On a dreary morning in April, 1893, John Marshall, a Portuguese
immigrant and successful farmer on Sumas Prairie in British Columbia,
was found lying sprawled across the veranda of his farmhouse, his body
cold and lifeless. The farmer's face was a mess, his nose smashed in and
cracked blood covering his forehead around a jagged black hole. The
shocked and unfortunate neighbor who discovered the body rushed to
Huntingdon railway station to summon the authorities. An autopsy,
coroner's inquest and murder investigation followed. Only two days
later, a local handyman named Albert Stroebel was arrested for
Marshall's murder. Stroebel was an unlikely killer: short and physically
disabled, locals considered him a harmless "boy" who seemed much younger
than his 20 years. The young man the community knew was not capable of
murder, and they were shocked to imagine that he could have killed the
man who had treated him like family. But something had gone tragically
wrong on the night Marshall died. Unraveling the mystery would take nine
months and two lengthy trials that seized the attention of local
communities on both sides of the Canadian-American border, splitting
them into pro- and anti-Stroebel factions. Newspapers devoted page after
page of coverage and throngs of spectators squeezed into the courtroom
galleries. The first trial in New Westminster ended with the jury
hopelessly deadlocked, the second in Victoria found him guilty and set
an impending date for his execution. The heaviest hitters of BC's
political and legal establishment took part including former and current
premiers, an Attorney General, and a future Supreme Court justice. When
the second trial ended with a guilty verdict and death sentence many in
the public howled in protest, convinced that a young man had been
condemned to die for a crime he did not commit. And the dramatic events
would not stop there. With the condemned man sitting on death row, the
case would take more twists and turns that would lead Albert Stroebel to
the shadow of the gallows.
