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Murder victim Arthur Badger and his car.

Source:

Left: "Cab Driver's Condition Critical," Winnipeg Tribune, September 29, 1945, p. 1. Right "This is Badger's Taxicab," Winnipeg Tribune, September 29, 1945, p. 1. Accessible online at Manitobia.ca.

Winnipeg Cab History / 78

Murder and Mayhem (1)

At about 4:30 a.m. on Friday, September 28, 1945, Arthur Badger was parked on Portage Avenue in front of Moore's Restaurant. He was 60 years old and was well known to other Winnipeg cab drivers, having driven a taxi for 28 years.

Another driver saw two men in battle dress climb into the back seat of Badger's cab before it drove west along Portage. He described the soldiers as being about 170 pounds. One of them appeared to be drunk.

About half an hour later, at 5 a.m., a resident of 3081 Portage Avenue was awakened by his alarm clock. Hearing voices he went out to investigate just in time to see a car drive away to the west. Badger, alive but barely consious, was lying in a nearby ditch.

Badger later died in hospital of severe head injuries. Meanwhile a truck driver spotted Badger's abandoned taxi near Portage La Prairie, about 80 kilometres west of Winnipeg. The engine was still warm when RCMP officers arrived at 6:25 a.m. Tracking dogs followed a trail for five kilometres before losing it in a railway construction camp.

At the end of October, 1945, RCMP arrested two soldiers in Vernon BC in connection with the theft of a car at Neepawa, MB in September. They were brought back to Winnipeg for questioning but no connection was established with the Badger's murder and the case remained unsolved.

For more information on the Arthur Badger case, see "Canadian Taxi Driver Homicides: Arthur Badger" (www.taxi-library.org/canada/1-b01.htm) on Taxi-Library.org.