Practically Perfect

by Dale Brawn

  Rita Genest was murdered on May 21, 1951. The evening she died Rita and her husband went out to supper with her brother. After dropping her off at home, the men spent the rest of the evening drinking and gambling. About 11:00 p.m. neighbours noticed smoke coming from the Genest apartment and called the fire department. By the time fire fighters arrived, the bedroom was completely gutted. All that remained was a smouldering mattress and blood. Lots of it. Firefighters promptly called the police. About an hour after they arrived, Roland Genest drove up. When he was taken to police headquarters twenty minutes later his alibi paid off in spades. He was released after providing investigators with a satisfactory account of his whereabouts when the fire started.

  A coroner’s inquest was held on May 30, but soon adjourned to give investigators more time to gather evidence. Before it adjourned, however, jurors heard from the two provincial medico-legal experts assigned to the Genest case. They testified that Rita died from two skull fractures, inflicted by a blunt instrument with a narrow edge, and that she was dead when her bedroom was set on fire. Their conclusion was based on both the extent of her head injuries, and the fact there was no trace of carbon dioxide in her blood. The last anyone heard about the investigation was a brief report published a few days after the murder. According to the newspaper article, Montreal homicide detectives had absolutely no clue who murdered Rita. For the next twenty-one months her file lay untouched.

  That changed on February 19, 1953, when the nude body of a woman was discovered lying in a farmer’s field on Île Bizard, a small island now a suburb of greater Montreal. The woman was found about one hundred feet from a much travelled road, and had been badly beaten about the head. She had also been stabbed numerous times. A near total absence of blood at the scene suggested to investigators that the victim was murdered elsewhere, and her body transported to the field. As one detective noted, “There was hardly any blood around the body, which leads us to believe she was carried there in a blanket after being knifed and hammered to death.”[2]

  Although the body of the woman lay in their morgue, the police had no clue who she was. They ran her fingerprints through their own database and that of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but the searches produced no leads. They decided to publish a photo of the woman’s face in local newspapers and invite Montrealers to visit the city morgue. Their appeal attracted an assortment of the morbidly curious, and those desperate to know whether the corpse was that of a missing loved one. For two days and nights hundreds of men, and a few women, slowly walked by the gurney on which the body lay. The detective leading the investigation made no apologies for what his team of investigators did. “Some of these people were just curious” he said. “But they claimed the victim’s description fitted that of someone they knew. We can’t take chances, because our only chance of learning who the woman is lies with somebody that knew her.”[3] Ultimately, that somebody was her mother. Two hours after she and two sisters of the victim identified the missing woman as Marie Paule Langlais, the police took Roland Genest into custody as a material witness. Forty-eight hours later he confessed to the murder, although there is considerable doubt he did so voluntarily.

  According to Genest, after the police picked him up on a Montreal street they took him to a police station, where he was put in a cell. The next morning officers read him his rights, and began questioning him about what he knew of the murder of Langlais. All he admitted was that he saw her the day before her body was found, and that the two had a disagreement. Langlais accused him of flirting with another woman. And that was that, at least according to the detectives who interviewed Genest. They said that when they returned to his cell the following day, they again read him his rights, but this time he wanted to get something off his chest, and he began talking. By the time they were done Genest confessed not only to killing Langlais, but to taking part in the murder of his wife as well. At least that was the official version of events. Genest saw it differently.

  He said after he was picked up one of the investigating officers came into his cell alone. The detective took off his rings and watch, rolled up his sleeves, and began hitting him. For fifteen minutes the officer punched him in the face and body, and he smashed Genest’s head on a table. By the time the policeman tired, Genest said he was ready to confess. The detective then stopped hitting him, took out a statement already written on a piece of paper, and had Genest sign it.

  At his trial the lawyer prosecuting the case could not see what the problem was. He asked the accused killer if he had indeed “told the police you hit Marie Paule over the head with a baseball bat? Do you admit that this is true.” Genest said yes, he said that. “Do you admit that you told them you hid the body on Île Bizard. Do you admit this is true?” Again the answer was yes. “Do you admit you told them where her clothes were? Do you admit this is true?” Another yes. Then Justice Wilfrid Lazure (the same judge who sentenced Roland Asselin to death) interrupted. Lazure wanted to know why Genest would tell the police these things if they were not true. Because, the accused said, he was told the beating was going to continue until he confessed. He did not even read the statement he signed.[4]

  Before his murder trial got underway, however, the inquest adjourned after the body of Langlais was discovered was reconvened. Sitting in the crowded coroner’s court were the mother, five sisters, and four brothers of the dead woman. The statement Genest made to the police was not admitted into evidence, but the court heard testimony from a number of the officers who investigated the murder. They said as a result of information given them by Genest, they recovered several items connected with the killing, including the partially burned clothes of the dead woman, found just outside a Montreal area village, a bloodstained knife recovered from the third story roof of an east end apartment building, and engagement and wedding rings were found in a private residence. Also recovered was the baseball bat used to beat Marie, and the blood-stained tarpaulin on which Genest placed Langlais when he transported her body to the spot where it was discovered.

  After hearing the evidence the coroner’s jury deliberated six minutes before finding Genest criminally responsible for causing the death of Marie Paule Langlais. Moments later the short, dapper accused killer was formally charged with murdering his girlfriend. Everything that followed the confession was a mere formality, and when Genest’s trial got underway on May 19, 1953, his guilt was never in question. The only issue was whether he should be convicted of murder or the lesser charge of manslaughter. The first offence involves an element of premeditation and planning, while the second consists of a killing carried out in the heat of passion.

  Genest was the first witness to testify. He said he picked up his girlfriend when she got off work at the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu hospital, and the two drove to a garage he rented, where they washed his car. They began to argue over medicine he kept in a trunk.

  The argument got hotter and she called me names. I called her names, and I told her she was crazy. She went to hit me with a baseball bat. I grabbed the bat and began to hit her on the head with it. I don’t know why — but I reached for a knife and began to stab her. I don’t know how many times I did. I must have gone beserk.[5]

  As soon as he stopped beating her he began to realize what he had done. “I got frightened and nervous. I wanted to escape … I took off her clothes and put them in a bag. There was lots of blood and I cleaned up the garage. I left there about six o’clock and I wanted to take the road to Toronto. I was driving around the north end of the island when I came to a wood. The place looked lonely and there were no homes there. I carried the body into the woods and left it there.”

  Genest said he was barely home when he remembered that his girlfriend wore a ring. He promptly returned to her body, and removed it. “The next day I took her clothes and burned them with gasoline.”[6]

  Genest’s lawyer used his client’s confession to try and persuade jurors that the murder of Langlais was not premeditated. It happened, he suggested, only because the v
ictim goaded her killer into hitting her.[7] The prosecutor saw things differently, and suggested to the jury that it should look at what Genest did after the murder for evidence of what was in his mind when he killed Langlais.

  The accused committed the crime knowingly and voluntarily. He did everything humanly possible to hide his crime. He brought the body to a lonely place on Île Bizard. He burned her clothes and he scattered the tarpaulin he carried the body in, the baseball bat and the knife at places miles apart.[8]

  This man, he suggested, was not a fool. He was a cold-blooded murderer.

  The jury had no difficulty agreeing, and despite a lack of evidence proving that Genest planned the killing, it deliberated only fifteen minutes before it convicted him of murder. Without doubt jurors were significantly influenced by the fact the accused killer had already gotten away with one murder. They were not prepared to see him get away with another. Justice Lazure also had no sympathy for Genest. After adjourning court briefly while he made himself ready to sentence the convicted murderer, Lazure re-entered wearing the traditional three-cornered hat and black gloves. He got right to the point. “It is never easy for me to pronounce the death sentence on an accused.” But, he said, “You have only yourself to blame for this predicament.”[9]

  Three months later Genest paid the price for his crime. The condemned killer was led from his cell in Montreal’s Bordeaux Jail shortly before 1:00 a.m. on Friday, August 28, 1953. Five minutes later his arms and legs were pinioned and a cloth hood was slipped over his head. After a noose was tightened around his neck, its knot secured under his left ear, the trap was sprung. Fifteen minutes later, the same length of time it took a jury to find him guilty of murder, Roland Genest was declared dead.

  In this photo, the metal door in the corner separates the cell from the death chamber. In the case of the Headingley jail in Manitoba, it took an executioner about ten seconds to lead a prisoner from the death cell to scaffold, and another four or five seconds to strap, noose, hood, and drop the condemned person. When a doctor standing below the death chamber declared a prisoner dead, a jail guard standing to one side of the scaffold used a long, metal hook to pull the rope by which the dead person was suspended to one side. Other officers then took hold of it and cut the executed killer down. Until relatively late in Canada’s experience with capital punishment the rope used to execute a killer became the property of the executioner, along with the clothing of the dead prisoner(s), and pieces of it were sold to souvenir hunters. In some cases, executioners purchased dozens of feet of extra rope, pieces of which were also sold off.

  Author’s photo.

  7

  Confessions and

  Presumptions of Guilt

  The brutality of murder is occasionally mind-numbing. That there are people in society who care so little that they would take the life of another without qualm is hard for most of us to accept. The five stories in this chapter are all about that kind of person. Poral Stefoff, John Barty, John Kooting, and John Pawluk were all violent men, whose adult lives showed little evidence of concern for others. But that could not be said of James Alfred Kelsey. He was considered a good man by all who knew him, or at least all of those who testified at his murder trial. The thread that runs through these stories is that each got away with murder for quite a long time.

  Poral Stefoff:

  Last Minute Confession of a Serial Killer

  Poral Stefoff was a vicious, brutal man who committed at least four murders. Although he was arrested within minutes of committing the crime for which, in December 1909, he was hanged, Stefoff was actually pretty successful at getting away with killing people.

  It is probably never a good thing for a killer to report the death of his victim, and in the case of Poral Stefoff, it was a fatal mistake. Stefoff was a labourer from Macedonia, and lived in a downtown Toronto boarding house with nearly a dozen of his countrymen. He was the only member of the group not to have a regular job, and around 6:00 a.m. on April 22, 1909, he started looking for work. In his absence Evan Simoff, a second-cousin, returned from his night shift as a cleaner for the Grand Trunk Railway. Stefoff expected his cousin to be at home, and when he returned from his job search was a little surprised to find that the door leading to the basement suite occupied by the Macedonians was locked. He walked to the front of the house and started down a narrow staircase connecting a ground floor sitting room to the basement. As he did he noticed Simoff lying at the bottom of the stairs. Stefoff turned around and rushed outside, where he sought help from a Macedonian living across the street. He in turn called the police. Within minutes five officers, closely followed by the city coroner, arrived on the scene. What they found was mind-numbing brutality.

  A hatchet was lying a few feet from the body of an adult male, who was lying in a pool of blood. The man’s pants were undone at the waist, presumably when the killer went searching for a money belt of the kind often worn by eastern European immigrants. When those first to arrive checked to see if the victim had any valuables on his person, they found blood stains on the inside of his right pocket, likely left when his killer took whatever the pocket once contained. Since nothing in the basement was disturbed, investigators concluded there had been no struggle. That meant the dead man probably knew the person who attacked him. Police thought the assault may have been interrupted, since whoever murdered Simoff left on his body $100 in gold pieces that he had sewn into the lining of his vest. Indeed, if the killer searched all of Simoff’s clothing it may have taken some time — the dead man was wearing two of almost everything, including pants and vest.

  As soon as they could, detectives rounded up the men who lived with the victim, and through an interpreter began questioning them. Three hours later everyone was allowed to leave, except the person who discovered the dead man’s body. Investigators could not help notice that Stefoff’s clothes were spotted with what looked like blood. He was asked how the stains got on his clothes. “I got them,” he replied, “at the Harris Abattoir, where I worked for twelve days.”[1] Stefoff’s questioners were not convinced by the answer, and became outright suspicious when they examined his clothes further, and under his jacket found more stains on the sleeve of his shirt. When they found $140 in Stefoff’s pocket, a man who admitted he had not worked for some time, the police took him into custody as a material witness. Four days later he was formally charged with murder.

  Much of the Crown’s case was based on the fact that on the day of Simoff’s murder, Stefoff had on him $140 in bills of the same denomination known to have been in the possession of the victim. It was because of this money that Stefoff’s trial was delayed for months. In a statement he gave to the police, the accused killer said the money was a loan from an acquaintance, who shortly after the murder returned to Macedonia. It took the Crown a considerable length of time to persuade the alleged money lender to return to Canada to testify. When he did, he testified for only ten minutes, but what he said struck at the heart of Stefoff’s defence. Yes, the witness told the court, he was a friend of both the victim and the victim’s alleged killer; but no, he never had any financial dealings with Stefoff, and he certainly never loaned him $140.[2]

  After that the Macedonians who shared a house with Stefoff and Simoff were called to the stand, and each said the same thing: Stefoff rarely worked, he never had any money, and he was constantly trying to borrow from them. The clincher for the Crown were the results of tests carried out on the stains noticed on Stefoff’s clothes the day of the murder. They were found to contain human blood. Those tests were the reason the alleged killer looked almost dapper as he sat in court. Investigators seized so much of his clothing that they had to find him something else to wear; which was why when court opened he was resplendent in his borrowed finery.

  In the end there was likely nothing Stefoff could have done or said to persuade jurors not to find him guilty, although his lawyer certainly tried. He argued that when his client spoke to the police the day Simoff was found, he did not un
derstand their questions, nor did he appreciate that he need not have said anything at all. The lawyer’s second submission was novel. He said that just because ten of the twelve jurors recently were subjected to considerable criticism for the decisions they made in two earlier murder trials, they should not feel inclined to make up for those verdicts by finding Stefoff guilty of a crime he did not commit. Pointing to his client, who he referred to as “that poor, dumb foreigner,” the lawyer said “Gentlemen, don’t allow yourselves to be moved by the demand for victims, and take as your victim this unfortunate foreigner, who doesn’t understand the language and who can’t defend himself against the vices of the detectives.”[3]

  When it was the turn of the Crown Attorney to sum up, he referred to the submission of Stefoff’s lawyer as “moonshine and balderdash.” He told jurors that if the statements made by his learned opponent were true, “it is an awful state of affairs. But it isn’t; you know it, and he knows it isn’t. So once more let us try to get rid of this truck and rubbish and let us get at the truth, no matter where it leads.”[4] Two of the members of the jury were initially not quite sure where that was, and an hour after they started their deliberations the entire panel asked to speak with the judge. The pair not yet convinced of Stefoff’s guilt wanted the statement he gave to the police read to them one more time. That done, all twelve jurors left the courtroom to resume their deliberations. Forty minutes later they were back, and the next day Stefoff was sentenced to hang.

  Two days later it was learned that the Macedonian labourer had not left the entirety of his defence in the hands of his counsel. When the killer arrived at the Don Jail to await his December 23 execution, he complained that his lawyer and his spiritual adviser conspired against him during his trial. He said the men knew of the existence of a witness who, if called, would testify that Stefoff had in his possession the money he was alleged to have stolen more than two months before Simoff was murdered. When word of the allegation reached the condemned prisoner’s minister, the reverend was hurt, and the more he thought about it, the more determined he was to prove the allegation false. The minister hired a cab, and beginning at 6:00 p.m. began making stops at every establishment in the city where Macedonian immigrants were likely to be found. At 2:00 a.m. the next morning he struck pay dirt. The man he was looking for was Elia Petroff, and Petroff was prepared to talk to the police. The Macedonian said he met Stefoff when he, Petroff, was arrested for vagrancy and placed in a cell next to the accused killer. The two talked, and before long Stefoff made his neighbour a proposition: if Petroff agreed to give false testimony on Stefoff’s behalf, Stefoff would pay him $150. But when the murderer told his legal counsel about the potential witness, the lawyer refused to call him. He knew whatever Petroff was going to say would be a lie. As for the spiritual adviser, he apparently refused to intercede with the lawyer on Stefoff’s behalf.