Maritime Murder (7 page)

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 me some money and I came to collect it.” Only no one in the Rice household, including Stan himself, recalled seeing Peter Wheeler that evening.

For one, there were far too many inconsistencies in Peter Wheeler's testimony. His story continued to change every time he told it. “The man blows as unpredictably as the wind,” one witness later reported.

Another problem was that Wheeler had no proper alibi for the night of the murder. And it did not help that he had been caught sending word to one of the witnesses to change his testimony in Wheeler's favour.

“Why would I have gone there that morning if I'd murdered poor Annie the night before?” Wheeler continued to argue. “It was them Indians that done it, I tell you.” No one was buying the story that Wheeler continued to sell.

The trial
dragged on into the month of May. On May
26
,
1896
, Peter Wheeler was taken by train to the Kentville jailhouse in the custody of Deputy Sheriff William Van Blarcom. The sheriff feared that the locals might get fed up with hearing all the stories Wheeler concocted to implicate them, and that a lynch mob would develop, so Wheeler was moved to a more geographically neutral place of c
onfinement.

One month later, on June
26
,
1
896
, Peter Wheeler was found guilty, with Judge Charles Townshend presiding. “I hereby direct,” Judge Townshend stated, “that you shall be taken hence to the jail in Kentville, and thence to the jail in Digby, and detained there until the eighth day of September,
1896
, and on that day you shall be hanged by the neck until dead.”

Peter Wheeler's face paled. Finally, he spoke. “I hope you will find out who the guilty party is before that time,” was all he said. But within a few short days of hearing the verdict, Peter Wheeler broke down and confessed the entire crime.

“I killed Annie Kempton,” Wheeler stated. “And I am going now to pay the penalty. I am sorry I have been so much trouble and expense to the county.

“I did it, but it wasn't me alone,” he explained, “or I would never have got up out of bed and done what I did. It was the dreadful Satan made me do it. He is the cause of a good many men's and women's ruin, if not in one way, then in another. Young men, I pray you take warning of this same first temptation. If you are ever tempted, remember poor Peter Wheeler, and that base lust caused him to do brutality and murder to an innocent young girl.

“Remember, friends,” he went on to say, “don't let Satan run away with you as he did with me. He is very cute and ready to tempt us and to get us in trouble, but he is cowardly at the end of it and is sure to leave us in the lurch.

“I suppose it's all right now,” he concluded. “I have taken one life for the Devil, and now I give my life for Jesus's sake. God bless me. Goodbye.”

On September
8
,
1986
, Peter Wheeler walked calmly to the noose a short time after midnight. He had been scheduled to be hanged later in the day, but the hour of his execution had been moved forward for fear of the rumour of a last-minute lynching.

At the very instant that the sheriff cut the rope of the suspension gallows to let the weight system come into play and hoist Wheeler into eternity, Wheeler cried out, “Jesus, I am coming.” Peter Wheeler was declared dead at
2
:
31
am
.

The body of Annie Kempton,
on the other hand, was buried on January
30
,
1896
, the day that would have been her sixteenth birthday. Contributions from Bear River and all across the province of Nova Scotia were used to erect a huge marble monument in the heart of the Mount Hope Cemetery in Bear River. The stone carries this inscription:

Erected to the memory of Annie Kempton

Aged fifteen years

Who lost her life on January
27
,
1896
, in her father's house in a desperate struggle to preserve her honour.

The subscribers hereby profess their profound respect for the departed one as a heroine in her maintenance unto death of the highest virtue of a Christian civilization—the sacred honour of womanhood.

The tombstone and the memory stand to this very day.

Amos Babcock
Shediac Bridge, New Brunswick
1805

A
mos Babcock didn't much care for the people of Shediac Bridge. They were French, of course, or Acadians, as they called themselves. Amos did not much care for their loud and open ways. He did not care for their heavily spiced cooking or their way of life. And he certainly did not care for the way they mispronounced his name, Amos, insisting as they did on pronouncing it “A-ma-za.”

But Amos was equally tired of moving. He had moved four times in the last few years—from Nova Scotia, where he had met and married young Dorcas Bennet, to the Hopewell Cape region of New Brunswick, then up to Shediac, and finally here to Shediac Bridge. He did want to move again. The sad fact was, he could not afford to move.

Besides, he had found a friend and a patron in the personage of William Hanington,
a local merchant who had settled in the Shediac area nearly forty years ago after an overland journey by foot from Halifax, Nova Scotia. Hanington had land in abundance, and he was willing and more than ready to share it with the Babcock family.

“Come and settle,” Hanington told Babcock. “I will give you a house and land, and you can pay me back when you can afford to. We badly need more English blood in the Shediac area.”

So Amos, Dorcas, and their nine children settled in the parish of Shediac on the road to Cocagne, about five kilometres from the present church of St. Martins-in-the-Woods. His brother Jonathan moved with him, along with Jonathan's wife, Mary Loomer. Completing the family was Mercy, Amos and Jonathan's younger sister.

A lot was said about Mercy. The townsfolk knew that Mercy was not quite “right” in the head. The talk was that she had been born with a fever that had stolen her wits and left her mentally challenged. Mercy had come to her brothers after her husband, Abner Hall, had cruelly abandoned her.

Still, the Acadians did their best to make the Babcock family welcome, and the Babcocks were determined to likewise do their best to make the most of their newfound situation. For the Babcock clan, the little town of Shediac Bridge was to be a place of hopeful redemption. They had come here under a cloud of financial and social misfortune, and the family silently prayed that this time, here amongst the Acadians, would be an opportunity to reclaim their place in society. All that changed when they met Richard Peck.

In
1775
Henry Alline heard the calling of God in his heart. He left his family home in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia and began wandering the Maritimes, preaching his own form of religion that he called the “New Light.” Alline maintained that Adam and Eve had been nothing more than holy spirits. He believed that the souls of all men and women are nothing more than projections emanating from a single, gigantic Holy Spirit.

Alline's teachings eventually inspired one Jacob Peck, a wanderer like Alline with very little in the way of religious background. Some say Peck was nothing more than a con artist. He had taken the teachings of Henry Alline and applied his own particular slant to their workings. He referred to himself as a modern-day John the Baptist. He made a living out of wandering the countryside, preaching and stirring up the flame of the “New Light,” holding revivals, and passing the hat for whatever donations he could gather up.

Jacob Peck was a charismatic man with a knack for breeding inspiration, particularly among the women and children of whatever region he was preaching in. Perhaps it was their gentle innocence that provided such a fertile home for Peck's wild ravings. “The man had panache,” the Acadians said. “A style, and a flair, and a hunger for attention.”

Perhaps the reason Amos Babcock took to the man's teachings was nothing more than Peck's innate and refreshing novelty and style. In an area full of hard-working farmers and fishermen who had little time for the practice of flowery oration, Peck found the perfect audience in Amos Babcock.

The whole thing began in
180
4
when a group of local Baptists began to gather at the Babcock farm. They built a hall and met regularly, and made a practice of inviting worshippers and travelling preachers from as far as the word could be spread. It started out simply as a place to practice their beliefs, but eventually it grew in momentum, scope, and ambition.

It must have been quite a sight for the simple farmer- and fisher- folk of the region. Members of the congregation would fall into rapturous trances. They would shout and speak in tongues, or fall upon the dirt floor and thrash about as if possessed by heavenly spirits. Spirits—or demons.

Amos's daughter, Sarah Babcock, fell into such a trance. She stood there for a full hour with her eyes tightly closed, preaching of a coming apocalypse that would sweep through the world. William Hanington was sent for. The elders begged Hanington to write down what the girl was saying.

By now, Sarah Babcock had been joined by another girl—Sarah Cornwall. The two girls spoke simultaneously, each one attempting to outdo the other, raving wildly of the dooms that were destined to fall upon the world as men knew it. “It is a miracle,” Peck cried out.

Night after night, the people would meet and listen to the words that flowed from these two young girls. And then afterwards, Peck would preach the dust out of the rafters, standing up at the altar and shouting out his prophecies. Finally, he would pass the hat, listening happily to the jingle of the coins.

On the cold evening of February
13
,
1805
, Amos led his family home from just such a hellfire revival meeting. The night seemed peaceful enough. At home, his wife, Dorcas, busied herself grinding some wheat in a hand mill to make a little flour for the morning breakfast. Amos sat by the fire and listened to his children. He asked them to talk of what they had seen and heard at the revival. In particular, he seemed to be greatly interested in reading the meanings behind their dreams.

Shortly before midnight the household heard a great noise, as if a cannon had gone off in the back lot. Amos rose to his feet and stood listening attentively. “He stood and he sniffed,” Dorcas would later testify. “As if he were smelling some strange odour.”

“The Lord has spoke to me,” Amos swore that night. “Just as He spoke to Brother Peck.”

“What has He told you?” Jonathan asked.

“He has told me what I must do.” So saying, Amos Babcock had his children bring him flour. He scattered the flour about the cabin floor.

“This is the bread of heaven,” Amos said. Then he removed his shoes and his socks, and he danced about the flour-strewn floorboards. His family joined in the dance, caught up in the spirit of revival. Then Amos stood stock-still in the centre of the floor.

“Open the door,” he said. “God wants to come in.” Jonathan threw the front door open and Amos rushed out, barefoot in the snow.

“The world is ending,” he shouted out. “The world is ending. The stars are falling. Heaven is looking down.” He returned to the house, apparently ignoring the winter cold.

“Line up,” he told his family. “Line up from oldest to youngest.” He spat upon the heads of each of his children, rubbing the spittle into their scalps and proclaiming each of them in turn to be a “Son of Gideon.” He picked up the smallest child and blew into her mouth until she choked upon his breath. Then he dropped her upon the floor.

He next began to sharpen a knife upon a whetstone. “This is not a knife,” he swore. “This is my cross.” His family waited quietly, lined up like sheep awaiting slaughter.

“Sing, won't you?” Amos asked them. They sang a hymn.

Imagine that, would you? Imagine being so fired up with your own conviction, that you would stand there in your kitchen, humming a hymn while a madman who looked like a loving father and gentle husband patiently honed a butcher's knife.

“Take off your clothes, Sister Mercy, and kneel upon the bread of heaven.” Mercy Babcock obediently removed her dress and knelt down upon the floor.

“You too, Brother Jonathan,” Amos said. While Jonathan also disrobed, Amos turned and shouted, “The Cross of Christ!” before he drove his knife repeatedly into his sister Mercy's heart.

Like a hypnotist snapping his fingers, this sudden violence broke whatever unholy spell had fallen upon this family. Jonathan ran out naked into the snow, screaming, “Murder, murder, murder!” The children also began to scream.

Amos walked about the kitchen with his knife raised above his head, smiling beatifically, his hands clasped about the hilt of the knife as if in prayer to some insane god of wasted blood.

Jonathan ran naked for a kilometre through the snow before he came to the house of the Acadian Joseph Poirier.

“Wake up, brother,” Joseph called out to his brother Pascal. “The crazy Baptists are killing themselves.”

The two Poirier brothers and Jonathan Babcock hastily summoned Shediac's clerk of the peace—namely, William Hanington. The four men returned with a one-horse sled to the Babcock household where they found Amos and his family.

Strangely enough, he hadn't harmed any of them after he had finished murdering his sister, Mercy. Instead, he had busied himself with a hasty and makeshift burial for his sister. He carried her out into the snow and buried her in a drift. He walked backwards from the homemade frozen grave, sweeping away all traces of his work with a pine bough.

The Poirier brothers tried to take Amos by force. “Gideon's men, arise,” Amos shouted out. “Defend your father.”

Two of the older children actually did try and stop the Poirier brothers. In their confused state, all they could see were two strangers trying to manhandle their father.

Eventually Hanington and the Poiriers managed to tie Amos to the sled. “We got to take him to the law,” Joseph Poirier declared. On snowshoe and sled, taking turns dragging, the three delivered Amos Babcock forty kilometres through a deep wooded darkness to the county jail in Dorchester. Amos was immediately charged with murder.

Amos sat in a dark cell all winter long. He prayed constantly. Some nights he would keep his guards awake while he sang hymns.

Apparently Jacob Peck received word of what had gone on that night. He arrived in town shortly before the trial was set to take place.

The trial was set for a late-spring circuit sitting with Judge Joshua Upham upon the bench, aided by Assistant Judge Amos Botsford, and with Solicitor General Ward Chipman prosecuting.

The trial was short, maybe six hours in total. The only person who would testify in Babcock's favor was Jacob Peck. In the heat of testimony, however, Peck began to sermonize, which did not go over very well. Peck was charged with “uttering blasphemous and seditious language.”

“In the eyes of this court,” Judge Upham proclaimed, “the preaching of this so-called minister, Jacob Peck, has contributed strongly toward the spiritual mayhem that ultimately resulted in the death of one Mercy Babcock.”

Jacob Peck was charged with contempt of the court, and, to his shock and utter amazement, was sent to wait upon the judge's pleasure within the confines of a local jailhouse.

It took the jury half an hour to deliberate upon their decision. Amos Babcock was declared guilty. There was, of course, some question of Babcock's sanity.

“If insanity is to be Amos Babcock's final defence, then he must show a total alienation of the mind,” Judge Upham declared.
“
With regard to those who believe that this murder is the work of Satan, I say to you that it is possible that God sent Babcock a strong delusion, but such a delusion will by no means lessen the man's apparent guilt.”

And then Judge Upham turned and spoke directly to Amos Babcock. “Have you anything to say as to why a sentence of death should not be pronounced?” Amos hung his head in sullen silence.

Babcock was sentenced to hang on June
28
,
1805
. A towering two-storey gallows was constructed. Amos Babcock was hanged that morning in Dorchester, New Brunswick, and was buried behind the Dorchester Penitentiary. His family left Shediac Bridge and moved to the Hopewell Cape region.

As for Jacob Peck, he posted bail on the same day of the trial, and walked out of Dorchester never to return.