The Confession
Holdback, Ep. 5: "R. v. Todd (1901)"
In Episode 1, John Gordon was found dead on a sidewalk with a bullet hole in his forehead. In Episode 2, Eli (“Stodge”) Stodgell, a Métis police constable, confronted Donald Todd, the main suspect. In Episode 3, Stodge hatched a plan to use his brothers, Harry and Bert, to get Todd to confess to Gordon’s murder. In Episode 4, the brothers, with the help of their sister, Mary, put the plan into action. Here are that episode’s last two sentences:
“Harry rolled up his sleeves, turned to face the side of beef hanging from a hook in a corner of the room, and punched it as hard as he could in the brisket. Bob let out a fake cry of pain.”
EPISODE 5
“There was lots of drinking,” Todd said at the trial. “Everyone was skunked.”
Harry seemed to him to have been the worst for it, the booze and the bloodiness, each time reeling out of the room next door where Bob was tied up looking more punch drunk, wobbling from the whiskies and all the physical exertions.
Variations on the following were repeated too many times for anyone to remember:
Harry would set a cigarette on fire and pour new drinks, hands trembling, Bob’s cow blood on his fists, more and more of it each time on his shirt;
“Guess it’s my go,” Burt would say with a weary sigh. “Unless you want a crack, Donny?”;
Todd would mutter something and Burt would heave up out of the chair and stagger into the other room, slamming the door behind him, making sure first that Todd got a good look at Bob’s bloodied carcass slumped over in the chair;
Once the door slammed whoever was in there, Harry or Bert would start punching the hanging beef and Bob would howl with simulated pain, his screams the only things ever changing, lowering in volume after each wet thwacking blow till they were cow low and whimpering, barely audible from where Todd was sitting.
This went on for three or four hours. Meanwhile, Harry and Bert took turns haranguing Todd, telling him how bad they were, how many men they’d killed, how many jobs they’d done, how much money they had. Waving it around.
“You interested in going into a job, Donny? An easy one that’ll bring us ten grand a piece?”
“Of course I said sure, Todd told the court. “Who wouldn’t?”
“Harry came out after that, said Bob was dead, and then fell over on the floor and passed out cold. Burt woke him and manhandled him into the hallway and locked the door. Then he pulled out a revolver and laid it on the table.
‘You know all my secrets now, Donny. That fool brother of mine told you everything and I told you quite a bit myself. There is only one man ever gave me away and he never gave me away a second time.’ Then he pulled out a knife.
‘I am pretty handy with a revolver,’ I said. ‘But I am even better with a knife.’
‘I need you to show me you’re as bad as the rest of us.’
‘How you want that I do that?’
‘Tell me why you shot John Gordon on Portage Avenue.’
So I said it was after a quarrel over a girl, and he said, pointing to the revolver, was the gun like this one? and I said yes and he said with .38 cartridges and I nodded. And he went to the window and tore down the paper curtain blind and ripped off a piece and said write it all down then. And I asked why.
‘Because I need to hold something on you so you can’t hold nothing over me.’
And I thought about that, and we had a couple more drinks. And then I asked for a pen.”
After writing all about the killing on the curtain, Todd went out of the room and over to a restaurant on Fourth Street and had something to eat on the second floor in a green-curtained booth, and looking at all the dull men decided then and there that he wouldn’t go back to the room again because he thought the crowd there was too fast and bad for him.
“And that’s when Stodgell and the chief came in and put the locks on me.”
Then he said that the stories the other witnesses had told were not the truth and that he never threw a revolver in the river. He did not tell anyone that he killed anybody. He never told anyone that he could see John Gordon's ghost.
Mr. Howell— ‘Now witness, you have been charged with the murder of John Gordon. Are you guilty or not guilty?’
Witness— ‘I am not.’
Mr. Howell— ‘Do you know who did commit the murder?’
Witness— ‘I do not. Probably somebody with a gun.’
The judge called for quiet. Then Todd told the court that he was in jail once for stealing a coat.
“I did not own an overcoat. I read an advertisement on mesmerism but I never studied it. I never drew a revolver on George Bruce. I did not rob Amy Bernard of $35. I did not Rob Thomas at St. Charles. I never had a fight with John Gordon.”
The court then adjourned until this morning.
Witness - ‘I do not. Probably somebody with a gun.’ Just wonderful.