The ‘Black’ Donnellys Massacre: The Unpunished Massacre (REUPLOAD)

Hello everybody welcome back to a brand new episode of The Casual Crim list as always I'm your host Sim here one of my writers this case Danny thank you so much Danny a script a Canadian conspiracy the black donal's Massacre never heard of this the format of the show if you're new here we're going to read this together and explore let's jump in shall [Music] we the frilly curtains tend to start twitching whenever a new family member moves into the neighborhood I'll admit that I've done it myself in the past I'm usually just looking out for a few very specific pointers I'll take it as a good sign if the new residents have got pets or are talking in calm voices or are so very old and close to death that are unlikely to have the energy to cause much trouble before the next lot inevitably move into the house in the very near future do old really old people who are close to death move house like is that something they do like my grandparents lived in the same house for a very long time before their inevitable deaths and because they're really old house would be like a big effort for them and they know people in the neighborhood what are they going to do go out and make friends with the other 90-year-olds like doesn't seem very realistic to me I'll take it as a bad sign if the new neighbors are wearing prince Andrew face masks and fall out of the removal van covered in blood and vomit as their eight screaming children run around the driveway with heroin needles sticking out of their arms whilst chanting the theme Dune to Peppa Pig I have that absolutely nailed into my head because my kids are not in a Peppa Peg Pig phase at the moment but they definitely were and it's it's just that haunts haunts the minds of parents just before we continue with today's video I want to say that it's brought to you by keeps now I know what you're probably thinking Simon you are a bals man but that doesn't mean that I can't help look out for my fellow folically challenged friends keeps 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whether you're fighting hair loss or just want to keep your main in tiptop shape keeps have got you covered thanks to keeps for sponsoring this video and for a special offer go to keeps.com Simon or click the link in the description below that's ks.com Simon that's me let's keep those those heads nice and hairy shall we gents and now back to today's video there are far too many other frilly curtains witches who really only care about whether the new neighbors might be pesky foreigners although in the north of England the term Foreigner might sometimes be employed to describe someone from a different continent a different country a different town or from the next street up where the rough kids set fire to dead cats that they found in wheelie bins Jesus Christ that's what the north of England's like apparently just dead cats in wheelie bins everywhere just being set fire to it's like it must be a tradition there Danny's from the north I've never been no I have been of course I've been to the north of England and I found so many dead cats the Don Le family might not necessarily have been expecting an easy ride when they upped sticks from their native iseland and moved all the way to Canada in the 1840s so so I iming all of this is very present day because you know wheelie bins and and it's like oh now we're going back to 1840s because that's where today's story is happen happening rather than Danny's Street and to put it mly they quickly rubbed up some of their neighbors in the wrong way but this was no minor neighborly squabble over borrowed lawn Ms or overgrown Hedges or nymphomaniac grandparents Danny no no the everg growing donelly family found themselves locked in a wild Feud which evolved into four Decades of bitter business rivalry violence robbery sabotage slit throats murder and at least one instance of swearing at a constable it was a feud that led to a genuinely gruesome final showdown in 1880 which went down in history as the black Don's Massacre during which no less than five members of the family were s savagely murdered in one night oh my god there must have been really bad neighbors that you had to murder them but where the Donell is the villainous architects of their own downfall or were the innocent victims of a local Lynch Mob who didn't care too much for Outsiders can it be true that nobody was ever convicted in the murders despite everyone in town knowing exactly who is responsible and why was the story suppressed for well over 70 years with some locals still regarding the matter as an unspeakable topic even today well if they got away with it it's because they'll be like never mention the murders that no one ever seemed to follow up on never mention them they will be forgotten and we will lead out live out our lives that's why no one would ever mention it it's not like if you had murdered someone in the past you're just walking around being like hey Bob remember that time we all got together and murdered that entire family no one's doing that that would be crazy hop down the road to my place where we can discuss the matter in even more detail while cracking open an ay bottle of wine and munching on a few light nibbles but take your shoes off before you come in and bring back that cement mixer I let you 6 months ago who has a cement mixer why would you have a cement mixer you mixing your own I guess people do mix their own cement I remember mixing my own cement I think my dad repaired our driveway or something but we didn't have a cement mixer it was only a little bit of cement so it just mixed it up in a bucket or something yeah I remember that if you got your own cement mixer you're up to some serious meet the black feet during their long residence in Canada the family were nicknamed the black donelles which is a bit of an odd nickname of a family of White Irish Catholics like could you think of more white people than Irish Catholics it's been suggested that the name refers to the Blackness of their moods and their hearts but it may have been a name plucked from centuries of good old religious conflict just also call it racism right they're like these outsid of from Marland and they arrive in Canada and they're just like it just feels a little bit racist doesn't it and by a little bit I just mean just regular racist when a young James donelly known as Jim and his wife Joanna Donell known as Judith packed up their and moved to Canada in the 1840s they were following the lead of a great many other Roman Catholic Irish immigrants who were escaping religious and political turmoil not to mention the small matter of the Great Famine to seek out fresh opportunities in this new Canadian world of maple syrup and quite staggering politeness the religious troubles had been bubbling away in Ireland since way back in the 17th century when the power and wealth effectively shifted to a minority landholding Protestants much to the detriment of the Catholic majority who lost many of their rights and were forced into hardship and poverty and death by the action of the ever escalating rents demanded by the Filthy Rich Protestant landlords this led in the 1750s to the rise of a secret society called the white boys formed by Angry Catholics who sought harsh revenge on all Protestants and even other Catholics who dared to engage or do business with any everyday Protestants the white boys got their name from the white spoks they wore while conducting their campaigns of Terror against the Protestants and sympathetic Catholics campaigns which often involve killing livestock and burning homes to the ground oh my go but why why would you choose white it's going to be a nightmare to get all the blood off in contrast the term black feet was a derogatory name thrown at any Catholic who dared to associate with Protestants or the English for that matter although they would never have referred to themselves in such a way Jim and Judith Donnelly were two such black feet who chose to try and get along with their neighbors instead of attempting to set fire to everything you'd think that this healthy desire to live in peace would be a promising sign for their future endeavors with their new neighbors over in Canada but half of the black feet nickname reserved for perceived Catholic traitors seemed to follow them over the pond maybe it wasn't such a giant leap after all though the donal's moved from a farming town in Ireland full of Irish Catholics to a farming town in Canada full of Irish Catholic immigrants okay well then it doesn't seem likely that they it was their Outsider thing because they're living in like a place where there's loads of other people like them the landscape may have changed a bit but the vibe was very similar in a population made up of people who sat on the opposite side of the barbed fence when it came to white boys and black feet but we're getting ahead of ourselves here as the dones took quite a long winded route to their new farming town Jim and Judith Donnelly had married in County tippery Ireland in 1840 and just one year later their first of many children James Jor was born it's not known exactly what year they decided to take the plunge and move to Canada but it's generally believed that Jim set sail around 1842 and found a place to live before Judith and little James followed him within the same year they made a bit of a false start by first settling down in the city of London in Ontario for a year or two where Jim briefly worked as a Tradesman before the donelles decided that City Life wasn't for them yeah I don't think City life would have been for me in the 18th century 1842 yeah they were kind of like there was it was getting pretty polluted by that time right and filthy and there's going to be horse everywhere I be like yeah no no no I'd rather live in the country and also way less disease I mean there's way more disease in the city less disease out in the country like I like living in the city now because it's relatively nice and there's like you know emission standards and there's not horses everywhere there's less there's there's just not that much disease around like compared to the past where everyone was getting just consumption and dying they were Keen to get their hands dirty and carve out a new life as farmers in what was then known as the bolf Township in Upper Canada which has since merged with the village of Lucan and is today known as Lucan bolf in Southwest Ontario the bedf township wasn't a bad place to start for a budding farmer preparing to plant his first crop and yank his first cow the fertile region had been adopted by a large group of African-Americans from Cincinnati Ohio in the 1820s who had carried without much of the initial logging of the lands but later struggled with the tough farming conditions and eventually abandoned their lots to return in defeat to city jobs under the ownership of the Canada company fresh attempts were made to sell the lots to potential new settlers from the UK at a relatively cheap price in a bid to get some productivity rolling out of this untapped Wilderness and it was an offer taken up by many Irish immigrants in the 1840s and yet relatively cheap was still far too expensive for many potential settlers and what happens in many cases is that rich British Property Owners snapped up the Lots without even bothering to pay them a visit yeah that's the thing you like immediately I've SE there's like cheap land it's like well someone with a lot more money is going to come in and buy it all up like unless I'm like surely you need to restrict this to people who live there or something like that like a bunch of places do this now don't they whereas like you can only buy land and stuff if you're like a person a resident of that country or even of that City and stuff don't Germany do this like famously to stop people doing airbnbs and stuff it's a bad idea to just make it cheap and then be like hey everyone can have it because there's rich people in like foreign countries that will just come and it just sat there in a casual hope that one day somebody might come along with enough money to rent their land and do something constructive with it the donelles certainly didn't have enough money to buy or even rent land when they first showed up in the bolf township but Jim and Judith weren't going to let a trivial matter like that scuffer their grand plans they came across a nice spot of a 100 acres of land which went under the official name of lot 18 concession 6 situated in an area known rather less officially as the RO line socalled because of the high volume of Roman Catholics who had already settled here during the last couple of years the name also perhaps served as a warning that Protestants weren't particularly welcome around these parts the problem was that this parcel of land was now owned by a guy called John Grace who had recently acquired it from the Canada company but fortunately John Grace was one of the many absent landlords Who currently didn't seem all that interested in lording over his land so Jim and Judith made themselves at home as the new squatters of lot 18 concession 6 this was a pretty common situation which was often strongly supported by the courts back in the days of the Wild Wild West the dones were probably not even aware who actually owns lot 18 whilst John Grace almost was certainly unaware that he had squatters on his land probably because John Grace is like chilling in London or whatever and he's just like vaguely aware that he owns some land somewhere and it's like John Grace it's kind of not a bad idea land's going cheap does you know what was is it Mark Twain who said you know invest in land there's only a limited amount of it it's not a bad plan that land's probably worth something today and like John Grace the 17th is Rich over the course of the next decade the donelles built themselves a fancy Homestead and a respectable working farm from the 100 acres of wilderness whilst Judith also gave birth to another six Sons William John Patrick Michael Robert and Thomas is that like statistically likely is it random or are some people more inclined to have boys and some people more inclined to have girls or is it just literally a 50-50 shot because six seven sons godamn by the 1850s the dones were established figures within the growing bolf Township although opinions of them appeared to be very mixed Jim was a pretty short and stocky Fe figure reaching No taller than 5' 5 in on the height chart he had probably plastered on the wall of his bedroom but he could look after himself whilst he was seen by many as a fairly cordial and pleasant sort of chap with a large group of loyal friends it was also known to get into occasional arguments and even fist fights after it had been at the source down the Local Tavern in the nearby Village of Lucan and he usually got the better of any guy who got a bit too Lippy with him yeah this seem sounds like just a reasonable dude he's like yeah okay I got lots of friends a pretty nice guy sometimes I get to fight till I get a bit drunk at the pub but it's like yeah this seems very like normal for the past meanwhile Judith was seen as a cheerful and amiable soul but she was also as tough as old boots and didn't take crap from anyone and that apparently included animals one completely unconfirmed rumor suggests that she once took a shortcut home across a neighbor's field and ended up getting chased back over the fence by Randy bull the next morning the bull was supposedly found dead with its tongue removed fing hell Judith why did you I like I don't think you should go and shoot someone's bull because you climbs in its fields and it got angry of course it's going to get angry but I could vaguely understand why you'll be upset and then go and shoot it or whatever but then you go over to it and just cut out its tongue like what you some Mafia trying to send the Bulls a message what the this might be a bit of idol gossip but Judith was certainly not a woman to Cross or to chase across a field under any circumstances and she would become even more feisty as the years progressed and the hurdles she faced became ever more challenging feisty is one way to describe a woman who shot aable walked over to it and sliced out its tongue and then just left the rest of its body Jada she's a bit feisty she'll cut out your tongue there were many in the bidoff township who felt the family fully deserved to reap the rewards of all of their hard labor toiling away on the now prosperous Farm they built up from nothing while raising seven young Sons but there were others who viewed the black feet donal's as cheeky squatters who were a bit rough around the edges and had no shame in conducting friendly business with Protestants outside of the Roman line instead of throwing eggs at them so again like me with my future perspective I'm like oh that's nice trying to get along rather than just like hating someone because of their religion but back in the day it's like no you better hate them you better hate them because of their religion or we're going to ostracize you which seems a bit intense doesn't it however after enjoying a decade of life in their new Homestead the Donal faced a fresh problem in around 1857 which was a little more pressing than divided opinion in the community some guy had just turned up on their farm with a rather grieved expression on his face he wanted to know what on Earth they were doing on his lands that he had just leased uh-oh Mr Grace enters the picture the logging be Incident John Grace the original owner of lot 18 concession 6 had eventually sold the land to a guy named Michael Mah after doing precisely nothing with it for 10 years I'll tell you what he was doing with it he was just waiting for that to appreciate in value yes Michael my was clearly a bit more proactive than the previous owner and he wasted no time at all in renting out the land to an Irishman by the name of Patrick Farrell who arrived in Canada in 1857 with his family fully expecting to develop a farm from scratch on his empty 100 acres of least land Patrick Farrell was naturally just a little perplexed when he finally made it the property only to find a family of nine living in a cozy Homestead and working on a farm that they reckoned belonged to them really I guess they got to pull it off you just be like no this is land I leased it from uh Peter yes Peter now let's get this tied up in the courts for ages it was reported that the initial heated discussion between Patrick Farrell and Jim donnley ended in a punch-up on the farm and despite the fact that Patrick Farrell was a former blacksmith who was built like a brick house he was sent packing after receiving a proper bruising from short ass Jim yeah but it's like Jim seems like one of these guys he's like short and stocky and has been in so many fights that he needs to F he he can fight and it doesn't matter how big Patrick Farrell is like Jim's just going to be like all right then let's let's fing go and Patrick will be you know beaten got his ass whipped by Jim he's 5 foot five but I wouldn't you know I'm definitely way off 5 foot five and I wouldn't like my chances against Jim I mean he's dead because this is the 19th century but I still you know if I was back in the I don't know why I need to explain this I I wouldn't go up against Jim if he was still alive but phoh wasn't going to give it up that easily after getting barely any help from the local conaby many of whom were good friends of the Donal Farrell took the case to court and argued that a bunch of no good squatters were preventing him from accessing the lands that he had lawfully leased if I was that dude I'd be like yo what was the name Michael or whatever he whoever he leased it from like yo the reason I leased this is because you're going to deal with the problems of leasing it's like if you live in a rented flat and the boiler breaks you're not like oh for now if my boiler breaks you're like for sake got to go get the boiler fix and the boiler man comes he's like it's going to be a grand or whatever you're like oh for [ __ ] sake whereas before if your boiler breaks you're just like yo land Lord boiler's broken it's cold and he'll come around or he'll call a guy and he'll fix it and the bill will we sent to him and you're like nice so I just be like bro sort this out why do I have to go to court it's not even my land in response the dones argue that they now spent years breaking their backs in toiling on the land and developing a farm which now rightfully belonged to them not some Johnny come lately who only thought he was leasing an empty spot of land I'm sorry Donal e but I don't think that's you built that knowing the risks that someone could come along and be like yo that's my land and it doesn't matter that 10 years have passed it's not yours the judge eventually made a ruling which some may find surprising Patrick Ferell was allowed to lease exactly half of lot six lot 18 concession six from the current landlord but taking into account the work and improvements of the dones had invested into the land they were allowed to keep the other 50 acres for themselves the good half that included the homestead and the hot tub that sounds in a way like a fairly sensible compromise but it's also perhaps quite understandable how neither party was entirely thrilled by the outcome no but it is a compromise and if I was Patrick I'd be pretty pissed off if I were the dony I'd be like holy sh got 50 L of acres of land for free yes for his part Patrick Farrell was now only getting half of the land that had traveled all the way to Canada for to farm H although it was in better shape than he had imagined my whil donelles had been legally awarded 50 acres of land without having to pay anyone a cent not a bad deal when you think about it they now just lost half the land they'd been working on for the last 10 years tensions boiled between the neighbors over the next few weeks and months as Jim and Patrick began to loudly bad mouth each other down at the tavern in Lucan whilst each party also accused the other of getting up to mischief and sabotage over the wrong side of the fence at the now divided Lot 8 lot 18 concession six but it was a short live Feud which would all be over by the summer was this Biggers one of the parties conceded defeat and moved away no because this is the Casual criminalist they got all got murdered Danny or perhaps they settled their differences over a beer and a pickled egg and agreed to live in harmony for the rest of their lives well no not quite the few only stopped when one of them killed the other so it all happen during a logging be held on June the 27th 1857 I've assume Danny's about to explain to me what a logging be is because I have no idea I was a bit confused for a while here as I thought that a logging be had something to do with the Wild and wacky sport of log rolling I imagine it's going to be like how much log how many trees can you fell in like an hour or whatever like you know Lumberjack style but we're talking about an entirely different logging me in this case we're talking about a productive social event in which good neighbors of the Wild Frontier get together to clear out a bit of space in the forest for the planting of crops ah yes what are we doing today little bit of deforestation yes most of the hard work was achieved in the morning but things tended to slow down quite considerably after lunchtime when everyone had started knocking back the liquor provided by the generous host generous host it's like this is a good deal for them it's like you just get a bunch of people who show up and clear some trees on your lands as and you call it a party and then you just give them some booze be like that's a good deal cuz otherwise you got to pay I had a tree surgeon come and cut down a tree at my house and I was like God damn it's expensive and I guess cuz they got like guys on like ropes and they're going up there and all that stuff but still like having someone cut down a tree is like is is pricey it would have been better if I just be like yo yo guys you want a beer for all your hard work and they' be like no we're sending you an invoice off like it's expensive this particular logging be had been organized by neighbor Billy Maloney and it turned out to be a well attended and highly productive event at which both Jim donnley and Patrick Ferell were present as usual everyone had got off to a flying start during the first half of the day but they had practically tossed the whole thing off by the late afternoon and the liquor had started flowing yes and it was of course during this late period of the day that Jim and Patrick finally found the time to begin hurling insults at each other and ABY exchange which swiftly led to a Rowdy punch-up but this was to be a fatal brawl which concluded with Patrick Farrell lying dead on the floor with a logging hand Spike hanging out of his head holy Jim you murdered him He's dead Jim frustratingly there were very few Witnesses who actually saw the whole thing unfold as Jim and Patrick had taken the polite step of stepping away from the main Buzz of the logging be crowd before throwing punches at one another well I'll tell you what when there's two people and they have a fight and one of them ends up dead with a spike in his head it was the one who's not dead he didn't Spike himself in the head rumors initially surface from some of the attendees that the bigger and bronier Patrick Farrell have been getting the better of Jim Donley on this occasion and as a desperate Last Resort Jim had picked up a hand Spike and used it to murder his opponent by driving it straight through his head however the local papers reported on the slightly different account told by some of the very few people who claim to have actually witnessed the incident in full these Witnesses reckon that Patrick had been the first to throw punches and Jim had responded by knocking him down to the ground and walking away as Jim's back was turned Patrick got to his feet picked up a hand Spike and lunged at Jim in what appeared to be a purposeful attempt to kill him right at the last second Jim spun around picked up the first object at hand which happened to be another longing hand Spike and as Patrick Bor down on his smaller opponent Jim thrust the handspike upward to defend himself but the hand Spike got lodged right in Patrick's head killing him instantly whether the killing of Patrick Farrell was deliberate or entirely accidental most Witnesses agree that Jim didn't seem particularly upset at first that farell had died at his hands why would he be he's like this guy's a [ __ ] I hate him I'm getting in a fight with him and he tried to kill me or we had a big fight and I killed him but it's like either way it's like you would I don't know maybe you should you just be upset because you killed someone I don't know if the guy was a dick I'd be like yeah he's the way is isn't it just get on with my day as a murderer he did however grow a bit more concerned when the police were called to the logging be and he suddenly realized that he was on the brink of getting arrested for murder shocking isn't it Jim when you kill someone instead of remaining calm and explaining to the police it acted in self-defense a point which could have been backed up by Witnesses Jim Donnelly instead panicked and fled Into the Wilderness not to be seen Again by anyone in the bidoff township for well over a year what he's just in the woods well I say he wasn't seen by anyone for over a year that might not be quite true there are a couple of theories which suggest that Jim hadn't actually fled very far at all for starters a few members of the community reported regular sightings of an unidentified woman toiling away on the donal's farm alongside Judith it's Jim and drag isn't it this mysterious female stranger was said to have a curious face that didn't look entirely Sim dissimilar to that of the fugitive Jim Donnelly but of course it couldn't be him because Jim was on the run for the police and this new farmand was clearly dressed in women's clothes people in the past are a bit naive aren't they an even bigger clue which may have indicated the close proximity of Jim Donnelly is that his ever faithful wife Judith somehow managed to conceive an eighth child during this period when Jim was officially missing after popping out seven sons they finally got a girl with attempt number eight and this last member of the original Donnelly Clan was named Jenny but it's pretty clear that Jim Donnelly had spent most of the year on the Run either lurking at home working the farm while dressed in a cunning disguise helping to conceive a child or occasionally hiding out in the homes and Stables of his loyal friends when it felt as if people might be bothering to look for him it's maybe a little surprising that he managed to get away with this low energy flight from Justice for quite so long particularly considering that it already built up a number of haters in the township who may have been pretty tempted by the juicy $400 reward that was being stumped up by the County Council for his capture holy $400 in like 1820s or whatever that is going to be worth a mega Fortune today it's believed that Jim May have been helped in no SPO measure by County Sheriff Ryder who was assisting The Fugitive in covering his somewhat half-ass tracks Sheriff Ryder was a fellow Blackfoot who had known Jim since way back in the old days of Tipper and Island some of the bidol locals were now feeling grieved that sheriff Ryder appeared to be making little effort to capture a fugitive who was hiding out on the town's doorstep it may or may not have been entirely unrelated that sometime later Sheriff Ryder was murdered for reasons Unknown by a killer that was never identified why is so much murdering going on these seem like very minor they're big disputes sure but like a lot of they're not big enough to be murdered over apparently they are Jim donelly was never actually captured at all it's just that after a year on the run or at least a year on a casual stroll he decided to turn himself into the police and face the music this could have been because was getting a bit nippy during the winter when he had to sleep in one of his mate Stables or he might have just started to get fed up with dressing in women's clothes while working on the farm or perhaps he just began to feel a bit more confident that the consequences might not be so bad if he just explained exactly what had happened during the logging the consequences couldn't have been much worse following a short trial at Haron County Courthouse Jim Donnelly was found guilty of the murder of Patrick Farland sentenced to death by hanging which was scheduled to take place two two weeks later Jim's going to be like it was cold but it's not that cold I should have stayed in the barn still a lot can happen in two weeks we've already established that Judith Donnelly didn't take crap from anyone and that didn't just apply to Randy Bulls it also applied to Randy judges she told the judge right where to stick his death sentence had got him to change his mind well kind of in the rather uncharacteristic moments tough old Judith petitioned the judge for clemency on the grounds that she was a helpless woman with eight mouths to feed who needed Jim back working down on the farm in the petition which was signed by a long list of local supporters she also points out that Jim's offense was committed without malice or premeditation and In the Heat of passion I kind of understand the last two points but I'm not entirely sure it's possible to stick a hands Spike into your rival's head without just a slight hint of malice well well it is if it's complete self-defense I mean there's malice about like beating him up but not to jam a spike into his head but the judge agreed to look at Jim Donnelly's case again and after concluding that Jim may have indeed acted in self-defense the death sentence was commuted to seven years in the Kingston Penitentiary Jim Donley may have managed to slip Through The Hangman's noose but he would be out of the picture for seven years and he'd be returning to a very different family when he was finally released yeah 7 years for like young kids my kids are four now he went away to prison for like seven years be 11 when you they'd be starting SEC my oldest would be starting Secondary School when she comes out when when you get out of prison you'll be like oh no I've missed a lot she'll be like who are you I'll be like I'm your dad oh that's so sad I don't like that I'll try not to stick any spikes in people's heads hopefully I'll be fine the rise of the Donnelly Brothers Judith certainly kept busy while her husband was banged up in prison or as or the jail G a o l old school spelling as it was known back then she faced a string of financial struggles and had to take out mortgages on the farm but she kept those eight mouths fed and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was not the supposedly helpless woman who had helped her husband cheat death Judith sold off a bit of the land to allow the building of a new Schoolhouse which all her children attended and this turned out to be a shrewd move as she also secured contracts to clean an organize events for the schoolhouse which brought in chunks of extra extra wages during this financially challenging period seven sons had all been taught by Judith to take care of themselves from a very early age perhaps this was always going to be the donly approached parenting but it could also be that Judith had grown increasingly imited over what she perceived to be her husband's wrongful incarceration alongside the faction of anti dones that now thrived in the Bol Township just like herself Judith kids weren't going to take crap from anyone in her own words from the time they could toddle I taught my seven sons to be foreign fist and club Fighters Shaw and tis I taught I who taught them how to gouge bite off an ear and crack in a head with a club showed them the best way to send a fast punch to the chin it was very hard to read and very brutal perhaps she taught them A Little Too Well by the time Jim Donley arrived back home he found that his seven young Sons had left behind had grown up and they hadd grown up into feared hard drinking men who weren't afraid to throw a punch down at the Local Tavern or anywhere else really the second oldest son William was now seen as the leader of the pack William had been born with a club foot and had suffered bullying and torment during his school days but this only appears to have toughened him up more than the other donelles in fact he would quickly become seen as the head of the whole family not just because of his Brawn but because he was also considered to be the smartest by far perhaps the white sheep of the Donnelly family was daughter Jenny whom Jim Donell was now only meeting for the first time after being released from jail in later life Jenny seemed to be the only donelly who managed to avoid bar fights regular brushes with the law and the general controversies that were to engulf the rest of her family Jenny's gentle nature and pleasant demeanor sparked Idol gossip that she must have been adopted or that perhaps Judith hadn't been quite as faithful as she claims when her husband was hiding away in the cupboard Under the Stairs Jenny never really had any enemies and usually received a warm welcome wherever she went but any potential boyfriends tended to keep their distance as soon as they realized she was a donelly as they became scared of ever getting on the wrong side of Jenny's family yeah it's like Jenny's really nice at everything but she's got seven brothers who are fing terrifying You' be like stay away from Jenny Jenny be like oh for sake but did Brothers truly deserve their Hellraiser reputation all seven of them James Junior William John Patrick Michael Robert and Thomas certainly got into their fair share of scrapes and fights and troubles with the law but this was hardly unique in the area the bidoff township was known to be a pretty dangerous place crowned full of criminals and Hooligans and Nells John a McDonald then attorney general and the future first prime minister of Canada received a letter from a local Authority in 1859 which pulled no punches on the current state of the Roman line in particular the letter warns there is a section of the township of bidol inhabited by the lower order of Roman Catholics where a person's life is not considered of any value even the judges are not safe in the area it's wise only to go about during daylight hours now the dones probably weren't that much different from any of their neighbors it's just that they were considered tougher than most and they were not a family to be messed with according to one long-standing rumor it took just three of the Donnelly Brothers to whip the asses of no less than 17 men during an epic barroom brawl after which all 17 opponents ran away to nurse their bruises whilst the trio Victorious Donley's just casually mooched back to the bar to get the next round in no shot there's no way that they're taking on 17 people but with three of them were they likeing ninjas or something some have argued that the donelles were not the villains that they're often made out to be every member of the family worked their fingers to the Bone and some of the sons went on to find great success in legitimate business even if that turned out to be just as controversial as every other aspect of their lives as we'll soon discover their supporters have suggested that the donelles were essentially a clate and industrious family who knew they had to fight their corner and stand up for themselves in a town riddled with crime and violence and knobheads others have argued that the donelles were a lore unto themselves who regularly crossed the line and got away with a ridiculous number of brutal crimes across a region in which many of the undrained constables were often just as bad as the criminals a region in which Witnesses were often too scared to testify in court and a region in which juries often seemed strangely reluctant to convict anyone on the strength of Hard Evidence whilst judges often seemed equally reluctant to pass adequate sentences for serious crimes you know your justice system is broken where the people putting people in jail are afraid of Retribution like you see this with like gangs and stuff in like cartel count country and like South America and stuff and like in countries that are a bit broken and it's just like that is not good that is that and like that I feel and like the president stealing all the money that's like some real your country's kind of Vibes right aside from Jenny just about all of the dones were destined to face a Relentless chain of allegations over the next couple of decades and most of them were destined to spend at least a s short time in jail although the overwhelming majority of charges leveled against them would never result in a conviction but the jury still out on whether the donelles were the true Terrors of the Town who rarely got caught or whether they were just unfairly coping the blame for every heinous act that ever took place in a crooked Township where judges feared To Tread a crooked Township which was gradually turning against the family in even bigger numbers the stage coach Feud and other Tales of Woe Bob McLean was no fan of the donelles this fellow Farmer in the BF Township was beginning to get fed up with having to replace all the tools that were getting stolen from his shed on a regular basis Bob felt convinced that those wretched dones were behind it and he eventually made a furious complaint to the constabulary in which he accused the dones of persistent theft later that same week poor old Bob McLean endured quite a terrible run of Jolly bad luck his cattle were poisoned the throats of his horses were slit and his barn was raised to the ground oh my God getting some mob Justice it's like massive overreaction you'll be forgiven for suspecting that the donelles may have been responsible but we'll never know for sure as Bob McLean decided to keep his mouth shut in the future pretty smart Bob oh my God they're gangsters now we'd be here all day if we actually went through every single occasion over the next few decades in which the Donley brothers were accused of something or the other various allegations including lassy a post office robbery and assault were leveled against the brothers but they were usually acquitted of all charges a few notable exceptions including incident in night 1875 when James Jr was found guilty of assaulting a fruit vendor but was cleared of the accompanying theft charge that very same year several Brothers became involved in a street brawl in which they resorted to hurling giant rocks at their repos but only Thomas was found guilty of assault giant rocks okay and of course a wedding was never destined to end well in the Rowdy bidol Township the 1876 wedding of local man Thomas Ryder escalated into a fullon riot when a bunch of C constables turned up on the happy day with the intention of arresting a whole bunch of donelles for recent alleged crimes shots were fired between the donelles and these somewhat bumbling constables who managed to let their targets briefly Escape From The Scene although William and John were later convict victed of assaulting a constable a couple of years later Robert Donnelly was found guilty of attempting to Murder One Constable Samuel Everett who claims that his attacker had fired shots at him from behind whilst the const was just trying to open the front door of his own house Robert Donnelly was sentenced to two years in the Kingston Penitentiary but a year later Constable Everett himself was in hot water after being convicted of assaulting another constable and during this period he made the startling admission that he wasn't completely sure who had attempted to shoot him in the back in the darkness he just kind of assumed that it might be Robert and this dude when into prison for that that's up also he only got if if he was him right if it was him he only got two years in jail I mean it wasn't but someone did it and they thought it was him and they were like yeah two years that'll work when whereas when he was in a fist fight with someone and he put a spike in his head and in kind of like self-defense maybe he got seven years was it this doesn't seem to have affected Robert's prison sentence what which he served in full but it's interesting to note that if Constable Everett's mysterious attacker had hit his Target and constable had died later from his wounds after pointing the figure at Robert then Robert Donnelly would almost certainly have been hung for his crime the Donnelly didn't seem to have much time for constables in general perhaps one of their biggest foes was a guy called Constable James Carrol who first rolled into town in 1879 and seemed to take an instant dislike to the family to say the least during one early altercation William and John Donnelly were convicted of throwing stones at the constable and they were find $3 each meanwhile mother Judith was charged with the shocking crime of using abusive language against the presumably traumatized Constable James Carroll who claims that words such as Rogue and blacku guard were lobbed recklessly in his direction oh someone called me a rogue I guess it was worse back in the day today if someone called you a rogue you'd be like hell yeah I'm a rogue I'm defin I'm rogish for her part Judas reckoned that the words were used in retaliation after the Constable pulled a gun on her and declared that he would enjoy shooting her just as much as he'd enjoy shooting one of her Vagabond Sons holy no wonder she called you a rogue it may all seem like fairly small fry stuff for now and leaving aside the allegation involving the gun it sounds like the kind of thing that was probably going on every day between children in the schoolhouse but the relationship between the donelles and Constable James Carol was about to take a significantly darker Turn The Saga of the donelles surely can't all be about petty crime and bar rolls and assassination attempts and throwing quite big Stones what about the inevitable romantic love stories and the family's later game changing move into big business well there's plenty to say about all of that but all such events were equally if not even more marred in controversy and kidnapping and fire and deaths the leader of the brothers William fell in love with a local Woman by the name of Maggie Thompson the young couple had reportedly been going steady for four or five years and William fully intended to marry Maggie but there was one minor snag Maggie's father also called William so let's call him Mr Thompson couldn't stand the dony and wasn't even aware that his daughter had been stepping out with William for the last few years and he didn't seem too thrilled about the prospect of Wedding Bells in his own words I had no idea she was keeping company with adony and would rather see her going to her grave than having my consent to marry him Jesus Christ dad I'd rather you were dead than marry him Christ the past a series of preserved letters between William Donley and Maggie Thompson reveal how Maggie at one point begged her lover to come and rescue her from the clutches of her father so that they could go and get married and William duy obliged or at least he gave it a good go he pulled together a gang of his closest Associates he then descended on the Thompson household in a bid to find Maggie and spirit her away to Freedom suspecting that Mr Thompson had already got wind of their plan William and the Gang also forced their way into the houses of Thompson's neighbors just in case Mr Thompson had hid anoy his daughter down the road it seems that Mr Thompson had been smarter than that as Williams mob never found Maggie on that night instead the gang were all charged with trespassing but in typical Donnelly style William and his friends managed to somehow get acquitted on the charge despite the large number of witnesses it turns out that Thompson's good neighbors the twoes had helped hide Maggie in a more discreet location but the twoes were now understandably annoyed that William and his cronies had come barging into the house to search every nook and cranny for the missing bride this went down in history as the night that Donal made enemies of both the Thompsons and the tuis and the incident would not be forgotten it's not entirely clear what happened to Old Maggie Thompson but William seemed to have forgotten all about his lost love within the space of a year as he married Nora Kennedy in 1875 shortly afterward he moved out of the Donnelly household but he clearly didn't fancy straying too far from the flock as he and his new wife Nora moved just down the road to a new property called whan's corners while the wedding itself seemed to go off without a hitch certainly no signs of brls or stone throwing or gunfire or death by logging heads Spike there were already hostilities Brewing between William and his new in-laws sadly it seems that the kennedies didn't care much for the donelles either and Norah's Brothers seemed particularly unhappy about Norah's choice of husband leading to yet more feuding in the years to come we can add the kennedies to the ever growing list of donly enemies and scrap any hope of a half decent wedding present William and Nora donelly probably just got towels seriously who thinks that towels are really a good idea for a wedding present people give towels as wedding presents I was gifted about 12 different sets of towels for my wedding I don't need that many towels all I actually wanted was a Mr Frosty ice cream ice crunchy maker and that was nowhere to be seen who gives towels it's a bit weird don't people have wedding lists you just have a list of things that you want and then people choose something for that otherwise you'd get like I don't know I'd say lots of things that are the same but I didn't think any of those things would be towels towels like one of those things that I want to choose myself because I want to go to the store I want to feel the towels and be like well that's a nice one I like that rather than like I don't know getting gifted them and you're like oh this is a bit rough I don't like it still William and Nora were probably living quite comfortable lives in wh and corners and couldn't care less if the kennedies very rarely came around to watch the big game on the widescreen TV by the time he was married William had turned his attention away from helping out on the Family Farm And into the lucrative business of Stage Coach Lines William and several other brothers had started working for the M MC and Keith Stage Coach Line in 1871 but the business folded just a couple of years later which would have been delightful news for the owner of the main Stage Coach rival John Hawkshaw who may well have started to rub his hands in Glee but Hawkshaw wouldn't have been rubbing his hands for very long William decided to start his own New Stage Coach line and roped in Brothers Michael Robert and Thomas help Drive the stages stage coaches is just like horses pulling carts right is that a stage coach the Donley Stage Coach line ran between London Lucan and exitor and soon gave John Hawkshaw more of a run for his money than the old McAn key line had ever managed in fact although Hawkshaw had been running his line for decades he was so troubled by this new rival that he conceived a defeat within the very same year and sold his business to an Irishman by the name of Patrick Flanigan who clearly was more determined to put up a fight this was the beginning of the stage coach Feud which spanned for a total of 5 years during which period the stages on each line were regularly sabotaged horses were tortured and killed why would you torture them why like just stop it just kill them don't kill them at all but why would you torture animals the passengers rised facing a barrage of pot shots from passing gunman every time they went out for a ride and of course every time either the Donnelly or Flanigan lines encountered trouble of any kind each blamed the other one of the biggest tragedies occurred in 1875 when William Brocks a stage driver for Flanigan was killed in one when one of the wheels fell off the stage prompting speculation that the dones had deliberately sabotaged the stage and caused the death of a driver although this was never proved yeah but by doing that aren't they going to retribution get retribution and then unscr of yours and that's going to that's going to be real bad during the same year Patrick Flanigan popped out to his barn only to find that some little scoundrel completely destroyed one of his stages and physically attacked one of his horses immediately suspecting the donelles he angrily gathered together a large group of his hardest mates and watched and marched over to the donle household to exact some rough Justice oh yeah but these guys are scary hard there's a rumor that three of them took on like 17 dudes in a pub it didn't quite go as planned the Lynch Mob were greeted by Jim Donnelly and most of his sons all of whom were reportedly armed with clubs and ready for battle even though the dones were heavily outnumbered they absolutely battered Flanagan's mob and it may or may not have been entirely coincidental that very shortly afterwards Patrick Flanigan's entire Barn was burnt down the on had always been used to answering charges leveled against them but things got particularly hectic during the stage coach Feud within the first 3 months of 1876 alone the family faced no less than 33 separate charges relating to assault shootings Arsen and theft and although they were usually acquitted a few of the brothers did spend short stin in jail around this time the stage coach huge finally came to an end in 1878 but that's not because of an unlikely truce or because either side was victorious in fact both sides lost the war the launch of an all New London her on Bruce Railway meant that that trains were on the way in and horses were on the way out enter the Peacekeeper not all of the Donnelly family would make it as far as the 1880s eldest son James Jr died in 1877 for what was officially described as pneumonia although others have suggested that he was shot dead by one of the family's many rivals however as there's no evidence to back up that theory it might have just been that even in the wild Arena of the Bol Township people sometimes still die from natural causes without anyone having to stick a logging hands Spike into their head yeah it's the 1880s people ding like left right incend it's kind of amazing that all of these children survived who adulthood it's the 1880s and be like oh what you got tuberculosis how long you got to live 6 months it's just it was the past people dying all the time it was reported that in a rather moving gesture the surviving Brothers honored his death by going out and pummeling anyone who would have said a bad word about James Jr it's what he would have wanted and the is like Daddy says that but it is what he would have wanted cuz they're like violent yobbos the death of the third youngest brother Michael in 1879 was a lot more dramatic and perhaps closer to what you might expect following the closure of the stage coach Empire Michael had moved away to the city of St Thomas where it secured a new new job at the Canada Southern Railroad after clocking off what would turn out to be his last ever working day Michael popped into a saloon in Waterford for like Refreshments got retirement's got to be weird right I know this is not him not retiring but I just had this image image of like leaving work for the last time and you're just like yeah just never going back to work God that's weird and you just wake up the next day and be like never we go to work again and I guess like two weeks later you're like yeah this is my life now like my parents are both retired and they're like they've got into their retirement and it seems like nice maybe I will retire someday not anytime soon and it's like I really like what I do so I don't know what i' do with my spare time he became embroiled in heated argument with a fellow employee by the name of William Lewis this argument rapidly evolved into another brawl surprise surprise but Michael was unaware that his opponent had a concealed knife on his person according to local newspaper reports Michael was stabbed in the groin after which he staggered around the bar and exclaimed boys I am gone before falling dead to the floor it speculated that William Lewis had have been working for a faction of the anti- Donell mob and had been tasked with the job of deliberately winding up Michael so that he could be stabbed with a concealed knife but it sounds more likely that there was just a dust up between two employees which got out of hand and if lwis had been working for somebody else the payoff wasn't particularly rewarding as he ended up serving a long stint in Kingston Penitentiary but for manslaughter rather than murder yeah it's like they were in a fight so that seems fair back in the bid off Township the local feuds had intensified more than ever by 1880 and the Don Le were now perhaps unfairly coping the blame for absolutely everything as more and more members of the community turned against them and loyal friends became harder to find if a horse got its throat slit it was the dones if a store was robbed it was the dones if a kid got his ice cream stolen by a seagull it was the Donley around this time William complained to the local press that somebody had stuck a sign up next to the next to the community well in the middle of town which warned no more water for the black Feats out of this well go up to Old Donnell's and get your water curiously William himself didn't seem to understand the origin of the term black feet and assumed that it was meant to describe the few residents of the Town who defied the rest of the community by continuing to associate with the dones and it's possible that the term may have evolved over the years to mean exactly that but as the residents of the township continued to bicker and brawl and steal from their neighbors and poison each other's Castle a new face arrived in town who was destined to play a huge role in finally turning this unruly place around although perhaps not in the way he envisioned or hoped this man was on a mission to put an end to the feuding and criminal Mayhem for good but we're not talking about a known nonsense gun doting Constable here and we're certainly not talking about Constable James Carol whose idea of eradicating the problem seemed to be based around the idea of just taking out the donelles no no no we're talking about a man who went by the name of Father John Connelly yeah I was like immediately I thought this dudes it's it's going to be like a Vicor or someone it's going to be someone who's like religious that's who when the Irishman father Connelly arrived from Quebec and took up his new position as the priest of St Patrick's Catholic Church in the BF Township he was more than aware of the on going feud between the donelles and pretty much the rest of the community as well as the high volume of crimes and violent incidents that pervaded the town as a whole if I was that priest been oh no you've been you sent me here that's where you think I'm needed and I know I'm needed there but can't I just go to the nice place where people just sharp to church they put some money in that little plate that that kind of thing that's that's more of a Vibe father Connelly sought to restore peace in bidoff or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that father Connelly sought to introduce the idea of peace to B for the first time he came up with the sweet idea of forming the peace Association in which members of the community met up on a regular basis to discuss the most effective ways of embracing Peace Love Harmony and Vegetarian Cuisine okay then in a bid to build new trust between neighbors members of the peace Association were invited to sign a pledge which granted permission to have all their homes searched whenever a theft was reported it sounds like quite a smart idea in away there was no way you would ever succumb to the temptation of stealing a corn planter from the guy down the road if you knew that your poty property was going to be searched regularly by the peace Association but there was a problem of course there's a problem anyone who's actually doing stealing is going to be like no because it's a voluntary thing it's not the law whilst the majority of the town's folk joined up with the peace Association there was one family who made a notable exception and refused to sign the pledge or have anything to do with Father Connelly's new group guess if you can name that family see if you can guess the name of that family it's the connelles not the connelles godamn it the donnes it's father Connelly Everyone's an uny because they're Irish now it's often reported that father Connelly ended up becoming yet another enemy of the donelles but I'm not sure that's entirely true there were certainly more than a few differences of opinion tossed arounds between Donnelly and Connelly the priest was obviously disappointed that the family refused to sign his peace pledge and he wasn't mad keen on the Donley's associating with Protestants he was particularly mythed when Jim Donley donated a significant chunk of money to the building of a nearby Anglican Church meanwhile the donelles felt that father Connelly was prone dis spouting anti-protestant rhetoric prompting a scene in which Jim felt compelled to stand up in church and lambas the priest for preaching hatred from his Pulpit but it seems that father Connelly was determined to try and get along with the donelles in his efforts to usher in a new era of peace for the town and he was usually made very welcome whenever he paid a visit to the Donley Homestead for Tean scones although he was given short shrift if he ever tried to persuade the family that things might get better if they just stopped behaving like kids all the time oh God yeah they're not going to cuz they're heads however whilst father Connelly had the best intentions at heart when forming the piece Association the donelly's refusal to take part and signed the pledge had only served to deepen the rift between the family and the rest of the town and now certain members of the peace Association were getting a little frustrated at father Connelly's gentle and patient approach they decided that firmer action needed to be taken immediately and with that in mind they formed a secret splinter group with a very different agenda they called themselves the vigilance committee missing cows and bonfires this new grumpy group included Constable James Carol as well as members of families who were sworn enemies of the dones including the Thompsons the tues and the kennedies who were of course William Donley's own in-laws they met up in secret at Ceda swamp Schoolhouse to discuss the most effective way of solving the donnley problem for good but this time there was no signing of Peace pledges the early plans seemed to be quite tame in comparison to what was to follow in February 1880 it seemed for a while as if the vigilance committee was focused more on childish pranks rather than brutal retribution for example there was the mystery of the missing cow which sounds like the title of an abandoned Famous Five novel you may remember that Mr William Thompson was the father of Maggie whom he somehow managed to keep hidden away from William Donley forever I didn't but now I do now I think about it I hope Mr Thompson didn't actually kill Maggie as he did make it clear that he would rather see his daughter dead than married to ad donelly Mr Thompson was Al a member of the vigilance committee as was his son William Jr and it was William Jr who reported that one of his cows had been stolen prompting his buddies on the committee to turn up on the doorstep of the Donnelly Homestead armed with sticks demanding to search the property I suspect the peace Association that already searched the property of everyone else so the Donal is were now the only remaining suspects yeah but the thing is with the V Association if everyone else has signed up then just by process of elimination it be like where's the Donley isn't it I mean that kind of works surprisingly Jim Don Le didn't put up much of a fight the property was searched and there was no sign of the missing cow the mob then went down the road to demand to search wh and Corners the home of William and Nora Donnelly again no sign of a missing cow and William didn't seem to get too annoyed about the whole thing although the donelles would later make an unsuccessful attempt to get the cow hunters convicted of trespassing the cow was found very shortly afterwards after having apparently just gone astray in nearby woods but it was speculated that the whole missing cow incident was orchestrated by members of the vigilance committee oh it's a false flag perhaps even by Thompson Senior or Thompson Jr in an attempt to wind up the dony and go them into a fight in which they would be outnumbered not that this necessarily makes much of a difference when you're dealing with the dony no it doesn't 17 dudes in a bar taken out by three of them that's like some Jack Reacher of more concern was the night of January the 15th 1880 on which a barn belonging to one of Jim Donley's neighbors was set a blaze and the fingers of suspition naturally pointed straight at the donelles Patrick grouchy rider was the neighbor in question and he seemed a little confused he had been neighbors with the donelles for years and had never had so much as a minor quarrel over turnips with them in fact the donelles and the Riders had a history stretching way back to the island days as grouchy was related to the Constable Rider who may have helped Jim evade capture before losing his own life under Shady circumstances grouchy seemed reluctant at first to lay the blame of the Don's door but it seems that he got swept up in the rumors and gossip that was circling around the township although it was never proven it now seems incredibly likely that the barn had actually been burnt down by members of the vigilance Committee in an attempt to frame the donelly brothers these guys they're just looking for an you could see how these guys end up getting murdered cuz they're just looking for excuses they're false flagging get out of this if that was the plan though it kind of backfired all of the brothers who still lived in the area were actually attending a local wedding on the night the B was ravaged By Flames so they weren't exactly short of an alibi or two as a desperate Last Resort the vigilance committee now backed by a slightly hesitant grouchy Rider decided to try and pin the blame on Jim and Judith Donnelly who were home that night this seems to be stretching credibility a little bit as Jim and Judith were both in their 60s by this point and I'm sure they could find better ways of spending their golden years than setting fire to their good neighbor's barn for absolutely no reason at all nevertheless despite the complete back of evidence and almost zero chance of convictions Jim and Judith were scheduled to face trial on the 4th of February 1880 for reasons beyond their control they wouldn't be able to make that date the black Donnell's Massacre perhaps feeling a little deflated that their alleged plot hadn't quite planned out in the way they had hoped the vigilance committee reconvened Ceda swamp Schoolhouse to consider the next move and they were thinking of strategies which went Way Beyond Barn fires and runaway cows they were planning a fullon assault the committee had a spy working for them James fley who was supposedly a good friend of the donelles who paid regular visits to the homestead but the vigilance committee somehow bullied him into Furnishing them with reports as to the movements and routines of the household so that a solid plan of attack could be formed when the family least suspected it ideally the committee wanted to get their hands on as many donelles as they could at the homestead but they knew they would have to make a separate visit to wh and Corners to deal with the ring leader of the pack William that seems like a bad idea if you want to take these people out right and I'm assuming they want to like kill them why would you do it do them all together You' just wait till they're alone and then you'd off one of them and then you'd off another one why would you try and approach them all together that seems like a terrible idea one of the new plans involved storming into the homes of the family hand cing the lot of them and then dragging them to the woods where they'd be hand from trees until they confess to every crime that they ever committed but the plans were to take even more drastic turns with every new committee meeting father conell got wi that something was brewing within a secret Splinter Group then urged his congregation to be wary of this evil that has fallen among the community most of his congregation probably suspected he was referring to the dones exactly what I thought rather than the secret society who were now determined to wipe them out on February the 3rd 1880 the dones were preparing for tomorrow's day in court where they were supposed to be on trial for the burning of Grouchy Riders barn now that might seem like quite a daunting event for a regular family but considering how often the dones have been hopping in and out of court over the last three decades they probably viewed this as another opportunity for A Grand Day Out and may have planned to pick up a few Donna kebabs on the way back home it's worth pointing out just how many donelles were still living in bidoff Township at this point and just how many lives were now in imminent danger as we already mentioned two of the Donley Brothers James Jr and Michael were already to see the fourth oldest brother Patrick had long since moved out of the area and into the city of thorald where he worked as a wagon maker enjoyed a happy life with his wife and children sounds like Patrick made a good decision of all the donly brothers Patrick was the one who had the least scrapes with the law and seemed to prefer AC quiet a life he had only recently written a letter to his father Jim which urged him to sell the farm and leave behind the troubled Township to start a new life in a place where not everybody hated him Patrick expressed his concern that if Jim and Judith didn't get out of bidoff soon something terrible might happen to them he like guys everybody hates you you should leave Jim replied that he and Judith had no desire to leave the farm and it's a shame he didn't listen to his son second youngest brother Robert had also moved away shortly after being released from jail for the alleged murder attempt on Constable Everett whilst I'm pleased to report that only daughter Jenny managed to finally overcome the problem of the family Nam scaring away potential Partners she married a man called James Curry and moved to gleno thankfully escaping the gruesome events that were to unfold on the night of February 3rd yep Pat rck and Jenny the Smart Ones of the family who left the town where everyone hates them and hates their name and just went off and had a nice happy life somewhere else so that leaves us with Jim and Judith still living at the homestead with just two of their sons John and Thomas while William lived nearby at whan's corners but one problem faced by the vigilance committee is that they were struggling to figure out who was where on the night that they plann to attack targets presumed to be at the homestead were absent whilst there were other individuals staying at the homestead whose presence the committee hadn't reckoned on on John Donnelly was presumed to be at the homestead where he still lived with his parents but it actually popped over to his brother Williams home where he intended to stay the night meanwhile Bridget donelly was the 21-year-old niece of Jim and Judith who had traveled from Ireland to spend an enchanting holiday with her weird relatives in Canada oh my God it's not like you just pop over to Canada isn't she going to be on a boat for like 3 weeks and then we have 13-year-old Johnny O Conor Johnny was a young Farm Hance who had been working hard all day for the donelles and had agreed to take care of the farm the following day when Jim and Judith would be away in court with that in mind Jim had invited Johnny to spend the night at the homestead as there would be little point of having him go home just to come back the next morning at the crack of dawn and wake up to wake up the [ __ ] Ru this changed the usual sleeping Arrangements quite a bit as Jim invited Johnny to sleep in the main bed with him a man in his 60s inviting a 13-year-old boy to share his bed would probably be frowned upon today but these were more innocent times and Jim was really offering Johnny a form of protection and reassurance of bedding with the gaffer in the big bed yeah I mean it's the past like didn't whole families used to sleep in the same bed together and stuff because there was only one bed so this meant that Judith was temporarily booted out of the master bedroom and instead shared a bed with niece Bridget in the room next door whilst Thomas Donnelly was sleeping in his usual room near the kitchen and John Donell left the house to spend the night with William and Nora at whan's Corners shortly before everyone had retired to bed that sneaky toac Bag James F had popped around to the homestead to exchange pleasantries with his friends but he was actually reporting back to the vigilance committee on who exactly was in the property he didn't do a very good job though although he heard the voice of Johnny O Conor in the background he Mook it to be the voice of John Donnelly who was already getting comfy down at whan's Corners so the committee had no idea that a young teenage boy was on the premises when the mob of around 30 men descended on the homestead around 1:00 a.m. for a final devastating Showdown with the black Donal now look things are going to get a bit rough from here on in but let's kick off with a welcome slice of good news 13-year-old farmand Johnny O was not hurt during the onsl onslaught that took place in the early hours of February the 4th 1880 the reason that I'm divulging that now is partly to ease any concern over the young boy's welfare but mainly because it's important to note that the majority of the following events are from Johnny's own Recollections based on what he saw and heard on that night there were apparently a few other Witnesses who observed a large group of men making their way to the homestead although nobody else seemed to be sure who was in the group some of them were dressed in women's clothing for reasons that I can't quite fathom and armed with pitchforks and axes and shovels and various other implements which probably weren't intended for a spot of late night farming the mob was believed to have been led by Constable James Carol whilst members of the Tui and Kennedy families and perhaps surprisingly former friends from the Ryder families brought up the rear the men arrived at the homestead and surrounded the entire property Constable Carol let himself in through the back door which was unlocked apparently back in those days everyone always left their doors unlocked at night because burglary hadn't been invented yet the Constable crept in and came across a sleeping Thomas donelly who he immediately handcuffed whilst proclaiming that he was under arrest Thomas understandably began to make a few vocal protestations regarding this unexpected disturbance and the heated argument between the two men woke up the rest of the household prompting Jim Judith and Bridget to come racing downstairs to see what all the fuss was about slightly weirdly Judith instructed Bridget to go and make a nice fire which seems a bit of an odd gesture if it was intended to make everyone nice and warm and comfortable Thomas demanded to see an arrest warrant but his request was met with Bara fists from members of the mob still handcuff while receiving this beating Thomas still somehow managed to break away from his attack as and flee through the front door with the intention of raising the alarm whilst the mob now turned their attention to Jim and Judith nie Bridget had fled upstairs in panic back to the bedroom in which she hadd been sleeping a terrified Johnny O Conor had quietly emerged from the master bedroom and had attempted to follow Bridget but In the Heat of the Moment she had flung The Door in his face and locked it Johnny retreated back to the master bedroom and crept underneath the bed where he remained hidden peeking through a crack which the veilance would usually have covered as the chaos unfolded downstairs whilst Thomas Donnelly had done well to make it through the front door he didn't get very far he was dragged straight back into the house by members of the mob who had been guarding the exterior and thrown to the floor his attackers took the time to remove his handcuffs before one of the mob took a shovel and repeatedly struck Thomas over the head with it until his head was cracked open whilst others thrust pitchforks deep inside him Jesus Christ okay Jim and Judith Donnelly did not witness the brutal death of their youngest son they had already been beaten black and blue by clubs until their bodies stopped moving the family dog had been barking throughout the whole ordal but was silence when one one of the mob cracked its skull open with a shovel as far as the gang were aware there was just one potential witness 21-year-old Bridget Donnelly who was still hiding in an upstairs locked bedroom a few members of the mob dashed upstairs to bash down the door and deal with a visiting niece by the time they brought Bridget downstairs she was already dead the mob abandoned all four bodies well five of you include the do on the kitchen floor as they dowed coal oil over all over the home dead and set far to the property property before making their exit into the night whilst it's been suggested that Jim Donley's eyes have been gouged out Judith had been sculpt and Thomas donnley had been castrated and decapitated I suspect that some people might be embellishing a story that doesn't really need any embellishment no it's already incredibly brutal what we do know for sure is that only charred remained of the bodies were uncovered when the fires finally stopped burning at lot 18 concession 6 Johnny O Conor had managed to make it out of the home instead before it burned to the ground he raced down to the kitchen quickly stepped over the four battered bodies and darted through the back door he didn't stop running until he reached the house of a good neighbor Patrick wheen Patrick was obviously a little discombobulated about having been woken up at 1:30 a.m. by a young screaming teenager who was hysterically attempting to explain that the dones had just been murdered course lucky this kid managed to Escape right Patrick was initially unsure if he should believe the boy but was also understandably hesitant about approaching the scene if a mob of up to 30 angry men were still hanging around with pitchforks he eventually woke up his two grown sons and persuaded them to accompany him on a trip to the homestead leaving Johnny in the care of his wife who begged the boy not to tell her anything about what had just happened he like I don't want to know I don't want to know by the time Patrick wheen and his sons had cautiously approached the homestead the Flames were beginning to die down they came across the remains of bodies which they were unable to identify however the work of the vigilance committee was not yet complete although they were a little puzzled as to why John Donley had not been present at the homestead their only concern now was to nail the ring leader of the pack William and this would involve a second late night Journey which would culminate at whan's Corners it appears that the numbers may have dwindled somewhat by the time the mob arrived at the house of William and Nora Donnelly perhaps some of the original mob had decided that it was seriously getting a bit late to be out and about others may have turned back home with complaints of aching arms I hope it's not inconceivable some may have not been directly involved in the violence and were now horrified at how the others had gotten a bit carried away whatever the reason whilst around 30 people had originally descended on the Homestead it's estimated that only around six of them stuck around for the second leg this reduced mob had decided on a different tactic this time instead of barging Uninvited into the house they preferred the idea of getting a blur eyed William to answer the door and taking him by surprise as they shot a load of bullets into him I'm not sure where the shotgun suddenly came from as there was no mention of the M brandishing such weapons in the original attack on the homestead and no evidence of the being used there it's possible they had them all along but only decided to use them on phase two of the operation as they were a bit more scared of a potential C Counterattack from the notorious hard case William it's widely reported but not confirmed that the mob initially began to beat one of William's horses to death in the hope that the anguished cries of the animal would wake up the head of the household but this tactic reportedly failed to raise anyone from their Slumber what we do know for sure is that one of the mob alleged to be a member of the Ryder family eventually just began shouting William's name from directly outside the house sure enough the light flickered on and a male figure opened the door only to be greeted by a hail of bullets as the men as the man fell to the ground two members of the Bob continued firing as many as 30 shots into the victim's chest and groin William's wife Norah raced downstairs to the scene and made an attempt to shift the victim back indoors to safety but the body was too heavy for her to drag at this point she was probably unaware that the small gang of attackers allegedly included her own brother a second male figure later appeared at the doorway and successfully dragged the body back into the house the gang Departed the scene apparently under the impression that they' just killed William Donley in fact they had failed in that mission they certainly K the man who had answered the door but that man was John Donnelly who had been staying overnight at Wayland's Corners so William must have been the second man who dragged the body back inside right that's definitely what I expect yeah well no this was actually a friend of the family called Martin Hogan who had also been staying overnight at the house whilst John donelly had been getting shot and Norah and Martin been trying to get him back inside or be at a tad late to do anything William Donnelly had remained in the upstairs bedroom surveying the scene from a window oh God he's going to go he's going to do some like take and on these guys this could be considered an uncharacteristically cowardly moment for a man considered to be the most feared of all the donelles especially as his wife had raced downstairs to potentially walk into a face full of bullets but as he was known for his brains as well as his Brawn it could be the case that William had decided the shest course of action would be to try and identify the attackers from a safe position however he reckons he could only make out three of the faces when the body of John Donnelly was later examined by a certain doctor flock the doctor made the public observation he had so many in his body that he would have to be cut to mince meat to get them all out Dr flocks postmortem reports on all five victims concluded that it was not possible to determine the exact causes of death as there were so little remains of the charred bodies a later Coroner's inquest which was delayed until March ruled that the victims have been murdered by Persons Unknown via methods of firearms Pitchfork axe shovel clubs and short wooden Stakes The Usual Suspects now you might have expected the local national press to take a fairly sympathetic stance towards the victims of a Lynch Mob which went down in history as the black Donley's Massacre and most of them did whilst trying to take the time to express their revulsion at the senseless Carnage that had taken place on their own doorstep One National Paper described the massacre as the blackest crime ever committed in the Dominion of Canada while the LTI paper pondered over a crime which has no parallel in the history of Canada however there were a couple of press reports who clearly felt the Donal had it coming for example the St Mary Journal Argus appeared to consider it an event worth celebrating when they observed quote the community is rid of most of a family who have made themselves a terror to the part of the country in which they resided the donelles were Desperados of the worst type and their neighbors were afraid to witness against them and no magistrate had backbone enough to convict them while we regret exceedingly that such an atrocious murder was committed in our neighborhood the people of the township of bolf will breathe the Freer it's like yeah it's really bad they were murdered but it but everyone's better off they deserved it meanwhile the globe managed to check out the word on the street when they interviewed a man who preferred to remain anonymous he told the reporter if you have lived here for the past 5 years as I have done you would know which side to sympathize with the only friends the donelles have are a few persons who were in the ring with them and who are always ready to swear them out of anything the man paused thoughtfully for a moment before adding don't put my name in the paper because if you do I'll get another torch before 2 months wait is he just threatening to like burn down the newspaper Jesus Christ I get the feeling that he was there stabbing pitchwars into people but whilst the community weighed up whether they should be celebrating in the streets or recoiling in horror the funeral for the five victims attracted a large turnout on February 6th including of course Jim and Judith surviving children William Patrick Robert and Jenny William's going to get up to some right surely he's like the brainy dangerous one and his family have just been murdered he's going to murder some people isn't that what's going to happen I assume that's going to happen at one point during the emotional sermon father Connelly broke down and wept whilst emphasizing that he bore no emnity against the family a possible reaction to Township mutterings that the priest planted the seeds for the massacre with his so-called peace Association and his anti-protestant preachings which had fueled further anger against the black feed donelles and indirectly led to the forming of a splinter group with murder in mind was not his fault he tried to start a peace group and the people in the peace group were like yeah this we're going to start the like vigilance group or whatever it was called and murder that's not the priest's fault but the question remains over who if anybody at all was going to face Justice for the five appalling murders didn't Danny say in the beginning that no one faces Justice which is kind of insane while some people were trying to pin the blame on Father Connelly for his pesky meddling I'm pretty sure the priest wasn't one of the people clutching a pitchfork on that night in fact it was generally believed that most people in the bof township knew exactly who is responsible for the massacre or at least they knew the identities of many people involved the supposedly secret vigilance committee wasn't really much of a secret at all at this stage and most residents were aware that Constable James Carrol was the ring leader Out For Blood supported by a list of particularly loyal acolytes who were known to keep his company and jump to his every command it's alleged that despite the late hour of the lynching several witnesses observed the mob first approaching the homestead and may have identified some of those familiar faces hidden beneath the women's clothing but not one of them fancied the idea of testifying in court so in terms of eyewitnesses we're left with the sole testimony of a 13-year-old farmand for the attack on the homestead during which Johnny O Conor claims to have recognized the faces and voices of the main perpetrators and the sole testimony of William Donnelly for the attack on Wayan's Corners during which he claimed to have recognized three faces in the darkness from his bedroom window the notable lack of other eyewitnesses willing to stand up in court meant that securing a conviction was always going to be tricky especially in a region where the juries were already known to be quite reluctant to give a guilty verdict even if a man had been seen by a thousand Witnesses shooting a victim in the chest while screaming I've caught you bang to rights Governor nevertheless within just a couple of days the police still eventually managed to round up a list of around 13 members of the vigilance committee based largely on the names provided by Johnny O Conor and William Donnelly every name on the list including Constable James Carol members of the and members of the Thompson Kennedy and Tui families were arrested and kept in jail before a series of preliminary hearings were held at beg's hotel in Lucan it was ultimately decided that only Constable James Carol would initially face trial for his alleged involvement in the specific murder of Judith Donnelly as observed by Johnny o' Conor some of the other suspects were released on bail but five of them were held in jail until their own trials would be supposedly set for later in the year assuming the local courts could fit them into their remarkably busy schedule it was the Press who first began pondering whether it was entirely fair to hold a trial in a courthouse in London Ontario where it was believed that many of the deep feelings of prejudice held against the donelles alongside strong waves of support for the suspects who may have got rid of a big chunk of the Troublesome family it was a point eventually picked up by the prosecution team who petitioned the judge Justice armor for a change in venue to more neutral grounds but the request was denied they're never going to get a fair trial everybody hates them I mean not them everyone hates the donelles so the people person on TR this Sheriff dude or whatever he's just definitely going to get away with this another concern was the immediate safety of young Johnny O Conor bearing in mind that he was the sole witness of the first attack it wasn't entirely inconceivable that someone working on the side of the suspects might attempt to take him out of the picture before he had a chance to testify oh my God yes of course he's got to be in like witness protection or whatever Johnny's parents Michael and Mary had already been the targets of abuse when they were out and about on the streets of bidoff and one of their two properties was later burned down although thankfully the property was empty at the time the Court ruled that the whole okona family should be taken out of bidoff and relocated in a safer area in London which would be guarded at all times by a constable at this point though Mary o Conor appeared to start taking the piss she insisted that the family didn't need 24 hour protection of a constable and argued that those wages should instead be paid to Johnny's older brother who would do just as good a job looking out for the family on his own surprisingly the court accepted this request but the arrangement lasted less than a week as that's all the time it took for Johnny's responsible body guard to go and get arrested after a drunken brawl in a store a little down the line Mario Conor began demanding money for new Furnishings or for the new p in London which she perceived as inadequately decorated along with various other convoluted expenses that she'd managed to drum up during this difficult period again the courts seemed to agree for to her every Financial request okay remarkably generous the crown Attorney Charles Hutchinson appeared to be losing his patience with Mary in a letter addressed to the attorney general in which he notes to the parents in my opinion I regret to say they have but little thought except as to the amount of money they can make out of the situation carry on Constable the first trial of Constable James Caroll got underway in London on October the 4th 1880 and as you might already be able to deduce from the wording of that sentence the outcome couldn't really be described as conclusive there's not actually much surviving documentation from the original trial although the word on the street is that we didn't really learn anything new over the course of the six days the prosecution team led by amelius Irving was still heavily reliant on testimony provided by Johnny O Conor which had been heard in detail during the coroner's inquest and which formed the basis of my earlier description of the attack on the homestead but one aspect that doesn't get reported very often is the surprising admission from Johnny oconor that he was spotted by Constable James Carol during the massacre the way the story is usually told Johnny was never detected by the attackers yet the boy claimed in court that Carol climbed the stairs saw Johny hone hiding under the bed looked him straight in the ey before leaving the bedroom without uttering a word if true this suggests that while the mob were happy to cover their tracks by murdering a 21-year-old niece who had nothing to do with their grievances James Carol couldn't quite bring himself to hurt a 13-year-old farmhand he may have felt that this would have been crossing the line for respectable Constable but murdering an innocent 21-year-old who was just on holiday for irelands that's cool Christ slightly confusingly the trial also had testimonies from William Donnelly and some of the suspects connected with the attack on whan's Corners even though at this stage Carol was the only one being charged with the specific murder of Judith Donnelly at a different property the defense team led by Hugh McMahon also wielded out a long list of aliis who all insisted that each suspect had been had spent the night in question indoors some of them had been enjoying a drink some of them have been playing cards and some of them have been chatting about the futility of human existence in an infinite Cosmos but absolutely none of them had been wandering around in the middle of the night with pitchwars and shovels and that is absolutely a fact after the prosecution and defense wrapped up their arguments Justice armor appeared to be steering the jury in the direction of a guilty verdict against Carol but after just 5 hours of deliberations the jury declared there was no hope of reaching a verdict seven were in favor of acquittal four were in favor of conviction and one couldn't make up his mind wait doesn't that mean you get acquitted isn't it like they have to get all of them no or like 10 out of 12 or something like that oh this is Canada I don't know how it works in Canada I don't really know how it works anywhere one juror in favor of aisle later noted that he could couldn't bring himself to convict James Carol solely on the word of a 13-year-old boy whilst another made the rather troubling admission that he wouldn't have voted in favor of conviction even if he had witnessed Carol carrying out the murders with his own eyes dude you need to be dismissed from the jury pool like what the what are you doing in there it's like no even if he was guilty I'd say he wasn't I love him he's my mate the second and final trial of Constable James Carol was scheduled for January 1881 this time presided over by Justice Cameron concerns were raised before the trial even got underway when it was noted that the jury was entirely made up of Protestants in a case involving the alleged murder of a black feet family by an Irish Catholic yeah again you need to dismiss this jury and find some people are actually impartial some suggested this wasn't entirely Fair on conable James gal it's not fair on him like even though he did this uh it's not fair on him he needs an impartial jury yet Crown Attorney Charles Hutchinson felt that the odds were still very much stacked against a conviction as there was so much hate for the Donell still festering in the region at one point he wrote a weary letter to prosecutor amelus Irving in which he complains that it was just a waste of time and money pushing on with a second trial as the outcome was inevitable but the prosecution pushed on ahead regardless yeah I mean it's a good try by the defense it's like you might as well give up because everyone hates the family and this guys even if he killed them with they're going to LM off and the prosecution like yeah you're right let's just go chill one notable difference this time around is that the testimonies were devoted almost exclusively to the attack on the homestead and William Donley was not invited to speak about the murder of his brother at Wayland's Corners I have to admit that I had trouble getting my head around the logic of spending so much of the first trial discussing the second attack when it appears to Bear little direct relation to the murder of Judith Donley at the hands of constable James Carroll it was now decided that the incident at Wayland's Corners would be scrutinized during potential future Trials of suspects charged specifically with the second attack yeah which makes way more sense the other the the second attack has nothing to do with the first or nothing to do with what's going on in court the main Alibi for James Carol was farmer William Thompson Jr of the missing cow Fame Thompson testified in court that Carol had slept at his house on the night in question and they'd both retired to bed at around 10 p.m. however it's worth noting William Thompson Jr himself was suspected of being a member of the mob as his testimony conflicted somewhat with the statement he gave to police the morning after the massacre in which he claimed to have gone to bed alone at around 6:30 and not waking up again until 7:00 a.m. the following morning that's a very long sleep which seems like a remarkably long snooze for a farmer yeah he slept 12 and 1/2 hours who could no one sleeps 12 and 1/ half hours when challenged about this in court William Thompson Jr claimed that he didn't recall saying that in the police statement but he may have panicked and lied out of fear of being wrongfully arrested Johnny oconor was given a tough grilling by the defense team during which there were some minor discrepancies uncovered in the various statements he'd given along the way involving specific noises that had heard and weapons that had glimpsed there was also Doubt cast over why exactly the viance of Jim and And Judith's bed would have been removed providing Johnny with the only opportunity to peek at the Carnage from his hiding position but Johnny swore that this was true in fact Johnny did a remarkably good job of remaining calm composed measured and respectful throughout the trial even when his earlier Recollections of the prosecution were continually interrupted by objections from the defense which were usually upheld by jus Justice Cameron who clearly wasn't taking a very favorable view of the boy's testimony if Johnny was calm and composed his mother Mary was sadly the exact opposite throughout her questioning by the defense team she was defensive tety and downright hostile at times here's an example of a typical exchange between Mary ' Conor defense lawyer Hugh McMahon and Justice Cameron regarding a question involving how much money she was trying to make from all of this Mary I don't want to be speaking to the jury or anyone else what for do you be forcing a woman to answer against her will oh my God people spoke weird in the past hum mcmah you'll have to answer my question Mrs oconor if you don't you'll be made to Mary you may keep me here for a month then Cameron I'll commit you Mrs oconor unless you answer the question Mary you can send me to prison if you like Cameron I will unless you answer the question Mary well then send me it's nice to work trying to get a woman to spake against her will Mary o Conor didn't get sent to prison but the problem is her unique contribution to the proceedings very probably did more harm than good to the prosecution it was revealed that she'd been constantly squeezing money from the crown for ridiculous reasons and had been contemplating how to get our hands on a four ,000 reward put up by the government of Ontario for information leading to a conviction that's a hella hella lot of money this led to speculation that Johnny oconor had been providing testimony under guidance from his money grabbing mother an allegation which had been dismissed by Justice armor during the first trial but one which Justice Cameron felt was quite probable in fact a week later Justice Cameron informed the jury that Johnny o' Conor's testimony should be considered unreliable leaving the jury with little else to work with on February the 2nd 1881 a unanimous verdict of not guilty was declared in the case of constable James Caroll am I surprised by this in no way whatsoever like I do I think he's guilty hell yes do I think he's uh going to get guilty no never did as soon as the verdict was declared whoops of joy and Delight briefly echoed all through the courthouse although these quickly subsided when judge Cameron announced that anyone caught applauding would be immediately arrested yet it's not appropriate to clap in a courtroom and whilst Cameron appeared to have directed The Jury to the verdict he did have a little Sympathy for the acquitted defendant in his closing remarks to Carol he noted you James Carol are a number of the constabulary of your own County and you have in the discharge of your duties as Constable exhibited the utmost asperity what does this mean oh one to my dictionary I nor have a dictionary where I can look stuff up because I'm small brained well this is like an old word from the past right it has been plainly shown that you are particularly anxious to prosecute the donelles and if you have suffered a years imprisonment you have yourself to blame for it this together with a continual dread and uncertainty hanging over you for you have had what may be looked upon as a narrow Escape for your life may be regarded by you in some measure as punishment for your dereliction of Duty and the discharge of your duties as conable I trust you will leave the doc a better and wiser man even judges back in the day it's like what are you saying basically like you've been a very naughty boy and it's lucky you got off perhaps a guil verdict was always going to be unlikely in a trial held in a region where the donelles were hated by so many especially considering the potential consequences for other suspects who could consequently be put on trial in the event of a conviction for Carol before the verdict was reached one the jurors had apparently asked prosecutor amelus Irving if there was any chance at all that Carol might not be hanged if he was found guilty to which the prosecutor had simply replied no this may have influenced the jury to some degree as they now feared that the guilty verdict in this case would ultimately result in the hanging of a long list of other husbands and fathers in the bidol township yeah it does set a dangerous precedent for all of those people this trial is super biased it's also a great pity that the testimony of the sole witness to the first attack on the homestead was disregarded as unreliable maybe a conable was never going to be hung on the word of a 13-year-old farmand and whilst Johnny O Conor was always remarkably mature and composed throughout the trials it's not out of the question that he may have been recalling certain events that he never actually witnessed or that he may have been influenced by his mother who had a b ey on a nice new mahogany piano for the front room but the facts still remain that shortly after Arch Enemy Constable James Carol formed a vigilance committee with a ruthless agenda of solving the Donnelly problem for good five members of the family were massacred by a Lynch Mob I suppose it could have just been a huge coincidence yeah it's not of course it's not we all know they did it it's nice about these things being so far in the past because you have to be like allegedly cuz everyone is dead for centuries like they did it we know they did it a big group of them led by this Constable dude went and murdered a whole bunch of people and they got away with it but here's where things get a little bit baffling in light of the verdict all the other prisoners were granted bail and nobody else was ever brought to trial for the murders I don't know if that's baffling it's like yo if the ring leader got off on not guilty then all of the others are as well it's going to be always it's like um a class action lawsuit right they get a class together and then they go to court and if it gets struck down then they don't go for each individual PL through each individual plaintiff until they get what they want and here they're just going it's going to be the same result because it's the same Witnesses and the same situation and they're just not going to be guilty the reasoning seemed to be that as it had not been possible to secure a conviction in the case of constable James Carrol it would be a waste of time and resources even attempting to secure a conviction for any of the other suspects exactly I could see why this makes some sort of attack sense for the attack on the homestead in which the prosecution would again need to rely on the Same Soul testimony that had already been deemed unreliable oh yeah but there's the attack on the second house why like that should be tried separately but I'm surprised that this also seemed to apply to the second attack at Wayan's Corners which was arguably an entirely separate event with entirely different Witnesses only one of which William Donnelly claimed to have identified some of the perpetrators it might even be argued that the separate events were different operations which involved at least some different suspects it's generally assumed that following the homestead attack the same mob moved on to Wayland's Corners in a greatly reduced number and this is backed up by the amount of time that elapsed between the two events and the fact that a few of the same faces were supposedly identified by both Johnny O Conor and William Donnelly but it does seem odd that the two mobs employed such different strategies and were armed with such different weapons whilst the first mob can confidently barged into the homestead with pitchforks and shovels the second much smaller mob were armed with shotguns and just fired bullets at their Target in a doorway from a distance before legging it it almost feels as if the two incidents were masterminded by entirely different suspects or it could be that the mob were more scared of William Donnelly than they were the rest of his family which might explain why most of them went back home for supper after the first attack and why the remainder of the group stopped off to collect shotguns yeah although if you're in that first group if everyone goes home then you're all because William Donley is going to be like get my gun although is he going to get revenge on all of these people I get a feeling he's not right because I feel like Danny told us some details of the story at the beginning I'd kind of expect William Donnelly to be like all right let's go William Donnelly claimed in his testimony during the first trout that he definitely saw the faces of three attackers from his bedroom window including Constable James Carroll and his own brother-in-law John Kennedy he also claimed that he thought he could identify three others but he couldn't quite be as sure about those the crown presumably felt that further TRS could not go ahead based on the sole testimony of a witness who was peering out into the inky Gloom the matter was dropped and nobody was ever convicted of participating in the black Don's Massacre a conspiracy of Silence in the immediate aftermath of the verdict the released prisoners headed straight down to the Western hotel for a celebratory drink one newspaper reported that William Donley briefly popped into the very same bar and extended a surprising invitation to buy a drink for all the suspects what are you doing it wasn't the really most cord of invitations though the exact words He barked out were I want all you murderers to come and have something nobody accepted the generous invitation and William left the Western hotel shortly afterward without further incident all those dudes i' just be like i' just be like with one eye open in the night looking for William donnley in the shadow Shadows of my bedroom the press in general bravely swam against the anti-d Donnelly tide as the majority of the papers appeared to conclude that Justice had most definitely not been served one paper described Constable James Carol and his cohorts as a bunch of sinister envious dangerous backwoodsmen whilst the Toronto Globe noted of the trial stronger evidence has rarely been brought against any man who in the face of it escapes The Gallows it did brief ly appear as if those Sinister envious dangerous backwood men might yet face another trial when just a month later two of the suspects Brothers James and William fahil apparently made a shocking confession to Patrick Donnelly that they had indeed been members of the mob and everything Johnny O Conor had claimed in court had been absolutely true don't talk about your crimes don't talk about your crimes especially to a member of the family who you committed those crimes against what are you doing the fil family had always been considered good friends of the donelles and you may remember that James F was the sneaky two- faced bag who was working as a spy for the vigilance committee oh I didn't remember that but that's the dude okay whilst popping around to the homestead and cheerfully eating all of their biscuits while it seems as if the sneaky Too Faced bag was on the verge of making amends for all of his behavior after he claimed to Patrick Donley that he and his brother never wanted to get involved in the first place but they' done so out of fear of repercussions from the vigilance committee the brothers also apparently revealed that they had no idea that the five victims were to be murdered they just thought they were going to be a little roughed up the bad news is that shortly after making this confession the fil Brothers fled to Michigan to avoid having to testify against the vigilance committee the good news is that by the end of the year the brothers have been extradited back to Canada to face questioning but the other bad news is that they denied ever having made such a confession and refused to testify meaning that the whole matter was again quietly dropped what did they think was going to happen that they're going to come back back and be like cuz they're not like what he going to testify against themselves like what what either Patrick Donley had just made the whole thing up or the V brothers were really utterly terrified of the vigilance committee the five victims were laid to rest underneath a large Monument erected in St Patrick's Cemetery in the bidf township the inscriptions were unusually dramatic for a commemorative mon Monument the full name of each victim was bluntly accompanied with the word murdered exclamation point the monument was reportedly the target of vandalism during the early years but it remained in place until 1964 by which point renewed interest in the donelly massacre generated such a spike in visitors to the controversial Monument the public access to the cemetery was temporarily denied the monument was replaced with a much smaller grave marker which notably admitted the five striking uses of the word murdered it's often reported that this decision was taken by then priest of St Patrick's church but it would appear that the descendants of the donelles fully approved of the replacement for at least seven decades the original Monument was the only Stark reminder of the massacre in both the bidol township and the nearby Village of Lucan where the story was heavily suppressed despite the fact that the story was well known throughout the rest of North America many children in the local area grew up without having the faintest clue about the Donal is because it was considered too to discuss the subject of course he was cuz they like I said at the beginning this whole this whole group of people got away with murder of course they're not talking about it they shut the up those two guys talked about it they're idiots everyone else is like just don't talk about the murders that we all were in on okay we got away with it don't talk about it ever again shut the [ __ ] up good work good criminals the reason behind this reluctance to share the past is apparently because nobody wanted to upset the descendants of the suspects who lived in the township if the citizens were really that bothered about hiding away from history you'd think they might have got rid of the monument a fair bit sooner bearing in mind that it defiantly screamed murder from the grounds of St Patrick's Cemetery but I guess that the kids were supposed to just ignore that and not ask any awkward questions The conspiratorial Cloud of covert concealment finally began to clear a little in 1954 when crime author Thomas Kelly wrote the bestselling book The Black donelles which sparked fresh interest in the massacre and was largely responsible for driving all those new visitors to the monument it has to be said that domas Kelly was aut to a fantasy writer and many have questioned his take on events which seems to paint the whole family as black-hearted monsters who thoroughly deserve their Grizzly fate a more sympathetic view has been adopted in recent years by the citizens of the now merged Township of Lucan bidol which is today home to the Lucan area Heritage and Donley Museum alongside the display of local historical artifacts from the last 150 years probably not including the logging hand Spike that killed Patrick Farrell the museum also host a mockup of the original donal's Homestead in which visitors can experience a spine chilling account of the whole Saga it's pretty Grim what's this oh yeah this is uh like 100 years in the future or whatever what's this well this is the room where um who was the guy who cut the faces off people had it was a strange relationship with his mother God damn it he's super famous what's his name ah that dude a mockup of his like weird murder house I don't know that's appropriate for a museum in fact much to the Chagrin of older residents Lucan bidol has begun to develop something of a small tourist industry based around the donelles it sad as me to say that you can even Fork out for ghost ST which play on the ideas that apparitions of the victims are regularly spotted in the window of the original Homestead and that horses refuse to pass the homestead on the night of February the 3rd of course that just people making some money but even though there are some entrepreneurial souls and paranormal charlatans now willing to cash in on the chage there are residents of can bid off who still consider the whole topic to be off limits even today a final intervention by God did the fantasy writer Thomas Kelly have a point when he suggested that the donelles deserved everything that was coming to them well I think it's pretty hard to justify breaking into somebody's house and bludgeoning the occupants to death under any circumstances particularly when the murder of the visiting 21-year-old niece Bridget was carried out purely to get rid of witnesses it's safe to conclude that the dones were no Angels they fiercely fought their corner usually with their fists they were regularly involved in baral and they had no quals about seriously pissing off the community to make a point it's probable that there were times when they seriously crossed the boundaries one of the many disturbing incidents was of course the death of Patrick Farrell although it's difficult to know for sure whether this was an act of callous murder or an accidental result of instinctive self-defense during the throws of battle there were other alleged atrocities over the years particularly during the height of the stage coach Feud but as the donelles were coping the blame for absolutely everything by that point usually without conviction from the half-hearted courts it's impossible to ascertain oh when they were guilty or innocent if I was a Gambling Man I'd wager that they were guilty of quite a few of the horrendous crimes that they were accused of committing but I'm still not going to argue against the principle of innocent into proving guilty but it's an interesting point to ponder when I first began researching this Saga I was deeply curious as to how William donnley would exact his dastardly revenge on the men that murdered his family yes after all he's going to go uh all taken on them after all this was the formidable leader of the pack whose family had just been savagely murdered by a group of around 30 men who had escaped Justice I figured he would take the law into his own hands and hunt all of them down one by one until he had felt Justice had been served if nothing else it would have made for a gripping movie franchise but he did no such thing he was actually urged to move out of the area in a short letter from Crown Attorney Charles Hutchinson who quite insensitively pointed out it seems to me that you are incurring no little risk in remaining there without much chance of doing good bullan stayed put and even became a constable himself for a few years although I'm now starting to think that every man in Bol Township became a constable at some point and he always felt sure that Justice would be served in the end although his faith in the justice system appears to have been misplaced he told the morning news in 1884 quote there were too many in that conspiracy to keep it quiet always I can afford to wait I've waited four years now and I can wait 20 more but it's still a little surprising that William Donley never once resorted to dishing out his own retribution could it be that he was getting too old for all of that Malak or could it be that he was a changed man who had seen the light or could it be that he was never really The Psychotic nutcase villain that everyone made him out to be oh that's compelling isn't it maybe he's just not like the only reason we think of him as a psycho is because we're getting this like crazy one-sided view of the donelles which we tried to not be crazy one-sided about so it's entirely possible he's just not a Nutter like we thought he was that's not to say the surviving dones didn't entirely avoid drama and controversy over the next few years it was reported in the papers in 1881 that William and Robert donnley had both been caught red-handed attempting to set fire to a mill belonging to one William Stanley but later court documents show that they hadn't been caught in the act at all and both defendants were found not guilty the Salvation Army arrived in town in 1885 and Robert Donnelly was one of many residents who vocally disapproved of their presence and the Unholy racket that they made as they marched up and down the streets banging their drums and tambourines that does sound rather annoying doesn't it when the Salvation Army's Barracks were mysteriously burned down in the middle of the night get the out of here Robert dony was the Prime candidate for lighting the match but it was never even proven that the incident was an act of deliberate Arsen probably was though those banging the drums up and down the street sound really annoying what does the Salvation Army even do at some point in the 1880s Robert Donnelly experienced a problem with missing geese determined to catch the culprit he stayed up all night and witnessed an intruder approaching his flock who was identified as Constable hum it's another Constable Robert decided to teach the Constable a lesson by beating him senseless and strangely it sounds like it starts off so he decided to teach him Lesson by beating the living out of him and strangely enough the only one to get arrested was Constable hum who was charged with leny the Constable who made that arrest was a certain Constable William Donnelly but on the whole the Don's lived out the rest of their lives in relative peace and all four surviving members of the family died of natural causes without a gunshot to be hurt Jenny was the last one to pass away in 1916 the same can't be said for many of the original Suspects were destined to face a chain of quite ghastly deaths or maybe William was getting them from behind the you know just secretly offing them and making it look like an accident this doesn't include the ring leader Constable James Carrol although he was eventually sacked from his post for misconduct and moved to the Rocky Mountains where he reportedly spent the remainder of his life penniless and alone oh no but many of the others were hit by trains gored to death by Bulls found dead in haunted Wells or died from incredibly painful diseases it was not a point lost on William Donley who appeared to give all the credit to God in a letter published in the exitor times in 1883 wrote in 13 years since the murders 34 persons directly or indirectly concerned in that Slaughter have met their just deserts and none of them have been murdered a direct visitation from Mighty God must have been the cause if the next 13 years will reap a larger Harvest as the last 13 I think Justice will have been done I'm not sure if death by direct visitation from Al Mighty God would have made it onto any of the death certificates though no but it is like he's probably pleased he's like yes yes yes you fell in that haunted well didn't you definitely didn't p i I don't think he pushed him whoever fell in the haunted well but you know it's nice it's nice for him speaking of God it's often said that religion was the root cause of the 40-year feud which resulted in the black Don's Massacre the story is widely painted in a way which suggests that the dones tried to escape the religious conflicts in Ireland only to find the religious conflicts followed them all the way to Canada and ultimately to their graves but I don't think that's the case at all yes I'm sure there were some Irish Catholics on the Roman line who disapproved of the donelles associating with Protestants but this seems to be more of a story about feuding neighbors just getting right off each other's noses yeah I agree I think that's exactly it the resentment kicked off with the disagreements over lands rather than disagreements over the pope many of the new neighbors in Canada would have taken an instant dislike to the Donley after they built up a prosperous new Farm on land which was perceived to be stolen the murder of Patrick Farrell didn't exactly help matters whilst the situation only intensified when the family started up their Stage Coach line which sparked a whole new era of cutthroat business rivalry perhaps this is less a story about religious conflict and more a story of a long-running feud between grumpy Neighbors in a wild and almost Lawless small town in which nearly everyone seemed to be both a constable and a criminal a nasty Feud which spiraled out of control and led to the forming of a Lynch Mob by one particular Constable with a pitchfork to grind as wisely pointed out in the London Free Press by Thomas lvas supervisor at the Lucan area Heritage Museum and Don Museum quote one of the most important things to remember from something like this is how fallible humans can be and how easy it is for us to stoke each other up with fears thank goodness we've all moved on from that kind of nonsense in today's more enlightened age except we haven't and that's where we end today's rather lengthly episode thank you so much for being here I hope you enjoyed it it's Friday afternoon for me so I'm going to go and enjoy my weekend I have no idea when you'll be hearing this but hopefully I'll have a good weekend and I'll uh see you next time for

Channel: The Casual Criminalist

Views: 68,764

Keywords: true crime, the donnelly murders, midnight massacre documentary, disaster discovery, true crime documentary, massacre, true crime stories, discovery crime stories, murder documentary

Id: TEuYb2dprL0

Length: 104min 4sec (6244 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 16 2024