he Amazing Case of

John bray

*

By
INSPECTOR C. CLARK

*

Lincoln’s Famous Axiom That “You Can’t Fool All the People All the Time” :
Applies Equally in Police Work as in Politics—Back in 1898, John Bray Fooled
a Lot of People in Vancouver—But He Didn't Fool Chief Constable Lister

YN FRIDAY AFTERNOON, April 22nd,
898, just a week before U.S. Admiral
3eo. Dewey broke Spain’s sea power at
he battle of Manila Bay, the seaport of
Jancouver, B.C., presented a sprawling
cene of frame buildings, horse-drawn trafhic
kirting mud holes and the plank sidewalks
esounding to the thump of loggers’ caulked
soots. Down on the waterfront three and
our-storey buildings and warehouses indi-
ated the business district. Times were good
n Vancouver, for the Yukon gold rush had
purred business and, down in Burrard Inlet,
. forest of masts marked the lumber fleet,

vindjammers from every quarter of the.

slobe, waiting their turn to load at Hastings
Mill.

A mile or two east or south of the town-
ite brought the traveller to farm or brush
and, which was being bought up at increas-
ng values. Great were the speculations
1s to the city’s future.

Four miles out of town, in the wilder
‘egion of South Vancouver, there was one
man, however, who was completely uncon-
serned about Vancouver's future or, for
that matter, its past. He lay face down in
in abandoned chicken house on the old
McRorie ranch—dead.

The McRorie place was just south of
Shannon’s ranch on the South Vancouver
wagon road. The original owner, McRorie,

had been killed by an Indian two years .

before, and a man named Henry Mole was
now in possession.

On this particular afternoon, Mole
was looking for a pitchfork and, thinking it
might be in the old chicken house, he tried
the door of the windowless shack. He
noticed the outside staple that usually held
the door fast had been withdrawn and when
he pushed the door he felt an obstruction.
Pushing harder he dislodged a stick which
had been propped against the door on the
inside. Standing in the doorway to get his
eyes accustomed to the gloomy interior,
Mole was startled to find the body of a man.

By the light of a couple of hastily lit
matches, Mole could see that the man was
a stranger. A pile of straw covered with
some grain sacks in one corner of the shack
gave evidence of having been used as a bed.
Leaving the scene undisturbed, Mole quickly
left, fastening the door with the staple. In
quick time he informed the Provincial Police
and, in due course, Chief Constable R. B.

THIRTEENTH EDITION

of the Provincial Police.

Lister (who was in charge of the New
Westminster Police district) arrived with
the coroner, Dr. Alfred Poole of Vancouver.

PoisON FOUND ON CORPSE

Lister and the doctor examined the scene
carefully and found that the dead man was
about 42 or 43 years of age, about five feet
nine inches in height, his dark hair tinged
with gray at the sides and wearing a short-
clipped beard. He seemed to be fairly well
dressed in a blue serge suit, black cotton
shirt, and on his feet were elastic-sided
Congress shoes. One of the dead man’s
arms was folded underneath him, the other
spread out. A cloth cap was on the back
of his head, and his face rested against a
small stump that protruded through the
earth floor near one of the walls. There
was no weapon in sight, no bloodstains to
be seen. There was, however, a small box

of rat poison pills lying beside him, bearing
the name of a Vancouver drug firm. There
were no windows in the building, and the
only entrance had been propped shut with
a stick from the inside.

The man’s pockets revealed nothing but
an English halfpenny, a blank notebook,
and two handkerchiefs, each marked in the
corner “J. Bray.”

There being nothing further to be learned
at the scene, the body was ordered removed
for post mortem. In view of the box of
poison pills, Chief Lister and the surgeon
decided it was a case of suicide.

But the post mortem revealed the first in
an amazing set of circumstances; the man
had been shot! Not once, but three times.
Lifting the scalp the coroner found three
p’stol bullets. One of them was lying
flattened under the scalp a quarter of an
inch over the right eye, another had pierced

“Back in the '90’s this pioneer wagon road, later named Granville Street, connected Vancouver
with the north arm of the Fraser River. Taken looking north, the picture shows what is today the
intersection of Granville and 37th Avenue. McRorie’s ranch lay a mile or so south of this point.

—Photo by Courtesy. City Archives, Vancouver.

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