Murder in the Family

by Jeff Blackstock

  Original of letter of July 18/59 from Dr. G. Mercer of B.A. giving his diagnosis of Carol’s complaint

  Yours sincerely

  Leslie Brown

  On the surface, this looked like a routine list of items for reimbursement as part of a bureaucratic medical claim. Several of the items should ordinarily have been submitted to a clerk in the department’s finance section. Why was Brown, George’s assistant deputy minister, wasting time itemizing medical bills in his own handwriting? Why was he using his personal stationery? Why was he signing as “Leslie Brown,” with no reference to his official title? He might have been George’s pal, instead of his much more senior boss way up the line.

  And why was it so important that George get a receipt for these letters? After delivering them to Brown, he took away not just a copy, but a duplicate, of the “personal” Cosgrove letter, with the doctor’s signature in ink—the same letter we found in his papers.

  These letters from Dr. Cosgrove and Brown must have been the documents George was referring to in his scribbled notes, which he thought could prove his innocence:

  – by Sept 12/59 they had not discovered the c.o.d. (see letter)

  – Its [sic] bothered me I’ve got docus I’ll show…

  Note that the date mentioned is the date of Dr. Cosgrove’s “personal” letter to Brown.

  But in the end, George urged himself to “bury” these documents:

  – bury them! Remove crutch of having somebody something to blame.

  Why didn’t he bury them?

  * * *

  —

  AFTER SOME REFLECTION on this exchange of letters among Dr. Cosgrove, Leslie Brown, and George, Julie and I came to realize its full significance—a significance that was different for each of the three men.

  For Brown, Cosgrove’s references in his “personal” letter to an unknown toxin and calling in the coroner must have been disturbing. We knew from our 1984 visit to the MNI that Brown had gone there shortly after our mother’s death to find out for himself what had happened to her. But now he was being informed in writing, by the lead physician on Carol’s medical team, about the toxin and the coroner. No doubt Cosgrove’s “To Whom It May Concern” letter was no less disturbing to Brown. It indicated that Carol, whom Brown had known personally from his visit to Buenos Aires, had contracted her illness—and both Brown and Dr. Cosgrove knew what that illness was—while on posting there. Brown had to put that together with the fact that the coroner had wanted to talk to George, his employee, about it.

  Once Dr. Cosgrove had tagged Brown in his official capacity with this knowledge, Brown had no choice but to do something about it. There would be no excuse for claiming ignorance now. Julie and I surmised that for Brown, it would have been even more alarming to know that George was the one and only suspect the police were interested in, as we would learn when we interviewed Dr. Graham at the MNI.

  Brown also knew about George’s three children living in the house back in Buenos Aires. By September 12, when he delivered Cosgrove’s letters to Brown, George was preparing to return to Argentina. If any harm came to his children, or to anyone else in the household there, Brown could not escape responsibility, knowing what he now knew. Even if it was never proved in a court of law that George was Carol’s killer, there was considerable risk if he actually was. Something needed to be done to address that risk.

  Consequently, Julie and I came to the conclusion that the purpose of Brown’s “receipt” letter to George was to serve as a cryptic but stern warning: it put him on notice that not only the police but also the medical authorities and, most importantly, his own superiors in government knew about the poison. They would be keeping a close eye on him, so he had better behave.

  From Brown’s point of view, George needed to know this, given that he wasn’t being charged with murder. And the best way to tell him was through something disguised and innocuous, such as this receipt. It was out of the question to make these communications explicitly, in plain English. That might have implicated the Government of Canada in a crime: aiding and abetting a murder suspect after the fact, and covering up the murder of a woman who had been on diplomatic status abroad and under the government’s protection, no less.

  Brown wrote to George in a personal capacity on his household stationery, off the official record, with no mention whatsoever of the poison or the police investigation. We can only conclude that Brown wanted no reference to Carol’s fatal poisoning showing up in government files. Otherwise, it would have made no sense for him to be so interested, in his personal capacity, in the paperwork for George’s medical claims.

  Bureaucracy being what it is, it’s also inconceivable that Brown would have taken such an extreme risk entirely on his own. He would have needed and obtained the approval of his superiors for his handling of Carol Blackstock’s death.

  (In this connection, it’s worth noting that, eleven years after his retirement from the federal public service, Leslie Brown presented his professional papers to Library and Archives Canada, in Ottawa, in 1979. Yet strangely, the papers for the period from 1959, the year Carol died, to 1963 are missing from the collection. Despite the efforts of a professional researcher, and Library and Archives staff, Brown’s papers for those years have not been found, though his papers before and after the gap are there. In 1963, Brown was appointed commissioner general of the Canadian Pavilion at the Montreal world’s fair, Expo 67.)

  Why did George continue to keep the damning letters from Cosgrove and Brown among his own papers? We thought he’d have disposed of them long ago. Instead, we realized, he must have viewed them initially as his insurance against being turned over to the police by government officials—who would only have been implicated with him after the fact. Many years later, after the onset of his dementia, he forgot all about the letters. In the end, his only escape from the crime he’d committed was to forget who he was.

  Far more sadly, Carol too was forgotten, though never by her three children. Multiple access-to-information requests by Julie and me over many years have consistently found no references in Canadian government records to Carol Blackstock or her death. Her murder while on unpaid government service abroad, and any link between it and our father, don’t officially exist.

  That evidence leads to an unsettling but inescapable conclusion: our mother’s killing was covered up—deliberately suppressed—by Canadian government officials, with the tacit collusion of medical and law-enforcement authorities in Montreal.

  How is it possible that, even after the coroner’s findings of arsenic poisoning, authorities at all three levels of government—federal, provincial, and municipal—failed to conduct an investigation?

  How could the wife of a Canadian official abroad be poisoned without consequences for the only suspect, her husband, enabling him to commit, in effect, a perfect crime?

  We believe that collusion occurred because it served the interests and convenience of all parties. For the Government of Canada, an investigation of alleged spousal murder by one of its diplomats would have triggered a huge political scandal, both at home and abroad. For the Montreal Neurological Institute, the scandal would also have been damaging, since its doctors failed to recognize Carol’s condition in time to save her life. As for law enforcement—whether the local Montreal police, or province of Quebec judicial authorities, or the RCMP—it appears that they all ignored their duty and did as they were told.

  Government, medical, and police officials all would have analyzed their options regarding a criminal investigation of George Blackstock. In each case, they would have made careful calculations to ensure damage control for their institutions and themselves. Those calculations did not include justice for Carol Blackstock.

  EPILOGUE

  REFLECTIONS ON A “PERFECT” CRIME

  IN HIS SCRIBBLED notes that surfaced after his death, George asked himself, “Why w
ouldn’t I have just gone the divorce route?”

  Although George appeared to be speaking hypothetically, there was something chilling to me in the casual way he mused about the option of “just” taking the divorce “route,” as I completed his sentence with the words that were surely implicit: “…instead of killing Carol.”

  It’s also a question that many readers may be asking. Today, almost 50 percent of marriages end in divorce. People wanting out of their marriages have a much-travelled and relatively clear legal path to follow. But this was far from true in 1959. George’s use of the word “just” grossly understates how problematic and self-defeating that route would have been for him.

  Back then, divorce was far more difficult to obtain and carried a heavy social stigma. No-fault divorce didn’t exist. In Canada, each divorce decree required passage of an Act of Parliament. To obtain a divorce, the grounds needed to be very serious: adultery, cruelty, criminality, alcoholism, mental illness, and the like.

  In George’s case, obtaining a divorce from Carol in Canada would have been a very messy business indeed. It would probably have resulted in dire consequences for his career, his fortune, and his hopes for a new life. It would have defeated, I’m sure, any hope of attaining his objective to be with Ingrid, if that was what he wanted. Given Carol’s assertive nature, she’d have fought him tooth and nail. The proceedings would have dragged out for a long time, likely beyond the limits of Ingrid’s patience.

  An Argentine divorce would have been out of the question, barred by local law, given George’s civil status as a foreign service officer from another nation. His employer would likely have opposed it too. In the meantime, he would have had no possibility of anything more than a furtive relationship with Ingrid. How long would she have been willing to wait for him to become free to marry her? And how much scandalous gossip would she and her status-conscious parents have been willing to endure?

  At best, the storyline emerging from the divorce proceedings in court would have been that George got his fifteen-year-old girlfriend pregnant, had three kids with her, and then dumped her. But it might have been much worse. Unless Carol had some mental illness or had committed adultery, he would have been considered the “guilty” party and become something of a social pariah.

  Perhaps worst of all from George’s point of view, he would have been saddled with onerous alimony and support payments for a long, long time. Carol had no immediate means of support for herself and her three children, and no good employment prospects with less than a tenth-grade education. He’d have been expected to shoulder the full cost of supporting his family, leaving him to subsist on much-reduced means. Without doubt, his family relationships and career would have suffered, probably with further financial consequences. Ingrid would likely have disappeared from his life. He would have found himself much worse off in every way than if he’d simply stayed married to Carol.

  Clearly, divorce was not an option for George. Despite his musing in his notes about “the divorce route,” he may have seen killing his wife as the only way out of his dilemma. I’m sure it would have taken him less than a minute to understand all this.

  Not surprisingly, George’s notes didn’t pursue the divorce idea, leaving it as a hollow rhetorical question. As with other questions he left unanswered—unwilling, or unable, to give his side of the story—at some point his accusers have the right to draw their own conclusions.

  * * *

  —

  A MORE FUNDAMENTAL question is why George would have entertained the idea of murder at all. Elsewhere in his notes to himself, he suggested Julie and I might attribute to him a motive of wanting to be free to be with Ingrid. This was purely supposition on his part; Julie and I had never raised it with him.

  Even if true, of course, that motive wouldn’t necessarily mean Ingrid knew anything about his murderous intent at the time. Nor would it necessarily preclude other motives—probably broader but related ones arising from discontent over his life situation.

  George felt trapped in a marriage that, at age seventeen, he hadn’t wanted. Carol had been little more than a child when they’d met. Now she was a mature woman with whom, for whatever reasons of his own, he felt he could no longer live.

  At that point in the posting to Buenos Aires, Carol was beginning to spread her wings in many ways. She was becoming far more socially active, adventurous, and independent than she’d ever been. This may or may not have been part of the equation for George.

  We can’t read the man’s mind, but we have only to look at his life. Added together, several interrelated considerations could have combined to create a powerful inducement for him to end his marriage in whatever way he could.

  * * *

  —

  THE QUESTION OF how he did it is a little easier to answer, simply because we know what killed Carol.

  Arsenic has been a murder weapon of choice for millennia because its presence is so difficult to detect: it is colourless, odourless, and tasteless. Arsenic trioxide, a white powder used for rat poison, would have been readily available in Buenos Aires. George could have put the arsenic in Carol’s food or drink without her noticing it. She was sick in bed—apparently from other causes, her doctors assumed. The symptoms of arsenic poisoning resemble the symptoms of many other ailments, making it difficult to diagnose unless it is suspected.

  George would have had some knowledge of all this from his reading. Agatha Christie was his favourite mystery writer, and arsenic was often used as a murder weapon in her novels. Arsenic and Old Lace was one of his favourite plays. Written by Joseph Kesselring, it was a black comedy made into a successful 1944 Hollywood film starring Cary Grant. The classic method was to administer arsenic slowly, in small amounts over time, to avoid precipitating a sudden death that might look suspicious. Instead, victims would be seen as succumbing to some ailment associated with the symptoms they presented.

  We think that George began by experimenting with feeding Carol small doses of arsenic. When he discovered that her doctors in Buenos Aires couldn’t diagnose it, even after treating her in hospital, he continued poisoning her in the expectation that she’d gradually succumb in the near future, with no one the wiser. In 1959, the police and medical system in Argentina might have presented relatively few obstacles for someone contemplating such a crime. George may have thought he could literally get away with murder there. What’s more, as a foreign service officer of another nation, he enjoyed diplomatic immunity from investigation and, were it ever to come to that, from prosecution.

  For a while, it looked as though George was going to get away with it. Carol had been admitted to hospital twice with worsening symptoms and her doctors still hadn’t made an accurate diagnosis. Arsenic is a tricky poison, however; its effects can be unpredictable, making it difficult to know how much to administer at a time. Too much, and the victim dies suddenly, raising suspicions. Too little, and the process can take too long. Moreover, the body eventually develops a tolerance, necessitating larger dosages. George just needed a little more time to finish the job.

  But things went wrong. George’s well-laid plans were thrown into disarray when Carol’s parents, alarmed by her condition, contacted his headquarters in Ottawa, setting off alarm bells at his workplace and precipitating her imminent return to Canada. The medical crisis he’d created threatened to blow up in his face. He felt he had no choice but to kill her then and there; otherwise, the doctors in Canada might diagnose the arsenic—which in fact they did, at the Montreal Neurological Institute, though tragically too late to save her life. If Carol had survived, she could have become an unwitting witness against him, perhaps confirming that he’d been bringing her meals. An investigation would have been disastrous for him. In for a penny, in for a pound.

  So, as the Montreal coroner’s autopsy concluded, Carol ingested a massive dose of arsenic just before she left Argentina to fly home—a trip that, in a cruel irony, was sup
posed to save her life. Due to a blockage in her viscera, it took more than two days after she arrived in Montreal for the arsenic to become sufficiently absorbed by her system to kill her.

  * * *

  —

  THIS QUESTION OF why George would take such an enormous risk initially posed a quandary for us, and especially for Doug. Why would someone who had as much to lose as he did—privilege, affluence, a promising career in a prestigious profession, a young family, his personal freedom—take such a huge risk by killing his wife?

  Perhaps he’d become so disenchanted with his marriage that he felt trapped in a jail cell already. But not every disenchanted husband murders his wife. What was it in George’s personality and character that enabled him to commit murder—not on a sudden impulse, with a gun or a knife, but with a deliberate, premeditated, cold-blooded cruelty that was equally violent?

  These were questions that Julie and I put to Dr. John Bradford when we met with him. Dr. Bradford is an internationally renowned forensic psychiatrist, a distinguished life fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, a fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, in the United Kingdom, and a distinguished fellow of the Canadian Psychiatric Association. He has worked on some of the most infamous serial homicide investigations in Canadian history, including the Paul Bernardo, Robert Pickton, and Russell Williams cases. He agreed to meet with us at his home to discuss our discoveries about our father.

  Before our meeting, Dr. Bradford had read an early draft of the manuscript of this book, which contained virtually the same material facts as presented here. His views on George Blackstock were based on what he had read. After agreeing without hesitation with our conclusion that George killed Carol, Dr. Bradford stated that George did so, in his opinion, to be with Ingrid. In cases of wife-murder, Dr. Bradford pointed out, there is frequently another woman in the wings, representing a powerful incentive to the husband.