Читать книгу Policing the Fringe - Charles Scheideman - Страница 9

The Nelson Axe Murders

The city of Nelson is a beautiful place with a rich history of mining and forestry. The mountains throughout the West Kootenay area have abundant mineral deposits, many of which have been mined over the years. Signs of mining can be seen along any roadway in the region, ranging from small shafts driven into the rock with hand drills and explosives, to large ventures where ore was taken out on underground narrow gauge railway tracks. Some of the mineral veins were still being worked in the early 1960s, and a few are still active today. Most of the mining activity was for lead zinc ore, known as galena, which was fed into the smelter operations in Trail. Nelson had a population of about ten thousand in the year 1900, and this census remained almost unchanged right up to the 1960s. As one mining venture petered out, another would be opened and the workers would drift around the district, nearly always able to find work. Local wags explained the unchanging population numbers by saying that each time a baby was born, some guy left town.

The mining areas of the world always attract a few prospector-promoters who prey on each other and on anyone else whom they can con into believing in their latest fabulously rich find. These types do most of their prospecting in bars and lounges, looking for victims with a few dollars from which they can be parted. There was an abundance of these barroom prospectors in Nelson in the early sixties. Conversations one would overhear in Nelson watering holes were nearly always about the latest strike that had been made on some mountain not far away. Most of these finds were claimed to be galena ore so rich that a man could not lift a water-bucket full. When interest was shown from a bystander (victim), the conversation became very secretive and furtive glances were cast about the room as bits of disinformation were carefully leaked out. Numbers were whispered about the percentage of silver in the ore sample and the potential tonnage of the new find. After a great deal of probing to see if the mark could be trusted, a chunk of very heavy, shiny black ore would be produced from a pocket or briefcase. The ore samples were very guarded, usually kept under the table, and the mark was only allowed to hold them for a few seconds. Most of these very rich ore samples had found their way out of a commercial mine in a worker’s pocket and had been traded in the bar for a few drinks.

Three promoters had been working as a team during the summers of the early sixties. They favoured the Kootenay region and centred their activities in Nelson. In the winter they drifted away to sponge room and board with relatives or others who did not realize their friends were such shady characters.

During their promoting/conning activity in the later part of one summer they became acquainted with a man who had immigrated to Canada from Czechoslovakia. Petre came here shortly after the Second World War and settled in Nelson for reasons that we were unable to determine; he had no family there or anywhere outside Czechoslovakia. He had kept himself employed at a variety of labour jobs and he was a skilled stonemason who took great pride in his work. Those who were fortunate enough to learn of his skills and to find and hire him were rewarded with an everlasting example of fine European craftsmanship. His work was remarkable, with perfect fitting and immaculate pointing. Stonemasonry was not in great demand at that time, however, and Petre was unable to communicate in English beyond the most basic requirements; these combined problems left him to seek work at whatever hard labour he could find.

Petre was a willing worker. Those who hired him were often amazed at how he would work from dawn to dark with only short breaks for meals or rest. He kept track of his hours and requested payment only for each full hour that he had worked. His attention to detail was as obvious in menial tasks as it was in his masonry. He was a very proud man.

Petre lived an exceedingly frugal existence. Home was a shack on a narrow wedge of property between the highway and a creek. The shack consisted of one room with a lean-to extension on the side where he parked his old car. The size and location of the property ensured that no others lived near him. Over the years he had closed the back end of the lean-to and put on a pair of hinged doors at the front, allowing him to get his old car in and out with some difficulty. The shack was heated by a light metal air-tight stove which also served for any cooking that he did. The wood for the stove was piled on the creek side of the shack, where it was handy to the door and kept out of the rain by the overhang of the metal roof. Every piece of wood was fitted into the pile perfectly; each square-sawn end was not more or less than one quarter of an inch different from the next. There was no electrical service to the shack; the only source of artificial light was a glass kerosene lamp. After about twenty years of this frugal living, Petre had saved some money. His bank records showed that he had a balance of nearly seven thousand dollars around the time he first met the three prospectors.

Petre corresponded with a niece in his homeland and occasionally received newspapers or clippings from there, which he stacked neatly on a stand beside his army-cot bed. The letters from his niece indicated that he had a dream of returning to Czechoslovakia for an extended visit. He wanted to entertain her and her friends and travel with them to all the places he remembered as a young man. It seemed the only thing delaying this dream trip was that costs were constantly increasing at a greater rate than his savings. If he could somehow double those savings, he would be able to travel and enjoy himself before old age left him unable to do so.

The three promoters became close friends with Petre almost immediately. One or more of them was always with him when he was not working. They introduced him to prospecting and helped him get a free miner’s license, which entitled him to stake and register a mining claim in the province. No doubt they told him how easy it would be to find the ore vein of all their dreams and become wealthy almost overnight. They helped him locate, stake and register a mineral claim. Petre’s claim lay only a few yards off the main highway just outside Nelson. They took him on their travels around the region, showed him claims they had registered and told him of the great potential of these properties—given the necessary investment for development. Petre was made to feel very fortunate to have met this trio of kindly and generous men.

It was just before the onset of winter that the three con-men made their final pitch to Petre and made off with his savings. The three drifted away for winter as they always had, leaving Petre to brood about his foolish error. Petre sat quietly in his shack by the creek and worried about his loss. His anger grew with each passing day, and he gradually formulated a plan to even the score.

In the early spring of the following year, Petre contacted one of the three promoters. They had an amiable conversation. Petre pretended to be understanding about the money having been used in the business of promoting mining ventures and that things did not always work out in spite of people’s best intentions. He went on to indicate that while things had not gone well with the mining investment, he had been very fortunate and had come into a sizable amount of money. He said he was looking forward to the return of the three to Nelson so that they could work together on some new projects.

During this early spring conversation Petre learned that one of the three promoters had indulged in excessive drinking, as he always did, but that that winter, the booze had killed him. This news was another great disappointment for Petre; he had had some plans for this man and now he had cheated him again. Petre waited for the snow to melt and for the remaining two con-men to return to Nelson. While he waited, he travelled to an area near Nelson and staked another claim. This claim was another part of Petre’s plan to even the score with the promoters.

Claims are often marked by cutting off a small tree at each corner of the selected property. The trees are cut leaving a stump about four feet tall, which is squared at the top with an axe. A soft aluminum tag is attached with a nail, and the claim information is then scratched into the aluminum tag with another nail. A typical claim tag will have the name of the prospector, the date, and the free miner’s license number. Petre had learned the proper procedure to mark his new claim, and applied it correctly.

At last the two surviving promoters returned to Nelson and Petre met them like long lost friends. They talked about their plans for the summer and Petre made it very clear that he wanted to be involved in their activities: he had faith in their knowledge and skills, and he was sure that some day they would be rewarded.

About six weeks after the promoters returned to Nelson, a citizen came to the police with a concern that all was not normal at Petre’s shack. He had been walking along the creek near the shack when he became aware of an overpowering stench. Having served on the battlefields in the Second World War, he could tell us with certainty that what he smelled was a dead body in an advanced stage of decomposition. Before he came to us he had found that the odour was coming from the lean-to garage on the side of the shack. Peering through the crack between the doors, he was able to see a car. He also saw that there was a hose attached to the car’s exhaust pipe.

We drove the few miles to Petre’s place, wondering what was in store for us there. I was new to police work and had not yet encountered a decomposing body. I grew up on a farm and had been in contact with rotting animal carcasses, but that experience did not leave me fully prepared for what we found that day. We parked the police car by the garage doors. It was a bright warm early summer day and our windows were wide open. Before the car had come to a stop we were assaulted by an odour like none I had ever experienced. I suddenly understood how the former soldier was sure that there was a rotting body there.

We were able to see through the crack between the doors that there was an old Buick in the garage and that there was a hose from the exhaust pipe along the side of the car. The building had no windows and no other door. We called for the Identification Section to photograph the area before we moved anything. The delay while we waited for the identification man would give us time to stand well back and formulate some kind of a plan. We very soon found that there was a slight breeze flowing down the creek valley and that the place to be was on the upwind side.

A police car on the side of a road with two uniformed police standing nearby always arouses a little curiosity from passing motorists. Most slow down to see what they can see and many stop to inquire and offer assistance. Almost everyone drove with their car windows open in those days, before air conditioning. While we waited for the second police car to arrive we watched the people in their cars. Those who approached from the downwind side would slow and move to the right and look with interest to learn what we were doing. When they caught wind of why we were there, their change of expression was startling; none stayed to inquire or offer assistance. The upwind vehicles, on the other hand, would stop, and in some cases people would get out before they got the rude message from the air. Then they all made a hasty departure.

The photography expert arrived and recorded the outside of the scene on film. There was no reason to delay any longer. We opened the double doors to reveal the horror inside. The odour in the lean-to garage was beyond description. Fortunately the open doors allowed a change of air and it became just a little thinner. Also fortunate is that the human sense of smell partly shuts down under a severe overload. Once this shutdown had occurred, the task was more manageable.

The car windows were closed, except for the one on the right rear where a vacuum cleaner hose had been placed through and the window turned up to hold the hose in place. The insides of all the windows were black from a carbon deposit left by the exhaust. The car must have been nearly full of fuel, because it had run for a long time after the occupant was dead. The body lay in the front as though the person had been sitting in the driver’s position and then fallen away from the door so that his head was on the passenger’s seat. The entire interior of the car was crawling with maggots, and adult flies filled the air of both the car and the garage. The body was fully clothed in what appeared to be work clothes of the kind worn by men in the construction or labour trades. The maggots were nearly finished their work. The body had been reduced to less than half of its original weight; only bones and some of the tougher skin tissue remained. Positive identification of this body would have to be done by dental records or through medical records of bone fractures.

Three pages of handwritten information in Petre’s native language was lying on the dash between the windshield and the steering wheel. Petre had started this writing in his shack some time before he moved to the garage to end his life. The first two pages were neatly done with straight lines of words and uniform penmanship; the final page had been written in the car while he waited for the exhaust gas to do its work. Petre had taken a small square of plywood into the car to hold on the steering wheel and support his paper while he wrote. The final page was uneven in both line and penmanship; toward the end of the writing it was obvious that he was having difficulty with coordination and thought. We were fortunate that Petre was so attentive to detail; even in a near-death state he had folded the pages together and placed them where they would surely be found. Had the notes come in direct contact with the body during decomposition there would have been very little, if anything, left of them.

Finally, the photographs had all been taken and the necessary records had been carefully made in our notebooks. All that was left to do was to remove the wriggling remains. I suggested to the others that I could hear my mother calling and that I would have to leave immediately. They did not believe me and they were very blunt about it. We wrapped the upper part of the body in disposable blankets and slowly moved it toward the passenger door of the car. As we did this the legs and feet followed; mainly because the trousers were holding them together. More blankets were added as the move progressed until the body was wrapped like an Egyptian mummy. The cold storage at the morgue would eventually stop even the most determined of the maggots.

The remains of Petre were identified from dental records and he was buried by the public administrator. His niece in Czechoslovakia was unable to attend and she knew of no other living family members. Petre’s old car was towed away by a very reluctant auto wrecker and it was burned as soon as we were certain that it could provide no further evidence. The shack was also burned because it had been illegally constructed on Crown Land.

The three pages of writings were translated for us. In them, Petre told of his first meeting with the three promoters, and how they had convinced him that he would receive great returns by investing his savings with them. He told of the great friendship that rapidly developed between the four of them, and how they had included him in all their prospecting activities. He told of withdrawing cash from his bank and turning it over to these men, and how they disappeared as soon as they were sure they had the last of his money. Petre said that the actions of these three men had ruined him and that his life was now “not worth a pipeful of tobacco.” Our translator told us that the reference to a pipeful of tobacco was a Czechoslovakian colloquialism.

The writings described an intense hatred for the three promoters and talked about the one of them who cheated Petre again by dying. There was no direct confession of having harmed the two con-men; however, the translator felt that neither of them had been alive at the time of the writing.

Our investigation moved to trying to find either of the promoters. They were well known among the regular bar patrons in town. Their return without their third partner had been noted, but no one could recall seeing either of them for over a month. Obviously no one had missed them. The government records of mine claims showed several hundred claims registered over the years by the three promoters, and three by Petre. Two of Petre’s claims had been registered about the time he first met the con-men; the third was made just before the two promoters returned that spring.

The most recent claims by the three promoters had been registered late the previous summer and were all in the Creston area. We had our office in Creston make inquiries about the con-men. The records at an old hotel in Creston showed that Petre and one of the promoters had stayed for one night nearly seven weeks earlier. They were driving Petre’s old Buick, and he had paid for the room. The hotel staff felt quite sure that there had been only two of them, but they were not positive.

There were a total of fourteen claims along the Goat River near Creston; it was decided to start by searching the most recently recorded claim and work back, by date, through all of them. The police service dog and his master were called to assist. On the second claim to be searched, the dog found some bone fragments and a pair of false teeth. The teeth were identical to a dental impression of one of the missing men. The bone fragments were identified as part of a human skull. Nothing further was found in a search of the claim and surrounding area but it was obvious that someone had died violently at that claim site. We were quite sure that the false teeth told us who that person had been. Wild animals had eaten and scattered the remains; the area was common range to bear and wolverine.

The police dog team returned to Nelson and started a search of Petre’s most recent claim. The search ended at the first corner marker of the claim. The aluminum tag was inscribed with Petre’s full name and free miner’s information as required. Face down at the base of the claim post lay the third promoter. He had been there for at least a month and the maggots were nearly finished their work there as well. A starfish-shaped wound was clearly visible in the mummified scalp over the crown of the head. This appeared to have been caused by a blow that had crushed the scalp between the flat of an axe and the momentary resistance of the skull beneath it. The blow was delivered from behind; the man would not likely have been aware of his impending death. The man wielding the axe did not stop at that: he stood over the body and chopped through the neck, leaving only the tissue of the throat area to hold the head to the body. He then stepped back slightly and with a final overhand swing, buried the axe head between his victim’s shoulder blades and left the handle standing up from the wound. Petre was a very angry man.

The exact date of the killings and suicide were never determined. It did appear that Petre went home after killing the second promoter and contemplated what he had done for several days before he gassed himself.