards who witnessed the execution. A little later the local sheriff sent a one sentence telegram to Ottawa: “The execution of Garry R. Barrett,” it said, “has taken place without a hitch.”[5] And so ended the life of a gloomy, morose man who once got away with murder.

  John Boyko: Marry Me or Die

  John Boyko gave Thekla “Tessy” Oliansky two options — marry him, or give him his share of the profits generated by their hot dog business. When she said no to both, her fate was sealed.

  On November 28, 1946, Oliansky’s seventeen-year-old son came home to discover her badly beaten body. An hour later Boyko walked into a Montreal police station and announced to the officer in charge, “Me in big trouble. I took a hammer and broke her head. That’s all.”[6] The officer told Boyko to have a seat, and asked the obviously distraught man what the problem was. All he got was the same two sentences, repeated over and over: “Me in great trouble. You want me.”[7] That was enough for the sergeant, and he asked a detective to take over the questioning. As the two policemen walked towards the lobby of the station, Detective Sergeant Albert Laroche mentioned in passing that someone had just beaten a woman to death, and his men were looking for her killer. Well, said the desk sergeant, “I think your man is here now.”[8]

  After talking to Boyko for a few minutes it was apparent to Laroche that the killer thought to be on the loose was at hand, and he immediately turned Boyko over to the two officers in charge of the investigation. Although Boyko spoke only broken English, it was clear that he wanted to confess, and confess he did. “I come give myself to police. I know this is not church and I will be punished. Me too old anyway. Me want no lawyer. I do not want to live long in jail. I want to hang.”[9] That was a wish that eventually was to be granted, but not for this murder.

  Boyko told his arresting officers that when he met Tessy Oliansky in 1941, she was living with a man. Two weeks later she ended that relationship, and suggested to Boyko that the two of them go into business together. When they saved enough money, she said they would get married. “If you want to work make nice money and buy couple houses, and after me finish that job and make lots of money get married to me.”[10] Boyko said he accepted the proposition. The next day he came home for lunch to find on the table a Bible. Oliansky made him swear an oath taken by many of those in Ukraine who plan to marry: “Thekla I take you as my wife. I swear to you before Jesus Christ I will not leave you so help me God.” Then, he said, Oliansky swore the same oath.

  Over the next five years the couple bought seven houses, and a chip wagon, where they worked together. All in all they saved more than enough to get married. The only thing preventing them from becoming man and wife was the fact that Boyko was already married to a woman still living in Ukraine. That hurdle was removed in June 1946, when Boyko’s wife was murdered by Russian soldiers.

  A few weeks before their final disagreement, Boyko felt the time was at last right. He told investigating officers that he said, “Tessie come to church and marry. You have lot of property now.”[11]

  She turned him down flat. “I’m sorry you too old for me.”[12] His response was simple: if you don’t want to marry me, give me my share of our business profits. He told her that since she had five properties, she could keep three and he should get two, and then he would be out of her life for good. She said all he deserved was $2,000, and that was all she was going to give him. “Me give you money. Me give you $2,000 and you scram.”[13] With that he gathered up some of his clothes and moved out of the house they were sharing.

  Boyko went on to tell officers that he became angry when he found out that he no sooner moved out of Oliansky’s house than she approached a male friend, who had been pursuing a romantic relationship with her, and told him that she would marry him if he could come up with $9,000. The man immediately deposited $2,000 to her credit in a bank. The next day she gave Boyko a cheque in the amount of $2,250, and told him to stay away from her. But Boyko felt he was too old to keep working, and asked a couple of his friends to meet with Oliansky to persuade her to give him more money. When they failed, he dropped by his former residence himself. She would have nothing to do with him. “Me give you nothing. Get out from my house.”[14] Boyko pleaded with her, asking what he would do when the money she had given him ran out. “When you make finish money, take a rope and hang you up.”[15]

  The day before Oliansky was murdered Boyko again showed up at her home, this time with a friend. Boyko heard a rumour that Oliansky was trying to have him arrested, and he wanted to hear directly from her that it was not true. The three talked for a bit, and before the men left they all shook hands. Unfortunately, whatever goodwill may have existed then did not last lo
ng. On the day of the murder Boyko approached Oliansky once more, this time when she was working in the couple’s chip wagon. He said he wanted his clothes and money. She told him to come by her house at supper time. At his trial Boyko told a slightly different story than the one he related to officers when he turned himself in. Then he said that when he got to the house sometime after six, she took him to the cellar to get his clothes. “In the cellar I’m tell him Tessie please give me more money. She says nothing. I take the hammer, broke her head, that’s all.”[16] When he finished confessing Boyko threw his bank book down and told the officers to see that the money in his account went to Oliansky’s son. One of the detectives suggested he keep the money, and use it to pay for a lawyer. Boyko was adamant. “Me no want lawyer. Me too old to rot in jail. Me just as soon hang up.”[17]

  John Boyko was a violent man who murdered the woman he loved, and the man he most disliked. After each killing he quickly confessed to what he had done.

  Courtesy of Library and Archives Canada.

  At trial Boyko said that in the cellar he asked Oliansky for more money, and she responded by spitting in his face and calling him names. She then picked up an axe, ordered him out of her house, and for no reason suddenly attacked him. The head of the axe was loose, and when Oliansky swung, it slid down the handle to her hands. As a result, when the blow landed, he was only struck by the wooden handle. He testified that it was at this point he started to fight back. “I picked up the hammer, which was lying there, and struck her on the head three times.”[18] In fact, the distraught man hit Olianksy on the head, neck, and shoulders somewhere between sixteen and twenty-six times.

  Although Boyko may have forgotten how many times he smashed Oliansky’s head, he had a clear recollection of how much money she owed him. He told jurors that he was forty-seven when he met thirty-six-year-old Oliansky in March 1941. He started working at her chip wagon almost immediately, on the understanding that he would receive 20 percent of whatever money came in. Over five years, the business grossed $40,000. According to his calculations, that meant he was owed $8,000. It wasn’t fair that she was now “throwing me out with $2,000 because I was too old, and she wanted to get married.”[19]

  On February 25, 1947, it took jurors just under three hours to find Boyko guilty of murder, rather than manslaughter. The former Austrian army officer was sentenced to hang three and a half months later, but a week before the sentence was to be carried out, it was commuted to life imprisonment. Boyko was promptly transferred from Montreal’s Bordeaux Jail to St-Vincent-de-Paul Penitentiary, at nearby Laval. For the next year and a half the heavy-set Ukrainian seemed to be adjusting to prison life, but this period of calm ended when the two things Boyko hated most came together in the persons of Dominic “Nick” Tedesco and former Member of Parliament Fred Rose.

  Although Boyko was in jail because he was a murderer, he regarded himself as an honest man, someone morally superior to the “common thieves and robbers” who surrounded him in prison.[20] Few inmates in St-Vincent-de-Paul fit that description more than Tedesco. In 1942, the Montrealer and a partner held up the Tic Toc Café. When the proprietor refused to reveal the combination to his safe, the men removed his shoes and socks and burned the soles of his feet with lighted matches. Before sentencing Tedesco to twenty years in jail and ten lashes, the judge who presided over the twenty-six-year-old’s trial made clear how upset he was at the brutality displayed by Tedesco and his partner. “Never in the years that I have been a judge have I sentenced anyone to be whipped, but under the circumstances, and especially in view of the brutality used by the two accused, I am forced to impose not only a lengthy sentence but also the whip.”[21]

  In prison Tedesco grew close to a man who stood for something Boyko detested — communism. The man was Rose. Born in Poland, Rose immigrated to Canada in 1916, and almost immediately joined the Young Communist League. After that he became a member of the Communist Party, and in 1943 he was elected to the House of Commons as a member of the Labour-Progressive Party of Canada. The organization was the legal arm of the Communist Party, which during the opening years of the Second World War was officially banned. Shortly after the war ended a cipher clerk stationed at the Soviet embassy in Ottawa defected, taking with him evidence that a spy ring was operating in Canada. Rose had the highest profile of the targets pursued by investigators. Charged with violating the Official Secrets Act, he refused to testify in his own defence, and was eventually sentenced to six years in prison. In late January 1947, he was officially expelled from Parliament.

  Rose and Tedesco hit it off in prison, and they were probably both amused and irritated by Boyko’s insistence that he would rather hang than live with communists. To provoke the Ukrainian, they constantly badgered him about his anti-communist beliefs. Boyko’s growing irritation reached the boiling point on November 24, 1948, when his daily ration of tobacco suddenly disappeared. The murderer was convinced Tedesco stole it, and when his victim was bent over a machine in the prison carpentry shop, Boyko plunged a chisel into his back, killing him almost instantly. The act made the former army officer the first person in the history of Montreal to face a second murder charge after being sentenced to hang for a previous killing.

  As was the case almost exactly two years earlier, Boyko immediately confessed to the murder. He said that:

  Many Sundays we walk in prison yard. All the time Tedesco and Fred Rose talk together and one time Tedesco tell me that Fred Rose said to him, me no Communist, me Fascist. Tedesco is rob man [thief] and Communist and for that I hate him and I kill him. Yes, I kill Tedesco and want jury and judge give me sentence, anything I will thank them.[22]

  On May 6, 1946, a Montreal jury obliged and three months and three weeks later so did a hangman.

  Albert Victor Westgate:

  Fascination Leads to Murder

  Although Albert Victor Westgate was born into money, his English parents were embarrassed by his troublemaking, and in his mid-teens he was shipped to Canada. Like other “remittance men” of the early twentieth century, his family sent him enough money to assure his survival, but not enough to return home.

  Westgate arrived in Winnipeg at the start of the First World War, just in time to enlist in the Canadian Expeditionary Force. He was immediately sent to France with the 1st Canadian Division’s 5th Battalion, eventually leaving the army with an honourable discharge, and wounds to his head, arms, and stomach. When he returned to Winnipeg he got a job driving a taxi. He was a hard worker, and seldom spoke, earning the nickname “Wordless Westgate.”

  Early in 1924, Westgate met Lottie Adams, the wife of a store detective. He became infatuated, buying her gifts and paying messengers $1.00 for each of his letters they delivered to her residence. Westgate’s overtures became too much for the Adams family, and Lottie asked him to leave her alone. In mid-February 1928, he begged for one last meeting. She agreed, and two days later Westgate picked her up, in full view of her neighbours. During their drive around the city Westgate pleaded with Lottie to run away with him. When she refused, he stopped the car near a golf course, pulled out a .32 calibre revolver, and fired, missing Lottie but sending a bullet through the vehicle’s roof. Lottie realized the trouble that she was in and tried to fight Westgate off, badly bruising herself in the process. Westgate’s second shot hit Adams in the left side of her head, splattering blood all over the inside of the car.

  For some unknown reason Westgate stabbed the obviously dead woman in the face, dragged her into a ditch, and hit her four times over the head with an axe. He then covered her body with snow and drove away. Unfortunately for him, he was so preoccupied with throwing her clothes out the window he drove into a snow bank. Half a dozen people asked if he needed help before a tow truck finally arrived. Westgate then drove to his rooming house, where he tried to wash off Lottie’s blood before returning the car to its owner.

  Although Lottie’s husband reported her missing, the body of the dead woman was not discovered for almost fourteen
days, and then it was found by chance. An unusual mild spell started melting the snow that had fallen the previous two weeks, and a man walking his dog noticed a human hand sticking out of a drift. Before the day was out Westgate was arrested. His trial lasted four days and ended in his conviction. Although Westgate was sentenced to be hanged, his lawyer appealed the verdict, arguing that because a juror suffered from dementia twelve years earlier, he should have been disqualified from serving. The Court of Appeal agreed and ordered a new hearing. It too ended with a guilty verdict.

  For a second time Westgate was sentenced to be hanged, but two days before he was to die his sentence was commuted to life in prison. During his fourteen years in Stony Mountain Penitentiary the diminutive killer (he stood only 5’6 ” and weighed just 136 pounds) was a model prisoner. After he was paroled in June 1943, he took a room in a Winnipeg boarding house and got a job as a mechanic. Two months later a sixteen-year-old girl moved into an adjoining apartment.

  Edith Cook left home because of her parents’ lectures over her fascination with older men in uniform, and she quickly became infatuated with the forty-two-year-old war veteran. Although Cook worked as a waitress in one of Winnipeg’s most popular restaurants, she agreed to give up her job and move to Vancouver with Westgate after he promised to pay her way and get her a job. The pair made plans to leave in early December 1943. But Westgate had no connections in British Columbia, and he was prohibited from leaving Winnipeg because of his parole conditions. Apart from those things, he could not even afford the price of Edith’s train ticket.

  Notwithstanding his economic circumstances, Westgate suggested that Cook rent a room at the Marlborough Hotel for the time remaining before their departure, and on December 2, she moved into unit 503. For the next day and a half the two were seen several times in the hotel, but sometime in the subsequent twenty-four hours Westgate squeezed Edith by the throat until she stopped breathing.