Albert County ghost town site of famous axe murder that saw Tom Collins tried 3 times | 24CA News

All that is left of what was as soon as a vibrant New Brunswick logging neighborhood known as New Ireland is a graveyard now being overtaken by the forest, a number of previous stone foundations and a criminal offense story that made headlines all over the world.

It could also be a ghost city now however New Ireland was the location of a brutal axe homicide that led to 3 separate trials of a younger British man within the early 1900s, and set a precedent in Canada’s authorized system.

James Upham, a Moncton historian and educator, says visiting the realm nonetheless offers him a “very eerie” feeling.

New Ireland is west of Riverside-Albert, close to the northeast nook of what’s now Fundy National Park. St. Agatha’s Catholic cemetery, the place Rev. E.J. McAuley and his cousin and housekeeper Mary Ann McAuley are buried, is one a part of the neighborhood that’s nonetheless maintained.

“This was a major event,” Upham mentioned of the crime that occurred in 1906.

 “This is somewhat comparable to the Lindbergh baby. This was huge news when the first trial took place. It’s an axe murder — that gets headlines.”

Catching fish and chopping wooden

The story begins when a younger Irish man named Tom Collins arrived in Albert County between 1905 and 1906 from England. He was employed by Rev. McAuley to assist out on the New Ireland rectory and church.

“They had horses that needed to be looked after. They had kindling that needed to be cut. They had physical work that needed to be done,” Upham mentioned. “Unfortunately, at some point in that process there appears to have been a bit of a disagreement.”

According to Upham’s analysis, Collins mentioned the disagreement was in regards to the variety of fish he had caught someday, when Mary Ann despatched him to a close-by lake to catch their supper. McAuley was away and the 2 have been on the property alone.

Mary Ann was upset Collins hadn’t caught sufficient and despatched him to cut wooden within the wooden pit, the place she continued to scold him.

Collins determined to go away New Ireland and the rectory because of the argument.

“At that point, though, he also robbed the place,” Upham mentioned. “We know that because he says he did. And when he was apprehended, he was caught carrying things that he had stolen from the building we’re standing outside of right now.”

Upham mentioned there isn’t any query as as to whether Collins robbed the rectory of things equivalent to a gold watch. There can be no query that somebody murdered Mary Anne with a straight razor and an axe.

An article within the Daily Telegraph from July 4, 1907, recounts the proof introduced in Collins’s second trial in Hopewell Cape.

“The murderer, whoever it was, was not content with dealing a blow which crashed through the skull and into the brain of the victim, but her throat was cut as well, as if to make doubly sure of the awful deed,” the account reads.

Collins tried 3 occasions

Upham describes the neighborhood as having a type of “Twin Peaks” really feel to it, declaring it was a distant Catholic neighborhood in a Protestant world.

“There’s mistrust, there’s distrust, there’s misinformation.”

In Collins’s first homicide trial in January 1907, Rev. McAuley testified, and the decision was responsible. However, that call was overturned as a result of the decide was discovered to have erred in his directions to the jury.

He “will not walk to the gallows,” reads an article in The Daily Gleaner on Feb. 23, 1907. It goes on to clarify the decide on the first trial had directed the jury that sure details had been completely confirmed, when this could have been left to the jury to determine.

“That got Tom a second trial and that was the first time, as I understand it in Canadian history, where a legal decision was overturned based on the judge’s discharge to or the judge’s instructions to the jury,” mentioned Upham.

“And this was a moment in Canadian history where we said, ‘Yeah, actually, the law trumps what the guy on the bench thinks or assumes he can do. That’s a huge moment because you have a young Catholic boy who is friendless and without family in this country being defended by a legal system that was not necessarily built to protect his ancestors.”

In that first trial, Collins didn’t take the witness field, however many family and friends from England despatched letters about his good character.

In between the primary and second trials, the case made headlines once more when on Feb. 3, 1907, Rev. McAuley died all of the sudden of “apoplexy” or what we’d possible name a stroke in the present day. 

In the second trial, held simply six months later in the summertime of 1907, Collins did testify in his personal defence. He admitted he had stolen from Rev. McAuley however mentioned he didn’t kill Mary Ann. His legal professionals argued that all the proscution’s proof was circumstantial, and that another person had murdered Mary Ann.

The second trial resulted in a hung jury. By the time the third trial was held, Upham mentioned, the case was so well-known it was nearly inconceivable to seek out an neutral jury. The third trial reached the identical conclusion as the primary: demise by hanging.

“And in the third trial, honestly, they seem to have just given up and said to hell with it — hang him,” mentioned Upham.

“So a young fellow who had done possibly nothing more than rob a place, was hung to death down the hill from here.”

On the morning of Nov. 15, 1907, Collins grew to become the one prisoner ever to be hanged on the Albert County Gaol, and one of many final in New Brunswick.

He was buried in an unmarked grave outdoors the jail in Hopewell Cape. According to the Albert County Museum, his physique was re-interred at a close-by cemetery 60 years later.

The case of Tom Collins was referenced within the Supreme Court to justify the double jeopardy modification to the Canadian Criminal Code.

Community gone, controversy continues

More than 100 years in the past, the neighborhood was divided as to the guilt or innocence of Tom Collins, and that division continues to at the present time in Albert County, Upham mentioned.

“You can get in quite a heated discussion with certain people in Albert County over what actually happened out here,” he mentioned. “There are people who will swear to you that Tom was innocent, that Father McAuley did it. There are people that will tell you that there are people in the neighbourhood who did it.”

Upham mentioned that two weeks earlier than Collins even arrived in New Ireland, somebody broke into the rectory and stole alcohol.

“It’s sometimes tempting to look at these little communities historically and say it was all perfect and rosy until, you know, a thing happened or something dreadful occurred.”

Upham mentioned the remaining graveyard and previous stone foundations are one in every of 1000’s of roadside monuments the place you may “stop and look around and say, ‘OK, there is more to this.’ And this is a prime one again.”

“We’re standing in the middle of a vital community that existed for generations,” he mentioned. “Where one of the most interesting legal events in Canadian history occurred, where a horrifying tragedy occurred and the only thing that memorializes it is a mouldering basement and a graveyard that is being reclaimed by the trees.”