Practically Perfect

by Dale Brawn

  Since at least the 1920s it has been the policy of provincial governments to release to family the body of a loved one who was executed. Occasionally, that meant a killer was buried near the body of his or her victim. The churchyard burial of murderers was most often allowed when a killer was predeceased by a family member. After two of his children died in infancy, Kendall purchased a plot in the Bayfield Cemetery, near Goderich, Ontario. Before his sentence was commuted, members of the cemetery’s board of trustees feared that the killer would seek to have his body buried next to those of his sons. To avoid that possibility, the board passed a motion refusing to allow the sheriff where Kendall was to be hanged permission to inter his body in Bayfield. That decision did not go down well with the editor of the Globe and Mail.

  By voting to refuse burial in the cemetery to a convicted murderer, Arthur Kendall, the board of trustees of the Bayfield Cemetery of Goderich have in no way protected or enhanced the sanctity of their ground. Kendall’s sentence has been commuted to life imprisonment, but it is regrettable that anyone should have wished to extend punishment beyond death.[34]

  If Kendall was not welcome in Goderich the same could not be said for Terrance, British Columbia. The killer’s relationship with the west coast town began on February 13, 1971, when he failed to return to the Kingston area minimum security jail, where he was serving his life sentence, after being granted a day pass. At some point Kendall made his way to Guelph, where he posted three letters to the warden of Joyceville Penitentiary. Although the contents of the letters were not released, according to an Ontario Provincial Police spokesperson, “They were rambling letters and he said he had no intention of going back to prison. He even mentioned he is going to write a book about his life.”[35] Even if he was serious about penning his autobiography, Kendall did not have time. On February 25, he was recaptured at the Terrace home of one of his stepsons. After that he was returned to prison, and like his wife, disappeared from public view.

  5

  Suspicions Linger

  Some of the stories of murder and treachery in this book suggest that the perfect crime is often the one committed most openly. That was the case with Marie Louis Cloutier and Achille Grondin, and Marie Beaulne and Philibert Lefebvre, four early-twentieth-century lovers who made no effort to hide their illicit romances. In fact, the longer the affairs lasted, the more they were accepted by residents of the small Quebec villages in which the two couples lived. Although no one in southwestern Alberta tolerated the murder of John Benson by William Jasper Collins, he, like the Quebec lovers, would almost certainly have escaped the hangman had he only exercised a little discretion after the fact.

  William Jasper Collins: Too Much Money

  In the opening decade of the twentieth century few lawyers around Braymer, Missouri, prospered more than John Benson. Although over the years he acquired property, considerable wealth, and a young wife and child, he yearned for something more. What he wanted was the experience of homesteading on the Canadian prairies. Before that happened, however, he took on one more client, a teenager charged with sexually assaulting his sister. In the days Benson spent preparing for trial he got to know William Jasper Collins well, and for some reason grew attached to the young man. After he obtained an acquittal, Benson became Collins’s benefactor and employer. So it was that when the lawyer filed a homestead claim near the tiny Alberta community of Cereal, he brought Collins with him. Over the next eight months Benson sold his land holdings in Braymer, and on April 4, 1913, he and Collins set off for western Canada. Three weeks later they finished building a barn and a small house, and Benson wrote home, asking his wife to meet him in Saskatoon.

  Clara Benson left Missouri on May 3, and when she reached Saskatoon she checked into the King Edward Hotel. Almost immediately she was handed a pair of telegrams, informing her of the death of John Benson. She promptly left for Kindersley, Saskatchewan, to collect the body of her husband. There she saw Collins in a hotel hallway. She rushed to him. “Oh, Jasper, tell me how it all happened.”[1] And he did. Not for one moment did it occur to her that he was lying.

  Collins told her that he was about a mile from the house watering horses when he heard a loud sound, like a shot. He finished with the animals, and then headed back. He arrived to find the shack on fire, and promptly rushed to the nearest neighbour. By the time he got back to the small dwelling, it was completely destroyed. In the ruins he found what was left of Benson. It was his opinion, said Collins, that Benson must have tried to put gasoline in the oil stove, and thereby caused the explosion.[2]

  When she met Collins at Kindersley, Benson asked him if any money was found in the ruins of the burned shack. She thought it a little strange when he told her there was none, since her husband wore a money belt, and when he left Braymer it contained somewhere between $3,500 and $4,000. Thinking perhaps John might have deposited his savings in a bank, she asked Collins if he ever saw her husband put anything under his pillow at night — perhaps a bank book? He said he did not notice anything because Benson always slept with a coat over his head.

  After she met Collins, Clara Benson and the young man quickly left for Cereal, where she made inquiries into the circumstances surrounding the fire and death. She was told that both the police and the local coroner were notified in the aftermath of her husband’s death, and a wire was sent to Braymer, advising friends of the dead lawyer what happened. Because there was no reason to think anything was amiss, no inquest was held. The widow discovered nothing to make her suspect that what everyone was calling an accident was really a murder, so she and Collins headed back to Saskatoon. There she purchased a ticket home for herself and the body of her husband. When Collins told her he did not have enough money to buy one for himself, she bought his as well. As soon as she arrived home Benson made arrangements to have her husband buried, and did what she could to settle into the life of a single parent. It was not long, however, before she began hearing rumours that Collins was spending a lot of money.

  Although he was jobless and professed to have no money, Collins started making a number of unusually large purchases. To hide what he was doing, he made them in towns around Braymer, but he brought what he bought back on the train, and in no time what he tried to keep secret was common knowledge. When Clara heard the talk she contacted the Masons. Her husband had been a member of the local order, and his friends in the organization were alarmed enough at what they were told that they hired a Pinkerton detective to investigate. When they received his report, the Masons arranged to have Benson’s body exhumed. There was not a lot of it left. The registrar of deaths for Caldwell County, Missouri conducted the post mortem. He found that one of the dead man’s hands and one foot were completely gone, there was some but not much flesh left on his chest, and a large piece of his skull was missing. There was also evidence of a blood clot at the base of the brain and a hole through his heart. He concluded that the cause of death was a blow to the head with a blunt instrument, and that the heart was struck by a bullet fired after the victim was dead.

  With the autopsy report in hand the Masons contacted the Braymer police. They took Collins into custody and searched his room. There they found a money belt containing $1,800 in twenty dollar bills, a fortune for a young man with no income. Arrangements were made to place Collins in a cell in the nearest jail, just down the road in Kingston. Before Collins and his minders got there Collins told them he was prepared to make a deal: if he was taken back to Braymer, he would tell them everything. So they turned around, and within the hour Collins confessed to murder.

  My name is William Jasper Collins and I live in Braymer, MO. I left the latter town with John Benson for the Canadian territory to take up a claim with him. Within a week after the completion of the house on the claim of John Benson, while in the house I struck him on the left side of the head with my fist, which knocked him down, and he then pulled a razor and I then drew a gun of .33-calibre and shot him. I then threw the gun away. After he had been dead an hour I
poured oil about the house and set it afire. I took his money, which was under his pillow. There is some of the money in the lot taken by Constable Burnett that belongs to me which Benson paid me, but I owed him my expenses to Canada and while there. This sum is in the amount of about $200. This statement is made of my own free will and accord and without consideration of promises of any nature.[3]

  Once the confession was signed, Collins and his entourage were at once back on the highway to Kingston, and a few days later, to Calgary, Alberta. His trial got underway at a special sitting of the province’s superior court on November 27, 1913. Calgarians lined up hours before court opened, hoping to get a seat in the tiny courtroom. Despite the cool, late fall weather, the court was “crowded to suffocation.”[4] That was especially so when Collins was sentenced. Although he sat through much of his trial with his head down, arm hanging over a railing of the prisoner’s box, apparently little interested in what was going on, the accused killer paid rapt attention when the jury returned with its verdict. After the panel’s foreman announced that Collins was guilty of murdering John Benson, Collins seemed shocked. In fact, everyone in the courtroom sat in silence. The only outward sign that Collins understood the significance of what he just heard was a change in his complexion — his face turned white, and he began licking his lips.

  The trial judge was Horace Harvey, a Quaker from Ontario who three years earlier was appointed chief justice of Alberta. As soon as he heard the verdict he picked up his pen, and made ready to pass sentence. He told the jurors that he agreed with their decision, and asked Collins if he had anything to say before sentence was passed. The youthful murderer said nothing. Taking his silence as licence to proceed, the judge imposed the only sentence he could — death. Collins was to be taken back to the barracks of the Royal North West Mounted Police, and there he was to be hanged on February 17, 1914.

  No one is sure what Collins was thinking, but shortly after he started his two-and-a-half month wait to die he decided not to eat. His jailors grew increasingly anxious, and the Calgary Herald equated his conduct to that of early twentieth-century feminists. In refusing to take nourishment, it said, the condemned man was following the example of “militant suffragettes.”[5] By January 18, 1914, the condemned prisoner was near death, and jail officials decided to force feed him. That was easier said than done. It took three large guards to subdue the prisoner while a special feeding tube was forced down his throat, and even then there was no guarantee he would gain enough strength to be put to death. Making matters worse, health wise, was that as his execution drew nearer, Collins became more and more nervous, and slept little.

  His mood no doubt darkened even more when carpenters began building his scaffold. The sound of hammering and the chatter of workmen could easily be heard in his cell, and even more noise was created by the crowds attracted to the jail when the top of the gallows rose above the fence surrounding the barracks. The throng milling about grew much larger the morning of the execution. Although Collins said he was prepared to die, until the very end he firmly believed his sentence would be commuted.

  Because the condemned man was so weak, arrangements were made to carry him to the scaffold. When the hangman arrived at his cell shortly before 8:00 a.m., however, that was not necessary. Although in obvious physical distress, Collins walked unaided, and ascended the steps of the gallows on his own. But the journey took all the energy the twenty-two-year-old possessed, and as soon as he reached the top of the scaffold he walked to an armchair already positioned on the trap, and sat. From the moment he was tied to it things went downhill. Collins was hooded and noosed while sitting, and dropped in that position. If events had been left to take their inevitable course, there might have been a different outcome. But the hangman was anxious, and five minutes after Collins was hanged, he cut the prisoner down; the problem was, the unfortunate man was not yet dead. With an unconscious, but obviously living prisoner lying at their feet, officials debated what to do next. If precedent were a guide, the comatose killer should have been carried back up the scaffold, noosed, held over the open space where the trap doors were once closed, and dropped by guards. The debate raged for nearly twenty minutes before fate intervened and Collins died.

  This photo is of a leather strap used to bind the ankles of a condemned prisoner. It took an executioner about two seconds to complete that process. On the only occasion when a prisoner refused to be bound, the executioner used the strap to beat the prisoner into submission.

  Author’s photo.

  Members of the coroner’s jury empanelled to confirm that the sentence of the court was carried out were required to witness the execution, and to a man were indignant. Their report makes evident the revulsion they felt.

  We find that Jasper Collins died in Calgary on February 17, at the barracks of the R.N.W.M.P., as a result of partial dislocation of the neck and suffocation caused by being hanged by the neck following the sentence of death passed upon the said Jasper Collins in the Supreme Court of Alberta.

  We further desire to add that in our opinion the sentence of the court was not carried out, owing to the fact that the said Jasper Collins was not hanged by the neck until dead, but was, contrary to the sentence of the court, cut down by the executioner before life was extinct.

  We further desire to express our dissatisfaction with the manner in which the execution was carried out by the hangman, and we feel that in the interests of justice, and of the public weal there should be an investigation in order that future executions should be carried out properly.

  We further desire to add that we do not in any way censure any other officials.[6]

  Canada has had only one official executioner, but between 1912 and 1934 Arthur Ellis was considered by federal and provincial governments, and the general public, to be the country’s preeminent hangman. But putting people to death was a competitive business, and Ellis did not always get the work. He was, however, a relentless self-promoter, and determined to keep his name front and centre. Although the federal government has sole responsibility for the administration of criminal law and the commutation of death penalties, the sheriff of the judicial district in which someone was to be hanged was the person who hired and paid the executioner who carried out a death sentence. When Ellis heard that Collins was to be executed, he wrote Calgary’s sheriff and offered his services. He was not pleased with the response: “Received yours of February 2. Will not require you, as I have engaged a local man to look after the execution.” Ellis may not have been happy that he was denied the Collins contract, but he was downright alarmed when news reports of the botched hanging contained no reference to the name of the man who carried out the execution. A week after the hanging he contacted the press in Toronto, to set the record straight.

  As a man very much in the public eye, I feel that people should know that I was not concerned in the execution at Calgary. I am well known all over Canada and it would hurt my reputation if it were thought that I was responsible. I understand that a man named Holmes, living in Calgary, was hired for the execution. He was a mere novice and I took the matter up with the attorney-general of Alberta before it took place. He would not interfere.[7]

  If young William Jasper Collins had only kept his ill-gotten gains hidden from his Braymer neighbours for a few months, he almost certainly would have gotten away with murder.

  Marie Beaulne and Philibert Lefebvre:

  Poison Does the Trick

  Philibert Lefebvre and Zephyr Viau had a lot in common. The men were friends, each cut wood and trapped for a living near Montpellier, in the southwest corner of the province of Quebec. In addition, both were illiterate, not gifted intellectually, and in love with the same woman. The principal difference between them was that in 1929 the sixty-two-year-old Viau was married to Marie Beaulne, the mother of his eight children, and Philibert was not.

  For most of his adult life Viau left his family every year to go into the woods, where for several months he lived in a tiny shanty, choppi
ng wood and trapping whatever animals he could find. In late 1928 he left behind not only his wife and kids, but his friend Lefebvre as well. Romance was long gone from the Viau marriage, although until his last trip into the woods there was no suggestion that loyalty had disappeared as well. That changed for some reason, and by the time Zephyr returned, his wife and his friend were in love. Beaulne gave considerable thought to what she was going to do when her husband came home. Leaving her children was not an option and divorce in a staunchly Roman Catholic settlement like the one she lived in was out of the question; in the end she concluded that murder was the only solution. In early twentieth-century Canada, when wives murdered their spouses, they usually resorted to poison, and so it was in this case.

  The first time Beaule put strychnine in her husband’s soup the poison made him sick, but it certainly did not kill him. Beaulne decided to increase the dosage, and on January 22, 1929, she got it right. When the woodcutter died suddenly his neighbours were a little suspicious. Almost everyone suspected his forty-two-year-old widow was carrying on with his thirty-two-year-old friend behind Viau’s back, but that alone was not enough to suggest a murder was committed. The sense that something was not right grew, however, when Marie insisted on burying her husband right away, without waiting for the traditional period of mourning to end. Even with that, Beaulne and Lefebvre would likely have gotten away with murder had not the Reverend Lucien Polydore Major been their parish priest. Major once saw a man die from strychnine poisoning, and what Viau went through triggered a memory. He decided to contact the provincial police. When officers arrived on the scene, just about everyone they talked to told them about Beaulne and Lefebvre, and suggested that the widow’s late husband did not die a natural death.