EVERYTHING IN HARDWARE Paint a Specialty ov VERNON, BRITISH COLUMBIA YUILL’'S HARDWARE Stop at the NATIONAL CAFE SODA FOUNTAIN and HOME-MADE CANDIES - CIGARS - TOBACCOS VERNON, B.C. When in Vernon GENERAL MOTORS PRODUCTS ALLIS-CHALMERS TRACTORS Logging Trailers and Equipment a Specialty Repairs - Accessozies - Service Day Phone 372 - Night Phone 192-R-3 VERNON B. C. CAPITOL MOTORS (Vernon) LTD. Coldstream Hotel J. Haskamp, Proprietor J. Smith, Manager “HOME AWAY FROM HOME" Good Clean Comfortable Rooms Hot and Cold Running Water Weekly Rates From $3.00 Up e LICENSED PREMISES British Columbia VERNON Subscribe to THE SHOULDER STRAP It's the Right Number IF YOU CALL 476 CAPITOL TAXI (Next to Capitol Theatre) CHARLIE McDOWELL and ERIC PALMER i 24-Hour Service British Columbia VERNON C. D. BLOOM Phone 400 W. SIGALET BLOOM & SIGALET (VERNON) LIMITED VERNON LUMBY - SALMON ARM Dealers in PLYMOUTH AND CHRYSLER CARS INTERNATIONAL AND FARGO TRUCKS Sales and Service British Columbia VERNON Page Seventy-eight One by one the assembled men filed through the door from the hall, strode through the room occupied by the detect- ives, and passed out through the kitchen. Unruffled, the parrot eyed each with casual disinterest. Pale, but jaunty, William Sturtevant was ushered into the room. Promptly the green cockatoo stiffened in frozen alarm. With ruffled plumage he slunk, cringing, to the farthest corner of the cage. “Help! Help!” shrieked the bird. “Murder! Murder!” He drew his red and green head from beneath the outstretched feathers, and leapt suddenly to the bars, clawing and chattering in incoherent rage, his black eyes riveted on the astonished man in the centre of the room. “Murder! Grrk! .. . ” he repeated his macabre imita- tion of the death rattle. The detectives, their eyes trained on the suspect, saw his face blanch till even his lips were livid. Staggering, he caught at the edge of the table and sank, a quivering heap of guilt, into the nearest chair. “Take it away ... take it away!” he screamed. “All right,” he quailed before the accusing eyes of Pratt, “take that creature away and I'll tell you everything. I killed Simeon and Thomas,” his eyes were frantic. “And I killed Mary Buckley, too.” While the green and red parrot continued to shriek its accusations from an adjoining room, William Sturtevant unfolded the brutal story of the triple slaying that had shocked the countryside. Pressed for money, he decided to rob his wealthy uncles, knowing they kept all their money in the house. Keeping watch on the farm till the coast was clear he’d lured Mary Buckley on an errand to a neigh bour’s, on the pretext that the woman was sick, then, hiding beside the road, he’d leapt out from the darkness and struck her down with the wagon stave. Secreting himself near the house he’d bludgeoned Thomas from behind as he filled the wood box, killed Simeon while he lay asleep in bed, but in the midst of his nefarious work was frightened by shrill cries for help. Fearful that one of his uncles had regained consciousness, or that others had arrived upon the scene, he’d beat a hasty retreat. Thrown into a cell and charged with the triple murders, William Sturtevant pro- ceeded, first thing next morning, to retract his statements. But detectives, prowling through his neat colonial home nearby, had already located $150 of the Sturtevant bills hidden in a sock, along with a pair of bloodstained trousers with a tell-tale hole in a pocket, through which the coins had trickled as he fled—his ears still assailed by the cockatoo’s raucous cries for help. Delving through a clothes closet Pratt held out a heavy work boot fitting the left foot and uttered a grim exclamation of triumph. “See that patch on the toe,” he exulted. “It’s identical with the plaster cast of the footprint we found beneath the body of the murdered housekeeper. If this doesn’t put a noose around William’s neck my nam isn’t George Pratt.” ae Dressed in sombre black, the prison swaggered into the dock at Plymouth Qoyg house a month later to face Judge Wel and Prosecuting Attorney Asa French, th man who'd set in motion the wheels justice that had brought William Sturteyay to fight for his life before a horrified cop course of shocked citizens. But th prisoner's aplomb sank rapidly under th withering testimony of witnesses why. showed that, prior to the triple slaying William Sturtevant had been broke, while immediately afterwards, he’d proceeded y cash in on the stolen loot at stores through. out Plymouth County. | It didn’t need the accusing shrieks of thy. big green and red cockatoo to finally weave the strands of the hangman’s rope about his neck. From a footprint, a boot, a wagon stave and a handful of silver coins, the painstaking work of Pratt, Pinkham ané their colleagues had woven a halter thy caused the jury, in only a few short minutes to pronounce the now cringing and panic stricken culprit guilty of murder in th first degree. Three months later, with the accusing shrieks of the green cockatoo that he blamed for his plight ringing a requiem in his ears, William Sturtevant, the personification of fear and terror, plunged through the trap of the sombre, black-painted scaffold reared within the prison yard of Plymouth to exact vengeance on the killer of the Sturtevants and Mary Buckley. IT was a few minutes after 11 o'clock on September 3rd, 1939. Mr. Chamberlain had just announced over the radio that we were at war with Germany. As I went into the street, I saw two Londoners standing ty gether on the pavement. I wondered what, at that historic moment, they were saying to each other. As I passed by, one of the men looked solemnly at his watch and.t1e marked to his companion: “They're open.” —From “Current Affairs’ ONE of the lads up the coast tells this story: It seems he and another constable had occasion to take one of these rural jaunis where cars were at a premium. Afoot in a rather primitive area the only transporta tion was a dilapidated old truck owned by the local mailman. As one policeman put it “it was sans lights, licence, windows, doors and almost tires!” Unkempt and easy going, father of a brood of ragged urchins, the driver navigated the old wreck ovet one of the toughest bits of trail in Wester Canada, and with nothing but the stats above and the tall timber on either side of the trail, Const. X asked the driver in what direction they were travelling. “Well” said the driver, as he wrestled the front wheels around a boulder “if ! could get turned around and start going the other way I would be coming from the east.” THE SHOULDER STRAP?