Free Maritime Murder by Steve Vernon Page B

severing her trachea. It would be anyone’s guess as to whether she bled to death or choked to death on her own blood as it pooled into her opened trachea.
    Wheeler rose from the corpse, still shaking from the adrenalin rush of the kill. He nervously straightened what he could. He washed his hands at the pump beside the Kemptons’ porch. He looked up at the night sky. It was nearly two o’clock.
    He made his way back home, unwittingly leaving a trail of bloody footprints in the snow. Then he crept into his bedroom, said his prayers, and went to sleep.

The Crime Revealed
    The next morning, Peter Wheeler rose early.
    â€œWe’ll need some eggs for breakfast,” Tillie told him. “The hens aren’t laying. Why don’t you go up to Annie’s place and ask if she’d lend us a few eggs?”
    Peter swallowed his guilt and nodded at her request. “I’ll need a basket for the eggs,” was all he said.
    â€œIs that blood on your coat?” Tillie asked.
    Peter wiped at the stain, wishing he had thought to clean it. “That’s just blood from a rabbit I was skinning last week.”
    â€œI don’t remember any rabbits,” Tillie said. “If you had some rabbits, we wouldn’t need eggs, now would we?”
    â€œI ate them rabbits myself,” Peter replied, thinking just as fast as he could. “I was hungry and cooked them over the fire.”
    â€œI thought you were a better skinner than that,” Tillie said.
    Peter just shrugged and headed off down the Sissiboo Road, toward Annie’s house. A short time later, he burst through Tillie’s door, panting breathlessly.
    â€œPoor, dear Annie,” he gasped. “Poor Annie Kempton.”
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” Tillie asked.
    â€œI found Annie,” he told her. “She’s dead. She’s cut up and dead. “
    â€œWhat happened?” Tillie asked in disbelief.
    â€œIt was those two Indians,” Peter said. “I saw them prowling out in the woods close by to the Kempton house while I was hunting those rabbits the other day. I bet you they broke in and did it.”
    However, when Detective Nicholas Power from Halifax joined the coroner’s jury to fully investigate the murder scene, they discovered that the bloodstained footprints were an exact match for the soles of Peter Wheeler’s knee-high moccasins.
    The coroner’s jury returned the following verdict:

    We do upon our oaths say that Annie Kempton, between the hours of five o’clock of the afternoon of Monday the
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January and the hour of eight o’clock of the morning of Tuesday the
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January, was evidently assaulted and struck on the forehead and head several heavy blows and had her throat cut in several places, causing her death; and was thereby feloniously killed and murdered at her father’s residence here in Bear River and we suspect Peter Wheeler of Bear River in said County of Digby, yeoman, to be guilty of the said murder of Annie Kempton.
    Signed: Lewis J. Lovitt, M. D. and Coroner, and twelve jurors

    Two days later, Peter Wheeler, still loudly proclaiming his innocence, was arraigned for trial and confined to the Digby jailhouse. People already were talking of the hanging that would surely follow.

The Trial of Peter Wheeler
    Things did not start out well for Peter Wheeler. The preliminary examinations of the case began on February 6 , 1896 .
    â€œI spoke to poor Annie on the Monday before she was killed,” Peter Wheeler testified. “She asked me to tell Tillie not to bother coming to stay with her that evening, because her neighbour, Grace Morine, was coming to visit.”
    However, when questioned about the matter, Grace Morine testified that Annie Kempton had never said any such thing to her.
    Wheeler then stated that he had been out that night, but for another reason than to see Annie. “I went to Stan Rice’s house,” he said. “Rice owed