Drop Dead by Lorna Poplak

Author:Lorna Poplak
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2017-07-06T04:00:00+00:00

Wilbert Coffin at the time of his arrest in 1953. Coffin, a prospector and woodsman, was hanged in the beautiful Gaspé Region of Quebec in 1956 for the murder of an American bear hunter.

Coffin complained bitterly of his treatment at the hands of the QPP, led by Captain Alphonse Matte. He claimed to have been “railroaded” in an attempt to coerce him into confession. On one occasion, he was grilled for eighteen consecutive hours, and denied water and cigarettes. Marion Petrie, his common-law wife and the mother of his five-year-old son, was also treated harshly by the police. She was detained and questioned for eighteen hours. And as Coffin and Petrie were not legally married, she was forced to testify as a Crown witness at his trial, which spouses are normally exempt from doing.

Coffin’s trial began on July 15, 1954 — almost exactly one year after the crime — at Percé, Quebec. On the prosecution side was the A-team of Paul Miquelon and Noel Dorion. They were two of Quebec’s best-known prosecutors, with an impressive number of convictions under their respective belts. On the defence side was Raymond Maher, who introduced himself to Coffin’s father as the best of the best. He would put a hundred witnesses on the stand, he said, to prove Coffin’s innocence.

Eugene Lindsey’s widow testified on the fourth day of the trial. She identified a stove and kerosene container as the equipment of the hunting party, as well as a watch, ring, belt, cap, a treasured knife, two torn undershirts, and a grey sweatshirt bearing the logo “Hollidaysburg Tigers,” all of which had belonged to her son Richard. The sweatshirt, though, had not had a small, round hole in the logo when she’d packed it into her son’s suitcase. That had been caused more recently, as the pathologist claimed, by the bullet that passed through his body.

Her voice faltered only once during the hour she spent on the witness stand. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, when she was asked if she recognized the handwriting on that postcard dated June 8, she replied with a sob: “I certainly do.”

As the trial progressed, the prosecution’s case became clear. They argued that Coffin had killed, then robbed, the trio. He’d spent substantial sums of money and had items belonging to the hunters in his possession at the time of his arrest. The evidence was all circumstantial. The murder weapon, for example, was never found. But the lawyers for the prosecution were very persuasive. They skilfully planted the perception that Coffin had borrowed a gun and called a witness who stated that he saw what looked like the barrel of a rifle sticking out of Coffin’s truck. (Many months later, the witness recanted his trial testimony.)

As for the defence — well, there was none. When the time came for Maher to leap to his feet, produce his promised hundred witnesses, and definitively clear Coffin’s name, he spoke just five words: “My Lord, the defence rests.

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