True Crime
read real local crime stories!
Throughout 2004 they had received information that somewhere within the City there was a huge grow, either in a warehouse or some other location that was still unknown to police.
No one will ever know how many men, women and children in Canada have been executed for capital offences since it was first settled. However, one of the earliest known executions occurred in the fall of 1542.
In 1944 there were three murders in Winnipeg. The most noteworthy was the murder of Samuel W. CAUGHEY, an accountant at the bank of Commerce located at Dufferin and Main St.
Prostitution was the downfall of the City’s first Chief of Police and on August 4, 1875. While there were laws against prostitution, it was next to impossible for the small 20 man police force to keep up.
By the time Jack Krafchenko was 33 years old he was a living legend. Before he turned 34 he was dead. Forty nine people were reportedly present for his execution.
It started in October 1921 with a break-in to the Bank of Hochelaga in Elie, Manitoba that got the gang some $1,200.00. The same gang was believed responsible for a break-in to the liquor warehouse in Carnduff, Saskatchewan in November where cases of liquor were stolen.
The Winnipeg Police Morality Squad was assigned the dubious task of bringing the City’s more notorious caricatures down, including that wily veteran of the criminal underworld Dick Tracy.
His co-workers found his interest in fire peculiar perhaps, but never anything more. Little did they know that what James Dodds possessed was not merely an interest in fire, but rather an obsession.
Julia JOHNSON was just five years old and lived with her immigrant parents on Austin Street.
Five minutes and a little girl disappeared from the face of the earth for nine years.
In January, Henri Jendrich Kraus, the man from nowhere, died. The only thing that makes his death noteworthy is the spree of violence that lead up to his death and the fact he died in a gun battle with the police.
On several occasions, Silver was caught in suites and in one instance he produced a revolver and threatened the victim. All victims of these celluloid break-ins described the culprit as a thin male, approx. 5’6″ to 5’9″ tall, with dark hair and dark eyes and approx. 35 years old – the precise description for Silver.
In the end, the total body count was seven; four policemen and the three young farmers from small-town Saskatchewan. The reason behind the actions of the three farmers will never be known.
He kept to himself. He never home late, always kept his room tidy, and was a big reader.
Very rarely would he go out this the army boys. As for girls he never bothered with them. He was very shy and would sooner run a mile than face a girl.
Florence Stuart was a sixteen-year-old telephone operator for the Manitoba Government Telephone Company. At the Stuart household, Florence’s father Charles Stuart was waiting up for his daughter. He heard the screams, ran to the front door and looked out. There he saw Florence, her clothing ripped.
Jack the ripper gained worldwide notoriety in 1888 for killing five women in the Whitechapel area of London, England. But the Ripper’s exploits pale when compared with the havoc created by Earle Leonard Nelson throughout North America in the 1920s.
For several weeks it bothered Nankerville that he had admitted the details of the botched robbery. He felt Smith might betray his confidence and tell someone that he had done the robbery. Surely the police would charge him with attempted murder and send him back to the penitentiary.
Troubles plagued the upper echelons of the St. Boniface Police Department. In 1921 almost the entire St. Boniface Police Department was dismissed in a “re-organization” of the department. One of the few officers to survive the re-organization was Thomas Gagnon, a seven-year veteran of the force.
Early in 1924 Westgate’s wife, Jane introduced him to a woman she had once worked with, Charlotte (Lottie) Adams.
In August 1943 a 16-year-old girl named Grace (Edith) Cook moved into a room on Spence Street after quarrelling with her mother and father about her lifestyle.
On Thursday, November 11, 1943, PEARSE started his shift at the Detention Home.
Leslie YOUNG did not like the rules at the Home and told the other boys in the cell that they should try and escape.
All three youths were charged with murder and returned to the Juvenile Detention Home.
There is a ghost in the north end of the city that is causing a lot of trouble to the inhabitants. His chief haunt is in a vacant house on St. John’s Avenue near Main. He appears late at night, and performs strange antics, so that timid people give the place wide birth.
~ Manitoba Free Press
Between Rathwell and Treherne, Manitoba, on Road 43 North is the Woodlands Cemetery where buried beneath a barely legible headstone, weathered with the passage of time, lies John William Clarkson – murdered on duty – November 17, 1905.