Pod Insights Canadian True Crime The Pacific Junction Murders [replay] About this episode A two-part series | A New Brunswick railway worker discovers a burned‑out shack deep in the woods, with three members of the young Lake family dead inside. But their infant is missing, and there's a trail of footprints in the snow. What begins as a desperate search for the lost baby soon exposes an unbelievable web of deception and hidden motives.
— This two-part series is a carefully selected replay from our archive, originally titled "The Lake Family Murders". We'll be back with new episodes in late April.
*Additional content warning: this series includes the death of a young child. Please take care when listening.
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1:55 Speaker 02 Canadian True Crime is a completely independent production funded mainly through advertising. The podcast often has disturbing content and coarse language. It's not for everyone. Please take care when listening.
2:07 Speaker 03 Hi there, I hope you're well. As I mentioned in the update a couple of weeks ago, this is a carefully selected replay from the archives as we prepare to return with new episodes in late April. Thanks so much for your patience.
2:24 Speaker 03 This is part one of a two-part series. An additional content warning: This series includes the death of a young child. Please take care when listening.
2:38 Speaker 03 The year was 1936 and the location was Pacific Junction, a remote railway junction in the Atlantic province of New Brunswick. It was a bitterly cold evening in early January and Canadian National Railways worker Omar Lutz was suddenly woken up by the sound of his dog barking incessantly outside. It was just after midnight. Omar went out to see what the disturbance was and found his dog running up and down the road, barking into the darkness as snow fell over the wooded area. Omar couldn't see anything going on, so quickly checked his fox pens to make sure no one was around
3:22 Speaker 03 before taking his dog back inside. He went back to bed, thinking nothing more of the strange incident.
3:35 Speaker 03 The following day Omar was back at the station at around noon when a man burst in saying he needed help. The man was a local trapper and logger named Otto Blackney and he said he'd just run straight from a horrific scene at a small settlement less than a mile away. Otto said he'd gone to the small shack belonging to another trapper named Philip Lake, who lived there with his young family. But he was instead confronted with a smoldering mess. Omar Lutz knew the Lake family. In fact, he'd just seen them the day before. Whatever this was about didn't sound good.
4:17 Speaker 03 Otto paused to catch his breath. All that remained of the Lake family shack was the frame, and a lone wood-burning stove that stood in the middle of what used to be the family's living area. The scene was starkly contrasted by the surrounding blanket of snow on the ground. Otto said that he gingerly approached the smoking ruins, and just inside the door frame, he saw something he'll never forget. Quote, "The hands and arms were burned off nearly to the elbows. The feet were burned off nearly to the knees. The flesh was practically all burned off." The body was unrecognisable,
4:59 Speaker 03 but Otto immediately assumed it was likely Philip Lake. He couldn't see anyone else there, and he knew he needed to get help. It was a remote, unpopulated area, but he knew there was a manned railway station nearby, so he started running in that direction. Once he got to the road, he started to see drops of blood peppered along in the snow, and then he came across a baby's bottle. Omar Lutz realised that Otto was describing the same stretch of road that he lived on, and this was likely what his dog was barking at just after midnight the previous night. Otto continued, saying after he picked up the bottle,
5:42 Speaker 03 he saw some tracks in the snow and started to follow them. Quote, "They seemed to stop every few minutes, and the person or persons appeared to have gathered up snow. I then came on the body of Jackie. He was face down in the snow, frozen, and I believed him dead, although I did not touch him." Jackie Lake was the eldest of the two Lake children, and he was only 20 months old. The toddler wasn't dressed for the freezing weather. The only thing he was wearing was a little pair of green and white pants, and heartbreakingly, his frozen arms were still outstretched. It was as though he was reaching for his mother.
6:28 Speaker 03 Otto said he followed the direction of those arms, and about forty feet away he found the body of Bertha, who he knew to be the wife of Philip Lake and the mother of the couple's two children. Quote, "There was a cut in her head, and she was lying in some blood. She had no clothes on except for a cloth around her hips. The snow where Bertha was lying was trampled down as though she had thrashed around."
7:24 Speaker 03 Railway worker Omar Lutz called for help. The remote location, combined with the snowy conditions and difficult terrain, made it difficult for emergency responders to arrive quickly. The nearest RCMP detachment was about twenty kilometres away in the town of Moncton, and constables had to travel to the scene by rail and then by foot. When they finally arrived at the ruined shack, one constable would describe what he saw when he looked at the ground near the doorway. Quote, "The remains were burned like a black stump. The legs had been burned off above the knees, but the skull was intact. They had told me Lake had two gold teeth,
8:08 Speaker 03 and I found these in the skull. When I touched one tooth, it dropped out of place." Dental records would confirm the remains belonged to thirty-year-old Philip Lake. The constables learned that the woman's body lying in the snow, about a hundred and eighty metres away from the shack, was his common-law wife Bertha, twenty-eight years old, her head surrounded by a pool of blood that extended by about six feet. And not too far away from that was the body of their son, Jackie. But the Lake family had another child that was still unaccounted for, a baby named Betty. She was only about four months old.
8:53 Speaker 03 The police kept searching and soon came across small skeletal remains that appeared to be all that was left of baby Betty. After first scanning the scene, it seemed likely to investigators that a fire broke out at the home, and Philip and Bertha perished while they were trying to rescue their children. It was incredibly heartbreaking. As the remains of the four members of the Lake family were taken to Moncton by freight car for autopsy, the RCMP finished searching inside the shack. Most of the family's possessions were consumed by the fire, but the constables managed to
9:34 Speaker 03 recover an alarm clock, a cash box, two knives, and the charred barrel of a 22 caliber rifle owned by Philip Lake.
9:45 Speaker 03 During a ground search of the area around the home, they found something curious. There were two sets of footprints leading away from the shack to the spot where the body of Bertha Lake was found, and there was evidence of pounding of the snow, especially in the area where her feet were. It seemed like it was more than just an escape. It actually looked like she was chased out of the home. And there were more footprints leading away from Bertha's body and away from the home towards the railway tracks. An investigator followed the trail and soon came across a large leather glove that had a blue and white mitten inside it.
10:28 Speaker 03 He picked it up and continued, noticing that there were depressions in the snow that looked as though someone had sat down between hurried footsteps. He also saw drag marks that looked to be from a stick. He continued to follow the trail, but it started getting harder and harder to find because of new snowdrifts, and then he lost it and had to turn back. Next step in the investigation was to speak to those who knew the Lake family.
11:00 Speaker 03 Philip Lake was originally from the neighbouring Atlantic province of Newfoundland and Labrador, but he met Bertha in New Brunswick. The circumstances of their meeting are unknown, other than the scandalous nature of it. Bertha was already married to a Moncton man named Marshall Ring. When Bertha met Philip Lake, she evidently saw a different future for herself and ran off with him, leaving her estranged husband heartbroken.
11:34 Speaker 03 Philip Lake and Bertha Ring ended up at the Pacific Junction Railway Region, an area so remote that it was known as the Backwoods. Only a few handfuls of settlers lived there at the time. The couple moved into one of the abandoned makeshift shacks. They were essentially squatters, but with some hard work and determination, they were able to build a sustainable life for themselves there. Philip would set up traps to catch wild game for food, and also cleared out some trees to plant crops like oats and potatoes. The couple weren't legally married, but they referred to each other as common-law husband and wife.
12:17 Speaker 03 And it wasn't long before Bertha was pregnant with their first son, Jackie. A year after he was born, along came baby Betty. Those who knew the family would tell the RCMP they were sociable, well-liked, and showed a generous display of strong community spirit. Thirty-year-old Philip Lake was known as a friendly and jovial man who shared whatever he had with others who needed it. And many did. This was 1936, six years after the crash of Wall Street caused the world to plunge into the Great Depression. The 1930s were a devastating time in history where goods no longer sold and businesses
13:02 Speaker 03 laid off workers at alarming rates, leaving them unable to provide for their families. In Canada, the unemployment rate climbed to an average of 30%. There were unprecedented levels of poverty, and one in five Canadians depended on government relief to survive, relief that was often insufficient. New Brunswick’s primary industries were hit hard. Lumber mills closed, paper mills stopped producing, and fishermen were paid much less for the fish they were able to catch, according to the provincial archives of New Brunswick. Many people found themselves hungry and often homeless, and the harsh winters made survival
13:47 Speaker 03 even more difficult.
13:50 Speaker 03 Local loggers and trappers reported that when they were hunting in the area, Philip Lake would generously invite them to stay in the outhouses near his shack, and Bertha would even cook them a hot meal. Otto Blackney, the man who first came across the horrific scene, told the police that the reason he went to the shack was to help Philip with firewood in exchange for a hot meal, but he said he hadn’t seen the family for about a week before that. The railway station worker he reported the discovery to, Omar Lutes, told the RCMP that the Lake family were law-abiding folks, and when he saw them just the previous day, he didn’t notice anything odd.
14:36 Speaker 03 Investigators spoke with Omar’s nephew, who had been visiting the Pacific Junction station house just the previous evening. He said he saw a young man walking towards Pacific Junction at about 5pm and was carrying what he believed to be a 22-caliber rifle under his arm. He identified the man as a local 19-year-old named Arthur Bannister.
15:04 Speaker 03 And this wasn't the first sighting of the young man during that timeframe. Investigators also spoke with a man named Leonard Carroll, who said that between 5 and 6pm that same evening, he came across someone that matched Arthur Bannister's description walking along the railway tracks. Quote, "The man I met was carrying a small box under one arm, and what I took to be a rifle under the other arm. It was a firearm of some sort, but I could not tell exactly what kind it was." Leonard Carroll said he spoke briefly with the young man he believed to be Arthur Bannister, who told him that he lived on "the old right of way",
15:47 Speaker 03 which was a colloquial term for a particular residential area nearby. And investigators followed up with a Canadian National Railway trolley operator, who also saw a man who matched Arthur's description walking along the tracks in around the same timeframe. So three separate men had reported seeing a person they either identified as Arthur Bannister or matched his description, likely to have been carrying a rifle, walking close to the train tracks. Two other men came forward to say they had seen fresh footprints in the snow that night, near the residential area known as "the old right of way".
16:30 Speaker 03 Our CMP investigators were sent to visit the home of the Bannister family.
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18:54 Speaker 03 The head of the Bannister household was 40-year-old mother, May Bannister, and she lived there with her four children, 20-year-old Daniel and 19-year-old Arthur, both unemployed, and their two sisters, 15-year-old Frances and 13-year-old Marie. There had once been a husband and father, but that man left the family over a decade earlier, leaving May to raise and provide for their four children by herself.
19:24 Speaker 03 And the Great Depression of the 1930s was not a great time to be a single mother to four children in rural New Brunswick. The Bannisters were just one of many families who lived in poverty and struggled greatly during this time. Their tiny home was cold and damp, and with five people living there, crowded. They had shelter at least, but when it came to essentials like food and clothing, the family were known to rely heavily on neighbours, charitable organisations and the kindness of strangers. They were always looking out for odd jobs that could earn them some extra money, and
20:04 Speaker 03 would find a kind car owner who would drive them into Moncton where they would sell flowers and wreaths they'd made. The RCMP actually knew of the Bannister family. They had arrested at least one of the brothers in Moncton before for begging for money. There's a strong, established link between poverty and crime. When we can't reliably access basic human necessities like food, clothing and shelter, and we've exhausted all our options, we become desperate. The RCMP arrived at the Bannister home with that blue and white mitten that was found along the snowy trail away from the lake home, inside a leather glove.
20:48 Speaker 03 That mitten would be their conversation starter for whoever answered the door. It was the oldest Bannister child, 20-year-old Daniel Bannister, and he immediately noticed the mitten. "Hey, that's mine, where'd you get it?" The investigator turned the tables, asking him when he last saw his mittens. Daniel replied that he'd loaned them to his younger brother Arthur the previous day. And Arthur was going trapping near Philip Lake's shack.
21:25 Speaker 03 After investigators had spoken to Daniel Bannister about the missing mittens, they immediately located and arrested his 19-year-old brother, Arthur Bannister, and brought him into the Moncton RCMP detachment for questioning. Arthur confirmed that he had gone to the lake shack, and he knew a fire had broken out because he was inside the home when it happened, but he denied any responsibility or blame for the incident. According to Arthur Bannister, when he arrived at the shack, he found three men there drinking: 30-year-old father Philip Lake and two local men. He said he sat down to drink with them until a bit later
22:10 Speaker 03 when his brother Daniel and younger sister Frances showed up at the shack to take him home. And that's where things took a negative turn. Arthur alleged that Philip Lake made an improper advance towards 15-year-old Frances and a fight broke out. He said he saw Philip pick up a piece of firewood and lob it at him, but instead it hit his 28-year-old wife, Bertha. And then, Daniel Bannister grabbed another piece of firewood and hit Philip on the head with it, knocking him to the ground. And in the commotion that followed, an oil lamp was knocked over. As the shack was quickly engulfed in flames,
22:52 Speaker 03 Arthur said he and his two siblings escaped and ran all the way home.
22:59 Speaker 03 The two local men Arthur named as being present that night were detained by police and questioned at length. They were incredulous, they both denied being present at the house at all that night, and they had solid alibis for the time which were corroborated by others. The two men were cleared. The RCMP didn't quite know what happened that night, but what they did know was that everything seemed to lead back to Arthur Bannister. They charged the 19-year-old with the murder of Philip Lake and picked up his older brother Daniel for questioning. Arthur had placed his brother and sister at the scene that night,
23:42 Speaker 03 but Daniel told investigators he'd never been to the Lake family home, ever. He'd never been inside it. In fact, he said he didn't even know where they lived.
23:58 Speaker 03 A coroner's inquest was held three days after the discovery of the bodies to get to the bottom of what happened. At autopsy, Philip Lake's body had been too badly burned to confirm his cause of death, but there was evidence of blunt force trauma to his head, which was determined to be the likely cause. The skeletal remains, originally thought to be baby Betty, actually belonged to the Lake family's cat. They also had a dog, a Great Dane, who was mercifully locked in a barn near the shack when the fire broke out and had since been taken to Moncton to be rehomed. The coroner determined that the most likely explanation
24:42 Speaker 03 was that four-month-old Betty must have also perished at the scene, her remains most likely completely consumed by the fire. Her mother, Bertha, had managed to escape the fire and had only superficial burns. Her cause of death was a fatal head wound, a large gash on the side of her head that caused a skull fracture. The coroner determined that the injury could not have been caused by a fall unless that fall was from a great height.
25:15 Speaker 03 Investigators believe that for whatever reason, a fight broke out at the home, and a fire started when an oil lamp was knocked over. From the evidence, they formed a theory that Bertha, who was almost naked, must have scooped up 20-month-old Jackie to flee from the burning house. But as she approached the door, she was likely struck over the head with something, and then chased out of the house. As she ran through the snow with Jackie in her arms, she may have been struck several more times before she dropped Jackie and collapsed in the snow, blood flowing from her head wound. When it came to little Jackie,
25:57 Speaker 03 the coroner only found a few scratches on his legs. Whoever it was that chased them out of the house just left them both to die: Bertha from her head wound, and Jackie from exposure to the cold.
26:13 Speaker 03 But what was the motive for all this? It seemed that everything, up until the fire, may have been explained by an accident in the heat of the moment. So why was there evidence of blunt force trauma to the head? And why did someone chase a mother and toddler out of their own home?
26:35 Speaker 03 A local man decided to contact the RCMP with a curious story to tell, but he didn't know if it was even relevant, because it happened three days before the murders. Earl O'Brien was a trapper who knew Philip Lake well. In fact, he'd been staying in one of the outhouses near the Lake home in the days before the tragic murders. And he had made plans to go trapping with one Arthur Bannister.
27:06 Speaker 03 The night of January the 2nd, three days before the murders, the two men were settling into that outhouse for the night so they could get an early start the next morning. Earl said he heard voices outside calling for Arthur, and watched as the 19-year-old grabbed his 22-caliber rifle and opened the door to find two people, a young man and what looked to be a teenage girl who seemed to be wearing men's trousers. Earl said he didn't know what this was all about or what these people wanted, but he hoped it would be helpful with the investigation. It certainly was. Investigators from Moncton RCMP returned to the Bannister home,
27:51 Speaker 03 this time to speak with 15-year-old Frances Bannister for the first time. But the door was answered by her mother, May Bannister. Newspapers would describe the 40-year-old as a plump or portly woman, in contrast with the way her kids were described, malnourished and skinny, especially the boys. May Bannister flat-out refused to let the RCMP into her home without a search warrant. The investigators weren't deterred. They had been focusing on learning about the Lake family, but their next task was to focus more on those who knew the Bannister family. They would be back with that search warrant.
28:36 Speaker 03 Investigators were informed that a man named Milton Tritz frequently assisted the impoverished family through the Salvation Army. Milton was also very generous with the Bannister family on a personal level, often providing them with groceries, loaning May small amounts of money, and bringing them excess clothes from a second-hand store he owned in Moncton. Milton Tritz told the RCMP that May Bannister had also been working for him as a housekeeper up until recently, and she often stayed at his place overnight. It appeared that this was his way of saying they had a casual intimate relationship.
29:18 Speaker 03 In October or November of 1935, about two months before the Lake family murders, May suddenly told him that she would have to take leave from work because she was pregnant with his baby and she would be leaving to give birth very soon.
29:38 Speaker 03 This was new. Investigators knew nothing of a baby, or that May had been pregnant with a fifth child. They asked Milton if the baby was ever born, and he said yes, but he didn’t actually meet her until January 6, 1936. That was the same day the fire at the Lake family shack was discovered.
30:04 Speaker 03 It was shortly after that that investigators visited the Bannister home for the first time and spoke with Daniel about the mitten. There was no mention of a new baby, and they saw no evidence that a baby even lived there. Something wasn’t adding up.
30:24 Speaker 03 On January 10, 1936, the remains of Philip Lake, his common-law wife Bertha, and their toddler Jackie were buried. And at the same time, investigators returned to the Bannister home, this time armed with a search warrant. When May Bannister answered the door, she was immediately asked if there was a baby in the house. She casually confirmed that there was. She’d given birth a few months beforehand in a cabin outside Moncton. No big deal. To the officers, it was though. They flashed the search warrant and entered the home to search for the baby, and soon came across a black-haired, blue-eyed baby girl upstairs.
31:12 Speaker 03 When they told May they were taking her to the station for questioning, she responded, quote, "You can take the damn baby, but I will not come while there is a drop of blood in me." May was extremely unhelpful, hostile even. The police had brought with them an employee known as a police matron, basically a woman to deal with other women and children who had been detained by police. The matron would report that she told May that a doctor was going to be arranged who would confirm she had recently given birth, that the baby belonged to her, and May reportedly replied, "No damn doctor is going to touch me."
31:53 Speaker 03 Later, that matron would be asked if the doctor's story was just her way of trying to scare May into talking, and she said she could tell by the way May looked that the woman could not be scared. The RCMP took forty-year-old May Bannister to the station for questioning, along with her fifteen-year-old daughter Frances. Both were detained from this point on as material witnesses. Because Arthur and Daniel were already in custody, the only family members that remained on the outside were thirteen-year-old Marie Bannister and the unidentified baby girl. Initially, they were cared for by Milton Trites.
32:37 Speaker 03 At the station, investigators demanded May Bannister provide proof that the infant was really hers. May told them she had given birth to the baby unattended, so there was no doctor to confirm it, and after she gave birth, she said she stayed at a local hotel with the baby for three days. One of the investigators would later say, quote, "I checked up on this information and found it to be untrue. In fact, I could not find anything to back up any of her assertions." May was asked if anyone else could corroborate that the baby was hers, and she gave the names of two men and one woman in Moncton, who would be able to confirm they had either
33:21 Speaker 03 seen her or had spoken to her while she was holding the baby. And May challenged investigators to ask her daughter Frances directly who the baby belonged to. So, they did. They took the fifteen-year-old into a separate room. Frances simply replied that the baby belonged to her mother and refused to say anything else. Investigators noticed that the teenager was incredibly composed, given the situation. After all, she was being questioned by police about the identity of her mother's baby, just days after her oldest brothers were arrested and charged with murder.
34:06 Speaker 03 Suddenly, May Bannister called investigators back and told them she'd had a change of heart. She confessed that the baby was not actually hers. She said Frances had rescued the baby from a house fire in the early morning hours of January the 6th, and brought her home. May gave the impression the family were just doing the good citizen thing by looking after an orphaned infant, and that's all she knew. It seemed highly likely that this baby may actually be Betty Lake.
34:41 Speaker 03 Investigators went back to fifteen-year-old Frances Bannister, who would back up her mother's latest story. She told them about what happened that night. She said her oldest brother Daniel had asked her to keep him company on a walk to the lake home, so he could bring their other brother Arthur back with them. She agreed to go with him, and said that they arrived at close to midnight, and waited outside for Arthur. And then, quote, "Arthur brought the child out and I turned and left, walking through the snow toward Pacific Junction Station." Frances said that as she carried the baby away, she didn't see or hear any evidence of a fire,
35:24 Speaker 03 but she did think she heard the sound of a woman screaming. She said her brothers caught up with her about halfway home.
35:34 Speaker 03 So Frances had basically confirmed her mother's story, but the version of events she gave was not good news for her brothers. Twenty-year-old Daniel had denied being at the home, or even knowing where the Lake family lived, but both of his siblings had now placed him at the scene. And when it came to nineteen-year-old Arthur's account, Frances didn't mention anything about being allegedly hit on by Philip Lake. There was no mention of a fight breaking out or an overturned lamp that caused a house fire. Arthur Bannister was already facing murder charges, but he was soon joined by his older brother, Daniel Bannister.
36:18 Speaker 03 And their mother, May Bannister, was charged with counts related to kidnapping and harboring a person who had been kidnapped. She was the first woman in Canadian history to be charged with the crime of kidnapping. But there were still so many unanswered questions, so the Crown made a decision to exhume and x-ray the remains of Philip Lake.
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38:59 Speaker 03 The first autopsy conducted on Philip Lake's remains hadn't been able to determine a cause of death, but recent developments necessitated a second opinion. After his remains were exhumed, an X-ray revealed there was a 22-caliber bullet lodged in Philip's skull. His death was not an accident, and it was not blunt force trauma that killed him. This was a murder.
39:28 Speaker 03 Police knew from witness accounts that Arthur Bannister had been seen walking near the train tracks with a 22-caliber rifle, but searches of the Bannister house had not produced the firearm. Figuring it had been dumped or discarded at some point, they asked any willing locals to assist them in a search of the snowdrifts along the tracks at Pacific Junction. 15-year-old Frances Bannister was also taken to the scene, and asked if she knew anything about her brother Arthur having a gun. Eventually, she told investigators that Arthur did have a rifle, and he smashed it on the way home. After she pointed out
40:09 Speaker 03 the general area where he threw it into the bushes along the railway, an investigator recovered the butt of a rifle that had been split and splintered.
40:21 Speaker 03 And not long after this, about a quarter of a mile from the Lake's shack, another member of the search party found the broken barrel of a 22 caliber rifle. The barrel, dirty with powder marks, was sent to a ballistics expert in Montreal to determine if there was any correlation with the bullet that had been recovered from Philip Lake's skull.
40:46 Speaker 03 Meanwhile, the police had been speaking to another man who worked with the Salvation Army to assist the impoverished Bannister family. His name was Albert Powell, and he was a busy man: a railway freight checker by day, a volunteer Sunday School teacher on Sundays, and his work with the Salvation Army. He told police that after he was introduced to the Bannisters, he visited with the family frequently, bringing them small amounts of money and groceries, and making sure they had their basic needs met. He even stopped by on Sundays to conduct private Sunday School classes for 13-year-old Marie Bannister.
41:28 Speaker 03 He told investigators that in October of 1935, three months before the Lake family murders, May Bannister summoned him to her home as she had something urgent to tell him. When Albert arrived, May gestured to her youngest daughter, 13-year-old Marie, and stated, quote, "If that child is going to have a baby, you are going to be responsible for it." Albert was shocked. He adamantly denied having any sexual contact with the young girl, and told May he was surprised she would say something like that when she herself would know it wasn't true. It appears that they managed to smooth things over after that,
42:12 Speaker 03 and Albert continued to visit with the family for the next few weeks. But for some reason, he started to get the feeling that he wasn't needed so much anymore, or perhaps the relationship had run its course, and the visits tapered off.
42:31 Speaker 03 Such was the interest in the strange case of the Lake family murders and its connection to the Bannister family, that hundreds of people had gathered outside the courthouse for the first court hearing, and every time after that, traffic backed up along the street outside the courthouse. Early on, there was a dramatic scuffle between two defence lawyers, who each insisted they had the right to defend the Bannister family. One had been appointed by the court, and the other claimed he'd been retained privately to represent the family, but there was some mystery around who was actually paying.
43:12 Speaker 03 The court-appointed lawyer told the judge that he'd heard rumours that the person paying for the retainer was also likely to be a crown witness in this case, and this person was apparently not related to the Bannisters. The judge shut the conversation down, determining that for whatever reason, someone had retained a lawyer to represent the Bannisters and that's what will happen. The court-appointed lawyer was dismissed, and the defence lawyer for the Bannisters moving forward would be a man named Murray Lambert.
43:48 Speaker 03 As part of the pre-trial hearings, logger Otto Blackney tearfully answered questions about visiting the Lake family shack that day to help Philip with fireworks. He told the court that instead, he came across his burnt body, and those of his wife and toddler. Otto Blackney was also the person who would identify the baby found in the Bannister home as being Betty Lake. He told the court that he knew very little about babies, but he had seen the Lake baby girl a number of times, and recalled Bertha showing him a strawberry birthmark on the baby's scalp, just under her thick, black hair.
44:30 Speaker 03 He said that when she cried, the birthmark would bulge. With that, the doors burst open and the bewildered baby was carried into the packed courtroom to be identified by Otto Blackney. Almost on cue, she began to cry, and her black hair was swept aside so that Otto could point out the bulging birthmark, just as he described it. There was no doubt that the baby was Betty Lake. Otto was asked about Philip Lake and Bertha Ring's relationship, and he said he didn't know whether they were legally married or not, but to him, they always seemed relatively happy and content. He did have one strange tale to tell.
45:16 Speaker 03 The previous fall, when Bertha was pregnant with Betty, Philip Lake recounted a strange encounter he'd had with one of the Bannister boys and his sister. Apparently, they showed up to the Lake family shack and asked Philip outright if they could have his baby when it was born. Otto told the court about Philip's reaction: "Philip just laughed about it and gave me to understand that he was not going to let them have the child."
45:47 Speaker 03 During the pre-trial court hearings, Defence Council Murray Lambert worked hard to represent the Bannister family, filing motions and asking for delays for various reasons, including bail requests. Forty-year-old May Bannister and her 15-year-old daughter Frances were being detained at the Moncton Police Jail as material witnesses. Bail had been denied for them both. Lambert argued that Frances was a minor and it was extremely unfair that the RCMP required her to be in custody at their beck and call just in case they needed her to testify. But there, she stayed.
46:30 Speaker 03 Through Lambert, the Bannister family would level several other accusations at the RCMP, including using unlawful interrogation tactics to coerce certain statements and confessions. One of the issues was that in the early stages of the preliminary hearings, Daniel requested to speak with an investigator so he could give a new statement, and commented: "The police cannot hang an innocent man. That's the reason I sent for you. I am going to tell it all." Defence counsel Lambert complained that this comment indicated that the statement that followed may have been motivated by Daniel’s fear of going to the gallows,
47:14 Speaker 03 rather than a desire to tell the truth. And also, Daniel didn’t realise that in trying to clear himself through his statement, he inadvertently implicated his brother Arthur. The RCMP constable who took the statement described Daniel Bannister as being “not too bright”, and the judge did not allow his statement to be admitted into evidence, so the details given never came to light. But newspapers reported the basic gist: in his new statement, Daniel admitted that he was outside the Lake family home that night, but he maintained he never actually went inside it.
47:59 Speaker 03 May Bannister had an accusation of her own, and it was about when she suddenly changed her mind and admitted the baby didn’t belong to her, and that Francis had rescued the baby from a house fire and brought her home. Through Defence counsel Lambert, May argued that the only reason she changed her story was because one of the RCMP officers had threatened her, that if she didn’t, she would face life in prison, and would also see her sons get hanged. The family made other claims that they’d been brow-beaten by the RCMP. They alleged that constables had incentivised Arthur and Daniel’s jail cellmates with
48:41 Speaker 03 getting a confession out of them, and they had also given 15-year-old Francis food, candy, and a radio to get her to talk. The RCMP constable did admit that he had purchased peanuts and apples for Francis when she was first in custody, but denied using it as an inducement, and also denied threatening May Bannister to get her to confess. The judge cleared the RCMP constable in question, and Defence counsel Lambert ended up admitting to the judge that he had been wrong in advising May to press charges on that matter. At one of the preliminary hearings, thirteen-year-old Marie Bannister was questioned,
49:25 Speaker 03 but it wasn't very successful and she didn't answer most of them. Defence counsel Lambert asked for the questioning to stop, claiming the teenager had also been intimidated by our CMP officers. Marie was the only family member who wasn't in police custody. Her father, May Bannister's estranged husband, had abandoned the family shortly after Marie was born, but upon learning what had happened, he returned to look after her. At seventy-five years old, William Bannister was more than thirty years older than his estranged wife and was described by those in the courtroom as a frail elderly man.
50:10 Speaker 03 The bizarre murder-kidnapping case of the Bannisters ended up going before a grand jury to decide if there was enough evidence to go to trial, as was customary at the time. The grand jury determined that Philip Lake and Bertha Ring had been murdered and there was enough evidence for both Arthur and Daniel Bannister to go to trial on murder charges, where they would face a mandatory death sentence if found guilty. When it came to Little Jackie Lake, the grand jury decided murder charges were not appropriate because the toddler's primary cause of death was exposure. In addition to murder charges,
50:51 Speaker 03 Arthur and Daniel Bannister were each charged with one count of kidnapping baby Betty, but because the stories they gave to police had been completely different, they would need to be tried separately. As for their mother, May Bannister, the grand jury found that a straight kidnapping charge wasn't appropriate and instead, ordered a trial on charges that amounted to procuring, counselling and harbouring a kidnapped child. By this point, local rumours were swirling that the murders of Philip Lake, Bertha Ring and Little Jackie Lake might actually be the secondary crime here, that the reason behind it all was the kidnapping of the baby.
51:37 Speaker 03 But even if the Lake family hadn't perished that night, they had no money to pay a ransom. It seemed that the Bannister family was desperate for certain people to believe they had a new baby. But what purpose could having a baby possibly serve? The family already lived in poverty, relying on the generosity of others for their survival. They certainly did not need any extra mouths to feed. So why were they so intent on acquiring a baby that they were willing to terrorise and kill a young family to get one?
52:21 Speaker 03 That's where we'll leave it for part one. Thanks for listening and special thanks to Eileen McFarlane from Crime Labs for her work on researching and writing this case. For the full list of resources we relied on to write this episode and anything else you want to know about the podcast, visit the page for each episode at canadiantruecrime.ca.
52:47 Speaker 03 Thank you so much as always for your kind ratings, reviews, messages and support. I wish I had time to reply to them all, but please know I am so grateful. Audio editing and production was by We Talk of Dreams, who also composed the theme songs. Production assistance was by Jessie Hawke, with script consulting by Carol Weinberg. Writing, narration, sound design and additional research was by me, and the disclaimer was voiced by Eric Crosby. I'll be back soon with part two. See you then.
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