Practically Perfect

by Dale Brawn

  According to Gilbert, Munroe informed them that:

  he was introduced to this girl first in Carleton; that he had went to see the girl many a time, said she had a child.… He said last fall he was going away on a little tour to Boston with some gentlemen from the city, partly on business and partly on pleasure; that the day before he left, I think he said Sunday, he went to see her, and she insisted on going with him. [On the return trip] When near Saint John, she asked him to get a coach for her; he did so, and on the way to the American Hotel, she asked him how far it was to Collins’, as she wanted to go out there. He told her it was from twelve to fifteen miles, and he promised to drive her out. He said he did drive her out. After they drove out a piece on the road past Bunker’s, he took her and the child out of the coach, and they walked on, and sent the coach back to Bunker’s. After they got on a piece she went on ahead, and after awhile came back again and said the parties were not at home she expected to see. He said they then walked back to Bunker’s, and took the coach and came home; that the understanding between him and her was that they would go out again; they did go out a second time. He said that in going out she complained of being at Mrs. Lordly’s; that she did not like Mrs. Lordly. He named some other hotels, and the coachman took them to the Union Hotel, in Union Street. He left her there. The second time they went out he turned the coach back at the same place he did the first time. She walked on ahead again. She came back and told him the parties were home that she wanted to see, and for him to see her trunks for Monday’s boat; that on Monday morning he was at the boat and put her trunks on board.[3]

  Gilbert and Marshall did not for a moment believe Munroe’s story, and after a short preliminary hearing the architect was committed to trial. It got underway on December 7, 1869, before Mr. Justice John Campbell Allan. The attorney-general of New Brunswick was Crown Prosecutor, and he was assisted by a local barrister. Both men were later appointed judges of the Supreme Court of New Brunswick. Munroe was defended by W.H. Tuck, one of the most prominent lawyers in Saint John.

  Robert Worden, the driver of the coach in which Munroe and Vail made their two journeys into the countryside, was among the first witnesses called to the stand. His testimony was the strongest evidence against Munroe presented by the Crown.

  He [Munroe] employed me on King Street, in this city, in 1868, in the fall, just before the Commercial Bank failed: it was the first of the week he asked me what I would charge to drive a lady and child to Collins’. I told him I did not care about going. He said it did not matter what the charge was, as it did not come out of him. I then told him it would be worth five dollars. He said for me to drive to the Brunswick House, there was a lady there — a friend’s wife — who he had to see out to Collins. He told me to go there and inquire for a lady by the name of Mrs. Clark. I did so, and she said she would be ready soon. Munroe was in the coach. In about five minutes she came down. She had a child with her. I took the child to be about a year old. She carried it down in her arms and got in the coach with it.[4]

  According to Worden, after Munroe and the woman were driven a short way into the countryside Munroe told him to stop, and Munroe and the woman got out.

  He took the child and the lady and he got out. He said Collins’ was nearby, and they would as leave walk.… He said he would walk back to Bunker’s, and for me to go there and feed. He said Collins’ were friends of hers.… I went back to Bunker’s, put up my horses, and ordered dinner. I think I drove at the rate of five or six miles an hour; it did not take me over ten minutes to come. I had been there about an hour and a half, and had my dinner, when Munroe came back. He asked me if I was ready to return to town; I said yes. He said the folks were not at home whom Mrs. Clarke wished to see, and they would have to come back another day. He paid me $5.… It was about two o’clock. On the way in he said to me that I need not drive to the Brunswick House again, as Mrs. Clarke and Lordly did not agree. I said I would take her to the Union Hotel. He said that would be handy for me to take her to the boat on Thursday morning. I drove her to Mrs. Lake’s, Union Hotel.… [then Munroe] told me to go to Lordly’s and get her trunks.

  I did not see Munroe again until Saturday.… When I saw Munroe on Saturday following, it was on King street about 9 o’clock in the morning. He said he wanted to go on the same trip again. I told him I would be ready.… I was at Lake’s about 11 o’clock in the morning.… The lady came down dressed much as on the former occasion; she had no luggage with her, that I saw, only the child. Munroe was in the coach. She and the child got into the coach again with Munroe. I do not recall of him speaking to me from the place we started until we got to the same place on the Black River road where we had stopped before. He said for me to stop, and they would walk down as before. I stopped and let them out. He told me to go back and feed, and he would soon be back again. I went back to Bunker’s. I turned, looked back, and saw them walking along the road — she was carrying the child. They were on opposite sides of the road from each other.

  It was before one o’clock when I got there [Bunker’s]. He came about half-past one.… He asked me if I were ready to go. I told him that I had ordered my dinner. He said he would rather pay for my dinner than have me wait.… Munroe was sweating, said it was a hard walk, he was wiping his forehead; did not observe anything else wrong.… he told me to take Mrs. Clarke’s trunks from Lake’s to the American boat, on Monday morning, and he would be there to receive them.… Saw him on Monday morning at the American boat about 7 1/4 in the morning.[5]

  Aside from Worden, the Crown called to the stand everyone who resided anywhere near the spot where the skeletons were found. None had ever heard of a Mrs. Clarke, or Sarah Margaret Vail for that matter, and no one was expecting a visit from either woman on the day the murder was believed to have been committed. Among the dozens of other witnesses to testify were a score of experts, including three doctors and a land surveyor. All Munroe’s lawyer could offer was a handful of character witnesses and in the trial’s closing moments, an alibi. A local farmer told the packed courtroom that a year earlier he was:

  coming to St. John to market with my son … She came into Mr. Crawford’s soon after I got there.… She said she was waiting to come in on the mail. The mail did not come along. She had with her a small child, from nine to twelve months old — a very small child. She told me she would pay me to bring her in; I said all right; I would not allow the lady to walk in at any rate.… My impression is she called herself Mrs. Clark. I am a poor hand at describing. She was a lowish sized woman, dressed in dark clothes, a black straw hat with dark ribbon, I think, crossed over the top of it. I brought her into town to where the old hay scales were, near the Golden Ball. She got off there; she said she would be in the market, in the afternoon or morning and pay me, but I never saw her after.[6]

  In the second half of the nineteenth century it was settled law that an accused murderer could not testify on her or his own behalf. By 1869, however, the lawyer for someone on trial for murder could at least make a closing argument to the jury. Munroe’s lawyer made just such a statement. He started with what amounted to an extended rant against the state of the law, beginning with an attack on capital punishment.

  I have already spoken to you of the unsatisfactory state of our criminal law. I raise my voice once more against it. I would raise my voice in my dying hour did the thought then flash across my mind, against its monstrous cruelty and injustice. It is not my duty now to argue the question of capital punishment. Respecting that, and the right of any state or court to inflict it, we probably all hold different opinions, but it is an awful thing for any court, or any set of men in cold blood, by any machinery of law, to take the life of a fellow being. If you, gentlemen, find a verdict of “guilty” in this case not one of you can escape the responsibility of so taking the life of a human being, and when the scaffold is erected, and the bell is tolling, and the rope is placed on the neck of the victim, in that dread hour not one of you can escape responsibility for what is
done.[7]

  The lawyer then mounted a vigorous attack on what he alleged was an improperly received confession.

  The law of England does not favour such confessions as these. It is harsh enough, severe enough, cruel enough, without authorising its officers to cross-question and torture the prisoners in their custody into making confessions, to be used as evidence against them.… what can the public think of John R. Marshall, whose duty it is to protect the prisoner when in his custody — he who had met this prisoner in the family circle, had known him from boyhood, had worshipped before the same altar with him, and under the guise of friendship entered his cell and said, “Now John, if there is any one in whom you should have confidence, it is in me: I have known you and your family, and your friends, and whatever you say to me shall be in strict confidence,” and then, when he had thus betrayed his victim into confession, immediately repeats what he had been told to the authorities. This is what John R. Marshall did. In the guise of a serpent he obtained a confession, and then betrayed the confidence of a man he called his friend. No conduct could be more despicable, mean and contemptible than this — nothing more horrible in a Christian.… Based on this statement is the whole or nearly the whole of the evidence. I do not envy the feelings John R. Marshall must experience if his miserable, contemptible, sneaking conduct succeed in making a case.[8]

  Before closing his address with a discussion of reasonable doubt, Munroe’s lawyer fired two last salvos at those he suggested were out to get his client — the Crown and local newspaper editors. He told jurors that the prosecutors virtually ransacked every corner of the country for people prepared to say something about the case, however insignificant it may be.

  While I admit that the greatest courtesy has been shown to myself personally, I must protest most solemnly against the manner in which the case has been conducted, which falls little short of being positively blood-thirsty…. Even the hunted hare is not run to earth without a fair start; but the law officers of the crown seem determined to fasten their bloody fangs at once on the prisoner, and at all hazards send him to the gallows.[9]

  If the barrister’s criticism of the Crown was strong, his comments about the local press virtually dripped with venom.

  It was bad enough that statements at variance with the laws of evidence, admitted at the preliminary investigations by gentlemen not very well acquainted with that law, should have been published; but some of the papers went even farther than this, and … some of the religious papers undertook to sum up the evidence, hold the scales of justice, weigh the evidence, and decide adversely to the prisoner. Good God! are we in a Christian country? Did not these writers know that this man would have to undergo a trial on this charge? Was it right, was it fair, was it Christian, to labor thus to create prejudice against him? Do they forget that the same God who gave the commandment “Thou shalt not kill,” also commanded “Though shalt not bear false evidence against thy neighbor?[10]

  The defence counsel was at his eloquent best when he again and again returned to the argument that there simply was not enough direct evidence for jurors to be persuaded of his client’s guilt.

  It is said that Sarah Margaret Vail was taken out by the prisoner to the neighborhood of the Lake and there foully murdered. There is no positive evidence of this.… Is there any testimony to show that this girl whom the prisoner drove out was Sarah Margaret Vail? There is no such testimony. The only evidence on that point is his own admissions. Where is the proof that the Miss Vail he spoke of is Sarah Margaret Vail? No witness proved that. It remains unestablished. Inferences won’t do in a case like this. The fact must be incontestably proved.

  Then consider that the man who intends to commit murder chooses secrecy, silence, darkness. What secrecy was there in the conduct of the prisoner? In broad daylight, in one of the principal streets of the most populous city of the Province he takes a coachman off the stand, drives to a hotel, there takes up this woman, then drives out in the Lake in view of the whole country. If this was a preparation for murder the annals of the world present no parallels to this act, nor could any one present, in his wildest day dreams, have imagined anything so preposterous as that he should thus, in broad day, have gone to commit such a crime in the light of that sun which at the instant should have been darkened. Good God! it is incredible.

  If he wished to commit this murder why did he not do it when they were together in the States. In a large city like Boston there were many opportunities. They were strangers in a strange land. No one knew him or her. Completely under his control, as she was said to be, what was there to prevent his dragging her into a place suited for such a deed, and then committing it under cover of darkness. If her body were afterwards found no one would know her.… why at least did he not make some attempt at concealment? Why did he not get a buggy as he might have done and take her up at some street corner and drive her to the place where he meant to perpetrate this deed? But he did not do this. Did you ever hear anything like this?[11]

  Ultimately, the emotional appeal of Munroe’s lawyer fell on deaf ears, and after deliberating less than two hours jurors returned a verdict of guilty. There was only one option available to Justice Allan, and he told Munroe that he would have until February 15, 1870, to prepare himself to die. That is precisely what the convicted killer did. In the days immediately preceding his execution he came to accept the inevitability of what was to come, and spent his daylight hours either in prayer, or in conversation with his spiritual advisers. The night before he was to hang, no doubt at their request, he confessed to the two murders.

  The first time I went out with Miss Vail it was only for a ride. We had no quarrel and our going was at her wish. We got out of the coach, at or near the place described on the trial, she had a satchel, and we walked along the road, I cannot say how far, sat down, and had a bite to eat. We both fired at a mark, she using a pistol I had given her — one of a pair — a breech loader, same as my own. The mate I gave to a friend. I had learned her to use it. There was no intention on my part to harm her at that time. We came back and I left her at Lake’s. She was to have gone to Boston on the Thursday after our first going out, but it was too stormy, and I went with my wife to Fredericton on that day, and came down again on Friday night. It was during that trip to Fredericton I first thought that the spot I had visited with Miss Vail on the Monday previous was a suitable spot to commit a bad act. I went out again with Miss Vail the Saturday following. We went the same road as before and to about the same place.

  The morning was frosty, the moss crisp and hard. There was no wet on the barren. The road was a little muddy. We went off the road a little way together and sat down. I went into the bushes, the child cried, I came out again, was angry, and strangled the child. I do not know if it was actually dead. As she was rising up, I shot [Miss Vail] in the head — I do not think on the same side as shown in the court. I threw a bush over her face and some over her hands. I found the pistol in her pocket, or just fallen out of it, a common handkerchief and a wallet with only a few dollars in it. I threw the handkerchief and wallet away and left at once and have never been back since. I had previously had some of her money — cannot say how much — perhaps half or a little more. I cannot say that money was not one of the reasons of the motives for the act committed. I do not say it was in self defence I killed Miss Vail. It was the money, my anger with her at the time and my bad thoughts on and after the trip to Fredericton working together, caused me to do the bad act. The letter written to Mrs. Crear [Maggie’s sister] was written by me, and mailed in Boston by a friend of mine living in or near Boston. I never killed any other person or child.[12]

  The day of Munroe’s execution a local paper spoke of the deep sadness enveloping the city. “Today a funeral pall hangs over our city; this a morning of sorrow — deep ineffimable sorrow. The crime of murder — murder the most cold-blooded, brutal and abhorrent — has been expiated by the life of the perpetrator.… Oh! May Munroe’s ignominious death, act as a warning to
seekers of illicit pleasure, and other degrading vices, turning them back into paths of uprightness and honor.”[13]

  Munroe woke on the fifteenth about 4:00 a.m., and dressed himself in dark pants, a white shirt, and boots. Never well-off, all he had to leave his wife was a gold watch and chain, and he asked his jailors to ensure that his widow received them. At 7:45 a.m. three things happened almost simultaneously. The executioner who was to hang Munroe entered the condemned man’s cell and pinioned his arms to his side; a bell began tolling a notice of the impending execution; and a black flag was raised over the jail. Before Munroe left his cell his hangman placed a white cloth hood over his head, and pulled it down until it rested on the architect’s nose. When all was in readiness, the procession of sheriff’s officers, spiritual advisers, hangman, and killer started out. As they walked to the gallows everyone, including the guards who lined the corridor, joined in singing Rock of Ages.

  Typical execution carried out in the courtyard of a Canadian jail. When executions were carried out in jail, courtyard scaffolds were usually constructed as close to the jail as possible, so that a condemned prisoner would have little time to panic after seeing for the first time the instrument of death that was about to take her or his life.