loose, but retained by the fingers of the
larger nugget.

O’Brien said he had found it in a strike
he had made along the river. But on in-
vestigation it was shown that this curious
nugget formerly belonged to Relfe, one
of the three missing men.

The pocket piece which Pennecuick
found in the tent in the wilderness was
also identified as Relfe’s. The key found
near it fitted the lock of Clayton’s strong-
box in Seattle. The buttons Pennecuick
unearthed in the ashes near the tent were
eventually traced to the overalls of Ole
Olsen, the third of the missing men.

Spring unlocked what the river held of
the triple murder. With the bodies of the
three men recovered, the case against
O’Brien was ready for trial.

But it was fully two years before all
the circumstantial evidence needed to
hang a man was assembled and presented
to a jury. Then the story of the crime
came out.

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O’Brien had conceived his scheme as
far back as his sojourn in gaol at Dawson.
He tried to get “Kid” West, a fellow
gaolbird, to join him in carrying it out.
West refused and O’Brien got “Little
Tommy’ Graves, another criminal, to
help him.

They erected the tent back of the cut-
off. They chopped down the cottonwoods

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with O’Brien’s axe. With unconscious
cynicism O’Brien chose Christmas Day

for the crime. When the three men bound
for Hootchiku reached the bend in the
river, O’Brien and Graves shot them from
ambush. Clayton and Olsen fell, shot
through the heart. Relfe was only
wounded.

The two murderers dragged their three
victims up the bank to the top of the hill.

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B.C.

Here, O’Brien with his .45 rifle and
Graves with his revolver killed Relfe. The
bodies were dropped through a hole in the
frozen river. The clothing of the men was
taken to the tent and the loot divided.

O’Brien told Graves to burn the gar-
ments outside of the tent, and while
Graves was at work O’Brien shot him
dead from behind, to save sharing the
loot. The body of Graves joined his vic-
tims in the river.

Lake Cowichan

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ALICE M. MILES, Proprietress
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Hats Suits, Coats, Dresses and Lingerie
t

B.C.

The scaffold attended to O’Brien and
the trial judge in summing up spoke high-
ly of the splendid work of Const. Penne-
cuick and his colleagues in solving an-

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other Northern mystery.

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Page Thirty

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