Practically Perfect

by Dale Brawn

  After Stefoff was arrested, Toronto police officers contacted other forces throughout Canada and the northern United States, and little by little became convinced that the man they had in custody very likely was a serial killer. They learned that a few years earlier an Englishman living in a boarding house in Bedford, Indiana, was murdered by a man matching Stefoff’s description. The Macedonians who witnessed the murder refused to help police, however, and the investigation went nowhere. Out of an abundance of caution, Stefoff retreated to Macedonia. When he learned that he was wanted for crimes committed there, he returned to the United States. This time he settled near Buffalo, New York, where he worked in a quarry. Before long he was again on the move, leaving behind the bodies of two of his countrymen. Once more Stefoff opted for caution and returned to Europe. Although he avoided the country of his birth, his reputation followed him wherever he went. After learning that he was about to be extradited to the United States, he decided to leave Europe for Toronto. Six months later Simoff became victim number four.

  Stefoff was never considered a talkative man, but that changed the evening before he was to hang. Shortly after 10:00 p.m. he told his guards that he had something to say; and he got right to the point. “I am guilty,” he said. “I am the murderer of the man.” Stefoff refused to give any details of Simoff’s killing, but said his motive was partly greed, and partly revenge for what was a perceived slight. He also admitted to killing an Englishman near Terre Haute, Indiana, but all he would say was that it had nothing to do with a disagreement; he got away with the killing because none of the Macedonians who saw him do it cooperated with the police.

  A little after breakfast was served at Toronto’s Don Jail on December 23, 1909, Poral Stefoff was executed.

  John Barty: The Cold-Set Killer

  A cold-set hammer is an ugly tool, used by blacksmiths and metal workers to cut rivets. It is square on one end, wedge-shaped on the other, with a sharpened edge like that of an axe or hatchet. Weighing a little over a kilogram, it makes a deadly weapon, and it was John Barty’s favourite implement of death. The Hamilton labourer worked for the Steel Company of Canada (now Stelco), and after his wife died and left him to raise the couple’s three children, he spent his leisure hours drinking. But money was tight, and as his family grew older, it became tighter. That was why he was not able to pay his bills, and in 1925 he was sued by one of the people to whom he owed money. None of this, however, excuses what Barty did during the lunch hour on June 10, 1926.

  Nancy Cook usually worked in Needle’s Shoe Store with someone else, but between noon and 1:00 p.m. things were slow, so she was alone. When Barty walked in to the store, he told Cook he wanted to buy shoes for his son. Cook went to get him a pair, and as she did, he walked over to the cash register. Before he was able to take any money from the till, Cook saw what Barty was doing and rushed over. The diminutive twenty-nine-year-old grabbed the much bigger steel worker, but her struggles seemed only to infuriate Barty. He drew from a pocket a cold-set hammer, and hit her twice on the head. Before he had a chance to strike her a third time his victim’s screams were heard by a woman pedestrian. She stopped and peered into the store, witnessing Barty put one arm around Cook and swing the hammer. When the weapon hit its mark the clerk collapsed onto the floor. No longer hindered by anyone, Barty jumped over the prostrate woman and rushed back to the cash register. As he emptied it the pedestrian raised the alarm.

  Cook’s husband also worked for Sam Needle, and on this Thursday he was just two stores away. When he heard the commotion he and his boss ran to the shoe store, where he saw his wife on the floor, and her apparent assailant standing at the till. Percy Cook was not much larger than Nancy, but he was every bit as brave. He went straight at Barty, who immediately swung his hammer at his slightly-built protagonist. He missed, and Cook grabbed him. In the fight that followed Barty bit down on Cook’s hands and nose, and while the two men were struggling, Needle started hitting the would-be thief with a piece of wood. When it broke he turned and ran to get help. Unimpeded by anyone else, Barty focussed on Cook, and was finally able to hit him with the hammer. The shoe salesman fell to his knees, and then rolled onto the floor, unconscious. He no sooner collapsed when two men, attracted by all the shouting, entered the store. One grabbed a small ladder, the other a broom, and both swung at the same time. Neither weapon made any impression on Barty, and when he raised his hammer they backed away, giving the enraged thief a chance to make his getaway. Before he could, a Hamilton police inspector joined the fray. He managed to get an arm around the neck of the larger man, and with his free hand began hitting him. After what no doubt seemed an eternity he got his handcuffs out and slapped one around his opponent’s wrist. And that was that. When Barty was searched he had just under $20 in his pocket, including a number of blood-stained bills.

  Nancy Cook was rushed to the Hamilton General Hospital. Although she suffered a skull fracture and was badly beaten on the head, she initially seemed to be improving by the hour. That changed around noon two days later. Her condition worsened, and doctors decided to operate, but nothing helped. Almost exactly forty-eight hours after she put up such a brave fight with her assailant, she died. Barty was being held on charges of assault and attempted robbery. To those the police now added one count of murder.

  Shortly after Cook’s killer was arrested he gave a statement to the police. In it he said that after he paid for his son’s shoes he turned to go out the front door of the shoe store, but Cook told him not to leave by that exit. She said he had to leave by the back door. That upset him, and the two got into an argument. When Cook struck him, he hit her back with the shoes he was carrying, in self-defence. That was all he could remember, other than the fact that before he went into the store he consumed a lot of bootleg wine.

  During his preliminary hearing Barty denied that he was responsible for Cook’s death. He testified that he was informed by a friend that when the police were carrying the unconscious woman from the store to an ambulance, they dropped her on the sidewalk, and she struck her head on the cement. That was what killed her, he claimed, not his attack. No one believed him, not then, nor in October, when he went on trial for murder. Although the trial lasted parts of three days, the outcome was never in doubt. After deliberating a little more than an hour, a jury returned a verdict of guilty. All that was left was the sentence.

  In cases of capital murder, a judge had no option but to impose a death sentence; but Mr. Justice H.M. Mowatt had never done it before. After the jury announced its verdict, he asked Barty if there was any reason why sentence should not be passed. When the killer stood in silence, Mowatt said he was ready to do what the law said he must. He paused, struggled with his emotions for a moment, and then resumed talking. After a few seconds he paused a second time, and before he was finished, stopped again. The second and third pauses were so extended court officials were not sure he would be able to continue. Mowatt, however, struggled on. John Barty, he said, you “shall be taken to the place from whence you came, and there confined in solitary confinement until …” This time when he stopped speaking it was not because of emotion, but because he could not find his calendar. He asked a court clerk for one, and after staring at it for a minute or two, looked up and continued: “the twenty-third day of December next, then he paused, “and then taken to a place of execution,” a longer pause this time, “and hanged by the neck until you are dead.” Mowatt stiffened slightly, and with considerable effort concluded: “May God have mercy on your soul.” Barty, meanwhile, seemed indifferent to everything that was going on.[5]

  In the days following his conviction Barty was questioned repeatedly about a triple murder that occurred in Hamilton on June 25, 1925. Sometime that afternoon someone carrying a cold-set hammer climbed a back stairway to a seedy apartment occupied by a bootlegger and his wife. That particular day they had a guest, although it hardly mattered. All three victims were both drunk and asleep. Their killer struck each in turn with the sharpened blad
e of his weapon, apparently with sufficient force that none of his victims had time to raise an alarm. In fact, there was not a single sign of a struggle. That initially confused investigators because when they walked in it seemed everywhere they looked there was a body. The head and neck of all three people were struck repeatedly, and each body bore evidence that the killer used both ends of his weapon on their faces. No one connected to the investigation had any doubt who committed the murders. A week or so before the slaughter, the bootlegger obtained a judgment against Barty for what he said were groceries, although that was no doubt a euphemism for bootleg wine.

  The trap doors on which a condemned prisoner stood before being dropped were huge, heavy affairs, capable of holding at least two prisoners. When the executioner pulled a lever to which the doors were attached, the noise made by the two halves separating could be heard clearly by prisoners celled near the execution chamber. When several prisoners were to be hanged one after another, the sound must have been terrifying to those awaiting their turn on the gallows. John Pawluk stood on these very doors on August 21, 1936.

  Author’s photo.

  On December 22, the day before Barty was to hang, his lawyer applied for a stay of execution to the Ontario Court of Appeal. The court dismissed his application, and then in a legal oddity, the lawyer walked from the courtroom to the office of one of the justices who just said no, and persuaded him to grant a temporary reprieve. In the end Barty’s fate was the same, except that instead of being hanged two days before Christmas, he was executed in the Hamilton jail on January 12, 1927.

  John Kooting and John Pawluk:

  Confessions on the Prairies

  According to Saint Augustine, the confession of evil works is the beginning of good works. In the case of two Manitoba men, it was the first step on the way to the gallows.

  Shoal Lake farmer John Kooting always got along with his neighbour Dymtro Czayka, and when Czayka left his job at the local creamery it did not seem out of place that he boarded for a time with Kooting and his family. What did seem unusual was that in the first week of November 1921, Czayka would leave the community to return to his native Austria without telling anyone of his plans.

  Two months after the former creamery worker was last seen, police questioned Kooting about his absence. Kooting’s suggestion that his lodger was staying temporarily with a friend was quickly proven to be a lie, and the farmer was arrested and charged with murdering the missing man. After a short preliminary hearing he was committed to stand trial. When a grand jury heard his case in the spring of 1923, its members were convinced Kooting was likely guilty, and it brought in a true bill. But there was no evidence that Czayka had been murdered, and instead of prosecuting his alleged killer, the Crown was forced to stay his charge and allow the accused killer to return home a free man.

  For the next two years everything returned to normal, at least for the Kootings. Then in early 1925 Kooting became bedridden. Convinced he was going to die, the farmer got in touch with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and asked if a couple officers might come by to hear what he had to say about the disappearance of Czayka. In his written statement, Kooting said he killed his former neighbour because he needed the man’s money to feed his family. After hitting Czayka over the head with an axe and taking his cash, he buried the dead man under a manure pile in his yard. Some months later he built a pig pen over the grave. He told the officers that when asked by neighbours about his friend’s disappearance, he told them Czayka had gone missing in a blizzard and likely perished.

  Although all that remained of Czayka was bones, a four-inch hole in his skull corroborated Kooting’s statement. At trial further corroboration was offered by his son, who testified that on the night of the murder he was sitting on the stairs of his parents’ home when his father came in and informed his mother that he had just killed their neighbour. The young man told the court he later found blood-soaked clothing hanging in a shed and bloodstains on the hay rack his father used on the evening of the murder. The only issue at trial was whether Kooting’s confession should be admitted into evidence. A Shoal Lake doctor testified that although Kooting was sick when he confessed to murdering Czayka, he was both physically and mentally fit to make “an intelligent statement.”[6] The jury was convinced. In less than an hour it returned a guilty verdict.

  Shortly before 8:00 a.m. on the third Friday in February 1926, Kooting was led from his death cell in the provincial jail at Portage la Prairie to a scaffold erected in the prison yard. The priest who spent the evening with the condemned man recited prayers for the dying as the procession made its way to the foot of the gallows, with Kooting responding in a clear, emotionless voice.

  The trap was sprung moments after the group reached the scaffold. Although witnesses later said the execution was carried out without a hitch, the coroner presiding over the inquest that followed noted that Kooting died from strangulation, rather than a broken neck. The dead man was buried in an unmarked grave in the yard of Portage jail.

  The other Manitoba murder that resulted in the death of a “confessor” bore striking similarities to the crime committed by Kooting, although this time suspicion was aroused when the illiterate man the killer suspected of having an affair with his wife left behind a suicide note.

  By 1935 John Pawluk had farmed north of Winnipeg for years. His relationship with his wife was not good, and had not been for years. On at least two occasions Julia disappeared for days before returning to her husband and their three young children. That was why the police were neither surprised nor alarmed when Pawluk reported his wife missing four months before her alleged lover was found shot to death.

  Genio Bulega lived near the Pawluks. The day he died a neighbour arrived at the home of the retired farmer to ask for help loading hay. He found the yard strangely quiet, and decided to enter the residence to investigate. He found Bulega sitting in a chair, the top of his head blown off. A shotgun lay beside his body. One end of a piece of binder twine was tied to its trigger, and the other end was wrapped around one of the feet of the dead man. On a table across the room investigators found an unusual, unpunctuated, blood-stained letter, held in place by a carving knife. Officers immediately became suspicious when they opened the suicide note. It was dated more than a month before its author allegedly shot himself, and urged police not to suspect Pawluk of killing his wife.

  Please don’t bother anybody about [Julia Pawluk] she was at my place on Monday ... she want me to go away with her and I told her I couldnt go with her she had been bothering me all summer I couldnt go with her and I cant stand her now wherever she went ... don’t bother him [John Pawluk] any because he is not to blame for anything this all I have to say goodby everybody please dont bother about his wife.[7]

  Any doubt investigators might have harboured that Bulgea was a murder rather than suicide victim was dispelled when they found blood on the inside of the letter. Not only was it impossible for Bulgea to have shot himself and then fold the note, it was unlikely he could have handled the shotgun without leaving evidence that he had done so. The gun had been wiped completely clean of fingerprints. But notwithstanding evidence pointing to his involvement in the death of Bulgea, Pawluk may still have avoided a murder conviction had he not on two separate occasions confessed to killing his wife.

  The first time he unburdened himself occurred before Bulega died. A neighbour dropped by for a visit following Julia’s disappearance. Without prompting, Pawluk told his startled guest that he no longer had a wife. Asked what he had done to her, he said he shot her with a .22 rifle and buried her body under a manure pile.[8] Pawluk’s second confession came after Bulega’s murder, while he was being held in the Headingley jail awaiting trial for killing his wife. A friend serving a six-month sentence for obtaining goods by false pretences shared a cell with Pawluk. Again, without prompting, Pawluk confessed to killing his wife. “I hope, now that they have me, they will hang me right away. I don’t want to be continually pulled around in the cou
rts.”[9]

  Manitoba’s cemetery of the executed, where the unclaimed bodies of men hanged in the province between 1932 and 1952 were reinterred after a flooding Red River destroyed the area in which they were first buried. The body of John Pawluk and a handful of other men were moved about a mile west of the jail. There they were interred in a small cemetery located in the middle of a field.

  Author’s photo.

  Pawluk need not have worried. Despite taking the stand to deny making either confession, a jury took less than an hour to return a verdict of guilty. Pawluk did not react when he was sentenced to death, and after his judge left the courtroom he calmly relit a half burned cigarette and walked back to his cell with a smile on his face. There were no smiles two months later when the forty-nine-year-old was led out of the death cell that connects to the gallows at the Headingley jail. Less than sixty seconds after Pawluk started his walk the trap was sprung. The Winnipeg Free Press summed up the feeling of those who witnessed the execution. “Had he been less talkative it might have been difficult to connect him definitely with the killing.”[10]