A Century After, Cariboo Mystery Still Resonates
Part 2
1920s Quesnel was generally quiet and law-abiding. It took months before residents began to wonder if there wasn’t something seriously amiss.
As we’ve seen, in October 1920, Arthur, Adah and Stanley Halden appeared to have abandoned their Quesnel farm and left a number of outstanding debts around town. The biggest one, all of $1250, a large sum at that time, was a promissory note made out to their hired hand, David Arthur Clark. It was Clark who told those who asked that the Haldens had left for Spokane to attend Arthur’s brother’s funeral, but he’d had no word from them since.
Upon the advice of B.C. Provincial Police Constable G.H. Greenwood, Clark approached Quesnel’s only lawyer who advised him to place a legal notice in the local newspaper alerting the Haldens that he was suing them. By then it was January 1921; three months had passed since the family dropped out of sight.
In his formal deposition Clark claimed he’d made every effort to contact the Haldens through the postmaster and “all likely persons” without success. Hence his being compelled to take legal steps.
There the matter may well have rested indefinitely had not Clark drawn attention to himself at Christmas when, invited to dinner with neighbours, he lavished them with expensive gifts—a horseshoe brooch set with pearls and a plain gold ring inscribed, “A.G. for Father, 1892”. Clark told the Andersons he took the ring from a dead German and bought the brooch in England. To another family, he gave a gold-plated army badge made into a brooch.
It did strike the Andersons as odd that a German soldier would be wearing a ring embossed in English, “A.G. for Father, 1892.”
When word of Clark’s generosity reached the ears of Constable Greenwood, the veteran policeman thought it seemed strange that the Haldens would leave town without a word. And, surely, they should have returned from a funeral, long ago. He decided to do some quiet checking.
He couldn’t find any record of the Halden’s having received or sent a telegram or a telephone call, and the postmaster informed him that once substantial mail for the family had trickled down after some letters had been returned, marked, “Left the district, no forwarding address.”
As for the couple’s having racked up debts around town, he couldn’t find anyone who complained of having been stiffed.
Then it struck Greenwood: Mrs. Halden’s maiden name was Godfrey: Adah Godfrey. A.G., just like the initials on the ring Clark offered to the Andersons! “Taken from a dead German, eh?” he thought to himself.
When detectives from the Vancouver BCPP detachment tracked down Adah Halden’s sister, Mrs. Thurza Hughes on Vancouver Island, the Parksville resident informed them that Adah had been widowed, and 14-year-old Stanley Wright was her son from her first marriage. After marrying Arthur Halden, an engineer, they’d taken up farming in Quesnel, and Adah had recently received 1000 pounds sterling from a property sale in England.
The Haldens so loved their vantage point overlooking the confluence of the Quesnel and Fraser rivers that they named their property Grand View Farm. —www.pinterest.com
Further inquiries disclosed that Arthur Halden didn’t have a brother in Washington and no one of that surname had died in the state in 1920. Besides identifying the ring given to the Andersons as her sister’s memorial ring marking the death of their father, Thurza Hughes produced a photo showing Adah wearing the horseshoe brooch at her wedding in 1919!
All of which explains Constable Greenwood’s NOTICE! asking if anyone had given the Haldens a ride out of town on Oct. 28, 1920, or if they’d seen any of the Halden family since the following day.
By now convinced of foul play, on Oct. 17, 1921, Greenwood charged Clark with the theft and possession of Adah Halden’s jewellery.
Committed for trial by Magistrate Lunn and Justice of the Peace J. Holt, Clark was originally charged on three counts of theft of “different articles of jewelry,” but one charge was dismissed. Mrs. Hughes and Mr. Godfrey, sister and brother of the missing woman, had positively identified the other pieces of jewellery as the property of Adah Halden.
When the first jury disagreed, Clark, who’d been denied bail, was given his choice of a speedy or a second jury trial. He opted for the latter and was bound over for the Spring Assize Court in Prince George, in June.
He’d unwittingly given the police the one thing they needed most at that stage of the investigation—more time.
With Clark in jail, Greenwood, and a small army of fellow officers and experienced woodsmen, set to work. All through that summer and well into the fall, they searched the Haldane property. Beginning with the log house, they probed walls, ripped up floors and dug in and around the foundations to the point they threatened the structure’s stability. It was as if the house had been scrubbed of the family’s presence, almost as if they’d never been there, no clothing or personal effects, no papers.
An ink blotter caught Greenwood’s eye. Some of the smudges appeared to be signatures and, holding them to a mirror, he saw it was the same one, penned again and again—Arthur Halden. Clark had obviously practised forging his signature which was confirmed when the promissory note was again examined and compared with Halden’s real signature on legal papers
There was one other clue. In the ashes of the fireplace, Greenwood found a mass of twisted, melted metal which proved to be picture frames. Clark, he surmised, wanted to eliminate every trace that the Haldanes had ever existed, including their family photos.
For several months, Grand View Farm had been the scene of brush fires, Clark having been hired to help the Haldanes clear their property of trees. Every ash pile was dug down and sifted for signs of human remains, the ground raked, the well and creeks drained. (Even the banks and eddies of the nearby Quesnel River were examined.) The outbuildings were also checked. For all their efforts, only some teeth in the ashes of a stump were found and sent away for examination.
And there the investigation, at least so far as murder was concerned, ground to a halt.
It was a full two years before things again returned to the boil. In August 1923, Clark appeared before Magistrate Johnson in District Court, New Westminster, to be again committed for trial. This time, the charge was forgery, stemming from Clark’s promissory note for $1250 which in effect gave him a mortgage on the Halden property.
Like a vengeful angel, the relentless Constable Greenwood was waiting for him as he was being released from the penitentiary upon completing his two-year sentence for stealing Mrs. Haldane’s jewellery.
As for Clark’s claim that the Haldens had returned to the U.S., in the two years which had elapsed, “they have not communicated with friends, and police have failed to find any trace” of them.
Three months later, Clark again faced trial. This time, he made real headlines, unlike the oblique inferences of Administrator Lund’s legal notices or in the Observer’s sketchy news columns. Reported the Vancouver Sun:
BATTLE OF WITS SEEN AT ASSIZES
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Handwriting Evidence Is Important Factor in Trial for Forgery
NEW WESTMINSTER, Nov. 28th. - “...Progress was slow today at the criminal assizes. [The second case] on the calendar was that of David Arthur Clark, the indictment in whose case discloses a charge of forgery and uttering. This resolved itself into a battle of legal wits on the question of handwriting. The central figure was Constable Greenwood of the provincial police, who declared that he had some ability in judging handwriting.
“But the real dual will take place tomorrow when a handwriting expert will occupy the witness stand. The case will be resumed at 10:30 o’clock tomorrow morning. George Cassady is crown prosecutor, with C.N. Haney for the defence.”
And, next day:
Jury Sustains Forgery Charge; Echo of Mysterious Disappearance of Ranchers Heard in Court.
“After an absence of 70 minutes, the jury returned a verdict of guilty in the case of David Arthur Clark, at the criminal assizes this afternoon, the proceedings having lasted one day and a half. The prisoner was charged with forging and uttering an I.O.U. for the sum of $1,250 in the fall of 1920, purporting to be agreed by A. Halden who, with his wife and an adopted son, 12 [sic] years of age, unaccountably disappeared from their ranch in the Cariboo district about that time.”
It being late in the day, Justice A. Morrison adjourned until the following morning when he reserved sentence until the end of the Assizes.
When next “farm hand” Clark is reported in the Sun, on December 13, he had to share the headlines with four other convicted felons. But his case stands out:
David A. Clark Goes on Hunger Strike in Jail; in Weak Condition.
“David Arthur Clark, who had been convicted on a charge of forgery and uttering, appeared in court in a very weak state. He had been on a hunger strike since he heard the verdict of the jury. This afternoon, the trim suspect and the keen watchful air that characterized him during his trial, had given place to a careworn, dishevelled look, and he was so weak that he had to be assisted into the prisoner’s booth.
GETS 10 YEARS
“Clark was convicted of forging and uttering an I.O.U. for $1,250 in the name of A. Halden, for whom he had been working. Mr. and Mrs. Halden and their adopted son unaccountably disappeared from their ranch in the Caribou district and, notwithstanding the most searching investigation, nothing has since been heard of them. In inquiring and imposing a sentence of 10 years in the penitentiary, his lordship told [the] prisoner that the maximum penalty was life.”
Curiously, it took the Cariboo Observer two weeks to inform its readers who, one would think, would have been eager to learn of his sentence.
Whatever the case, the newspaper reminded them of Clark’s previous two-year sentence for the theft of Mrs. Halden’s jewellery. He’d now been sentenced to a total of 12 years for theft and forging and uttering. But, after two years, for all of the efforts of police, there was still no sign of the senior Haldens and their son.
Then the years began to tick by as Clark recovered from his fast and served his sentence without further resistance. In February 1928, garish, front-page headlines in the Vancouver Province reopened the mystery in the public mind:
—Vancouver Province, Feb, 20, 1928
Mr. M.A. Van Roggen, one of Adah Halden’s three brothers, had sought a court order presuming her death for the purpose of settling her estate. Court was told that the last time she was known to be alive was Oct. 29, 1920. Neither she, her husband or their son had been seen since.
This, despite the fact that police had made determined efforts in March 1921 to resolve the case when they scoured the Dragon Lake Road property. According to the Province, they “practically tore the farm houses [meaning the main house and outbuildings] to pieces and did considerable excavating work, but they found no trace of the missing family”. (This wasn’t quite true although police had said nothing publicly about the teeth found on the farm.)
Neither Mrs. Halden’s bank account nor the Victory bonds she’d bought for Stanley had been touched and she left no will; her estate, presumably including her share in the property, was valued at $7000.
One of her brothers had since passed away, leaving a widow and children who’d acquire whatever interest he had in his sister’s estate. Mr. Justice Murphy adjourned Van Roggen’s application until the heirs of the deceased brother could be notified.
This legal courtesy attended to, with an eerie touch of deja vu, Official Administrator Edgar C. Lunn placed another legal ad in the Observer:
TENDERS!
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TENDERS will be received by the undersigned up to noon on July 25th, 1928, for the purchase of Lot 6681, Cariboo district, the property of the Haldane estate. The area contains 128 acres, and has some buildings on it. The highest or any tender not necessarily accepted.
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There the needle stuck for 10 months, when Lunn again posted a notice in the Observer, this one much more prominently:
In the Supreme Court of British Columbia
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Re: Adah Halden, deceased
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Take notice that by order of the Supreme Court, made the 18th day of May, 1928, I was appointed Administrator of the Estate of the said Adah Halden, lately of Quesnel, married woman, deceased; and all parties having claims against the said Estate are hereby required to furnish the same, properly verified, to me on or before the 20th day of May, A.D. 1929, after which date the Estate will be distributed, having regard only to claims then received.
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Almost ironically, a major creditor did step forward. Proving that there’s nothing more final than death and taxes, the Province of British Columbia made a claim for the Halden property for delinquent taxes.
As it happened, expressions of interest in the various delinquent properties, the Dragon Road Ranch included, were said to be few.
Downtown Quesnel in the 1950s. —www.britishcolumbialocal.ca
At another government sale a year later, however, the Halden’s long-abandoned Grand View Ranch at Dragon Lake passed into new hands. For years, the former Halden homestead sat unoccupied but continued to intrigue Quesnel residents who remembered the family and their mysterious disappearance.
Unsurprisingly, Grand View Farm became known as Quesnel’s Haunted House.
(Next week: Conclusion)
