by Steve Vernon
A funeral service for the Lakes was delayed one day when the rcmp officially recommended that the Lakes’ remains be further examined for any possible evidence. A trio of local doctors—C. R. Baxter, A. J. Landry, and H. P. Melanson—laboured for six long hours over their gruesome task. During the post-mortem examination, the fact was revealed that Bertha Lake was three months pregnant.
It was decided, until more evidence arose, that Philip Lake had been knocked unconscious and had burned to death. Bertha, it was believed, had grabbed Jack and fled into the night. That didn’t go far in explaining the condition in which they had found Bertha’s corpse, but it was thought possible that she had been concussed in the struggle at their cabin and had simply fallen down in the snow and bled to death, thrashing about in her final agonies. Shortly afterward, Bertha and Philip’s young son, Jack, had simply frozen to death.
The next morning a funeral service was held. Reverend L. R. Graves, pastor of the Lutes Mountain Baptist Church, said a few simple words of farewell. The coffins were transported by horse and sleigh, and buried at the Horseman’s Burying Ground at Bonnell’s Corner.
But where was the baby? Where on earth was little Betty Lake?
The Whereabouts of Betty Lake
The deeper truth began slowly to come out when a neighbour stated that he had seen a baby dressed in a pair of cast-off men’s trousers at the Bannister house. Then Milton Trites came forward with the information that there indeed was a baby at the Bannister residence, and that Trites had actually provided May Bannister with clothing for the child from the stock of his Salvation Army used clothing store.
May Bannister coldly swore that the baby was hers. “I gave birth to the child in the Fox Creek area at a cabin that belonged to somebody I can’t remember. There was a French midwife who assisted in the birth. Don’t ask me what her name was either.”
“Do you remember the baby’s name, at least?” Constable J. K. Randall sarcastically asked May Bannister.
“Certainly,” May Bannister replied. “Her name is Thyra Milton Trites.”
Anyone could see that there were enough holes in May Bannister’s story to sink a battleship. It didn’t help that the baby’s hair had been recently cut, only not well enough to conceal the fact that a portion of her fine black hair had been scorched, as if the child had been rescued from a burning tarpaper shack.
Moncton Police Chief L. S. Hutchinson ordered that the baby be brought into Moncton for safekeeping, but an unexpected snowstorm derailed this plan. Instead, the baby was left in the keeping of Milton Trites, who still believed the baby to be his.
“If May says it’s my baby, then I guess it is,” Trites stoically maintained. “There is room for the child to stay here at the Salvation Army.”
So saying, Milton Trites agreed to see that both the baby and May’s youngest daughter, Marie, were safely taken care of. Meanwhile, police continued to try and verify the actual identity of the baby. They found a break in the case when they spoke again to Otto Blakeney by telephone.
“I know the child,” Otto Blakeney told local police. “I know her by sight, and I can prove it. Just take a look at the top of the girl’s head, beneath those long, wavy black locks of hers. You’ll find a bright strawberry birthmark that’s been branded there ever since she was first born.”
The hair, as mentioned before, had been hastily cut, but when the police looked as Blakeney directed, they clearly saw the birthmark. The truth was undeniable. May Bannister had lied through her teeth.
The Real Story
May Bannister was accused of kidnapping, the first such charge ever laid in the history of the province of New Brunswick. Arthur and Daniel were charged with kidnapping and murder. Frances Bannister was not officially charged, perhaps because of her youth, but she remained in jail as a material witness, held on a prohibitively high ten-thousand-dollar bail.
The preliminary hearing started early on Monday, January 13, 1936, in the Moncton courthouse. Reportedly, a couple thousand spectators attempted to cram into the courthouse. Before the trial could begin, they had to be forced to wait outside in the street. At nine o’clock in the morning the doors were opened briefly, and approximately three hundred spectators crowded into the courthouse. The rest of the curious crowd remained outside, circling the courthouse and nosily attempting to peek in through the windows.
There were, of course, the usual preliminaries that needed seeing to. Eight minor cases of public drunkenness and vagrancy were summarily dealt with by Chief Justice Jeremiah Hayes.
Finally it was time for the Bannister hearing to begin. The defendants were led in. The Bannister brothers were dressed in work pants, tattered sweaters, and oversized gum rubber boots. Both looked surly and unwashed. Arthur picked at his teeth with his dirty fingers, grinning and giggling as the jurors were led in. Daniel was wearing a floppy, ear-flapped, dirty brown hunting cap.
“Remove your hat,” a bailiff ordered. Daniel laconically dragged the cap off of his hay-coloured head of uncombed hair. He looked about the courtroom as if he were bored, swinging and fiddling nervously with the hunting cap in his hands. May Bannister sat stolidly with her arms folded across her chest in a picture of stubborn, uncooperative denial. Daughter Frances seemed the happiest of all four of the Bannister family, staring about the courtroom with great interest, and chewing gum loudly.
“Who speaks for the defendants?” the judge asked.
The Bannisters’ defence attorney, F. W. Robertson, was less than happy with the position he found himself in. With a town full of angry citizens stockpiling torches and practicing their lynch knots, Robertson felt the odds were definitely stacked against him winning the verdict.
Fortunately, fate intervened and took those worries off his hands. While he was still shuffling with his trial notes, postponing the inevitable, a stranger sprang to his feet and spoke up.
“I speak for the defendants,” the stranger said.
The stranger’s name was Murray Lambert. He had come to town hoping for a bit of ready publicity.
“I have a signed retainer from the Bannister family,” Robertson protested.
“As do I,” Lambert replied, waving a sealed envelope in the air. “I spoke to them earlier in the morning while you were still shovelling your boiled breakfast oats into your stomach.”
May Bannister grinned smugly.
“I will take this matter before the New Brunswick Barrister’s Society,” Robertson threatened. “I will protest.”
“You do that,” Lambert calmly said. “And give them my highest regards. In the meanwhile, I assure you that I will speak for May Bannister.”
Robertson barrelled toward Lambert, who stood calmly waiting for the man, not showing one whit of fear. A fist fight nearly broke out between the two lawyers. The bailiffs stepped between the two men, the clerk of the peace ordered an adjournment, and the magistrate agreed with the order. The proceedings would continue two days hence, on Wednesday.
The Bannister family met with both lawyers, and returned to announce that they had signed formal documents. May Bannister had begun the day with one lawyer, but wound up hiring Lambert.
The Hearing Continues
It turned out that Lambert had actually been retained by an unknown benefactor of the Bannister family. Whoever the benefactor was, their investment proved to be a sound one. Lambert tenaciously fought and disputed every motion and testimony. Legal technicalities and petty quibbling became a commonplace occurrence throughout the entire hearing.
Was it effective? It was, to an extent. Lambert’s arguments did wear down resistance. People simply became tired of listening to the constant testimony, rebuttal, and repudiation. They tuned out, stopped paying attention to what was being said, and tended toward making hasty assumptions. Some of the courtroom was even swayed by Lambert’s continued argument that this was a clear-cut case of the power structure turned against the
unfortunate poor.
The Bannisters were their own worst enemy in this hearing. May’s insistence on keeping her mouth closed and not offering any information made her look all the more suspicious. Daniel and Arthur continued to giggle and grin. They didn’t seem worried or bothered at all by the notion of either imprisonment or hanging. Frances, on the other hand, continued to argue that she had nothing to do with anything that had happened that night. “I just held the baby,” she said. “I wanted to keep it safe.”
The youngest Bannister, Marie, followed her mother’s lead and said nothing. The court could not decide if she was old enough to even understand the gravity of the situation her family was in.
“She is too young to understand what an oath actually is,” Lambert argued. “If you think she is old enough to understand, then the court must give me the time to prepare her for trial. She is a member of the family and therefore she is my obligation.”
Finally, the defence and the prosecution came to a compromise and agreed to adjourn for five days. It was agreed that they would use the time to reform, deliberate, and otherwise rest their weary ears. They would meet again on the morning of January 20, 1936.
Further Evidence Comes Forth
Everyone knew that Murray Lambert, for all of his windbaggery and talk, was simply buying time for his client. He was very good at stalling the path of legislative procedure. A second appeal and a second adjournment bought him another week’s worth of delay.
The rcmp decided to put that unexpected gift of time to good use. They ordered the exhumation of the recently interred Philip Lake. The corpse was subjected to further medical investigation. During this investigation, an X-ray revealed the presence of a .22 calibre rifle bullet imbedded in the wreckage of Philip Lake’s skull.
This was a critical piece of information. Up until that point, it was thought that Lake had died from a skull fracture resulting from a possibly accidental blow to the head. With the discovery of the bullet, murder seemed a much more likely possible verdict.
Following that discovery, a search began for the murder weapon. Several hundred citizens and railroad workers were called out. Armed with nothing more than shovels, they proceeded to dig alongside the trail that the Bannisters had made in their flight from the Lake homestead. The searchers were instructed to dig along the path, carving a swath as wide as a grown man might conceivably throw a rifle. One of the searchers was quoted as saying that the search party “must have shovelled half the snow in Westmoreland County while we were out there hunting for that blasted rifle.”
Frances Bannister was brought out to retrace her flight in the snow. She seemed oddly eager to help the authorities in any way she could. Whether she was actually displaying a degree of civic duty, or whether she was merely trying to save her own skin, is quite debatable.
After three days of digging, rcmp Constable J. A. Fenwick uncovered the broken butt of a .22 calibre rifle from a snow bank. The last bit of evidence fell into place.
Murder or Nothing
On Tuesday, January 29, the court assembled, and the last of Lambert’s delaying tactics played out. The Bannister family was led into the courtroom. The brothers smiled as if they were walking to a family picnic. May Bannister continued to scowl at those assembled about her. Young Frances looked nervously about the courtroom and fretted with her hair.
By coincidence, the date of the final verdict happened to be the same day of the funeral of King George v, who had died early that week. Frances Bannister had been listening to a radio upstairs in one of the courtroom’s holding cells while the sentence was being read. She had left the radio turned up and playing loudly as the family walked slowly into the courtroom, seemingly accompanied by the distant, crackling strains of Handel’s “Funeral March.”
The final arguments were heard. Lambert continued to argue that the baby belonged to May Bannister. He argued that Daniel Bannister had been tortured and tormented by police into testifying. He argued that Frances Bannister had been bribed with candy. He argued that there was not enough evidence to prove that anyone in the Lake household had been murdered. He argued that there was no proven connection between the broken rifle, the bullet inside Philip Lake’s skull, and the Bannister family. Finally, he argued that anyone could have visited the Lakes’ homestead that night and done the deed. One by one, each of Murray Lambert’s arguments was raised and defeated.
“There is absolutely nothing in this case to warrant reduction of the charge to manslaughter,” Chief Justice J. H. Barry told the court. “It is murder or nothing.”
Arthur Bannister was declared guilty of murder and kidnapping. “I sentence you to be hanged by the neck until you are dead,” Barry said, “and may almighty God have mercy on your soul.”
“She could have went either way,” Arthur declared nonchalantly, as he calmly accepted a cigarette from a spectator in the crowd.
May Bannister was found guilty of harbouring a kidnapped infant. Even then, she remained unremorseful. “Hang me if you like,” she said. “I don’t need no prayers. Just bury me deep enough so the birds don’t peck my eyes out.”
However, May Bannister was not to be hanged. She would serve three and a half years in Kingston Prison. Eventually, she received time off for good behaviour. Daniel Bannister was also found guilty of murder, but the jury decided that his role in the events warranted mercy.
This wasn’t good enough for lawyer Lambert. He would clear his clients or die trying. Upon appeal, a second trial was allowed. The fact that rcmp Sergeant Bedford Peters actually fainted in the witness box as he examined the late Philip Lake’s gold teeth neither helped nor hurt the proceedings. However, at the end of the second trial, both Daniel and Arthur Bannister were convicted to be hanged.
Perhaps May should have stuck with her first lawyer.
On September 22, 1936, the famous Canadian hangman Arthur Ellis arrived in Dorchester Prison. He supervised the construction of a proper gallows. The black flag was raised at the Dorchester county courthouse to signal an execution.
Daniel played it cool. He allowed no trace of worry or fear to show in his actions before the hanging. Arthur, on the other hand, raged and threw a tantrum in his cell. He seemed to think that he was being framed and ought not to be there.
Visiting was allowed early in the evening. May spent a little time with her boys before they took their final drop. Frances and Marie were also allowed to attend. Amazingly enough, the boys’ long-estranged father, William Bannister, came to see the boys on their last night. “I had to come and say goodbye,” he told one curious reporter.
I wonder what they thought, looking at the man who had stepped so completely out of their lives thirteen years ago, now standing there on the very last night of their earthly existence.
At eleven o’clock, when the moon was hanging high in the New Brunswick twilight, Arthur Ellis slid a black hood over each of the boys’ heads. Daniel broke his cool and asked that the hood be removed long enough for him to say a final prayer. Then the hood was replaced.
Ellis fit each hand-tied noose carefully over the boys’ throats. At six minutes after one o’clock, the lever was thrown, the heavy trap doors swung open, and Daniel and Arthur dropped into eternity. Ellis kept them hanging for twenty interminably long minutes before they were removed from the gallows and placed in a pair of plain pine coffins that had been waiting all night for them in a nearby hallway. The coffins were carried up the hill in a flashlight procession.
Waiting graves had been dug carefully with preordained and legislated precision, seven feet and four inches long, six feet wide, and four and a half feet deep. Not a single relative was present to claim the bodies. Even William Bannister, the boys’ father, did not stick around for the funeral—as basic a ceremony as could be imagined. The boys had been raised in the dark and were buried in equal squalor.
Three and a half years later, May Bannister left her prison ce
ll and vanished into the sordid and tawdry pages of history.
don’t blame the dog
Francis Xavier Gallant
Malpeque Bay, Prince Edward Island
1812
Malpeque Bay, long known for its tasty world-famous oysters, is also known as the home of Prince Edward Island’s first sentence for murder.
In the late eighteenth century, Francis Xavier Gallant and two of his brothers sailed from Shippegan, New Brunswick, and settled in Prince Edward Island. The journey was a fairly easy one.
Xavier was a little teapot of a man, short and stocky. He walked with a quick, nervous waddle, which earned him the nickname “Pingouin” or penguin, from his two brothers. He settled along the shores of Malpeque Bay, eking out a bare living as a tenant farmer on Lot Sixteen.
Xavier met his wife-to-be, Madelaine Doucet, shortly afterwards. Together they raised a family of seven children. Life seemed happy. They were a poor but hard-working family who believed in their dreams.
Then something bad happened—something that would cast the Gallant family into a collective nightmare. Xavier made a shrewd deal with a local merchant, Thomas March. The business deal brought him a profit of several hundred dollars—an awful lot of money back in those days. This should have been a benefit, but the money brought with it a terrible curse.
Xavier became obsessed with his small fortune. He spent hours counting and recounting his treasure. He hid it in several places about the house—the attic, the basement, the larder. He would move it from hiding spot to hiding spot, determined to keep it safe from theft.
“The entire pack of you craven dogs are out to get my money,” he told his wife and children. “But I will fool you all.”
