‘A MYSTERIOUS BRUNETTE’ MAY BE KEY TO A MURDER
The Sun’s Bob Bouchette reports on shooting of rooming house owner
Bob Bouchette was The Vancouver Sun’s star reporter in the 1930s. In an era when crime stories were big, he could spin a murder yarn as colourfully as detective novelists Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain.
A classic was the murder of Jack Robertson on June 2, 1935.
“Police are looking for ‘Mary, a mysterious brunette, who may able to solve the riddle of the murder of Jack Robertson, 55-year-old proprietor of the North Star Rooms, 33 West Hastings Street, shot to death in his establishment at 11:30 Sunday night,” Bouchette wrote.
“Was this ‘Mary’ one side of a love triangle also involving the murdered Robertson and a second man?
“Was the man who registered himself as ‘B. Harold’ at 11:15 and vanished a few minutes later, without even turning down his bed coverings, a gunman sent to kill Robertson?”
An anonymous Sun artist did a map of the crime at the North Star, which is now known as the Chelsea. (It’s the building beside Funky Winkerbean’s.)
The map was called “The Trail of Blood,” and depicted “Robertson’s journey from his room to the Hastings Street entrance where he was found dying.”
Robertson’s room was number nine, and is shown with his bed. It connected to the manager’s office, which had a chair, a couch, and a desk behind a “wicket window.”
The artist drew a dotted line from Robertson’s room down the hall to the landing and then down the stairs to the street, where his body was found just inside the entrance. With little hard evidence from the cops, Bouchette’s story was filled with questions.
“Was the murder engineered by a lone gunman, or did he have a confederate who lured Robertson upstairs on pretence of booking a room while the killer waited in the office below?
“Was Robertson, a well-liked man who was known to carry considerable sums in his pocket, the victim of a bandit who lost his nerve and fled after the fatal shot was fired?
“Is there anything in Robertson’s past, which allegedly includes a temporary proprietorship of the Windsor Hotel, 55 East Hastings Street, mentioned frequently as a notorious bawdy house at the recent vice trials, which might throw light on the motive for the slaying?”
Later in the story Bouchette said Robertson had purchased the Windsor from Lou Barrack, “a convicted white slaver.” This is 1930s slang for someone who lived off the avails of prostitution. But Robertson found the Windsor “too rough,” and sold it.
Police interviewed Robertson’s wife and brother, who both swore he had no enemies. But Bouchette noted the cops were looking for Mickey Namit, “night clerk at the North Star, who was discharged Saturday by Robertson for failing to light the furnace.”
Bouchette interviewed several men who had rooms at the North Star, including Angelo Eustachio, a chef who lived across the hall from the office.
“I heard a sound like a shot,” Eustachio said, “and then I heard Robertson yell, ‘you son of a bitch, you son of a bitch.’ There was a sound of footsteps going away.
“I put on my pants and slippers and went downstairs. Robertson was lying at the foot of the stairway. He was spitting blood.”
On June 4 The Sun reported that the mysterious Mary was believed to be a “foreign woman.” The tip had been given by a “blonde woman roomer” who told police she had overheard Robertson being warned “several times” that he “might get into trouble over Mary.”
An inquest was held into the murder June 7 at the city morgue. Mary turned out to be Mary Ohama, who had a room at the North Star. The Sun reported she looked “fetching in a white ensemble” at the inquest.
Another roomer testified at the inquest that he had seen Robertson talking to Mary and a “short, stocky in a peaked cap” shortly before the murder. But Mary said she “did not recall” speaking to the man in the peaked cap.
The story then disappeared from the paper, so it’s hard to say if Robertson’s murderer was ever found. Sadly, Bob Bouchette suffered from depression and is believed to have committed suicide by drowning on June 12, 1938.