The death of Const. Snowdon lead to double hanging

Winnipeg

On Oct. 2, 1918, a rare double hanging took place at Headingley Gaol for two men convicted of murdering a Winnipeg police constable.

Const, Bernard Snowdon, 30, was a native of Newcastle, England and a seven-year veteran of the police force. He was walking his Main Street beat on the night of Friday, April 5, 1918, and noticed that the door behind Rosenblat’s hardware store at 649 Main St. was broken. He pulled on the latch and entered.

Hours later, a patrol sergeant found Snowdon’s body a few feet inside the back entrance of the store. There was a gunshot wound through his back and what appeared to be an axe wound on the back of his head.

A manhunt soon led police next door to room 4 of the Maple Leaf (now ManWin) Hotel where they found a gun and three men: Frank Sullivan (48), Philip Johnson (33), and John Stoike (17).

What transpired that night is unclear. At their respective trials, Sullivan maintained that he stayed in the room when the other two men went out that night. The other two initially said they were not there but soon blamed each other for pulling the trigger during a botched robbery. In the end, all three were convicted of murder and sentenced to hang.

Stoike had the best chance of having his sentence commuted, given his age, but his lawyer decided not to appeal and gambled that the regular ministerial review process would do it for him. When Sullivan’s lawyer was asked about the sentence, he is reported to have said “So they’re going to hang Sullivan. Well, it can’t be helped.”

Often forgotten in the headlines was Mrs. Snowdon and her infant daughter Margaret, who lived at 472 Kylemore St. She was still convalescing from a couple of major surgeries the previous year and had to go under doctor’s care when told of the murder.

A reporter later asked Mrs. Snowdon if it gave her solace that the men responsible for the crime would hang. She replied that she wasn’t a vindictive person.

“The matter is in a power higher than mine which will deal with them better than I could,” she said.

When asked how she would support herself, she said there was a $1,000 special pension from the city, her husband’s small life insurance policy, and then she would likely have to go back to work at a department store, something she had done before her marriage.

As the execution date approached, Stoike’s sentence was commuted by the justice minister, which left Johnson and Sullivan to stand at the gallows at dawn on Oct. 2, 1918.

Both men proclaimed their innocence to the end. Sullivan’s pleas that he was not there on the night continued after the black hood was placed over his head. The hangman had to ask him to “be quiet” so that he could fit the noose around his neck.

Const. Snowdon was buried in Elmwood Cemetery. Johnson and Sullivan were buried in the “potter’s field”, or indigent section, of Brookside Cemetery.