Maritime Murder

by Steve Vernon

  It was obvious that Dougal had shot her in cold blood. Although he argued fervently that it had been nothing more than an unplanned accident, and the by-product of one bad argument and two too many brandies, the jury took less than a single hour to find Quartermaster Sergeant Samuel Herbert Dougal guilty of premeditated murder. Dougal was sentenced to be hanged on June 22, 1903, at Chelmsford Prison.

  “Are you guilty or not guilty?” the prison chaplain asked as the executioner wrapped his hand around the gallows lever. Dougal would not answer.

  “Are you guilty or not guilty?” the prison chaplain repeated.

  “Guil— ,” was Dougal’s last syllable as he dropped through the trapdoor into eternity. As for his two Halifax wives—Lovenia Martha and Mary Herberta—their bodies still lie undisturbed in the quiet Fort Massey Cemetery.

  the severed head told the tale

  Neil McFadyen

  Pictou County, Nova Scotia

  1848

  Neil McFadyen was born and raised on the Isle of Tiree, a small Scottish island situated just off of the coast of Argyll County. In 1824 he married a woman from the McKinnon family whose first name has unfortunately been lost in the annals of recorded history. It was a hard life and Neil was quite unhappy. A possible solution to his discontent came in 1827, when his father and his family booked passage to Cape Breton and invited Neil and his wife to accompany them. They moved to Moose River, a small settlement about forty kilometres southeast of Pictou, Nova Scotia.

  There, Neil McFadyen built a small log cabin with his wife. The two of them raised several children. He picked up odd jobs wherever he could manage. Unfortunately, along with the odd jobs, he picked up more than he ought to have. Following a string of minor thefts, McFadyen found it necessary to travel in search of healthier working and living arrangements.

  McFadyen left Pictou and found work in a New Brunswick lumber camp just off the Bay of Chaleur. It was here that he met Jamie Kier, a young man with a dream of building a new life for himself.

  “I’d love to settle down and build myself a farm,” Jamie told McFadyen. “This lumbering is too much work with too little reward.”

  “There’s an awful lot of work in farming,” Neil McFadyen replied. “Have you given that much thought?”

  “It’s not the work I mind. It’s the lack of permanence. I’d really love a chance to set down roots and just grow in the dirt. Right here, about the only roots I run into are the ones I cut down.”

  “So what would you grow?” McFadyen asked.

  “Oh, most anything, I suppose,” Jamie replied. “Beans and potatoes and beets and carrots and peas—just for starters.”

  “And do you have the money for it?” McFadyen asked.

  “I have most of my money saved,” Jamie said, patting a buttoned pocket on his vest that jingled when he touched it. “My dad sent me some as well.”

  “And does your dad live nearby?” McFadyen asked, trying to guess just how much money was crammed into that tightly buttoned vest pocket.

  “My dad lives in New Brunswick,” Jamie replied. “He wants me to buy the farm next to his and settle down.”

  “You know what I think?” McFadyen asked. “I think you ought to think about following me home to Pictou County.”

  “Is that where you live?” Jamie asked.

  “Sure,” McFadyen answered. “I live in Moose River, just a few miles from the Garden of Eden itself.”

  Although Neil McFadyen was presenting his story in a slightly misleading fashion, he was actually telling the truth to the boy. The town of Moose River was just a few kilometres away from the small Nova Scotia community that had laid claim to the name “Garden of Eden,” for its location just to the north of Eden Lake.

  “The Garden of Eden?” Jamie asked in disbelief.

  “Sure, and I wouldn’t be lying to you. You can grow nearly anything you want to—except maybe tired—in the dirt over that way, and they’re practically giving it away. Why don’t you come home with me and I’ll see you set up good and proper with a farm of your own. I might even find you a woman, so you could raise yourself a crop of children to work that farm for you.”

  McFadyen laid it on just as thick as he was able.

  “Can’t you just picture yourself living the life of a proper country gentleman,” McFadyen went on, “with a pack of strapping young sons doing all your work, and a wife to bake you biscuits and serve you liquor and cream until your belly is so swollen you’ll need an extra set of arms to tie your bootlaces with?”

  Jamie listened intently.

  “Just think about it,” McFadyen continued. “It’s Nova Scotia. That’s another term for ‘New Scotland.’ What better place for a stout Scot such as yourself to build himself a home? Come next year, you’ll no doubt have raised enough money to buy your father a home where he can grow old in peace.”

  “I like the sound of that last bit,” Jamie said.

  Quicker than you could say, “Take care, young gentleman,” Neil McFadyen had talked young Jamie Kier into quitting his job as a lumberjack and catching the first ship bound for Pictou, making sure that Kier paid their fare along the way.

  Welcome to Pictou County

  Throughout the short journey, McFadyen kept Jamie Kier’s imagination ablaze with his tales of fertile wilderness. Night and day, he heaped lies and exaggerations upon the boy’s hopes and dreams like they were nothing more than armloads of sun-seasoned kindling.

  When they reached Nova Scotia, McFadyen and Kier spent the night sleeping rough in a ditch. It was the first day of July, and the weather was warm enough to allow the men to sleep rough as they did.

  “Come tomorrow,” McFadyen promised, “you and I will walk to your new farm. I know of one such farm nearby that you can buy for a song, and the song needn’t even be sung on key.”

  In the morning they set off again. “It’s just through these woods,” McFadyen directed.

  They came to a small stream. “There’s a dead log we can cross on,” McFadyen said. “You get to the other side, and we’ll find dirt for the planting.”

  Jamie stepped onto the dead log, his arms wide for balance, a perfect crucifixion in motion. At the same time, McFadyen stooped and scooped up a good-sized rock, swung hard, and brought the rock down against the back of Jamie Kier’s skull. Kier fell from the log into the stream. McFadyen knelt down upon the young boy’s back and held his face in the flowing stream until he stopped breathing.

  McFadyen took the vest off the dead boy and put it on himself, patting the money pocket and grinning at the jingling sound it made. Then he searched the boy’s belongings and took whatever seemed valuable. He heaped some fir boughs over the boy’s body, and left him lying there in a quiet glade beside the happily rattling stream. He stood up, said a small prayer over the boy’s makeshift grave, then walked away from the scene of the murder, whistling and grinning to his wicked old self.

  Guilty Fear

  By the time Neil McFadyen reached his home, he had begun to have second thoughts about his actions. “Secrets never stay kept,” he told himself. “And a murder will out itself, as sure as sin has got whiskers.”

  The fear of having his guilt discovered gnawed away at McFadyen’s uneasy conscience. Before the week had run its course, Neil McFadyen had allowed his guilty paranoia to run wild over his imagination. He barred the windows and reinforced the cabin door. He carried a large basket of rocks, just perfect for throwing, into his house. He bought himself a pitchfork, which he set by the front door. He likewise kept a loaded long rifle hanging over the fireplace. “If they come for me,” he thought to himself, “they’ll have a fight on their hands.”

  His wife and children grew fearful at his behavior. “Is the devil after you?” his wife asked. “What have you done now?”

  McFadyen said nothing.

  The days passed into weeks, and it seemed as if
Neil McFadyen was destined to get away with his evil deed. In spite of this, his paranoia grew continuously. He would sit in an old wooden rocking chair and watch his front door intently, as if he was terrified that someone or something was going to walk in unexpectedly and accuse him of the murder. And then, suddenly, that is exactly what happened.

  Murder Will Out

  In late September 1848, two months after the murder of Jamie Kier, a local hunter stumbled across Kier’s remains. It was not a pretty sight. The flesh had rotted past recognition. Insects, rodents, coyotes, and birds of prey had fed upon the flesh while it was fresh, and then decomposition had continued until parts of the body were worn to the bone. What was left of the flesh was blackened and nearly unrecognizable.

  Word went out, and shortly afterwards, Jamie’s father and brother arrived from New Brunswick. They had long suspected that Jamie had come to a bad end, and had reported him as missing to any authorities who would listen.

  The body, unfortunately, was unidentifiable. The few remaining rags of apparel provided some clue to the corpse’s actual identity; however, it was Jamie’s father who gave the authorities the vital clue they required to verify the corpse’s identity.

  “There is a small, hard lump on the inside of his left jawbone,” Jamie’s father said. “It is a souvenir from a horse that kicked him when he was a young boy.”

  The advanced state of decomposition made easy transport a virtual impossibility, but medical examiners severed the head, placed it in a basket, and transported it to a proper facility. Once there, a team of three doctors cut into what was left of the jaw and found the telltale lump. “Without a question,” the medical team reported, “given what we have been told, the remains discovered in the Moose River woodland belong to Jamie Kier.”

  Further investigation led back to the New Brunswick logging camp, where it was verified that Jamie Kier had indeed spent an inordinate amount of time in the company of Neil McFadyen. “They left together,” the logging foreman reported. “The two of them quit on the very same day and sailed off for Nova Scotia.”

  Following this testimony, a legal warrant was sworn out. It happened fast. Neil McFadyen was taken completely by surprise. He wasn’t even given the time he needed to reach for his pitchfork, his rocks, or to even try for his long rifle, when local authorities arrived to search his cabin. They uncovered Jamie Kier’s vest and several of his personal belongings. McFadyen’s wife and children stood by, amazed and terrified, as Neil McFadyen was promptly arrested and charged with the murder of Jamie Kier.

  Burial on the Beach

  McFadyen spent the next two months brooding in a cold and lonely jail cell in the jailhouse directly beside the Pictou courthouse. Following a short trial—in which the severed head was reportedly brought into the courtroom in a wooden box of salt as a piece of necessary evidence—Neil McFadyen was convicted, and sentenced to be hanged on Wednesday, December 20, 1848, somewhere between the hours 10:00 am and 2:00 pm.

  McFadyen was taken by horse-drawn wagon to the Hospital Point beach. He sat upon a crude wooden casket that would serve as both a platform and the ultimate resting place for his remains.

  It was a brutally cold morning, with a stiff Atlantic wind blowing in directly across the beach. A crowd of at least fifty onlookers braved this cold, and followed along behind the wagon until they came to a properly sized beach pine that had been chosen for the procedure.

  The sheriff stood on the wagon beside McFadyen as he carefully arranged the noose. Neil McFadyen wore nothing but a thin jacket and a tattered shirt and pants.

  “It’s mighty cold out here,” McFadyen complained to the sheriff. “If you are going to do it, then you might as well put me through at once.”

  “No sir,” the sheriff said gruffly. “I will see this done as the letter of the law prescribes. I dare say it was equally cold in that hole you left young Jamie Kier to rot in, and I dare say it will be warmer where you are going soon.”

  Some of the onlookers voiced their objections, maintaining that a swifter execution might be in keeping with the custom of following a condemned man’s last request, but the sheriff only turned his face stubbornly into the wind and waited the objections out.

  Promptly at ten o’clock, the sheriff stepped down from the wagon, leaving Neil McFadyen standing on his own coffin with his neck in the noose. The sheriff picked up a short leather whip, with which he cracked the horse’s hindquarters, and before you could say “drop,” Neil McFadyen was twisting in the wind.

  They cut McFadyen down after a doctor pronounced him dead. A party of four volunteers dug a hole in the sand on the beach, and then they buried Neil McFadyen there in an unmarked grave.

  As for Jamie Kier, he was buried in the Pioneer Cemetery on Sutherland’s Mountain—located just south of Blue Mountain in Pictou County, along Route 347. A small stone monument was erected, and still remains standing over his grave, engraved with the following inscription:

  In Memory of

  James Kier

  A Native of Bay D’Chaleiu

  Aged 21 yrs

  Who came to his death the 1st of July 1848

  by the hands of an assassin

  A thirty-two-shilling ghost story

  Maurice Doyle

  River Philip, Nova Scotia

  1838

  There are an awful lot of axe murders in this book, but for good reason. The simple fact is, wood was an important resource in the early days of the Maritime provinces. Wood was used to provide shelter for people and animals. Wood provided fire for warmth and cooking. You built things out of wood: wagons, tools, furniture, household utensils, boxes, toys, fences. The roots of the trees themselves could also be used for medicinal purposes.

  And all of that wood demanded an axe for hewing, shaping, notching, felling, and a thousand other purposes. Man, woman, and child—all depended chiefly upon the handling of a well-crafted axe, and they would not travel far without either hatchet or axe close at hand. So it is no surprise that an axe was far too often utilized as a tool for murder.

  This is the tale of one such murder, which took place on June 28, 1838, in the little Nova Scotia town of River Philip.

  Thirty-Two Shillings

  In the first two months of 1838, master carver Amos Seaman, known as King Seaman to the local folks, hired Maurice Doyle, a transient Cape Breton labourer with a bad reputation for drinking, gambling, and fighting. It was a bad pairing from the first moment the two met. Amos Seaman had a good reputation as a carver of wood and stone. He had personally carved some of the finest of tombstones to ever stand watch over eternity within the borders of Nova Scotia.

  Maurice Doyle, on the other hand, had a bad reputation, and Amos Seaman knew it to begin with. Still, he figured Doyle could do very little harm, given that he was primarily employed as a logger and a farmhand; however, Doyle proved to be more trouble than he was worth for King Seaman.

  One late February morning in 1838, Maurice Doyle walked into the Pugwash store of Henry G. Pineo and purchased thirty-two shillings’ worth of supplies, charging them to King Seaman’s account. However, later that day, Pineo found out that Doyle had just been fired by King Seaman.

  Pineo promptly summoned the constable, and Doyle was arrested for outstanding debt and ordered to pay a total of thirty-nine shillings. The extra seven shillings were to compensate the court costs.

  John Clem, a local farmer from River Philip—a small settlement about thirty-two kilometres southeast of Amherst—agreed to hire Doyle as an unpaid labourer, with the understanding that Clem would assume responsibility for Doyle’s outstanding debt. Clem’s primary motivation was a desire to help out his fellow man. All that he could see was another human being in dire need of assistance. This philanthropic spirit would all too soon prove to be the death of River Philip farmer John Clem.

  Lord Have Mercy upon Us

  It was a warm June morning,
and William Hussey was eager to begin the planting of potatoes. His neighbour John Clem had promised him a load of seed potatoes for planting. Hussey had risen early, for it was a long hike to Clem’s secluded farmhouse.

  Actually, “farmhouse” is a bit of an overstatement. The Clem house consisted of two separate rooms—one was used by John Clem’s housekeeper, Mrs. Elizabeth Pipes, and her twelve-year-old daughter, Jane; Clem slept and lived in the other room.

  Some people talked about how it wasn’t really proper for a widow such as Mrs. Pipes to be living in such close quarters to an old bachelor like Clem, but times were hard for a widowed woman and child. After her husband, William Pipes, passed away in 1830, Mrs. Pipes had taken Clem up on his proposition. He could not afford to pay her, but she kept his house and cooked his meals, and in return he saw that she and her child had food to eat and a roof over their heads. It was a good working deal, and if there was any sort of mischief going on between her and Clem, she gave no sign.

  The house looked deserted. Where could John Clem be? William Hussey didn’t like the feel of this one bit. He searched the exterior until he heard a slow, painful groan coming from inside the house.

  “Hello?” Hussey called aloud. He opened the door to find John Clem lying on his back before the fire. His hands were crossed upon his chest as if he were ready to die. He bore many wounds, the chief among which was a gaping wound to his temple. One of Clem’s ears was nearly sliced off and dangling from a few threads of cartilage. Hussey knelt down and gingerly checked for a pulse. John Clem moaned softly at Hussey’s touch. A gout of blood oozed from his parted lips.