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    British Columbia Murders: Notorious Cases and Unsolved Mysteries
    British Columbia Murders: Notorious Cases and Unsolved Mysteries
    British Columbia Murders: Notorious Cases and Unsolved Mysteries
    Ebook105 pages1 hour

    British Columbia Murders: Notorious Cases and Unsolved Mysteries

    By Susan McNicoll

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    About this ebook

    In July 1924, Scottish nursemaid Janet Smith was murdered in Vancouver’s wealthy Shaughnessy Heights. Her killer was never apprehended, but the investigation had shocking consequences. Twenty years later, Molly Justice was stabbed to death in a Saanich park. Her murderer has never been charged, even though police were virtually certain of his identity for over 50 years. Susan McNicoll’s dramatic accounts of six of British Columbia’s most intriguing murders span a century of crime, from a 1904 Victoria Chinatown murder to a modern cold case from Vernon solved through DNA analysis of an unusual kind.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHeritage House
    Release dateFeb 1, 2011
    ISBN9781926936147
    British Columbia Murders: Notorious Cases and Unsolved Mysteries
    Author

    Susan McNicoll

    Susan McNicoll lives in Vancouver, BC, where she divides her time between writing and running a bookkeeping business. Although she is now a die-hard British Columbian, her heart still belongs to the Toronto Blue Jays. Susan's lifelong love of words and history has been the main focus of her writing career, which began with five years as a reporter for the Ottawa Journal.

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    • 3/5
      As part of the Amazing Stories series by Heritage House, this slim volume showcases six notorious cases and unsolved mysteries from British Columbia's history. Written in the style of investigative journalism and covering cases that span over 100 years, McNicoll examines an interesting mix of cases - some I remember reading about and others that were new to me: - 1904 murder of a Chinese theatre manager in Victoria's Chinatown - 1915 suspicious death of a pre-emption homesteader near Fort St. James in Northern British Columbia - 1924 murder in Vancouver's wealthy Shaughnessy Heights of a Scottish nursemaid - 1943 attack and subsequent death of Molly Justice in a Saanich park as she was walking home which received a great deal of press 53 years later when hints of impropriety prompted a provincial investigation into the conduct of the authorities involved in the case - A Vancouver radio personality's poisoning of his wife with arsenic in the 1960's and the subsequent court cases - a cold case from 1991 which became the first case for British Columbia's provincial Unsolved Homicide Unit and was solved through unusual DNA analysis.At a mere 120 pages to cover the six cases it is easy to understand that McNicoll focuses on hitting the key facts and presenting information where her research indicates errors were made, key evidence was ignored, prejudices influenced decisions and perjury occurred. Whether these are in fact British Columbia's most notorious cases is subjective and open to debate. What I really liked about these stories is the interesting historical facts and unusual twists that McNicoll brings to the reader's attention - in 1904 three separate oaths were allowed when Chinese witnesses testified under the Canada Evidence Act (the Paper Oath, the Saucer Oath and the Chicken Oath), in 1943 the Coroner's Act still called for "male British citizens" to sit on the jury of a coroner's inquest (meaning three women jurors chosen had to be replaced by substitute jurors from among the spectators) and how a hatred and mistrust of Orientals in the 1920's played an influential role in the case of the Scottish nursemaid. Not stellar writing but for me it has the right balance of facts and enticing information to keep me reading, without bogging me down in an overload of evidence and court transcriptions. This may appeal to readers with an interest in true crime stories that are easy to read in a quick sitting.

    Book preview

    British Columbia Murders - Susan McNicoll

    Terms

    Prologue

    Wong Foon Sing had been kidnapped and beaten for 14 days by some of the people paid to uphold the law, not break it. After putting a chain around his body and tying it to his feet, they slapped him, punched him and rammed his head into the wall. Blood flowed from his nose and ear. His captives washed the blood off and the next day started the assault again.

    The constant buzz inside his head would not go away. They thought he’d been lying and wanted the truth. He told them the same facts he had been stating all along about the murder of nursemaid Janet Smith. The truth made them angry. Now, it appeared, his suffering was going to come to a tragic end.

    The men showed him a picture of his wife and told Wong he would never see her again. He was unchained and taken upstairs to an unfinished room with exposed wooden beams. There was a rough scaffold with a chair on it, and Wong saw a rope hanging over one of the beams. It had a noose at one end.

    They put me on chair and fix rope on my head, Wong later testified. Man says, ‘You tell everything or we kill you. You tell or you be dead.’ I say I no can tell anymore. I no know nothing more about poor nursie. Man say again they hang me.

    One of his captors pulled the chair out from under him. Wong Foon Sing lost consciousness.

    CHAPTER

    1

    Arsenic and Cold Shakes

    Local radio personality Rene Castellani undoubtedly thought he was going to get away with it. After all, he had been slowly and methodically poisoning his wife, Esther, for months leading up to that summer of 1965 and no one suspected a thing. Not her family or her doctors, not his co-workers—not even the station receptionist he was planning to marry.

    Although Rene had been unhappy in his marriage for a couple of years, the seeds for his scheme were not planted until he began working as a promotions man for Vancouver radio station CKNW in late 1963. His first publicity stunt was a precursor of things to come. He was hired by the station to play the so-called Maharaja of Alleebara and pretend he was in British Columbia to announce his plans to buy the province. With his exotic outfits and entourage of dancing girls and bodyguards, the phony maharaja was wined and dined by unsuspecting hosts at the Astor Hotel and seen picking up tabs for patrons in bars.

    Everyone in Vancouver began talking about the maharaja. Huge signs on the sides of buses proclaimed his desire to buy British Columbia—a prospect that even prompted a few citizens to protest with pickets reading Keep BC British. It was all a scam, of course. It did, however, show Rene’s abilities to pull the wool over people’s eyes—abilities that would ultimately extend way beyond his job and into his private life. CKNW had found a star in this con artist. He would end up bringing them more publicity than they had ever dreamed of, but not the kind they wanted.

    Esther Castellani began to have stomach problems towards the end of November 1964. She tried to live with the condition and even continued working at a children’s clothing store. About the same time, she told a friend of hers that all was not well in her 19-year marriage. She had found a letter in her husband’s wallet from someone named Lolly and suspected he was in a relationship with the woman. When she confronted Rene with her suspicions, he denied anything was going on.

    Esther’s stomach problems quickly began worsening, and she started having abdominal cramping as well. On January 5, 1965, she made the first of nine visits she would end up having with the Castellani family physician, Dr. John Secter.

    She had abdominal pains and nausea, Dr. Secter would later testify. I examined her and found her to be otherwise normal physically. I told her to watch her diet and gave her medication. Dr. Secter stated he treated her for gastritis and a possible gall bladder condition. Rene Castellani phoned him three times in the middle of the night and once in the afternoon to make a house call.

    On May 17, 1965, Esther went to Dr. Secter’s office and said she felt somewhat better, but four days later her husband summoned the physician to their house yet again. Dr. Secter advised his patient to have a gall bladder X-ray. He would never treat her again.

    By now, others in her family were becoming increasingly worried. With this last severe bout of abdominal pain and vomiting, Esther’s mother, Mabel Lound, reached the breaking point in her concern for her daughter and called in a specialist, Dr. Bernard Moscovich. This infuriated Rene, who asked Mabel if she did not think he was capable of taking care of his own wife. Regardless of her husband’s anger, Dr. Moscovich examined Esther on May 23, 1965, and had her admitted to Vancouver General Hospital the following day.

    Meanwhile, back at CKNW, rumours about Rene had been running rampant for some time. He was now billed as The Dizzy Dialer, performing what could best be described as a radio version of the popular old television program Candid Camera. Rene would phone stores, hotels and other places and say outrageous things or make ridiculous requests, sounding totally deadpan and convincing. The person on the other end of the line would be taken in and made to look gullible and foolish on the radio. It was a role Rene relished.

    His private life, though, was causing concern at the station. Early in 1965, W.J. Hughes, manager of CKNW, had heard talk of a relationship between Rene and the recently widowed station receptionist, Adelaide (Lolly) Miller. Rene was Catholic and married, with a 12-year-old daughter, and Hughes did not want any bad publicity for the station. As he did with his wife, however, Rene denied the relationship existed.

    Hughes would later testify that Esther called the station one day looking for her husband. She said he had left for work at 4 a.m. that morning explaining he had a very important project, yet when she tried to reach him, he wasn’t there. Once again, Hughes spoke to Rene, this time telling him his association with Lolly Miller had to be terminated or the two of them would be dismissed. In May, when it became apparent his words were not being heeded, Hughes called for the pair’s firing. Lolly resigned on May 5, but—in a little piece of irony—Rene ended up not being asked to leave at that time because his wife was sick and the station wanted to show compassion. It was then that Esther’s condition worsened and she entered hospital. Rene continued working.

    As her days in hospital passed, Esther’s nausea persisted and she grew weaker. Numbness set in. She gradually lost the use of her arms and legs and was in tremendous pain. She could no longer feed herself or even hold a cigarette. When she went into hospital she was still able to eat, but by mid-June she was being fed intravenously as well. Her white-cell count dropped, and Dr. Moscovich told Rene that his wife’s condition was becoming very serious. They were still searching for a cause and even considered lead poisoning when they discovered Esther had done some painting the previous year at the store where she worked. This theory did not pan out, but Rene would take every new speculation and tell it to anyone who would listen.

    It was shortly after the doctors told him his wife was seriously ill that Rene performed his best-known stunt, one that would play out prominently down the road. In a radio promotion for Bowell McLean Motors (locally known as BowMac), Rene climbed to the top of the BowMac sign on West Broadway at Alder and stayed there for eight days. This was the era of the neon-sign rage in

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