Maritime Murder (8 page)

Angèle Poulin
Caraquet Island, New Brunswick
1874

I
t certainly wasn't Angèle's fault. She hadn't given her husband the disease of leprosy. Still, what had she expected? Marrying a man twelve years older. What had she been thinking?

A woman has needs.

Born near Bathurst in
1826
, Angèle had married Francis Xavier Poulin when she was twenty-six years old, which was very old for a girl to be getting married in those days. She had been a little surprised when the man had first broached the subject of matrimony. She knew she was not much of a catch, physically. She was a rather drab girl. One boy had told her that she had a face like a fish, only not as pretty.

“Beggers cannot be picky,” Angèle told herself.

Poulin had made a fine husband for the first twelve years of the couple's marriage. They had eight children, and Xavier worked very hard as a lumberman in the woods of the Acadian Peninsula.

It was not a particularly fat life. Money was hard to come by and food was always tight, but between the two of them working like ten devils, they made themselves as happy as could be expected.

And then, in
1864
, fate shook its long, dark finger at the Poulin family when Xavier Poulin came down with the dreaded disease of leprosy. This condition was not unheard of. Indeed, there had been cases of leprosy in New Brunswick since the early
1
820
s, when Ursule Landry Benoit of Tracadie, daughter of Anselme Landry and Marie Brideau, came down with the first reported case.

At this time, leprosy was thought to be highly contagious. The standard treatment was quarantine and banishment from all human contact. The very first thing the parish priest warned victims about was the impossibility of intercourse.

“You must resign yourself, Xavier,” the old priest had said. “From now, think of intercourse between you and your wife to be forbidden. You do not want her to be sick, do you?”

Ha. It was easy for that old starch-collar to say a thing like that. He had taken a vow of celibacy. For her part, Angèle was no angel.

Life became even harder for Angèle when it became apparent that Xavier could no longer work in the woods. As a result of the leprosy, he began to lose sensation in his fingers and could no longer wield an axe or bow saw safely. Walking became difficult and his joints ached constantly. As a result, the Poulin family had to resort to becoming wards of the local parish.

“We are beggars,” Angèle would bitterly complain. “All pride has been lost.”

The only good thing that came about as a result of her husband's condition was meeting Olivier Gallien. Olivier was a tall and strapping twenty-five-year-old man. He had a wildness and a darkness to him, almost savage, that attracted Angèle immediately. He lived alone in a one-room cabin on Caraquet Island and performed odd tasks for the local church.

Olivier was moved by the Poulin's dilemma. He invited them to move in with him. “We can share our meagre fortune,” he told them. “You will be good company for me.”

The next few years were a constant trial for Xavier. It was bad enough being forced to live beneath another man's roof. The aches and the running sores that accompanied his leprosy made him miserable. But worse still was the undeniable knowledge that Olivier and Angèle had become lovers, as two more children were born to Angèle in spite of the fact that she had not experienced physical intimacy with her husband for many years.

However,
1874
marked a turning point for Xavier's condition. He felt the blood moving in his veins. The all-too-familiar aches began to dissipate. He found the strength to split kindling with the hatchet. He began taking walks every morning to build his endurance.

“I am a new man,” he told his wife. He smiled at her frequently, ignoring the fact that she was three months pregnant with a third child fathered by Olivier Gallien.

“I could kill him, you know,” Olivier said to Angèle. “It would be easy.” This wasn't a new idea. In one way or another, Olivier had been raising the proposition with Angèle for the last two years.

So far, Angèle had resisted. She didn't love her husband, but she did not hate him either. Yet she was very much in love with young Olivier Gallien. Their relationship had evolved and matured from a needful affair into a most comfortable adultery. Angèle did not want to leave her newfound love, but if her husband fully regained his strength her happy situation might alter.

The delicate and dangerous tightrope these three walked did not go unnoticed by the local townsfolk. While visiting the Poulin household in the early spring, a local woman by the name of Victoria Dugay witnessed two particularly incriminating events.

“When the old man took a walk, Gallien and Angèle talked among themselves. Angèle carefully honed a knife and handed it to Gallien. ‘Go,' she told him. ‘Go and do it,'” Victoria Dugay related. “But when Gallien returned, he only shook his head when Angèle asked him if he had done it. ‘No,' he said, ‘my heart did not permit it.'”

The second event was even more blatant. “The old man was sleeping,” Victoria Dugay testified. “Angèle said to Gallien, ‘Go and see if he is sleeping. If he is not sleeping, knock him on the head so that he will not get up for some time. Or better yet, just choke him. People will think he died in a fit of weakness.'

“But then I heard Xavier call out from the bed,” Victoria went on. “‘I am not dead yet,' he said. ‘I am as cunning as you two.'”

A few days later, on Monday, April
20
,
1874
, Delina Gallien, Olivier's sister, was visiting at her brother's cabin.

“I want to go and cut some wood,” Xavier said.

“Is that wise?” Delina asked. “For one in your condition?”

“I am feeling stronger every day,” Poulin assured her. “I think by the winter I will be ready to work in the woods again. I want my old house back. I am tired of sleeping under another man's roof.” So saying, he left for the woods.

“My brother and that Poulin woman talked together in the yard for some time. I could not hear what was said,” Delina would later testify. “It seemed painfully obvious to me they wanted their privacy. After an hour or so, my brother walked into the woods alone. I think he was following old Poulin.”

An hour later, Olivier returned.

“He was shaking,” Delina said, “like a leaf in the wind. He had his head hung down as if sorry about something. Again, he talked with that Poulin woman in the yard. She took his clothes from him and threw them into the loft. He dove into a stream and scrubbed himself so hard I thought he was trying to remove something from his very soul.” The afternoon wore on.

“At four in the afternoon,” Delina continued, “that Poulin woman began to cook the supper. ‘Aren't you the least bit worried about your husband?' I asked. ‘Don't you know where he is?'”

Finally, Angèle spoke. “He is in the clearing,” she said. “Perhaps he has fallen asleep.” And then she went back to her cooking.

“I followed the path to the clearing,” Delina went on. “I found him in the dirt. His head was broken in as if by a blow from an axe blade. I ran like a crazy goose back to the cabin and I got my brother. The two of us, we dragged old Poulin's body back home on a small cart.”

“I am not the one,” Olivier kept saying over and over to Delina. “I am not the one who killed her husband. I am not the one.”

Authorities were summoned to the scene of the crime, and the official inquest was held three days later. The coroner determined that Xavier Poulin had been killed with an axe. However, the medical examiner could not determine if he had merely tripped, fallen, and inadvertently stove his own head in, or if it had been done by someone else. “Given Xavier Poulin's state of advanced leprosy, and the numbness in the hands and joints that such a condition could bring,” he said, “it is quite possible that he died by unexpected accident.”

On the fourth day following the discovery of the body, Olivier Gallien walked into the crowded confines of the town magistrate's office and confessed his guilt. “I did the deed,” Gallien admitted. “I followed Xavier into the woods, and I beat him with a club and my fists, not with an axe. I hurt the man,” Gallien went on. “But I did not kill him.”

Magistrate J. C. Blackhole cautioned Olivier not to say anything more in the presence of witnesses.

“I do not care,” Gallien went on. “I would not have done it, save for the goading of that woman, Angèle.”

Constable Alphonse Landry was summoned, and Olivier Gallien was arrested and secured in the Bathurst jailhouse.

“I did it,” Gallien further confessed to Landry. “I followed Xavier into the woods and hit him with a stick. I beat him and walked away, not having the heart to kill a sixty-year-old man. When I left, he was still alive.”

“Are you sure of that?” Landry asked.

“Dead men do not crawl,” Gallien stated. “When I left him, he was still crawling face down in the dirt.”

Police were sent to Gallien's cabin, where they arrested Angèle for the killing of her husband. “She did it,” one of the policemen later reported. “Olivier left him for dead, but when he returned to the cabin that Poulin woman must have slipped out into the woods and finished him with his own axe.”

But could they prove it?

It was decided that Angèle and Olivier would stand trial separately for their parts in the murder of Xavier Poulin. The trials were held at the Bathurst courthouse on the morning of September
3
,
1
874
. Mr. Justice J. W. Weldon served as judge for both cases. Lawyer J. S. Barbrie served as defence for both Angèle and Olivier. Crown Prosecutor F. W. Morrison served as the prosecutor for both cases.

Olivier Gallien's trial was swift. Based upon his confession and the testimony of several witnesses, including his sister Delina, Olivier was declared guilty. The jury, after deliberating for a scant twenty minutes, made a strong recommendation for mercy based upon the fact that Gallien had both confessed and said that he was truly sorry.

Olivier Gallien was also brought in to testify as a witness at Angèle Poulin's trial. To all reports he seemed strangely at a loss for words. His entire testimony consisted of him repeating the phrases “I don't know” and “I can't remember.”

One wonders if the sight of his lover and the thought that she was still carrying his child did not stir his romantic Acadian heart. Judge Weldon dryly remarked that it appeared obvious to him that the woman's influence over the man was still as strong as ever. Or perhaps Olivier merely felt guilty.

It took the jury an hour to declare Angèle Poulin guilty of the murder of Francis Xavier Poulin. No recommendation of mercy was brought forward.

Two days later, Olivier and Angèle stood side by side in the Bathurst courthouse, awaiting the judge's final sentence. Both were declared guilty as charged and both were sentenced to death.

“Olivier Gallien,” Judge Weldon declared, “you will be hanged by the neck until dead at the Bathurst prison on October
29
,
1874
. Angèle Poulin, you will be hanged by the neck until dead on January
5
,
1875
. The court is granting this stay of execution due to your all-too-apparent pregnancy.”

Neither prisoner flinched as they were led from the courtroom. It took several hours before it was realized that neither of the two murderers spoke English. A translator was sent to the jailhouse to deliver the verdicts to Poulin and Gallien later that day.

Judge Weldon would later declare that he saw no reason to show Gallien any mercy. “The man is guilty of murder,” Weldon stated. “Sorry or not, he will have to pay. But I am still of the opinion that Angèle Poulin is the most guilty of the two.”

Guilty or not, Olivier Gallien was hanged on October
2
9
,
1874
, in the concealment of a closed gallows outside the Bathurst prison. The day before the execution, the two lovers were permitted to speak with each other one last time.

“Do you forgive me?” Angèle asked.

“God will take care of that,” Gallien replied.

Afterwards, when they cut his body down and made it ready for burial, Angèle Poulin was reported to have broken into tears.

Angèle Poulin gave birth to her child in the shadow of the gallows. Her death sentence was commuted on December
22
,
1874
, to life in the confines of Dorchester Penitentiary.

In
1885
it was decided that female prisoners should be secured and segregated at the Kingston Penitentiary. Rather than merely move her, the warden at Dorchester took it upon himself to recommend Angèle for a pardon. Judge Weldon relented and eventually endorsed the recommendation.