Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 12, 2025
When the spring came the bodies were found on sand-bars and were easily identified, even by the fitting of some fragments of teeth that Pennecuick had found where the men had been shot in the head by the revolver after they had fallen before the rifle.
So marks made that morning would stay, and Pennecuick found that some heavy body or bodies had been dragged down to a place in the ice where, though now frozen over, these bodies had been put in the river. Pennecuick reasoned that if O'Brien was going to kill these men he would not do it on the river where he might be seen.
Pennecuick, of course, followed, and came to a tent cabin in which he found the .45-calibre rifle. Raking in the snow, he discovered that clothing had been burned, for he found some buttons with the name of a Seattle firm. Then he went in and searched the stove and found more relics.
But he felt that probably O'Brien had emptied the pockets of his victims' clothes before he burned them, and likely had thrown the things away from the fire that might lead to his identification with the murder if he kept them. So Pennecuick did the same thing with articles out of his own pocket, watching where they fell.
Of course, Pennecuick did not know about this axe when he found the trees chopped down, but his examination of the stumps shows that he omitted nothing in his scrutiny. When Pennecuick noted that, he hunted for traces of a trail, and found such traces leading to the river. He got a broom and swept the whole way down. Klondikers recall Christmas '98 as soft in the morning and freezing at night.
Things were beginning to look interesting and, as Inspector Scarth wanted a man who answered O'Brien's description for robbing the cache of Mr. Hansen at Wolf's Island, O'Brien was sent up to Fort Selkirk and held on that charge. Pennecuick proved himself a veritable sleuth.
So the sleuth went back up into the bush and swept away till he came to some evidences of blood, then he found three .32 revolver bullets, and one in the earth from a .45 rifle. Next day, as Pennecuick came back to work he met a dog on the river. Dogs crop up all over the Northern history, and many times they were important links in the chains of evidence.
Pennecuick recognized the dog as O'Brien's, which had been kept in barracks at Dawson by the Police and fed and petted when O'Brien was in jail there before. The dog recognized the uniform, fawned on the wearer of it, and when Pennecuick said "Go home, sir, go home," the dog turned and trotted up the bank and then turned aside where some slight trail showed.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking