Maritime Murder

by Steve Vernon

  More than forty witnesses testified during the trial. Throughout the entire proceeding, Gillis seemed calm and collected—but when the jury declared him guilty, Alexander Gillis lost all control.

  “Damn you,” he cursed at the jury. “One of you murdered Callaghan. Why do you stand there grinning at me?” He leaned out of his box and swung a wild left hook that barely missed one of the closest jurors. Marshall Flynn and several deputies physically restrained Gillis, and dragged him back to his cell still protesting the verdict.

  The violent tantrum did not help the man’s case one bit. Three days later Alexander Gillis was sentenced to be hanged on March 11, 1886, the very date of his thirty-fifth birthday.

  A week before the execution, the Marquess of Lansdowne—Canada’s fifth Governor General—commuted Gillis’s sentence to life imprisonment, based on the grounds that he had been convicted entirely upon circumstantial evidence. Eight years later, he was transferred to a penitentiary in the province of Ontario, and on July 1, 1894, Alexander Gillis was released on parole.

  It is said that he eventually returned unnoticed to the town of Harmony but was nearly lynched when he finally identified himself. His sweetheart had left town with his child, in the company of another man.

  “There is nothing here for you,” Gillis was told by the town authorities.

  Heartsick, he is reputed to have eventually returned to the penitentiary from which he had been freed. He asked to be taken in, and the authorities showed mercy and allowed him to stay. In the end, it seems that Alexander Gillis was happiest behind bars.

  seven revolvers and one knife

  Hubert Grant

  Birch Cove, Nova Scotia

  1912

  Colonel James Egan had run his Birch Cove hardware store for over ten years. He considered himself a successful businessman and a citizen of some repute, so when he showed up for work on the morning of Wednesday, May 29, 1912, and found his front door hanging wide open and his stock burgled, he clearly expected some sort of judicial satisfaction.

  “Well, what are you going to do about it?” Colonel James Egan asked.

  The police officer shrugged. “There’s not much we can do,” he admitted. “I’m sorry that your store was broken into, but the loss of seven revolvers and one common hunting knife isn’t exactly what you would call a case of grand larceny.”

  “That knife wasn’t common whatsoever,” Egan huffed indignantly. “That was a genuine Invicta knife, handmade from the finest of Sheffield steel—the finest steel anywhere—by the reputed firm of E. M. Dickinson.”

  “We’ll do all we can, Colonel Egan, but you have to understand that items like pistols and knives—even fancy ones—are easily hidden or disposed of,” the officer said, trying his best to placate the old gentleman. “They’ll most likely be traded or sold or bartered. It is quite likely we won’t catch so much as a glimpse of one of these stolen weapons.”

  Egan was utterly irate. “Well, at least you ought to get your details straight,” Egan scolded. “The pistols were not all revolvers. There was both a Browning .38 calibre automatic handgun and an Iver Johnson .45 calibre automatic handgun. Neither of those weapons could be described as mere revolvers. Those are both man-stoppers, sir. As an officer of the law, you should have those critical details clear in your report.”

  The officer nodded impatiently. He’d had a long day, and his feet were sore, and his back was sore, and he had already had more than his fill of listening to the old colonel’s ranting for now.

  “We’ll do what we can, sir,” the officer said, snapping his notebook closed. “And may I suggest you return to the business of hardware.” The officer turned on his heels. “Good day, sir.”

  “You’ve not heard the end of this matter, officer,” Colonel Egan barked, determined to get the last word in. “If you don’t track down my missing weapons, they are bound to cause an awful lot of trouble for someone.”

  The officer allowed him that last word, not uttering a reply. Perhaps he should have listened, because it turned out that Colonel Egan was as right as right could be. Those weapons would cause an awful lot of trouble for someone.

  A Dreary, Wet Morning

  It happened on the afternoon after the break-in at Colonel Egan’s hardware store. It was Thursday, May 30, 1912, and not much was happening in the little town of Birch Cove, Nova Scotia. The day was tired and comfortable, and marked by a drizzle that had been falling steadily since long before sunrise.

  “It is just the perfect weather for a funeral, isn’t it?” Edward Cody asked Thomas Donaldson.

  “And exactly what is that supposed to mean?” Donaldson asked.

  Cody’s eyes twinkled mischievously. “Haven’t you ever noticed that it rains on most every funeral you go to?”

  Sixty-nine-year-old Edward Cody was a regular customer at Donaldson’s Birch Cove corner store. Not that Cody ever bought all that much from Donaldson. A pack of cheap cigarettes and a bag of hard-rock candy was his usual purchase. No, what Edward Cody primarily brought to Donaldson’s life was more along the lines of local colour than anything else.

  “I keep his spirits up and enliven his life with the gift of pure conversation,” Edward Cody would tell anyone who asked. “I build his morale. I mean, there he is in that corner store all day long, with a front room to sell the goods, a backroom to store what didn’t go into the front room, and a bedroom to sleep in. The man’s entire existence tastes of cardboard and dried goods. He’s tied to that store, and will most likely die in that store, no matter what I say or do. I mean, what kind of a life is that for any man?”

  So Edward Cody made it his personal duty to sit in that store most of the day, keeping Thomas Donaldson suitably entertained. The truth of the matter was that Thomas Donaldson was about as close of a good friend as Edward could ever name.

  “Yes sir,” Cody went on. “If you ask me, I think it rains on funerals because God is crying over one more lost soul.”

  “If you say so, Ed,” Donaldson agreed, not feeling the need to explore Cody’s notion any further. “Say, all of this conversation has really tired me out. You wouldn’t mind keeping an eye on things while I have a bit of an afternoon nap, would you?”

  “Why don’t you do just that, Tom,” Cody agreed. “I’m not doing much right now, and you do look a little peaked. Why don’t you go pound your ear for an hour or so, and I will give you a yell if anything world-shaking happens.”

  It was an old ritual for the two friends. Donaldson knew Cody wouldn’t really mind all that much watching the store. Truth be known, Cody liked helping out, and he liked sitting on the tall stool at the counter, and Donaldson knew very well that during that hour, Cody enjoyed the feeling of responsibility and commitment that minding the store brought to his sixty-nine-year-old soul. In a way, Donaldson felt that he was doing his own bit to improve the quality of Edward Cody’s daily life.

  Besides, on a day like today, it wasn’t likely that anyone was going to walk in and make any kind of a sudden demand. So Donaldson went into his tiny back bedroom and lay down upon the bed. Within ten minutes Thomas Donaldson had fallen sound asleep and was dead to the world.

  A Sudden Murder

  Cody leafed through the newspaper. There was nothing much in it beyond some speculation about last month’s sinking of the Titanic, and frankly, Cody was tired of reading that particular bit of news. It had been a terrible event, but what was the use of dragging it out for so long? It was time for a new tragedy, Cody thought to himself. At three o’clock that very afternoon, Edward Cody would get his wish.

  It happened about half an hour after Donaldson had lain down in bed. Edward Cody noticed a stranger standing outside in the rain. The stranger was a young man, dressed in a shabby blue suit with a dilapidated cap pulled down low to keep the rain out of his eyes.

  “He looked cold and wet and absolutely miserable,” Cody later told t
he court. “And I felt sorry for the boy so I stuck my head outside and asked him if he wanted to get in out of the rain and maybe get a cup of hot tea into his belly. He was reluctant at first, but I was stubborn about it, and finally he accepted my invitation and came right on into the store.”

  As the young man entered the store, Edward Cody offered to go and wake the owner up, but the young man told him not to bother.

  “I’m just glad to be in out of the rain,” the young man said. “I’ve just walked in from Kearney Lake, where I was out fishing.”

  “It seems a bad day for fishing,” Cody noted. “Was anything out there biting?”

  “Nothing but the horseflies,” the young man answered. And then he pulled a pistol from under his jacket.

  “Old man, don’t you call out or make a sound,” the young man warned. “Just keep your mouth shut tight.” And then he drew another pistol from out of his jacket.

  “The hell I will,” Cody said, jumping up and running directly for the bedroom.

  “Tom!” he shouted.

  Three steps, and Edward Cody had stumbled into Donaldson’s little bedroom. He caught hold of Thomas Donaldson’s leg and shook it hard.

  “What?” Donaldson asked, blinking himself awake as a bullet tore through the meat of Edward Cody’s left shoulder.

  “Oh my God,” Donaldson blurted, sitting up and rolling to the floor on his knees as he struggled to stand. His feet were tangled in his bedding and he could not easily find his footing.

  Which was exactly when the young man squeezed the trigger and put a bullet directly into Tom Donaldson’s chest. A third shot fired directly into his skull killed Donaldson instantly.

  Then the young man emptied the other three bullets into Edward Cody’s back, intending to finish the old man off. “I told you to be quiet,” the young man said. He looked around nervously for other witnesses, but the sound of the constantly falling rain had drowned out any trace of the foul crime.

  Forty-five minutes later, the murderer finished ransacking the little store. He opened the door, stepped into the empty street, and walked away as quickly and quietly as was humanly possible. No one saw a thing.

  “I Did Not Think I was Going to Live”

  The young murderer’s name was Hubert Grant. He was born in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, on May 13, 1889. According to his brother, Henry Grant, who at the time lived in Boston, Hubert had been seriously injured by a runaway horse several years before the shooting.

  “Ever since that horse knocked him down,” Henry Grant would later testify, “Hubert has developed a funny kind of way of looking at the world. He would go off for days on end and sleep outdoors. Sometimes he would stick pins through his ears and his fingertips. I saw him do it once, and it was the coldest thing I had ever seen. I asked him why he kept sticking those pins in himself, and he told me it was just to feel some sort of something.”

  Hubert was staying at the Victoria Hotel. His accommodations were modestly priced, which suited his needs just fine. He smiled as he entered the hotel and went upstairs to his room.

  He was certain that he had got away with the crime, but he neglected to take into account the grit and stubborn will to live of Edward Cody, who had lain half-draped over Thomas Donaldson’s bed for nearly an hour with six bullet holes in his body—four entry wounds and two exit wounds.

  Through squinted eyes, Cody could see his good friend lying in front of him with a bullet hole in his forehead and a bright bloom of blood slowly darkening upon his shirt. He could see that Donaldson was dead, and indeed, he was certain that he would be as dead as his friend in a very short matter of time.

  “I did not think I was going to live,” he later told authorities. “I lay there beside my friend’s dead body for nearly an hour after the killer had slammed the door behind himself. Finally, I got the strength to crawl to the door. It took nearly twenty minutes to get the door open, and then I crawled down the street and to the local drugstore, maybe about two hundred yards or so. Two women brought a mattress downstairs and covered me with a blanket, and I just lay there on that mattress staring up at the ceiling, just waiting to die. Then the doctor came and he told me that I was not going to die quite just yet, and then the police walked in and started asking me questions.”

  Cody suffered from severe internal injuries and had to be rushed directly to a Halifax hospital, where he would convalesce for many weeks, but the doctor was right: Cody would live. Thomas Donaldson, on the other hand, had died almost instantly. The manhunt was on.

  The Investigation

  The police immediately began to canvas the area for possible witnesses. A young girl reported seeing a strange young man drinking at a public pump. She found a leather knife sheath where he had most likely dropped it. The leather sheath was later identified by Colonel James Egan as belonging to the missing Invicta hunting knife that had been stolen from his hardware store.

  A day later, in the town of Windsor, Constable Robert Conlon spotted a man who matched the description of the murderer. The suspect was staying in room twenty-nine of the Victoria Hotel. Constable Conlon arrested the young man and upon searching his pockets discovered one ten-dollar bill, five one-dollar bills, and a mixture of pocket change. One of Colonel Egan’s missing revolvers was also discovered on his person.

  Detective Hanrahan of the Halifax police department was dispatched to the town of Birch Cove. There, he and a jailer named Malcolm escorted a handcuffed Hubert Grant back to Halifax. That same day, young Alfred Cain found the missing hunting knife lying in the gutter about ten feet from Thomas Donaldson’s storefront.

  On Sunday, June 2, 1912, Hubert Grant, dressed in the same garments that he had worn during the Thomas Donaldson shooting, was taken from a Halifax jail to the hospital room where Edward Cody lay resting. Cody did not hesitate. He sat up from his hospital bed and pointed directly at Hubert Grant.

  “That’s the man who shot Donaldson,” Cody shouted weakly. “That’s the man who shot me. I am sure of it. I am sure of him.”

  Later that day, two Birch Cove residents—Charles Redden and Robert Walsh—discovered the two pistols carelessly tossed into a nearby alder thicket, not more than 250 yards south of Donaldson’s storefront. There was a revolver, and the Browning automatic. Five of the chambers of the .38 calibre revolver still carried bullets. The Browning, on the other hand, was empty. The weapons were quickly turned over to the local Justice of the Peace, William Studd.

  Studd, in turn, handed the weapons over to the police. Colonel Egan was happy to identify both of these weapons as having been stolen from his hardware store. Both weapons were kept by the police as pieces of necessary evidence.

  Hubert Grant was charged with first-degree murder. He was held in the Halifax County jail. It had been decided that he would be tried in a Halifax court because the key witness, Edward Cody, would not be able to travel far for an awfully long time.

  Hubert was examined in the jail by two doctors—Dr. J. L. Sinclair for the Crown prosecution, and Dr. A. Bert on behalf of the defence. “Hubert Cody is a decidedly unstable individual,” the doctors concluded. “This condition is further exacerbated by a severe addiction to morphine. We believe that he became addicted to this narcotic in the convalescent period following his unfortunate accident with the runaway horse.”

  On Wednesday, June 5, 1912, Hubert Grant was brought to an inquest before the stipendiary magistrate Alexander MacDougall. The case was promptly postponed until the autumn, to allow for further psychological evaluation of the defendant, Hubert Grant.

  On October 4, 1912, Grant stood before the freshly appointed Chief Justice James Johnston Ritchie at the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia. Ritchie was keen to get started. He saw no need to further prolong the proceedings.

  The trial began on October 29, 1912. Andrew Cluney, King’s Council, served as the Crown prosecutor, and W. H. O’Hearn served as the defence counsel for Hube
rt Grant.

  The trial was fairly short. Grant was found guilty of the cold-blooded murder of Thomas Donaldson and the equally cold-blooded shooting of Edward Cody.

  Edward Cody proved too tough for four measly bullets to kill him. He died peacefully in his sleep three years later. In the time before he passed away he was known to spend many a morning standing alone outside of the building that had housed Thomas Donaldson’s store.

  There are certain wounds that never heal.

  “He Ate ’Em Raw”

  Robert “Buck” Olsen

  Moncton, New Brunswick

  1892

  On a dark Friday night in late July 1892, the solid steel safe of W. Wilson and Co.’s Chatham, New Brunswick, location was blown open with two carefully placed sticks of dynamite. The thieves escaped with about $250 in cash and a horde of mixed coins, including several solid silver Mexican dollars.

  Two days later, two suspicious-looking men were spotted in a local Moncton hotel and brothel run by the Donnelly family. The two men—then known only as Buck and Jim—were spotted attempting to spend those stolen Mexican silver dollars. Word reached Moncton’s chief of police, Charles Foster, who led a small group of determined police officers on a daring late-night raid.

  The officers who accompanied Foster were forty-four-year-old veteran policeman Joseph E. Steadman; Special Constable Charles Colborne; policeman Scott; and civilian volunteer, Alexander McRae. The officers crept up quietly on the brothel/hotel, hoping to catch the two criminals by surprise.

  The raid was made even more challenging by the simple fact that many of the employees and customers of the brothel would both recognize and know the police officers on sight, and might actually hamper any attempt at arrest. Authority was not well thought of in this particular neck of town.