W. James Edwards
Pembroke, ON / March 14, 1948
Edwards, 35, was married with two small daughters aged two and six. He and his family lived small house on Norman Street which he had largely built himself. While on the night shift always returned home at midnight for lunch. His wife had his lunch waiting for him on the night he disappeared.
At about 10:30 p.m. on Sunday, March 14, 1948, a man aged between 45 and 50 called from the phone booth outside the Clearview Tea Room on the outskirts of Pembroke and asked for a cab. Edwards took the trip.
About 40 minutes later Bill Perkins, a taxi driver for the same company, Murphy's, saw Edwards' black 1947 sedan at the side of the road. Thinking that Edwards had encountered mechanical trouble he investigated and found the body lying in a pool of blood across the front seat. Edwards had been shot in the right temple. The bullet had gone through his head and smashed through the driver's side window. Perkins had no radio and drove to the nearest telephone to call the police.
Investigators learned that the man who made the call returned to the Tea Room later the same night riding on the back of a truck. Police tracked down the truck driver and the two companions who were with him. They said that they saw a car approaching them from Pembroke, but it was parked when they drew abreast of it. When they stopped a little way beyond the car the suspected killer ran up and asked for a ride, saying that he had had car trouble.
Since there was no room in the truck cab the man rode in the truck box. The driver expected to drop him off at the nearest gas station but the man insisted on being driven back to the Clearview Tea Room.
Police theorized that Edwards was killed just before the truck arrived on the scene. His money was still intact, suggesting that the robber had no time take it. Running to the truck and asking for a ride ensured that the truck driver and his companions would not discover the murder.
Another motorist arrived at the nearby intersection at the same time and saw the suspect run from Edwards' car to the truck.
Edwards was survived by his wife and daughters and by eight brothers and two sisters. A trust fund was established and donations collected for Edwards' family. A front-page announcement in the Pembroke Standard-Observer noted that the couple's house was mortgaged and that Mrs. Edwards' sole assets consisted of the taxi and her husband's $1,000 life insurance policy. Donations totalled $2,075.50 by the first week in April. In December, 1948, police announced that they had arrested a suspect in the case.
Twenty-three years after Edwards death a Toronto city gardener confessed to his role in the killing "so I can go to sleep at night".
The gardener, who was 17 years old in 1948, claimed that the killing was not a robbery but a "stupid accident".
He and an older friend hired Edwards to take them out of town to a spot on the Ottawa River where they intended to stay overnight and shoot geese. The gardener had brought along his father's 20-gauge shotgun and a .30-30 calibre rifle.
As they reached the river the older man, sitting in front, asked to see the rifle and the gardener passed it to him from the back seat. As the older man reached for his money to pay the fare the gun went off.
"The shot hit the driver in the head and I could hear the blood running down on to the floorboards of the car.
"[The older man] said 'Let's get out of here' so we turned the lights out on the cab and got a ride back to Pembroke on a logging truck."
The gardener told his wife about the killing before he was married, but was alays afraid to tell the authorities. In July, 1970 the older man, the father of nine children, died in Toronto's Don Jail of an apparent epileptic seizure.
Ontario Provincial Police were notified of the confession but had no immediate comment.
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