Maritime Murder (11 page)

“The sentence of this court is that you, William Millman, be henceforth taken to the prison from whence you last came, and that you be kept in safe custody until Tuesday, the tenth day of the month of April, and on that day, between the hours of eight in the morning and four in the afternoon, within the walls of that prison, you will be hanged by the neck until you are dead. And may the Lord, in his infinite goodness, have mercy upon your soul, for I do not.”

William Millman spent his final days in the very same cell in which George Dowey had been kept two years previous. Millman spent his last few weeks clapped in cold iron after he broke a bottle over his jailer's head in an attempt at escape.

Millman's attempt was almost successful. He actually made it out of the cell and into the jail yard. And that was as far as he got. Three guards corralled him and brought him to his knees with brute force.

Millman was next placed in a cell reserved for madmen, and he spent his last days in great discomfort, constantly under guard and chained in irons. On the last night before execution, he begged and pleaded to be simply left alone to wait.

“What can one poor fellow do,” he pleaded, “chained to the floor as I am? You've got me, and I know it rightly so.” The desperate plea for merciful solitude was eventually honoured, in lieu of a last request.

Tuesday, April
10
,
1
888
, was a cold and dreary morning. A huge, iron-grey storm cloud hung over the prison yard like some great, heavenly hearse waiting patiently to carry away its next customer.

Onlookers had been gathering out in the street since early morning, although the gallows were boarded on the sides that faced the street. Only about fifty-odd spectators, those with previously arranged execution passes, were allowed into the prison yard itself.

As the clock tolled eight, Millman was led to the gallows. He was blindfolded at his own request. He was dressed in black, perhaps to match the black mackintosh and slouch hat that the waiting executioner wore. The Reverend James Simpson walked sombrely in front of Millman, wearing a black cassock, surplice, and biretta as he read from the prayers for the dead.

Millman seemed calm to all who watched. The jailer reported that Millman had slept well the night before. Sheriff Curtis appeared visibly shaken, pausing occasionally to drag his heavy forearm across his eyes to wipe away his tears as he solemnly read out Millman's death warrant.

“Let us pray,” Reverend Simpson intoned. Millman bowed his blindfolded head. Viewers could see his lips moving along as the Reverend Simpson read out the Lord's Prayer. “Amen,” Millman loudly added as Reverend Simpson completed the prayer.

The executioner slipped the noose over Millman's head as Simpson began reciting a final benediction. Sheriff Curtis slowly raised and dropped his hand. The executioner threw the lever. At
8
:
08
am
William Millman dropped into Death's arms.

Millman's legs spasmed for a minute or so. His entire body shook and trembled for a few short seconds. And then he was still.

The black flag was solemnly raised over the Charlottetown courthouse to signal the passing of a murderer. The bell at St. Peter's Church tolled for nineteen minutes. Reverend Simpson continued to read.

The doctor clambered up a short stepladder to check for a pulse. At
8
:
19
am,
the pulse stilled, and William Millman was pronounced dead. Seven minutes later, they lowered his body into a waiting casket and then they removed the noose. Millman's neck and spine appeared to have been immediately dislocated. His hands were purpled into the colour of autumn grapes. The coffin was closed. A prison carpenter tacked a small, engraved brass placard onto the lid. The engraving read, “William Millman, Jesu Mercy.”

There are still strong feelings regarding the guilt or innocence of William Millman, but, right or wrong, Millman surely paid the final price.

The Osborne Family
Shediac, New Brunswick
1877

S
ome people never know when they've got it good. On Friday, October
12
,
1877
, Timothy McCarthy tucked a thousand dollars into his suit coat pocket and left a successful business behind in Moncton.

Well, actually, what he was leaving was his wife, Helen, and his four young children. He should have been happy, I suppose. His business, a tavern, was by all reports very profitable. His children were bright and loved him deeply. But he and Helen could not see eye to eye, so Timothy McCarthy decided that he would leave the province and move to Prince Edward Island.

He boarded a train for Pointe-du-Chêne, intending to take the ferry to Prince Edward Island. However, Helen left the children with her parents and followed on her husband's heels. When he realized that the wife he was trying to leave was riding on the same train as he was, he decided to do something about the situation. He got off of the train at Pointe-du-Chêne, doubled back, reboarded, and rode the train all the way back to Moncton, leaving Helen alone in Pointe-du-Chêne.

“That'll fix her,” was what he was thinking. It turns out the person he actually fixed was himself.

He stopped long enough to hitch a horse to a carriage and then he drove directly to the village of Shediac, intending to put as much physical distance between himself and his wife as possible.

It turns out that he accomplished that trick just about as well as anyone could ever hope to manage, putting a lifetime and a death between himself and his wife. Like I said, some people really never know when they've got it good.

Tired out from his long journey, Timothy McCarthy found himself a room at the Weldon Hotel. Then he went down to the tavern below.

“I am here to drink,” Timothy McCarthy told Weldon Hotel barkeeper, Martin Macdonald. “I need to drown my trouble in as many glassfuls as it takes.”

“You've come to the right place,” Macdonald replied.

“Timothy McCarthy had two drinks, and then left the bar in the company of the town postman, Chipman Smith,” Martin Macdonald later testified. “Beyond that, I know nothing.”

“I took him to the Adams House to meet with the Riley sisters, hoping for a party,” Chipman Smith later testified. “Only the Riley girls wouldn't let us in, on account of our drunkenness. McCarthy and I parted ways at this point, and I have no idea where he might have gone from there.”

“Where is the liquor cheapest?” Timothy McCarthy asked the Adams House innkeeper, after Chipman Smith had departed. The innkeeper directed him to a nearby bar in the lower floor of the Waverly Hotel, which was owned and run by John Osborne, his wife, Martha, his twenty-five-year-old daughter, Eliza, and his seventeen-year-old son, Harry.

Within an hour, McCarthy was feeling no pain. He bought several rounds for the house, and anyone with eyes noticed his fat, gold watch
and the large roll of bills that he continued to peel money from. He was free with his money, and not very careful about concealing his fortune.

Timothy McCarthy was alone and at the mercy of the night. He was never seen alive again.

Meanwhile, back in Pointe-du-Chêne, Helen
spent a few quiet nights contemplating her next move and wondering just where her husband had gone. Finally she had enough of waiting and boarded the train back to Moncton where she spoke with Timothy's two brothers—Edward and Stephen—who ran a successful King Street blacksmith shop.

The family searched for two whole weeks, eventually tracking Timothy's disappearance to the Weldon Hotel in Shediac. The only traces discovered were his horse and carriage—which Helen returned home—and his hat, which was found by hunters upon the bank of the Scoudouc River.

It was then that Helen reported her husband missing to Sheriff Botsford of Shediac, New Brunswick. The sheriff began his investigation, doggedly interviewing witnesses and tracking down as many clues as could be unearthed upon this very cold trail. Privately the sheriff wondered if Timothy McCarthy hadn't either skipped town or taken his own life.

This was all to change in January
1879,
when young Annie Parker walked into Sheriff Botsford's office, sat down, and told him the whole true story about just what happened to Timothy McCarthy.

Annie Parker was a rather plain and uneducated young woman who lived alone and worked as a servant at the Waverly House. Born to a hard-working, French Canadian mother in northern Quebec, Annie had come to Shediac at the age of seventeen to find her fortune. Her English, by all reports, was not so good; her mother tongue was French.

“I'd only started working there a few weeks before it happened,” Annie would later testify. “If I'd only known then what I know now, I would have never taken the position in the first place.”

“It happened on October
12
,” Annie continued. “The whole Osborne family—Eliza, Martha, and Harry—were there when I saw it. John Osborne was sick in bed that night. Mr. Timothy McCarthy was there as well. He was in the sitting room with Martha and Eliza. I was one room over, scrubbing a floor. Either they didn't know I was there or didn't think I was worth worrying about.

“They were talking about a polonaise—you know, one of those bodice-gowns that go over your petticoat? It seems Mr. McCarthy had given one really fancy polonaise to a girl in Moncton, just because he liked her. I think Martha and Eliza were trying to convince Mr. McCarthy to buy them a polonaise—only I couldn't tell you for the life of me where they would wear such a fancy getup, even if they did talk him into buying one for them.

“‘Were there white buttons on that polonaise?' Eliza asked.

“‘They were black buttons,' Mr. McCarthy told her.

“‘Whoever heard of such a thing?' Eliza said. ‘Black buttons on a polonaise! A lot you know. I bet you anything those buttons were white.'

“That's when Mr. McCarthy pulled out a roll of money that you could plug a stovepipe with. ‘What are you willing to bet?' he asked. I saw the money when I leaned around the corner, and I saw the way Eliza and Martha were looking at it, and I guess Mr. McCarthy would have seen the way they were looking too, except he had already had one too many drinks that evening and wasn't really looking at anything beyond the tip of his own nose.

“Then Mr. McCarthy and Eliza started arguing on what colour those buttons were, and the two of them argued until Mr. McCarthy decided to go back out to the bar and drink a bit more. Next, I saw Eliza talking with Harry Osborne. Then, right after the clock struck midnight, I heard Mrs. Osborne, Eliza, and Harry talking about how Harry was fixing to give Mr. McCarthy a white powder that would ‘mortifize' Mr. McCarthy the next time he had himself a drink. That was the word they used—‘mortifize'—and I didn't like the sound of that word one bit at all.

“Then Mr. McCarthy came back to the sitting room, and he drank with Harry and Eliza, and he paid for the drinks out of that stove-pipe-plugging roll of money. I kept watching him drag that horse-choking roll of money from out of his pocket, and I wanted to tell him not to, but I was afraid to say a thing. And then Mrs. Osborne put that white powder and some sugar into Mr. McCarthy's drink, saying that she was going to sweeten his drink for him, and they were laughing and so Mr. McCarthy, he laughed too.

“I wanted to warn him not to drink that drink, but Mrs. Osborne, she put that powder into a drink for me and called me over to the table and told me to have myself a drink. But I thought better of it and told her that I had promised my mother never to drink strong liquor, and she took me at my word.

“All this time, everybody was talking, and Mr. McCarthy, he was talking right along with them, and then his words got harder and harder to understand, and I guess that white powder was mortifizing him really good. He knew something was wrong, and he called out for his wife, Helen, over and over, and his son, Hazen, as well. I don't think he knew where he was by that point. Then he just lay there breathing slowly, like a winded horse, and Mrs. Osborne walked over and took that wad of money from out of his pocket.

“She offered me some, but I wouldn't take it. And then she said to Harry, ‘If you put him anywhere, he will know where his money has got to when he wakes up, and we will all be taken up by the law for it.'

“She was looking right at me when she said ‘we all,' but then Harry looked right back at her and said, ‘Mother, if you think he will come to and cause us trouble, let me finish him right here.'

“Mrs. Osborne, she took a hatchet from behind the bar and handed it to Harry and told him, ‘Strike him only the once, and kill him right the once.' So Harry took the hatchet and struck Mr. McCarthy behind his right ear. He fell, and the blood rushed out of his mouth and his nose. Harry said, ‘He is not dead yet,' and then he struck him again in the very same spot, and then he was.

“After he was dead, Harry took his watch and searched his pockets for what money he could find. Then he fetched a horse and a wagon to the door. He brought a large grey stone into the house, about a foot long and six inches wide by four inches thick. Then he took a rope and tied a slip knot around the stone and a tight knot around Mr. McCarthy's neck. Then he took the family Bible, and he made me swear to never say a word to anyone about what I'd seen. Then he told me to help him to get the body to the river but I wouldn't go. I said I would scrub the blood from the floor, since I had been scrubbing already, and that seemed to make Mrs. Osborne happy. Harry wasn't so sure. He still wanted to do something about me talking, but Mrs. Osborne told him not to worry. She said that I had sworn on the Bible, and that I would always be working for them, and who would I tell anyway. So Harry took the body down to the river, and he carefully backed the wagon up to the water, and then he used two long, wooden poles to roll Mr. McCarthy's body down into the gulping river water.”

The Osbornes used the money to pay off a few debts. Eliza shortened the sleeves of Timothy McCarthy's waterproof overcoat so that it would fit Harry. Martha Osborne warned Harry never to wear the coat in Moncton, for fear of someone recognizing the garment.

“I kept the secret for as long as I could,” Annie Parker said. “On account of I had sworn on the Bible. I did go down to the river by the bridge where Harry had said he dumped the body, and I saw wagon tracks in the mud. I kept it secret right until January, but then I couldn't keep it quiet any longer. I could feel that secret getting colder and colder inside my soul, like a chunk of ice that was hardening fast about my heart, until I finally could take no more.

“I got up this morning and I come straight to your office and started talking, and now you know the whole sorry truth of it all.”

The entire Osborne family, including John,
was arrested on Sunday, January
20
,
1878
, and taken by wagon to Moncton, where they spent the night in the local jail. The hearing began the very next morning at eleven o'clock, at the Moncton courtroom in Dunlap's Hall on Duke Street. The judge presiding was Magistrate Jacob Wortman. The lawyers for the defence were W. J. Gilbert and C. A. Holstead, while lawyer R. A. Borden was in charge of the prosecution.

Annie Parker repeated her initial testimony in much the same way as she had first stated it. Postmaster Chipman Smith and bartender Martin Macdonald corroborated Timothy McCarthy's early activities. McCarthy's wife, Helen, testified as to the conditions in which her husband had left her. She also testified that McCarthy was prone to carrying large rolls of money on his person. He never worried too much about wrongdoers, having a basically trusting nature as he did.

Much was said about Annie Parker's character, and people began to wonder just how trustworthy the young girl actually was. There was some talk of how Annie might have been making a living since leaving the employ of the Osborne family. Others held the suspicion that Annie's entire testimony was nothing more than an attempt to extort money from either the Osbornes or the McCarthy family.

However, after hearing the evidence both for and against the Osbornes, Judge Wortman committed the Osborne family for trial at the next sitting of the Supreme Court seven months later in Dorchester.

On May
11
,
1878
—four months after the initial hearing—the body of Timothy McCarthy was finally found by a pair of loggers who were poling a raft full of timber down the Scoudouc River, bound for the Smith Mill. The body was discovered about three or four hundred metres away from the bridge from which Annie Parker testified that Harry Osborne had pushed Timothy McCarthy's body.

Had Annie told the truth? There was indeed a rope tied to McCarthy's neck. However, there was no sign of the rock that Harry Osborne had reportedly used to weigh the body down.