Remembering Murders

Wonder if the Moose Jaw ghost tour has a stop at the dreamland where in the mid 70's a hooker tied a guy to the bed then stabbed him 47 times. She then took out a bottle of lighter fluid and lit the body on fire. In court, she claimed "it was an accident". The judge not being a complete dolt did not see how this could have been an OOPS and sent get to jail for the next 25 years of her life. The claim she was high on PCP at the time BTW.

Wilbert Colin Thatcher In 1983 he was investigated and later convicted of killing his wife JoAnn. It seems to this day that there is a LOT of people who think his son did it and Colin took the fall for him rather than let him go to jail. Literally you can still from time to time hear people talking about this murder today 34 years later.

The next one I recall is not from Moose Jaw but a place 385km away in Wilkie. This was the case of Robert Latimer who ended his daughter’s sad life in 1993. She suffered every day of her life with painful seizures and could not function on her own as she was so disabled. Robert ended her life with exhaust from his truck. Not many people I knew faulted him for doing this and saw it as an act of kindness. Ozzy Osborn wrote a song about it.

There is also the matter of a fight in town one day. I can’t remember the year this one was and can’t seem to find it. But a rather aggressive man with a history of violence before and after the fight ended up killing a man with one punch in the parking lot of a local bar. The man had bumped his pool que and caused him to miss. He even wanted to pay for this violent man’s game but it was not enough. He followed the man who was going home to his family into the parking lot and killed him with one punch. He got off from it as the judge decided since the man with a wife and kids left without him, has a pre-existing condition that allowed the punch to kill him.  Many people in town thought this was a travesty and wanted a retrial. But it was not to be. The long history of violence and the fact he went out of his way to hit the man after following him outside did not stand for anything in the judge’s mind. Most people figured it was the fact that he came from a family with money that saved him.

There was another instance not so long ago that sparks to memory. Once again, I can’t find the date. The man got drunk and loaded his gun after taking it from the gun locker and drove across town to his ex’s home. He then broke in and shot her dead, hit the gun (not to well) in the yard and drove all the way back home. This did NOT count as premeditated murder as “the man was too drunk to formulate a plan”. That phrase given all that he did to kill her, sparked wrong in a lot of minds around town. Again, it was a person with a history of running into contact with the law.

The last one is a vague memory of when I was about 8 years old and the first time my Dad had spoken about a murder openly in front of me. This was probably not a great idea – but he had to talk to Mom and did not care I was also in the room. A man who was high on drugs and drinking had his sporting event interrupted by his crying child. His wife reportedly was out at work. The man then hit the child several times to make it stop and when it did not stop he grabbed it by the ankles and slammed it into the wall until it did stop. Sooner or later the wife came home to him passed out and the smashed baby on the floor. Once again this was in the 1970’s.