John Heslop and the Case That Never Closed

In the early hours of January 27, 1891, John Heslop was murdered inside his home near Ancaster, Ontario. He was a respected township clerk, a longtime pioneer in the area, and a man whose death sent shockwaves through the surrounding countryside.

What followed was an investigation shaped by footprints in the snow, conflicting testimony, and mounting public pressure. Detectives were brought in from outside the region. Suspects were named, arrests were made, a trial was held—and yet, certainty never arrived.

This episode traces the crime as it was experienced by the women inside the house, the evidence uncovered in the cold morning light, and the legal process that promised answers—but ultimately failed to deliver them.

One hundred and thirty-five years later, the case of John Heslop remains unresolved. The questions raised in 1891 are still with us, waiting for a conclusion that never came.

And then there's the burning question that remained on the lips of Hamilton residents for years, "Were you at Katie White's funeral?" 

We would love to know what you think! Are John Bartram, John Lottridge, Samuel Goosey, and George Douglas guilty? What really happened that night?

Transcript

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1. 1. 1. 1. Thank you. What do anchors, chairs, and masks have in common? You're about to find out on this episode of Forgotten Felonies. Welcome back to Forgotten Felonies. I'm Monica. And I'm Olivia. And this is where we take you back in time to rediscover the tales of vintage villainy that time forgot. This case takes us out of the United States, and I am really excited to cover our first fully international case. Yeah, Olivia found us a really great old case from Ontario, Canada. So let's take a walk back through time to January 27th, 1891. The house was located on the Copetown Road, sitting on a hill about 50 yards off the road. There was a winding, tree-lined lane leading from Copetown Road up to the home. The trees lining this lane were large pines with drooping branches that nearly touched the ground. The house itself was quite large, built with gray stone and gothic elements. It featured two stories and an attic. Surrounding the house were manicured lawns and gravel walkways. By the time the reporter reached the Heslop house that morning, the night was already over, but the shock was still spreading across the county. Horses were tied along the fence and more were tied up in the barn. People had come in from the surrounding countryside, some from miles away, drawn there by word of what had happened in the early hours of the morning. Inside the house, the parlor was full of sympathetic well-wishers. John Heslop, age 78, was dead. Friends and neighbors had come not out of curiosity, but to offer sympathy to the women he had left behind. He had been one of the most respected and well-known pioneers in the area, and the loss of his life, taken violently inside his own home, had stunned the community. It didn't take long for the reporter to locate the women. 70-year-old Elizabeth Heslop and her 46-year-old daughter Annie sat together in the parlor. They were surprisingly calm and composed, and when the reporter spoke to them, they were very clear about what had happened inside their house just hours earlier. understand why so many people came to the Heslop home that morning, you have to understand who John Heslop was. This was not a stranger or a recent arrival. This was a man whose name had been familiar in the area for decades. Someone people trusted, someone many of them had worked with in one capacity or another, and someone they knew they could rely on. His home was not just a house along the road; it was part of the fabric of the community. What happened in the early hours of January 27th did not just take a life. It tore a hole in the place where people believed they were safe. And in 1891, this was considered one of the most deliberate and cold-blooded deeds in the history of Canada. John Heslop had been a member of the Wentworth County Council and he had been the Warden of Wentworth County from 1853 to 1858. If I understand it correctly, at that time in Canada, a warden was kind of like a governor of the county, overseeing the heads of towns and cities. All of the men in charge of the areas in a county would be on the council, and the person at the head of the council was the warden. In 1872, John Heslop was appointed clerk and township treasurer of Ancaster, and that is the position that he still held in 1891. And as far as anyone knew, Mr. Heslop was a very wealthy man. What Elizabeth Heslop and her daughter described to the reporter was horrifying, but it was their new reality. It was what they had experienced hours earlier inside that house in the dark. This is the story they told. Annie Heslop saw her father before he went to bed that night, sometime around 10 o'clock. Her parents, John and Elizabeth, shared the bedroom at the back side of the house, and Annie's room was on the front side. The bedrooms were on the upper floor. Elizabeth had woken up in the early hours of the morning, which happened to her often.

She looked at her watch and it said it was 1: 4:29

30 a. m., but her watch ran a little fast, so it was slightly early. She was trying to go back to sleep, but she heard a strange sound coming from downstairs. She shook John awake and asked him if he had heard that noise. He had bad hearing, so he didn't hear when the outer door was being smashed in, but he certainly heard when the door at the bottom of the stairs was smashed in. The head of the stairs that led to the kitchen was right outside their bedroom door, and there was a locked door at the bottom of the stairs. The door at the top of the stairs was kept shut. This is when Annie was awakened by her mother calling her name. There's someone in the house, she said. Annie went into the hall and saw her father standing there in his nightclothes. He and his wife had come out of their room. into the hallway with a candle. John opened the door and they could hear the sound of footsteps coming up the uncarpeted stairs. At that point, John could not see the men clearly. Just a few steps below where he stood, the stairs turned sharply at a right angle, forming a landing that blocked the view down into the lower part of the stairway. Holding the candle out in front of him, John called down the stairs and demanded to know who was there and what they wanted. From below, one of the men answered, 'It's all right. Go back to bed.' Almost immediately after that, the candle somehow went out and everything went dark. John and Elizabeth went back into their bedroom to relight the candle. While Elizabeth was dealing with the candle, John got a hold of a heavy wooden chair and made his way back to the top of the stairs. 78-year-old John Heslop began swinging that heavy chair at the intruders from the top of the stairs and managed to back them down far enough that John himself wound up standing on the landing, five steps down. Elizabeth had the candle lit, but she did not step back out into the hall. She remained just inside the bedroom door, too afraid to come out. Annie stood at her own bedroom door. Because the candlelight was obstructed by the doorframe, Annie could not see what took place on the landing of the stairs. Both women heard a scuffle. Mrs. Heslop heard her husband doing a lot of yelling and thought he was trying to frighten the unwelcome strangers. The women heard thuds. They heard wood splinter. They heard a fall. They heard a single gunshot. And they heard a short groan. Two men came up the stairs into the upper hall. Now both women could see the men clearly for the first time. They were wearing masks tied around their heads, made from women's scarves or clouds. These were very sheer pieces of fabric that they wrapped around their heads, but there was only one layer wrapped over their eyes so they could still see through the mesh without anyone being able to easily see their eyes. One of the men was taller than the other. The taller man lit a piece of candle that they brought with them, using the flame from the light Elizabeth was holding, and forced Elizabeth back into her bedroom. Annie tried to get past the men to go to her father, but one of the men stopped her and said, 'Go back to your room.' Instead of returning to her own room, Annie went into her mother's bedroom. Elizabeth urged her daughter to try to do something, to get help if she could. Annie's plan was to go outside and ring the harvest bell, hoping it would alert the neighbors. When Annie attempted to leave the room, the short man guarding them forced her back, pointing his pistol at her. As he did, he told her, 'There are four men, and we are watching the house.' He was holding a revolver in his left hand as he spoke. Andy then heard the tall man going through her belongings in her own bedroom. He took several pieces of jewelry made with diamonds and garnets. Eventually, he returned and demanded money. Where's the money? Elizabeth told him they didn't keep any money in the house. He replied, 'I know better.' Elizabeth answered, 'If you think there is money here, then go and find it.' The man ransacked the house. He went right down the front stairs this time and straight to the safe at the end of the hallway. They heard him open it, which they thought was strange considering it was always kept locked. They assumed he must have come with a skeleton key. After going through the safe, he went through all of the papers and a desk nearby, and he rifled through several other rooms and closets. When he had finished searching, he came back for his accomplice, and they left. When they were sure they were really gone, Elizabeth and Annie ran to John. The broken pieces of the chair were scattered along the stairs. On the landing, there were marks where the chair had struck as he fought in the dark, swinging that heavy chair furiously back and forth. No blood visible. Elizabeth believed at first that he might only be stunned, or maybe even chloroformed. John was lying huddled on the landing, face upward. They tried to revive him. They applied something to his face, hoping to bring him around. Elizabeth told Annie to run for help. As Annie left the house, Elizabeth opened the front of her husband's nightshirt and saw the gunshot wound in his chest. John was wearing only a flannel nightshirt, a light undershirt, and a nightcap. The shot had been fired at such close range that the fabric was burned. The bullet had entered his chest near the heart. Elizabeth remained with his body while Annie ran to the home of John Reading, who lived with his family 300 yards away. Annie knocked at the window and called out for help, telling him there had been burglars in the house. John Reading returned with her to the Heslop home, where he checked for a pulse and told the women that John Heslop was dead. John Reading then went to the home of Charles Capine, who lived down the road a quarter of a mile. He went to the village to get Dr. Brandon, Captain McGregor, Inspector J. H. Smith, and Constable John Cran and Constable Phillips. By the time the constables arrived at the Heslop house, it was close to 5 o'clock in the morning. Already had several people there. Neighbors had come in the dark. Horses stood tied along the fence. The women had been awake for hours, recounting what they could remember. Of the night over and over again. But outside the house, the night had left behind something the women could not see from inside. Snow. It had fallen earlier and lay undisturbed across the road, the driveway, and the surrounding grounds. And in that snow, the movements of the men who came to the Heslop house were preserved with remarkable clarity. The investigators did not have to imagine how the burglars arrived. The snow showed them. They could see where a rig had turned off the road and driven partway up the road. The long, winding lane toward the house. They could see where it had stopped, not at the house itself, but almost exactly halfway up. And the snow showed them where the rig had been backed into a side path, with the horse facing out toward the main road for a quick getaway. Near that spot, the snow was trampled heavily. Footprints showed where a man had stepped down from the path and stood beneath a spreading evergreen. He was pacing back and forth as if trying to keep warm while he waited. The pattern suggested that he had remained there for some time. Two other sets of footprints led away from the rig and up toward the house. They went first to the front door, where they stopped. Then the tracks circled around the house toward the rear. The men appeared to have examined the windows before finally reaching the back door. There, the snow showed where they had paused again, long enough to take stock of what they would do next. Nearby was a pile of green cordwood. From that point on, on, the trail became unmistakable. The tracks led directly to the kitchen door, where force had been used to break the lock, bashing the door in with a cordwood stick. From there, they continued inside, beyond the threshold, and over to the door that closed off the stairs that would lead to the second floor. This door had also been locked. The cordwood stick was again used to smash their way through. The cordwood stick was then left on the floor by the stove. Of this was key evidence. It meant the crime scene did not begin with the gunshot. It began outside with decisions made deliberately and in sequence. Where to stop, how to leave the horse, which door to avoid, and which one to break. The snow recorded all of it, and it raised immediate questions. This was not a random intrusion. The men had not stumbled onto the Heslop house. They had approached it with purpose, taken time to examine it, and entered knowing there was no quiet way inside. What investigators had to determine next was whether that purpose had been theft alone or whether violence had always been part of the plan. Yes, and the reason John Heslop was targeted was because taxes had just been collected. Whoever did this must have thought that the county treasurer actually had the tax money in their home. But it turns out that the tax collector would take the money straight to the bank, and they just gave the receipts to the treasurer for bookkeeping. Right. And so all they actually got from this robbery was Annie's jewelry. There had actually been a little purse with $40 in a drawer, but they completely missed that. Wow. And there was no money in the safe at all. The tracks did not end at the Heslop property, though. Once investigators had traced the route around the house and back to the waiting rig, they followed the wheel tracks. back down the driveway and onto the road. And from there, the trail continued, clear enough, at least at first, to suggest the direction the men had taken when they... fled. The rig's tracks led away from the Heslop home and toward Ancaster, and then beyond it. For miles they tracked a horse and vehicle moving at speed, the marks of iron shoes and wheels cutting into the surface of the snow. Investigators followed as far as they could, tracking the route through the countryside and into the city of Hamilton. By the time the trail reached the corner of Dundurn and King Streets, however, it became impossible to continue. The snow there was broken and it was confused by traffic. Other rigs, wagons, and early morning movement had obliterated any clear trace. Because this day, Tuesday, January 27th, was actually a market day in Hamilton, which would bring farmers from all over the county to sell their goods. Most of them would be leaving their farms very early in the morning, and there would be a lot of traffic heading into Hamilton. But the tracks from the Heslop home proved something undeniable. The crime had not stayed local. The information gathered from the tracks, the direction of travel, the proof that the men had entered Hamilton, it was assumed that the men probably traveled on toward Toronto. All of this information was passed on to the Hamilton police, and that is where the investigation met its first open criticism. Hamilton authorities were not pleased. According to later reporting, they were highly critical of the Ancaster investigators for not contacting them sooner. From their perspective, valuable time had been lost, time during which their officers in Hamilton could have been out looking for the men, watching all the main roads, and hopefully catching the robbers before they got away. At one point, a reporter asked Coroner Brandon of Ancaster why they hadn't contacted the Hamilton City Police immediately, and he said, 'Well, the real reason is that we didn't think of it. We'll do better next time.' The rebuke made one thing clear. Whatever control the local authorities believed they had in the early hours of the murder, it was already slipping. The men who killed John Heslop had not vanished into the countryside, but they more than likely took off to a bigger city. And from that moment on, the investigation was no longer just about reading tracks in the snow. This was going to be a lot more difficult than that, and they were going to need some outside help. Shiloh's Consumption Cure, this great cough cure, this successful consumption cure, is without a parallel in the history of medicine. All druggists are authorized to sell it on a positive guarantee, a test that no other cure can successfully stand. If you have a cough, sore throat, or bronchitis, use it, or it will cure you. If your child has the croup or whooping cough, use it promptly and relief is sure. If you dread that insidious disease, consumption, don't fail to use it. It will cure you or cost nothing. Ask your druggist for Shiloh's Cure. 50 cents and one dollar. The funeral took place on Friday, January 30th. The weather was harsh and freezing that day, but hundreds of people made the trek. In fact, there were between two and three people. 300 rigs stretched along the fences near the house. Inside the house were many friends who came to pay their sympathies to Elizabeth and Annie Heslop. By this time, three days after the murder, Elizabeth Heslop was not doing well. The loss of her husband caused such distress that she was physically weak. She was propped up by cushions in an easy chair, and her daughter Annie tenderly stroked her hair. Everyone was worried that the stress and strain of all of this would take Elizabeth's life. John's body was laid out in the parlor in a casket, which was covered with black cloth. Back in the late 1800s, it was still customary for white people in the Americas to follow traditional mourning rituals from Europe. Black cloths were usually draped over shiny things in the house, such as mirrors, and flowers were put all around the casket to mask the smell of the body. Family members also had to wear nothing but black for years after the death. But the length of time the rules of their wardrobes depended on whether the mourner was a man or a woman. There were some very strange rules of mourning back in Victorian England. There was actually a book published with all of the guidelines for proper mourning. Rules about it. I talk about this in my developmental psychology class, actually, when we get to the final chapter about death and dying. So it was actually very cool to see. Elements of those morning rituals talked about in these articles from 1891. There were also floral offerings. Basically, the florists had wire frames in the shapes of recognizable symbols, and the flowers would be attached to the wire frames. It was a very Victorian funeral tradition. One of these arrangements was a floral pillow with colored flowers spelling the word 'father'. Another was shaped like an anchor and had the words 'at rest', and the third was shaped like a sickle. In Victorian mourning symbolism, the anchor represented hope, the idea of being safely moored after the storms of life had ended. The sickle symbolized the harvest, or in this case, it symbolized a life whose work was finished. On his casket was a silver plate bearing the inscription, 'John Heslop, died January 27, 1891, aged 78 years and 6 months.' There was no funeral service at the house, just a viewing.

At 2: 19:37

30 p. m., the funeral procession began. The hearse went first, and then all of the rigs. Well over 250 buggies and sleighs followed. In behind. They made their way to St. John's Episcopal Church for a service where they sang, 'Surely he hath borne our grief and carried our sorrows. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.' Субтитры создавал DimaTorzok. Then there was a short lesson from Corinthians. When the service was done and the crowd was leaving the building, the organist played the dead march in Saul. The body was then buried in the graveyard next to the church building. The funeral was over, but the investigation was still in its infancy. Three days prior, when John Heslop had been murdered and the snow evidence had been observed, it became clear that they were going to need some help solving this puzzle. A man named Inspector J. H. Smith made the call. Inspector Smith was actually the school inspector, but he was also a very close personal friend of John Heslop's. Smith was also one of the first men to come to the school. To the house that morning after Charles Capine went into Ancaster to alert the authorities. Inspector Smith was elected as the foreman of the coroner's jury for this case, and it was was he who made a call to Toronto on the day of the murder, the 27th, to ask that the government assign a detective to this case. Yes, they had good detectives in Ancaster and Hamilton, but Inspector Smith wanted it to be handled even higher up than that. Detective William D. Greer was assigned to the case, and he made his way to the crime scene by Wednesday the 28th. Also on the 28th, Coroner Dr. Brandon got the County Council to agree to offer a reward of $300 for the apprehension and conviction of these murderous scoundrels. The township of Ancaster would throw in another $200, bringing this to a $500, 000 reward. Unfortunately, Canada did not retain inflation information prior to the year 1914, so we can't figure out exactly how much 500 Canadian dollars in 1891 would be equivalent to in 2026. But if it had been 1914, then that 500 Canadian dollars would have the purchasing power of about $13, 764. 22 in 2026 Canadian dollars. Converting that to U. S. dollars, it would be equal to about $10, 122. 80. Yeah, I was bummed when I found out that we wouldn't be able to convert those numbers perfectly. But just know that it would be more than that because 1914 was 23 years. What I found out was prices were pretty stable and actually slightly deflationary in Canada through the 1890s, but inflation began steadily around the year 1900. But other than that, we just don't know what it would convert to. So Detective Greer from Toronto was described as a clever and energetic officer. The papers often talked about how young and good looking he was. years old, and they said he had rosy cheeks and a blonde mustache. He was sharp as a steel trap, they said. On top of that, he was really good at keeping his opinions to himself. He wouldn't overshare anything with any news reporters. I'm sure they hated that. And yet he was good at extracting all of the information. He could get from anyone he was talking to. The people of Ancaster Township and the surrounding areas were confident that Detective Greer, this very competent and capable detective from Toronto, would be able to solve this mystery in no time. But days went by without any word. On February 5th, the reward had been increased from $500 Canadian dollars to $700. This brought wannabe detectives out of the woodwork, even a Pinkerton detective from Chicago, all of them trying to earn that reward money. The Pinkerton National Detective Agency had been founded in 1850 by Alan Pinkerton. By 1891, the agency was managed by his sons, William and Robert. When it was first founded, they focused on railway theft and train robbers. But by 1891, they had expanded. By the early 1890s, Pinkertons were primarily hired by industrial... cheerleaders and railroad tycoons as private security guards and spies to infiltrate unions and break labor strikes. The agency was so large— with 2, 000 active agents and 30, 000 reserves— that it was considered more powerful than the U. S. Army. The state of Ohio finally outlawed the Pinkertons because they became increasingly involved in violent clashes with workers during labor strikes. Their motto was, 'We never sleep,' and that's what gave rise to the term private eye. And it was the Pinkertons who maintained the very first criminal database known as the Rogues Gallery, which included mugshots and detailed files on criminals. And that is all so fascinating. I had never heard of the Pinkertons before, and they had such a big influence on what we now think of as detective work. You had never heard of them until this? Yeah. Really? I mean, I don't know. Maybe I had, but I didn't, like, know anything about him. Yeah, that's just surprising. Well, fun facts. In 1890... about 300 armed Pinkertons attacked some striking steel workers and killed multiple people, which finally led to Congress passing the Anti-Pinkerton Act in 1893. Through the early 20th century, their detective roles were absorbed into public law enforcement, and then agencies like the FBI developed. In 1999, the company was acquired by a Swedish security firm, and today it operates under names like Pinkerton Consulting and Investigations, or simply Pinkerton. They offer private security and risk services worldwide. Wow. You know, there's some really cool history in this episode. Well, one of those Pinkerton detectives made his way from Chicago to Ancaster, and he was certain that he would have the case solved in no time, but that didn't work out either. So Detective Greer, he was still working on the case. And he actually had found a few residents of Ancaster who had heard a horse and buggy drive through.

Around 11: 26:35

45 p. m. on the night of January 26th. And they heard it come back through again a couple hours later. And they knew that it was the same one because... the horse had, quote, forged. So I looked this up. What does that mean? And apparently it means that it was making this strange clicking noise with its shoes. And that's all I could find. So John Reading, the man who Annie has slophead run to get, had actually heard the buggy speed past his house about five minutes before Annie had arrived. And then his mother, who lived a bit further down the road, she had also heard them go galloping past. And a woman who mans a toll booth a few miles away awoke to the sound of a buggy passing through very early that morning. She got up to collect their toll, but they didn't stop to pay. She could see there were two or three men in the buggy, and they were in a hurry. By February 14th, the reward had increased again. Mrs. Elizabeth Heslop had offered up another $300, bringing that $700 up to $1, 000. But on the 14th, the Ontario government... also offered $1, 000 Canadian dollars on top of that. This brought it up to a whopping $2, 000 Canadian dollars, which was quite a chunk of change. In 1891. Remember, since we can only go back as far as 1914 for inflation rates, $2, 000 Canadian dollars in 1914 would have the purchasing power of $1, 000. of $55, 056. 87 today. And in US dollars, that would be $40, 491. 18. You'd think that much money would get people talking, but still no one came forward. Then, on February 28th, a month after the murder, the Dominion of Cannon... the whole country itself under the rule of Queen Victoria was offering a free pardon to any person or persons other than the actual murderer who would give information that would lead to the arrest and conviction of the murderer. So you're saying the accomplices could get off scot-free if they came forward? Exactly. And they could cash in on that $2, 000 reward. So surely there would be some movement now, right? They're like, okay, I mean, just... Maybe the guy who was standing with the horse, maybe he'll come forward and turn in the two guys who went in the house, right? He'll get $2, 000 and he won't even get in trouble. But no, there was nothing. So by the end of October, the people of Ancaster were very unhappy with the lack of progress made. It had been nine months. And, I mean, Detective Greer... he was a busy man, and because he worked for the government of Ontario, he had other cases that he was also working on. The people of Ancaster thought that they ought to have a detective who could give his entire undivided attention to the case, but that just wasn't feasible. However, Detective Greer was still working on the case. He was just a quiet sort of guy. I mean, he was a guy who kept things close to his chest and he wouldn't reveal too much of anything to anyone. He did make a statement to a reporter, though. He said that he was surprised that the $2, 000 reward and the free pardon didn't make the third guy, the one who stayed with the horse, turn on his buddies. I suppose there is honor, even amongst such people. Greer really was good at keeping secrets, though. On November 19th, he arrested two indigenous men over at Niagara Falls at the border of Canada and the United States. Their names were Samuel Goosey and George Douglas, both members of the Tuscagora tribe. Goosey was said to have been born in 1866, which would have made him 25 in 1891, but the papers consistently said that he was 22. He had been educated at one of those ethnocidal Indian boarding schools and spoke perfect English. Now, I'm confused about George Douglas's age because one article said he was about 20, but then there was another article that referred to his married adult daughter. So he could not have been 20. So unless they... Were confused and it was actually a sister of his, but I don't know. Douglas spoke broken English and so Goosey often acted as Douglas's interpreter. But it turns out Douglas could get along pretty well without him. It was just kind of a struggle. Now, people heard of this arrest, and there was talk that these two were the ones who had murdered John Heslop. But Detective Greer had left for Toronto right after he arrested them, and he wouldn't talk to anyone. So a reporter tracked him down at his apartment in Toronto around midnight and got him to open the door. And Greer would not even admit that he had arrested anyone. And he emphatically denied that there were any developments whatsoever in the Heslop case. But were there any developments? Yes, actually, there were some very big developments. So officially, George Douglas was wanted on charges for harness stealing from the Onondaga Reserve, and Sam Goosey was being held as a material witness. While Douglas would face charges for the harness stealing, it was kind of just an excuse to hold the two in jail. See, Greer had been weaving a web of evidence around these two, as well as a couple other men, for months now. Okay, let's shift gears a little. I need to introduce you to the Bartram family. William and Grace Bartram had moved to Canada from England and settled in Middleport, Canada. William had gotten into the horse business and was doing well for the family. They had eight children. John Alfred Bartram was the third child, born in 1842. John was said to have been an exceptionally smart boy, but right out of his teens, he fell in with the wrong crowd. His group of friends eventually became a gang of thugs. John's older sister, Jane, married a man by the name of Thomas David Lottridge, and they lived on a 100-acre farm in Binbrook, Ontario. Together, they had eight children. John Bartram himself married a woman by the name of Elizabeth Dora Dalrymple, but she went by Betsy, and they settled in the state of Michigan. Together, they had seven children, two sons and five daughters. John Bartram couldn't seem to keep out of trouble, and by 1889, he was wanted by the authorities in Michigan, so he fled back to Canada. But a few months after going back to Canada, he was facing charges for cattle stealing, and he disappeared again. From 1889 to 1891, he was living the life of a man on the run, staying out of sight as much as possible, keeping his head down, and hiding out with any family who would shield him from police. The rest of John's siblings were upstanding members of the community, but blood was thicker than water. They all knew he was wanted by the authorities, but they wouldn't dream of telling anyone where he was. In the year 1891, John Bartram was 49 years old, but looked much older. He had a gray beard, graying hair, and something was terribly wrong with his right eye. He had cancer, he said. It had been operated on years earlier with a cancerous growth removed, but it had grown back and he could hardly see out of it. November 1891, specifically, Bartram was staying with two of his brothers in the family cabin in Middleport, Ontario, where they lived with their mother up until her passing the previous February. John Bartram wasn't the only rebel in the family, though. He had a nephew who seemed to enjoy life on the wild side, too. John's sister, Jane Lottridge, had a son named John Walter Lottridge. He was her second-born son. In 1891, he was 28 years old. John Lottridge was still living at home with his parents and several siblings on the 100-acre farm in Binbrook. It was a dilapidated-looking cabin with only two bedrooms. The barns and the outhouses were in better shape than the house itself. So here's what happened. About three weeks after the murder of John Heslop had taken place, a very drunk George Douglas was at the home of Tom Young and his wife in Middleport. Douglas had been there a few times already since the murder, but this time, when he was hanging out with Mrs. Young in the barn, he wound up telling her that he had something to do with the Heslop murder. After confessing a very detailed story to her, she went and got her husband, Tom, and Douglas repeated the story. He had said that he and Goosey went along with John Bartram and John Lottridge down to the Heslop home because Bartram had told them they'd easily be able to get $500 or $600 from the taxpayer's money. They just had to be willing to ride a long way in the middle of the night and help him rob this old man. So he said that they'd gotten there with masks, and Lottridge stayed with the horse and buggy halfway down the driveway. Douglas said that Goosey used the stick, and he's the one who broke open the back door. And then Douglas and Bartram went upstairs. Douglas said that he had been hit in the head with the chair so he knocked old man Heslop down and then Bartram shot him dead. Douglas said that all they got was about $40 and some jewelry and that Lottridge got to keep the jewelry. Tom Young and his wife didn't go to the authorities, even though there was a hefty reward offered, because they weren't really sure if they should believe it or not. But Tom Young did confront Bartram the next time he saw him. And Bartram said, 'That was complete nonsense.' You know, you could put money on it. You know, you can bet your money that that did not happen. So Tom Young also spoke to George Douglas' brother, Isaac Douglas. And Isaac was equally convinced that that had to have been a made-up story. However, shortly after Douglas had shared this story with the Youngs in Middleport, Douglas and Goosey were over at a hotel in their indigenous community of Onondaga. Onondaga, which is six miles west of Middleport, and they were having a conversation. The hotel keeper, Tom Fearman, overheard this conversation. They were talking about the pros and cons of the murder. Tom Fearman did go to the authorities, and that is how Detective Greer was tipped off to the whole thing. Dr. Williams, pink pills for pale people, are not a purgative medicine. They are a blood builder, tonic, and reconstructor, as they supply in a condensed form the substances actually needed to enrich the blood, curing all diseases. Coming from poor and watery blood or from vitiated humors in the blood, and also invigorate and build up the blood and system when broken down by over work, mental worry, disease, excesses, and indiscretions. They have a specific action on the sexual system of both men and women, restoring lost vigor and correcting all irregularities and suppressions. Every man who finds his mental faculties dull or failing, or his physical power flagging, should take these pills. They will restore his lost energies, both physical and mental. Every woman should take them. They cure all suppressions and irregularities, which inevitably entail sickness when neglected. Young men should take these pills. They will cure the results of youthful bad habits and strengthen the system. Young women should take them. These pills will make them regular. For sale by all druggists or will be sent upon receipt of price. 50 cents per box. By addressing the Dr. William Med Company. Brockville, Ontario. Now they just needed to round everybody up without tipping them off first. Bartram had been on the run since he was charged with cattle stealing in 1889. He'd been caught with the skins and carcasses of some cattle that had been stolen, and he told the police at the time that he had purchased them from the indigenous man Samuel Goosey at the end of October 1889. He said he paid money for them, and he swore that he hadn't known they were stolen. Well, Bartram told the police that he would be able to get them the receipt to prove he had paid money for those cows. The police agreed to meet with him at a hotel the following day. So that he could, you know, produce this receipt. Well, Bartram never showed up and he had fled back to Michigan. So ever since then, the authorities couldn't seem to find him. And he would just slip back and forth over the border undetected. Lottridge would be very easy to find. He wasn't currently wanted for any charges, and they knew that he was living with his parents in Binbrook. Goosey and Douglas. Now, they were not on the Onondaga Reservation in Canada. They were both across the border in New York on the Lewiston Reserve. They would often go back and forth to find work over there. So the plan was to initially arrest Bartram for the cattle stealing and arrest Goosey and Douglas for the harness stealing, and then they could, you know, hold them in jail while Greer worked on gathering more evidence for the Heslop murder. Well, extradition from the United States can be pretty slow. I mean, there was a lot of paperwork involved. After Greer arrested them on November 11th without any extradition paperwork, he simply said that that he and the American authorities had worked together to get them across the border. He wouldn't yet divulge how they went about it, but he said that he believed it was perfectly legal. Yes, it was, if drugging and kidnapping is legal, you know. Later on, Goosey said that he and Douglas had been given something to drink because the officers were giving whiskey to the Indigenous people to get them to answer questions. Goosey said after taking that drink, the next thing he remembers is waking up in a cell in Brantford, Ontario. Douglas said the same thing. Yeah, I feel like they should have been sued for that. But I don't know if indigenous people really had the ability to sue over things like that back then. Or, you know, if they would have been taken seriously. I have no idea. I mean, they kidnap them all the time and put them in schools. That is true. That is true. That's the ethnocidal. It was genocide. White people suck. Okay. Yes, we do. Yes. So they have Goosey and Douglas behind bars on November 11th. And what nobody knows is that they've had John Bartram behind bars since November 9th. That one remained completely quiet. So it had been decided that they ought to make the arrest. Sergeant Adams, County Constable William Hunter, and Deputy Elijah Thomas were given the task of going to get Bartram. On the 9th, they went out to the home in Middleport, where John Bartram's brother, brothers, Hank and William, were living. When they knocked on the door and asked if he was there, the brothers said no. The officers made entry anyway and found John lying on a bed, drunk as a skunk. John Bartram was then arrested for cattle stealing. He said to Constable Adams, 'Look here, now you've got me solid. But if you will let me off this charge of cattle stealing, I will give you some good pointers about the fellows who murdered old man Heslop at Ancaster last winter.' The officer said he couldn't help him, so then he asked if he could talk to Constable Hunter, and he said basically the same thing, only this time he told Hunter that he could also tell him where to find the missing jewelry. John Bartram was taken to the Brantford Jail, located in Brant County. When questioned about his whereabouts on the night of January 26th and the early morning of January 27th, Bartram said he had been playing cards with friends until about 4 o'clock in the morning, and then he left his brother's home in Middleport to take a half-court of wood to Hamilton. Remember, the killers had been tracked as far as Hamilton, and it was true that people had seen John Bartram in Hamilton that morning. Bartram was set to go to trial for cattle stealing, and his nephew John Lottridge was subpoenaed. Lottridge made his way west to Brantford from his home in Binbrook. It was a 40-mile trip. As he sat in his hotel's bar, he was arrested by police on a charge of first-degree murder. He was the first of the four that was arrested on charges directly related to the Heslop crime. This arrest took place on Thursday, December 10th, 1891. When he heard what the charge was, he was absolutely speechless. Tears welled up in his eyes and he began to shake. He swore he had no knowledge of the act itself and he had nothing to do with it whatsoever. Lottridge said that he was away from his home in Binbrook that night with a horse and buggy, but he had gone to Cayuga to visit his lady love, Carrie Humphrey. Three weeks after John Lottridge was arrested, something crazy happened. George Douglas, the Indigenous man who had told the story to Mr. and Mrs. Tom Young just three weeks after the murder, he made a full confession. It was December 31st. It was during the preliminary examination for Bartram's cattle stealing trial, because, still at this time, nobody, aside from John Lottridge, had actually been charged with the murder. Douglas had actually been sentenced to three months for the harness stealing. So he had actually already had his little trial. So he had been to Central Prison, but they brought him back so that he could testify against John Bartram at his preliminary examination. The night before, Douglas had asked Detective Greer what that proclamation meant, the one about the free pardon. And when he heard that he'd get a free pardon if he turned in the person who actually fired the shot, he decided to go for it. Well, when Goosey found out Douglas admitted to it, Goosey decided he would do the same. He didn't want to go down for his role in the crime if there was a free pardon up for grabs. So John Lottridge was then told that both Douglas and Goosey had made full confessions. He was told that he would get a full pardon if he would confess to his role in the murder committed by his uncle. Lottridge, however, still insisted that he absolutely had nothing to do with any of this. When Goosey made his confession, he said that on Monday, January 26th, he and Douglas got up to Middleport to see John Bartram in the early afternoon. They talked to him a bit, and then the two indigenous men went over to the home of Tom Young and his wife. They stayed there until about 9 p. m. Goosey then went back to Bartram's house. Douglas had stopped by a bakery to get some cakes and then joined Goosey at Bartram's house. Lottridge was also there at the time when he arrived, and they sat in a back room. Bartram said he knew of a job that could get them five or six hundred dollars but it would be a bit of a drive and Goosey said that sounded like a plan. They drank whiskey and they played dominoes. Bartram told them to talk quietly so they wouldn't wake the others in the house. Goosey saw two young women, which were Bartram's nieces, but he didn't see any other men there. When Bartram said it was time to go, the four of them went outside. He said there was a horse hitched to a wagon outside, and the wagon had just one seat, but a board was placed behind the seat so that the indigenous men could sit on it. Then they drove east, he thought, for what felt like a couple hours. He said they continued drinking along the way. They stopped at one point and Bartram told Douglas to hop out and grab a stick from a woodpile beside the road. He said they might need it later. They continued on a bit further. They stopped again, and Bartram took out the mesh cloths. Bartram wrapped one around his own face, and he gave the other to Douglas. Finally, they came to the gate at the end of the drive that led to the Heslop house. They drove up only halfway, and then Bartram told them to get out. Lottridge stayed with the rig while Bartram, Goosey, and Douglas walked up the drive to the house. He said they tried the front door, then Douglas went around to the north side while Bartram and Goosey went to the south. Bartram was trying the lock, but Goosey said to move back, and he rammed the door with a cordwood stick, and Douglas had come back around by then. Bartram told Goosey to stand outside and watch the door, and if anybody came, give a whistle. Then Bartram and Douglas went inside. Goosey heard them break another door, and after a while, he heard a gun go off. At that point, Goosey said he ran back to the rig, and he told Lottridge that somebody had been shot. Goosey said he thought it was probably, you know, either Bartram or Douglas who had been shot. So Lottridge said, 'Oh my gosh, you know, jump in the buggy' and they left. He said they drove about a quarter of a mile away before they decided to circle back, and when they got back to the gate, they saw Bartram and Douglas. Lottridge asked Bartram if anyone had been hurt, and Bartram said no, and then they left. Bartram had made a comment, Goosey said. He said, 'I bet that old fellow won't be hitting anybody else in the head with a chair again. Ha ha ha ha.' And anyway, they drove for about an hour and a half, he said. And then they stopped at a barn. They didn't know whose barn it was, but they put the horse and buggy in there. And then Lottridge went to the door of the house and asked for some food. Lottridge brought them some bread and meat. And they sat and ate it. They were there for between 15 and 20 minutes. And then they continued on toward Middleport. But Bartram stopped about four miles out from Middleport, and he told Goosey and Douglas to get out and walk the rest of the way. So the two walked together for a little while and then they split up. Douglas went to his brother's, Isaac Douglas, and Goosey went to his sister's. Her name was Lucy. Wow, so they got it solved, right? Well, not quite. So, of course, Lottridge and Bartram were denying all of this, up and down, but I mean, it sounds pretty solid. However... Multiple people only saw two pairs of footprints going up to the house in the snow. If Goosey and Douglas were telling the truth, there should be three. Indeed. Nonetheless, that didn't seem to matter. The prosecution, or the Crown as they call it in Canada, was perfectly happy hanging Lottridge and Bartram on that confession. And besides, multiple people had overheard jailhouse conversations in which Lottridge and Bartram said to each other things like, 'Who told?' And 'if you keep your mouth shut, they can't do anything to us.' And even conversations between Lottridge and Goosey in which Lottridge said things like, 'It's only the four of us who know about it. Just keep your mouth shut and they can't prove anything.'So the case went to trial in March of 1892, and it was held in Hamilton. This was an incredibly popular trial. By the dozens watched every day. And the crowds were so absurdly immense in the courthouse corridors that people's clothes wound up being ripped and buttons would be rubbed completely off their coats as they tried to like shuffle past each other to get to the courtroom doors first. Excuse me. Pardon me. They actually had to, like, ban people from being at a certain entryway because the judge and, you know, all of the prosecutors. Everybody, they couldn't even get into the courtroom. It was very difficult. So they had to crack down. Anyway, the prosecution put on a very... very convincing case. They had people backing up everything Goosey said. His sister testified about what time he got there that morning and how tired he had been from being up the whole night. night before. Then you had Tom Young and his wife telling about Douglas' full confession just three weeks after the murder. Throughout the proceedings, day after day, Bartram and Lottridge sat in the prisoner's dock, listening. Bartram had to keep rubbing his cancerous, weepy eye. Ew. It looked absolutely horrific. I see your face, Olivia. Yeah, it was nasty. It was so swollen, and it was seeping, and so he had to continually wipe it. And... Your face is... Just precious right now. The reporters suggested that he was rubbing it on purpose to make it look really bad so that he would get sympathy. I know. Oh, I know. He also sat like slightly sideways so that his left eye and ear could like point straight at the witness stand so he could hear everything and see everything because his right eye like hardly even opened. Just, I mean, the way they described it was just so disgusting. Um, anyway. So yeah, some of the testimony against him absolutely enraged him. And he had a few outbursts, yelling stuff like, 'How much of the reward money are you getting for that one?' But when it was time for the defense to present their case, it all got very confusing, at least for me. The defense attorneys kept assuring everyone that they weren't worried at all about how things were going, even though the crown brought in witness after witness to corroborate Goosey's confession. And when they took the floor, I... quickly found out why. The defense was simply to prove the alibi for all four of the parties. And one by one, they went through and called witness. After witness who testified as to where the four men actually were on the night of January 26th to 27th. And if these were accurate, the men were not even in the same towns. A word to the wise. Are your children pale and restless at night? Feverish at times and a hacking cough. If so, get at once a bottle of Nurse Hill's Worm Syrup, and you will never regret it, as it is a positive cure for worms in children. McGregor and Park's Drugstore is the place where it is sold. Let's start with Sam Goosey and George Douglas. In the fall of 1890, there was an event on the Onondaga Reservation called the Indian Fair. During the festivities, a fight had broken out. Goosey was in big trouble for this fight, and he got 80 days in jail. To avoid his own sentence, Douglas slipped across the border to Lewiston, New York. George Douglas' nephew, Nelles Douglas, soon joined him. Then they got word that Nelles' sister, Katie White, was gravely ill and likely wouldn't make it. Nelles didn't have money to get back to Onondaga, but he needed to get back there ASAP. George was able to get $1. 90 and gave it to Nelles. Nelles made it back to Onondaga, but his sister Katie White was already dead. The funeral was Thursday, January 22nd. Goosey was at the funeral in Canada with Nelles Douglas, but George was still back in New York. Two days later, Nellis went back to New York and was met by George Douglas. That next week, there were two funerals for people in Lewiston. George was a pallbearer at the funeral of Mrs. Hewitt, which took place on January 27th. That was the same day that John Heslop was murdered. Dozens of Indigenous people were brought from New York to testify, and they all placed George Douglas in New York on the day of the murder in Canada. Dozens more came from the Onondaga Reserve in Canada and swore that Douglas had left after the Indian Fair at the end of 1890 and he didn't return to Canada until spring of 1891. And remember, the murder happened in January of 1891, so they're swearing that he wasn't even in the country for that whole time. Everyone was using the funeral of Katie White as their reference point for dates of things that happened. And soon the whole town of Hamilton had essentially turned it into a meme. They'd heard the question, 'Were you at Katie White's funeral?' So many times that the town's folks started asking the question to each other flippantly just to be funny. 'Were you at Katie White's funeral?' And according to an article I found from 1946, a full 34 years after the trial, that question stuck around as a town-wide inside joke for several years. Now, Goosey's alibi was handled next. Goosey was seen at a logging bee, which I'm not exactly sure what that is, but he was seen at a logging bee. On the reservation in Onondaga until after 5 o'clock p. m. on the Monday after Katie White's funeral. So that would have been January 26th. or the day before the murder. Now, this is the day that Goosey claimed to have been in Middleport with George Douglas drinking at the home of Tom Young and his wife. and then going to John Bartram's home where he stayed for hours before committing the crime. If he was at this logging bee, then how could he have been in Middleport? I found out what a logging bee is. What is it? This is AI,

so that's why it sounds like this: 56:05

A logging bee was a 19th-century social gathering in North America where neighbors, similar to a barn raising or quilting bee, gathered to help clear felled trees and logs from a settler's land to prepare it for farming. It was a collaborative, multi-day community work event often involving teams of horses or oxen. Oh, that's cool. Well, also, I know from other testimony that at the end of it, there was a dance. After the logging bee. And the violinist did not show up. So a lot of them were disappointed. Rats. Maybe they were the true criminal. Maybe. Maybe it was the violinist. You're onto something. I think we've solved this one. The violinist in the stairwell with the bow. Yeah. All right. So one of John Bartram's nieces, Nancy Grace Lottridge, lived in the home where John Bartram was arrested. It's the same home where Goosey said they were playing dominoes all night. It turns out that Nancy Grace and her sister, Fanny, were up playing dominoes and a game called Teasel that night. Their uncle, Aley Weaver, and their cousins, Annie and Thomas, had come over to play as well. Nancy's ailing grandmother, Grace Bartram, also lived there, as did John's two brothers, William and Hank. Nancy, when shown the two indigenous men in the courtroom, said she had never even met Goosey before. She had met George Douglas long before that night, like he'd been at the house like two years prior, but Goosey had never been in their home and she had never even seen his face. That night, John Bartram actually went to bed early, she said. It turns out that John's son, Albert Bartram, and Albert's wife, Alice, had just bought and moved into their very first home over in Hamilton, Ontario. Albert had sent a letter to one of his Lottridge cousins, Thomas Lottridge, and asked if Thomas could bring him a cord of wood. When Thomas Lottridge told his uncle John Bartram about this, John said he'd like to take his son a cord of wood as well. Well, ain't that dandy. That's probably because his whole family back in Michigan had disowned him due to his criminal ways. He was probably a little bit sad that his son hadn't gone to him first. That's what I was thinking, too. Because, yeah, Albert had moved back to Canada. So that was cool. But, yeah, he probably wanted to mend that relationship. So he was planning to take a half-cord of wood to his son's house in Hamilton, which they said was about 20 miles from that Bartram home in Middleport. The problem... was that John Bartram was a wanted man. He couldn't move around freely in the daytime. He would have to leave under the cover of darkness. So, according to his niece, who was on the stand, she said that when the game of dominoes was winding down, Hank Bartram went outside to load up the buggy with a half cord of wood loaded sideways and with a bundle of hay on top of it. It was around 2 o'clock a. m. when Hank loaded it. John got up at 4 a. m. and left for Hamilton. He took a cream-colored horse that was a bit lame, and it walked a little slower than molasses in January. Now, he was seen by multiple people along the way, but it was so dark that they weren't able to identify him. One man who saw him actually assumed it was Hank Bartram, so he later tested that it was Hank, not John, but it was dark and he didn't actually see his face. John arrived in Hamilton around mid-morning on Tuesday. After unloading the wood at his son's house, he went into town and came back with a newspaper that broke the news of John Heslop's murder. John stayed one night at his son's home. And on Wednesday, his nephew, Thomas Lottridge, arrived with his load of wood for Albert. Then John Bartram headed back to Middleport. Everyone who was at the house on the night in question testified to that story. As for John Lottridge, he was simply at home. The night before, he'd been in Cayuga with his girlfriend, and he came home on that Monday, and he was having a flare-up of his rheumatism, so his mother had to put some liniment on him. He shared a bed with his brother, Thomas Lottridge, that same night, and then Monday night is supposedly the night that the four prisoners had taken off to Ancaster to rob the Heslop home. But according to all of these witnesses, these folks were all otherwise engaged. When the defense rested, the Crown had a chance to redirect. They brought up a Mr. Hewitt from Lewiston, New York. It was his wife who had been buriedon January 27th, and he swore that George Douglas was not at the funeral and was not a pallbearer. He named off all six pallbearers, actually, as well as where they stood along the casket. Detective Greer got on the stand and pointed out how their original stories had all changed. Lottridge initially said he was with his girlfriend on the night of the murder, and Bartram had said he was playing cards with friends all night, but there were no cards played at all, and Bartram didn't even participate in the game of dominoes. Greer also pointed out that when he questioned John Lottridge's father about his son's whereabouts, he said that he had no idea where John had been that night because he was not a good boy and had not stayed home. Not a good boy. He was with his lady love. Overall, there had been 43 witnesses called for the crown and 73 witnesses called for the defense.

It was 12: 1:01:33

20 on the eighth day of the trial when Mr. Nesbitt, John Lottridge's defense attorney, began his closing remarks. Mr. Nesbitt pointed out that the crown had hired criminals to try to get jailhouse confessions out of Bartram, which they did. And all of them did say that they had gotten confessions. But Mr. Nesbitt's point was that you can't trust people like this, especially when two men's lives are on the line. He also pointed out that Detective Greer not to include other pieces of evidence that would actually point away from these four men. For example, there was a rig that passed through a toll gate five miles south of the murder early that morning, not going in the direction that Goosey claimed they went. He pointed out that the Heslop women heard both of the robbers speak, and neither of them spoke broken English or asked for an interpreter, which would have been the case if George Douglas had actually been one of them. Then, lawyer Heyd, who was the defense attorney for John Bartram, addressed the jury. He pointed out that Goosey and Douglas actually had different stories. So Douglas had... actually said that they took two sticks from a wood pile on the side of the road before getting to the house. He said that he picked one up and then Bartram had also picked one up. And they both had them in the buggy, and they carried them up together to the house. In reality, the snow evidence showed that the piece of cordwood used to break open the door had been taken from the wood pile next to the door that it was used on. There were no other sticks found discarded anywhere on the property. And if Goosey's story and timeline are correct,

then he would have gotten out of the buggy around 7: 1:03:13

22 am on the 27th and would have had to walk 11. 5 miles to his sister's house by 8 or 9 o'clock that morning. Mr. Heyd's address didn't finish until the ninth day of the trial, which was Thursday, March 24, 1892. It was so powerful that the crowd began to applaud when he was done, but Judge Rose put a stop to that pretty quickly. Next, it was the Crown's turn to address the jury. Mr. Crerer was representing the Crown. He said that, of course, there are only criminals who can vouch for the bad things Bartram does. Birds of a feather flock together, after all. They are his only associates and there is no honor among thieves. The crown also said that it would have been impossible for Goosey to have described the interior of the Bartram home as perfectly as he had if he had never been there. He also said that they were playing dominoes that night. How would Goosey have known that? He points out that Goosey said he ran when he heard the shot, and then he and Lottridge drove off for a short distance before coming back. Why throw in that detail if none of it had even happened? The defense went to Lewiston and found lots of people to say Douglas had been at Mrs. Hewitt's funeral as a pallbearer, but they purposely did not talk to her husband. Wouldn't he know better than anyone? When the Crown got her husband's take and he named all six pallbearers, none of them were Douglas. Then the alibi placing Goosey at the reservation on the first Monday after Katie White's funeral. Well, Mrs. Tobiko said that she was at the logging bee and the dance that followed, but she got really sick and called for a doctor. Well, they talked to the doctor, and the doctor's book showed that he actually saw her on February 9th, which was was the third Monday after the funeral. That makes everyone's story about Goosey's whereabouts wrong by two whole weeks. Mr. Crearer was done. The judge made his own address to the jury. It sounded like he really believed the men were guilty, and he dealt sledgehammer blows at the defense. Bartram was freaking out over in the prisoner's dock, beads of perspiration on his forehead as he gripped the bars in front of him. The jury began deliberations on Thursday, March 24, 1892,

at 5: 1:05:39

50 p. m. By 8 p. m., the crowd outside the courthouse had swelled to about 1, 000 people. Like, this was a huge deal.

It was9: 1:05:49

25 when the jury said they had reached a verdict. What is your verdict, gentlemen? Not guilty, my lord. Not guilty. The jurors explained later that they were torn over whether Douglas was really in Lewiston or in Canada, because there were just so many witnesses saying that he was at Katie White's funeral, and thus in Canada, a few days before the murder, but then so many more saying that they hadn't seen him there. And still more saying that he'd actually been at the Lewiston Reservation in New York. And since they couldn't figure out which people to believe, they decided to give the accused the benefit of the doubt, and they went with not guilty. The crowd outside was not happy. What? Right after the verdict, Goosey was asked what he thought about it.'It's a damn shame. It is terrible. Those are the right men, and the police need not look for anyone else.' When asked about the indigenous people who came over to swear that George Douglas was at the Lewiston Reserve, Goosey had this to say.'They came under the belief that they were going to help Douglas and me out of a hole. And I hear they say now that if they had known they were going to help the white men, they would never have come to swear in court.' When he was asked why he had decided to confess in the first place, Goosey said, 'Well, when John Bartram tried to put the cattle stealing on to me by saying, 'I bought them from Sam Goosey and paid my hard money for them,' I was afraid to trust him and I wanted to save myself. I was afraid he would say me and Douglas went into the house and shot the man. You bet they would have hung us on such evidence.' A few years later, in July of 1895, the war correspondent for the Hamilton Spectator caught up with Goosey again. He had joined the military and was a private in the 37th Regiment, and he had this to say.'John Bartram's livin' Down in Middleport. He's an awful-looking sight. They had to cut his eye out where the cancer was. And he's getting very feeble, though he thinks he's cured now. Douglas is down on the reserve. He doesn't belong to the regiment. Lottridge is at home in Binbrook, I guess. I've been here at four or five camps.' I couldn't find a whole lot of follow-up on George Douglas. However, in August of 1892, so about five months after the trial, I saw that he was back over on the Lewiston Reservation in New York, but he was in police custody over there for theft. C'est la vie! Bartram had been found guilty of the cattle stealing before the murder trial began, and he was sentenced to serve 23 months in jail. By this time, he still had 18 months left, but Central Prison wouldn't take him because of his nasty cancerous eye. I wouldn't either. That prison was for hard labor, and he wasn't going to be able to do much of that. By that July, his eye had been removed, and he was able to be transferred to Central Prison by November of 1892. Bartram was released from prison on November 10, 1893. In June of 1895, he saw Constable Hunter, who had arrested him for cattle stealing back in 1891, and he unleashed a verbal lashing upon him. He was then arrested and charged with "insulting language." Then, on March 30, 1898, Bartram was again arrested for cattle stealing from a butcher at Caledonia. On October 4, 1901, Bartram was arrested in Lapeer County, Michigan, for stealing Joseph Bohnsack's horse. For this, he was sentenced to two years, but on July 17th of 1902, he was pardoned because he had cancer and was not doing well. Bartram died on January 12, 1906, in Brant County, Ontario, and we could not find any burial details on him. Yeah, I couldn't find an obituary for him or anything. Because he doesn't deserve one. I'm going to write a cool memorial thing for him anyway on Find a Grave. So, immediately upon being found not guilty on March 24th, John Lottridge was placed under arrest on the charge of burglary. If they couldn't get him for the murder of John Lottridge, on Heslop, they were sure going to try to get him for burglarizing the Heslop home. Well, a week or so later, on April 1st, Lottridge was released from Hamilton Jail on bail of $4, 000 Canadian dollars. He, his father, and one of his other uncles had split the cost. He was back in court on those burglary charges later that year, but it had to be postponed, and I couldn't find any follow-up after that, so I assume it was eventually dropped. Later, in June of 1905, Lottridge filed a suit against the Herald Printing Company for libel. There had been an article printed in both the Herald and the Times that said John Lottridge, who was connected with the Heslop murder, had recently been convicted of horse stealing. Now, this was actually a case of mistaken identity. Because it was an indigenous man named Isaac Lottridge who had stolen horses. But bringing all of this up, 13 years later, reviving the Heslop case and connecting his... named horse-stealing, it allegedly caused him some damages. And by all accounts, ever since the trial in March of 1892, he'd been living an honest, quiet life on his farm in Tuscarora. Ultimately, he was awarded $200 Canadian dollars, even though the suit had been for $1, 000. And thus, the murder of John Heslop is still unsolved— 135 years later. So, Monica, do you think they did it? I don't know. I waffled on this so much. Goosey's story is so detailed and his statements afterward even are, like, so convincing. So part of me thinks, yes, but there were only two tracks in the snow. True. But why would they have confessed if they hadn't actually done it, though? Well, I think that Goosey and Douglas knew that, no matter how much they proclaimed their innocence, they likely would have been found guilty and hanged for it. Hmm-hmm. And so this may have been the only way to save their necks, really. But then the question is, why keep up the lie even after it was all said and done? You know? So what do you think? Do you think they did it? I think yes. However, I don't think the nephew was super involved. Yeah. I mean, when they described his reaction when he was arrested, like he he was absolutely floored. He was like, absolutely floored. He went there to testify in the cattle stealing thing. And Goosey later said that Lottridge had actually been involved in the cattle stealing thing. You know, with Bartram. And so he figured he was going to be going over there for that. And he figured that he was going to get arrested for the cattle stealing. He had no idea. Like this came out of nowhere. Yeah. I also think Goosey switched him and Douglas. Like their roles. Perhaps. So I think Goosey was the one that actually went into the house. Because he spoke perfect English. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And they do describe him as being quite short. And they say there was a short man and a taller man. Yes. And, um, I do have like drawings of, of all of them actually from the papers. But yes, those are my thoughts. Yeah, that does sound right. And they do point out that Goosey was very, very clever. And I mean, like, very cunning. And like, conniving. Like, I feel like he could have totally put this together and convinced George Douglas and just been like, 'Look, this is how it has to go. Trust me,' you know, and switched it that way. So I think you're onto something. I think he might've been the mastermind, not Bartram. So, oh, when they asked Bartram about the comments that he made. When he was arrested and he was like, 'Oh, hey, I can tell you who did it.' He pointed the finger at a black man named Doc Griffin. Of course he would. He said that Doc Griffin had approached him and was like, 'Hey, we have a lead on this thing. You should come with me and do this with me.' And that Bartram was like, 'I don't think that this would be a good idea.' So he declined. And so when he heard about it, he was like, 'Oh, the Griffins did it.' But then when they had Doc Griffin on the stand, he was like, 'I have not even talked to Bartrum in like three years.' Yeah, interesting. If only we could go back 135 years. And look at that eye. Just kidding. No. No, no, no. Give him an eye patch. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if it was really cancer. So they asked him about his eye, and he said that, 16 or 17 years prior, he'd been working on an anvil and a little piece of steel had flown up into his eye. And ever since then, it had been giving him trouble. So, because it had been that long, there was one article that said that the doctors said it couldn't be cancer because it had been that long. Gross. Yeah. Nasty. Yeah. Well. That's our tale. Yep. And we're both, we're both ill. We are. Well, shout out to newspapers. com, of course. CPI inflation calculator at in2013dollars. com, which it should be like 2026dollars. com now. Internet archives, family search, ancestry. com, findagrave. com, my brother, Christian... Join our socials. We have a Facebook page. Monica is very active on there. I've been very reclusive recently. Forgive me. That is Forgotten Felonies on Facebook. And it's Forgotten_Felonies on Instagram and Threads. And I will try to be better about posting on there. Leave us reviews wherever you listen and leave us comments on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube. And send us some requests. Yeah. Like to our email. Yeah, or there's always a link in the description that says 'Send Monica and Olivia a message.' something like that in the episode descriptions. And then, um, Could they send a message on Instagram? Oh, you're the Instagram person. Or I meant, well, yes, they could on Instagram, but I meant Facebook. Oh, yeah, totally. Yeah. We're on there. Yay. Yay. And share our podcast. We do this all ourselves. We're not paid. No, we're not. Yeah. So please share. Please share. We want more people. We have fun with this. So. I totally stalk the stats and see how many downloads we get. And Monica started doing "Fun-sized Felonies". Yes, for the weeks that we do not put out a full-sized episode. Yes. And I found a pretty cool one from this that's branching off of this one, actually. I was reading up on it this morning. And then that one links to one that could be a full episode. There we go. These are fun to see. Yeah, because you know, I mean, they wrote like, Dr. Williams, pink pills for pale people. And they were like, 'Oh, this is an eye catcher. This is so good.' Oh, this is so good. You know? Who wouldn't want to know about pink pills for pale people? Like that. Oh man, it's like an earworm. I mean, they're never gonna forget it. We're gonna sell so many, you know, like yeah. And we're just like, 'Oh, this one's hilarious Yeah. They never thought, like, 135 years from now, people are going to be featuring these because it's hilarious. Oh man. So yeah, some poor person going to work that day, just not even know. Yep. This was 1892. Oh wow, that's nuts, geez. Yeah. Oh, man.