John Wilson was a Scotsman who married a woman named Polly Hutchison in 1908. Soon afterward, he began embezzling money from the business he co-owned with his in-laws in a vain attempt to save the business of his even more dishonest brother. The family did not press charges, but in 1912 he decided to go to Saskatchewan for a year in order to escape the shame. He left his wife and two children behind.
In Canada, Wilson held several jobs, eventually ending up as a Mountie. He never earned enough money to return home or to bring his family to Canada, but one suspects that the real problem was that he did not want to go home and admit failure. He eventually stopped writing to his family. Instead, he fell in love with Jessie Patterson, a young woman whose family had nursed him through a bout of tuberculosis.
Meanwhile, his anxious wife resolved to come to Canada to find him. Through a strange coincidence, she reached him by phone the first day she arrived in Saskatchewan. Wilson did not have the courage to tell either his wife or his girlfriend the truth about the other woman, and he kept them in separate cities, embezzling fine money to keep up with his expenses.
After about six months, in the fall of 1918, Wilson bought a marriage licence, took his now pregnant wife for a drive in the country near Waldheim, Sask., blew her head off with a shotgun and buried her beneath a culvert. He drove around to get back on the road, but as he went past the place where the body was buried, he lost control of the car and crashed it into the ditch. He burned the car to obliterate the bloodstains. A group of helpful Mennonite farmers found Wilson in the morning, gave him breakfast and drove him into town, unaware of the murder.
Two days later, Wilson married Jessie. He sent letters and telegrams to Polly's family in Scotland to maintain the fiction that she was still alive, but when she didn't write them, the family became suspicious and asked the Royal Northwest Mounted Police to investigate. About 14 months later, Wlison was arrested. He eventually told police where the body was buried, was convicted of murder and was hanged.
The book is fascinating, not just because it is very well written but also because Wilson's wives and their families kept many of his letters. These letters reveal the man behind this evil deed and thus provide a deep insight into the psychology of evil.
Wilson emerges as a man lacking in moral courage. He couldn't face the shame of embezzlement in Scotland or the shame of failure in Canada. He didn't have the courage to tell the two women in his life about each other and hedged for six months, unable to decide what to do. The murder was not a bold plan but a way of escaping having to tell the truth. Wilson wrote a series of contradictory lies to the two women and their families, and couldn't keep his story straight with other people either. (He told several different stories to the Mennonite farmers on the morning after the murder, for instance.) One wonders whether he even knew the truth himself; one suspects that he lied to himself to cover up the truth he couldn't face.
Wilson was not a cold-blooded, conscienceless killer. In the 14 months before he was arrested, Wilson struggled with guilt, depression and alcoholism. He kept incriminating evidence, and missed an opportunity to blame his wife's death on a flu epidemic. The crashing of his car at the murder site suggests that he didn't want to get away. He did not try to flee when it became obvious the police were investigating him. He seems to have been a man waiting to be caught, even though he lacked the courage to turn himself in. He eventually admitted the murder, in spite of the fact that his story kept changing. A suicide attempt failed; one suspects that he did not so much fear death, as he despaired over his empty and meaningless life.
One also gets a sense of the essential loneliness of the man. Alone on the vast prairie, drifting from job to job, he had drinking companions but no real friends. He had two wives but preferred to tell lies to them rather than reveal to them who he really was. He seemed to be always searching for something to give his life meaning, but he ruined everything good he came into contact with. He was given the love of two good women, but betrayed them both. In the end, Polly Hutchison's family expressed pity for him, rather than anger.
One of the policemen quotes a comment on an earlier case: "Most of the interest and part of the terror of great crime are due not to what is abnormal, but to what is normal in it, what we have in common with the criminal, rather than the subtle insanity which differentiates him from us."
Surprisingly, John Wilson's evil does not succeed in overshadowing other elements in the book. The police who investigated the murder appear as honest men with a passion for truth and justice. Wilson's evil seems weak and unstable in comparison to their solid honesty. In the strange intermixing of circumstances, one can almost see the hand of God, bringing Wilson to justice and forcing him to finally face his sin.
The two women in John Wilson's life were also far different from their husband. Polly, in particular, seems to have been a devout Christian from a family of devout Christians. She emerges as faithful, courageous, forgiving and generous, travelling alone for thousands of miles to find her unfaithful husband. Her family back in Scotland showed similar traits. It was their persistence in begging the police to find Polly that eventually led to the discovery of the truth. Even in her few months in Canada, Polly had gained some good friends, who sought to find out what had happened to her. Polly was never alone. In spite of her unfaithful husband, her life was one of committed relationships.
Wilson's second wife also enjoyed the loving, tolerant support of her family. This family had risked their own lives to nurse back to health a lonely man who would otherwise have died of tuberculosis in a cold tent on the edge of town. When the murder was discovered, Jessie found a refuge in their midst. Her first child was born the day John Wilson was executed. She eventually remarried and had six more children. Although she suffered periodic bouts of depression, she lived a full and productive life, active in church and community.
The Mennonite farmers as well emerge as honest, truthful, tolerant and generous, even to a man whom they suspected was half-drunk when he smashed his car and who they recognized was telling them lies.
The Secret Lives of Sgt. John Wilson is not just a record of evil. It is also a historical record of a good and faithful Christian community. In the end, the good overshadows and defeats the evil.
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