Practically Perfect

by Dale Brawn

  One of the requirements of the law is that immediately following an execution a coroner’s jury had to be empanelled to view the remains of the person executed, and to swear that he was well and truly dead. What the six jurors from Port Arthur saw was a man who looked almost asleep, and were it not for a slight discolouration around his neck, someone might have thought he dozed off with not a worry in the world.

  John “Cobalt” Ivanchuk: Too Much to Say

  John Ivanchuk was, like so many men and women executed in Canada, inclined to talk too much. He also placed too much trust in a fifteen-year-old young woman. His story is of particular interest because we know so little about what motivated him to kill a northern Ontario liquor inspector, and how he escaped detection while continuing to live in the same small town in which he committed the murder.

  Ivanchuk was born in Austria in 1887, and served in the armed forces of his country before immigrating to Canada as a twenty-five-year-old. About the same time he earned his nickname “Cobalt” as a miner in northern Ontario, Ivanchuk began a rapid descent into crime and corruption. Harry Constable, on the other hand, was by all accounts a good person. He was a young war hero, worked hard, participated in community events, took the time to get to know his neighbours, and was liked by everyone. In late October 1926, he spent most of the evening with other members of the Cochrane band. The northern town was proud of its musicians, and most band members took their practice seriously. It was not altogether surprising, then, when by 11:30 p.m. he was not yet home. Still, it was late, and Constable’s wife was waiting up. When she heard three shots she at first thought someone was celebrating, but quickly realized that even though it was Friday, it was almost midnight, and in a town the size of Cochrane, that was late. Both curious and worried, she decided to investigate. When she stepped out of her house she noticed a neighbour coming out of his. It was pouring in rain, and dark, and neither could see. Before they had a chance to turn back, the Constable’s Airedale emerged out of the darkness. Just then a man from down the street walked up and shone his flashlight along the path. That’s when they saw Harry lying against a fence. While Mrs. Constable ran towards her husband, one of the neighbours took off in the opposite direction to phone for a doctor. In less than five minutes two arrived. Although the inspector was alive, everyone could see that there was little that could be done. He had been shot three times. One bullet struck his shoulder, and a second hit him in the abdomen, but neither was noticed at the time. The third wound was clearly visible — there was practically nothing left of his throat. Twenty minutes after she heard the first shot ring out, Constable’s wife became a widow.

  John Ivanchuk was a small time bootlegger in northern Ontario, and somewhere along the line he ran afoul of a Cochrane liquor inspector. Ivanchuk got even for whatever slight he suffered by shooting the officer three times. Although the killer continued to live in the same small town in which he committed the murder, it took the police more than a year to catch him.

  Courtesy of Library and Archives Canada.

  From the start the Ontario Provincial Police officers investigating Constable’s murder were convinced that the assault was an act of revenge, most likely carried out by someone who was prosecuted by the dead liquor inspector for a violation of the Ontario Temperance Act. Within days of offering a $2,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of Constable’s killer, the provincial government increased their offer to $5,000.

  In view of the fact that very little progress has been made in obtaining information that would lead to the discovery of the slayer of Inspector Constable. The Government feels that every effort that would be conducive to the capture of the murderer should be made. The Crown officers and Government employees must at all odds be protected in the faithful discharge of their duties.[8]

  Although the reward brought in a flood of leads, none proved productive.

  That was a little ironic, considering that after shooting Constable, Ivanchuk spoke of the murder to almost everyone he met. But before he did, he put his life in the hands of a fifteen-year-old. Sophia Dincorn was about to enter her house after spending an evening with a friend when Ivanchuk ran up. He thrust a gun into her hand and told her to keep it for him. She did, apparently oblivious to the Constable murder, or unconcerned that she was now an accessory after the fact. If she is to be believed, it was two days before she even looked at what she was keeping for a man with whom she later claimed to have had only a passing acquaintance.

  Four days after the murder Ivanchuk showed up unannounced at a shack occupied by a local butcher, near the Taschereau, Ontario, train station. Ivanchuk asked for supper and a place to stay the night. The next morning the men killed an animal the butcher was getting ready to slaughter. That evening, as they chatted, Ivanchuk told his host that he felt he had not been dealt with fairly, without explaining by whom, then blurted out: “me shot Constable at Cochrane.”[9] Ivanchuk apparently thought long and hard about what he confessed to, and in the middle of the night woke the butcher and warned him not to tell anyone about the inspector. Ivanchuk looked at his puzzled host, and said he had a good mind to shoot him then and there, to remove any chance he would tell. Full of gin, and exhausted from lack of sleep, Ivanchuk decided to postpone thoughts of further killing, and went back to bed.

  Constable’s killer left the next day, and met up with another acquaintance. He suggested that they open a brothel in Kapuskasing. When his would-be partner said he was too nervous of the police to be part of such a thing, Ivanchuk told him that if the police interfered he would shoot them just as he had Constable. Asked if he was not afraid of being caught, Ivanchuk said he was relying on a friend still living in Cochrane to keep potential witnesses from talking to the police. To be certain his listener knew what he meant by reference to the way he killed Constable, Ivanchuk said he shot the inspector in the body and the neck, ensuring there was no chance he survived the attack.

  It was never made clear at what point the police started to focus their search on Ivanchuk, but the former army officer made no attempt to stay out of the spotlight. In the two years between the killing and his arrest, Ivanchuk continued to reside in Cochrane, and made his living gambling and selling illicit liquor throughout the north. That came to an end on November 15, 1928, when Ontario Provincial Police officers descended on a Cochrane drinking establishment. Although Ivanchuk was arrested, he was not charged with murder for two days, when investigators were finally able to confirm his identity. Five months later his trial got underway.

  A lot happened to Sophia Dincorn in the two and a half years since Constable was murdered. For one thing, she was no longer fifteen, and for another, she was now a mother, living in Schumacher, Ontario. Early in her trial testimony it was revealed that she was likely responsible for Ivanchuk’s arrest, since it was the information she gave officers a few days before he was apprehended that pointed them in the right direction. Still, what she said at trial was not consistent with the testimony of other witnesses. For instance, she told the court that the evening Constable was killed she was with a friend at the home where her friend worked as a domestic. That was not true. On the day in question her friend was not even employed there. She also testified that she and Ivanchuk once attended a wedding together. He denied that was true, and no one admitted seeing them together.

  Ivanchuk took the stand in his own defence, and denied being in the places he was said to have been, or knowing the people to whom he was said to have spoken. He testified that not only did he not know Sophia Dincorn, he had never seen her before going on trial. The night Constable was shot, Ivanchuk said he went to a movie with a friend, had something to eat, and then rented a room in the Queen’s Hotel. When the defence finished putting in its evidence, one of the police officers investigating the murder was recalled to the stand. He told the court that within a few hours of the liquor inspector’s murder he started searching the town’s hotel rooms, making a note of who was where. Nowhere in his search did he encounter
Ivanchuk. To members of the all-male jury, there was just too much evidence against the accused, and too little to like about him, and on April 12, 1929, they found him guilty of murder. Ivanchuk was sentenced to hang in late June. But he was not executed then. His lawyer obtained a one month postponement from the federal department of justice so he could file additional material in support of his client’s application for clemency. Whatever was submitted did nothing to persuade the cabinet to commute the killer’s sentence, and on July 19, Ivanchuk was put to death in the jail at Haileybury. For a while, it did not look like he would go quietly.

  John Ivanchuk made little attempt to keep secret the fact he murdered a Cochrane, Ontario, liquor inspector, and it was only a matter of time before he was turned in. At trial much of the testimony that resulted in his conviction was very likely false.

  Courtesy of Library and Archives Canada.

  The day before he was to hang, Ivanchuk, always moody, became sullen and almost overcome with anger. At times he pounded on the iron bars of his cell with so much force the sound could be heard by pedestrians outside. A few hours later, however, he seemed to become resigned to his fate, and grew quiet. Shortly before his midnight execution he was offered a dose of morphine, to take the edge off. His refusal initially alarmed members of his death watch, but when Arthur Ellis, the best known of the country’s several executioners, arrived at his cell, Ivanchuk gave no trouble. Barefooted and wearing only his striped prison trousers, the condemned man calmly stood to have his arms pinioned behind his back. Perhaps his sense of resignation was the result of the dream he had the night before. In it a black-robed woman told him he would be dead within twenty-four hours.

  It was only a few feet from the death cell to the spot in the jail where a makeshift scaffold was constructed, but Ivanchuk asked that he be escorted to the gallows by uniformed police officers. Making the journey with him was an Ontario Provincial Police sergeant, an OPP constable, a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a chief of police, and a deputy sheriff. Twelve seconds after leaving his cell Ivanchuk was standing on the scaffold. As soon as he arrived his legs were tied, a black hood pulled over his head, and the noose tightened around his neck. Ellis asked if Ivanchuk had any last words. When there was no response, he repeated his question. Ivanchuk responded with a query of his own: “What do you mean — about the murder? My heart is clean.”[10] With that the bolt holding the trap door secure was released, and the bound prisoner disappeared from view. Twelve minutes later he was dead. Because no one claimed his body, the remains of John “Cobalt” Ivanchuk were interred in the yard of Haileybury Jail.

  Stanley Donald McLaren: A Fatal Mistake

  Just after Stanley McLaren’s wife turned him in to the police, he told his captors that his three biggest mistakes in life were getting married, beating to death a Calgary fruit merchant, and following his wife’s advice to confess to the murder. Before he listened to her, there was absolutely no way McLaren was going to hang.

  This sad tale began on a Monday late in September 1945. McLaren was nineteen, and just a month earlier arrived in Calgary. He made the most of his time, and by the end of September was going out regularly with a young woman from Regina. About the only problem he had was a lack of money. McLaren was a plasterer by trade, and while it was only a matter of time before he found a job, he wanted money right away. That may have been why he stole a coat. He was quickly caught, photographed, fingerprinted, and fined $10. The conviction did nothing to dissuade McLaren from pursuing a life of crime. When he needed money on September 24, he decided to get it the easy way.

  Around 6:00 p.m. he entered the fruit store of Wing Yum Lum, a sixty-five-year merchant who only four years earlier started his business near Calgary’s busy Edmonton Trail. When McLaren entered his grocery, Lum barely noticed him and continued serving customers already there. All of them noticed McLaren standing around, but none later identified him as the person they saw. When McLaren was still loitering about an hour and a half later, Lum became anxious. Without saying anything, he left McLaren alone for a few seconds, and slipped into the back to unlock the rear door of the store, in case he had to make a speedy exit. He never got that chance. When Lum returned McLaren told him he wanted a few peaches to take home to his mother. As soon as the fruit grocer bent to pick them out of a case lying on the floor, McLaren pulled a revolver from his coat pocket and demanded the money from the cash register. Whether he was nervous or did not understand what was said, Lum did not move quickly enough, and McLaren began smashing his head with the butt of his pistol.

  The cries of the grocer were heard by shopkeepers on either side of his store, and one of them, a baker, rushed out to see what was happening.

  When I heard him scream at first I thought it was kids teasing him and I didn’t pay much attention. When the screaming continued I went out and looked through the open door of his shop. Lum was lying on the floor with the man kneeling on his chest, hitting him on the head with a small black gun. Just as I looked in the door and before I could get back to my own shop to call the police, the man ran at me and grabbed me. He looked up and down the street. There wasn’t a soul in sight. He ordered me into the Chinese shop. When I refused he stuck a gun in my stomach and said, “You come in here.”

  Lum had gotten to his feet by this time but I don’t think he knew what he was doing. The man ordered me to empty the cash register. He then attacked the Chinese again, knocking him to the floor and striking him repeatedly after he was down…. He kept glaring at me as I stood by the till, and all the time pounding the old man.… The cash register was a small one with a few bills and some silver in it. I could see a ten and a few ones in the bills. I thought I pushed the ten to the back but it must have been among them when he snatched them from my hand and rushed out the back door.… What I can’t understand is why he kept beating the poor old man.[11]

  As McLaren was making his getaway through the back door, a young sailor on home leave walked up to the front of the store, where he stood waiting for a friend. All of a sudden two men appeared. Lum was standing beside his would-be rescuer, blood running down his face. The baker told the startled sailor that Lum had been robbed and beaten, and that the culprit escaped through the rear of the store. With that the sailor took off in pursuit. In seconds the young man saw his quarry about two blocks ahead, running up a hill. When the robber noticed that he was being pursued he stopped running, doubled back, and then turned up the hill and disappeared.

  For the next three years that was where things stood. Lum died of his head wounds fourteen hours after being admitted to hospital, but not before an interpreter helped the native of Canton, China, give police a description of the man who robbed him. The woman translating for Lum told investigators that she had known the grocer for some time, and like so many immigrants struggling to make a new life in Canada, he was completely devoted to his business. She said Lum spoke very little English, and rarely interacted with anyone besides customers. Even though he was a member of a local Chinese benevolent society, Lum did not mix much with other immigrants. According to the interpreter, he spent every day in his store, either at the front, where he operated his tiny business, or in the rear, where he lived alone.

  A year after killing Lum, McLaren married Marie Kayter in Regina, where they resided before moving to Vancouver, and later to northern Ontario. In July 1948, their transient life seemed to be behind them, and the couple settled in Toronto. In the three years between the Calgary murder and moving east, McLaren made little effort to hide from authorities, probably because no one had any inkling he was involved in Lum’s death. That quickly changed, however, when the hot-tempered killer got into one argument too many. On August 28, he was involved in a brawl on a Toronto street corner, and charged with common assault. The police were barely finished processing him when his wife appeared and asked to speak to someone in charge. She told the officer that her husband three years earlier had committed a murder, and was wanted by the authorities in Calg
ary. Satisfied she had done her civic duty, or exacted revenge for whatever wrongs had been done her by McLaren, she went home. After the police in Toronto heard back from their counterparts in Alberta, they contacted Marie McLaren by phone. As a result of the additional information she gave them, the officers decided to interrogate McLaren right away instead of leaving him to be questioned by Calgary police. At this stage there was nothing except the words of his wife to connect the twenty-three-year-old plasterer to the death of Lum. Had he remained silent, McLaren would almost certainly have gone free. But he could not keep his mouth shut.

  Detectives Edmund Tong and Roy Perry took McLaren into a small room as Toronto police headquarters, and began questioning him about the murder his wife said was committed in 1945. During the first forty minutes their prisoner denied all knowledge of the crime. Then he suddenly stopped talking, and asked if he could phone his wife. Tong took McLaren to a telephone, and dialed her number. When the call was answered McLaren asked a single question: “Do you still love me, Marie?”[12] The question was answered, although the detective could not make out what was said. Back in the interview room, McLaren sat in silence for several minutes. Apparently satisfied about what he was going to do next, he then looked up, and said, “I’ll tell you the story. I did it.”[13] With that, he started talking.