On a foggy night in November 1905, 48-year-old Thomas Jackson back to his domestic on Melville highway in Vancouver after 9 months of prospecting north of the Skeena. Jackson was once chuffed simply because he had made an enormous gold strike. 4 days later he was once lifeless from strychnine poisoning. Any of the opposite 4 humans dwelling in the home on Melville highway can have slipped the poison into the combination of Epsom salts and beer that Jackson took at the morning of his demise. newshounds from Vancouver’s newspapers selected Jackson’s teary-eyed, fragile, 24-year-old spouse, Theresa, as their first selection for the in charge celebration. Then because the days glided by, their choice shifted to the useless man’s steely-eyed, light-fingered, American better half's mother, Esther Jones. Suspicion additionally fell at the boarders—Esther’s nephew Harry Fisher and Ernest Exall. them all had the chance to plant the poison.

Eventually the police up at the newspapers’ revelations, an important being that Harry Fisher used to be now not Esther’s nephew yet her son. Fisher fled to Washington, and in his absence his mom and sister have been arrested—not for homicide yet for perjured testimony on the coroner’s inquest.

What used to be a sequence of hearings and trials within the city’s courtrooms with fledgling legal professionals attempting to make their names in strive against with the distinguished defence advice Joseph Martin, KC. while the newspapers, that have been locked in a dangerous stream battle, attempted desperately to trump one another with juicy bits of data, it all splashed on their entrance pages week after week. finally the 2 girls served time within the BC reformatory, yet nobody was once ever attempted for the homicide of Thomas Jackson.

Acclaimed author Betty Keller has established her sensational tale of homicide and intrigue on real occasions that happened in Vancouver’s pre-World warfare I years.