History meets true crime as the Historic Crime Club gathers next week to discuss the brutal murders of three people in Harbour Grace nearly 200 years ago.

Teacher Robert Crocker Bray, his young son Samuel and live-in caregiver Ellen Coombs, were bludgeoned to death in a robbery gone horribly wrong in 1833.

Julia Mayo of the A.C. Hunter Library formed the club to discuss local historic murders and whether the same outcomes would be reached today.

Listen to “Julia Mayo – A. C. Hunter Library” on Spreaker.

 

“What if this crime happened today? How would that have changed? Like, the investigation, the prosecution, all of the things that are involved in the crime, how would that be different in the 21st. century?”

Two men were convicted of the crime – Peter Downing and Patrick Malone. Downing was executed and gibbeted, which was a common practice under the British Admiralty to deter others from criminality, however, times were changing.

Residents were disgusted by the practice and revolted, cutting Downing’s body down and depositing it on the Magistrate’s doorstep in protest.

“‘Because we want to have communities, and we want to live here with our families, we want to raise our kids, we want our kids to live here,'” Mayo says of the feeling at the time.

“This was something you would not see done at that time..in London. They wouldn’t be doing that in more established communities, so they put their foot down and they said ‘no'”

The Historic Crime Club meets this coming Tuesday at 6:30 in the A.C. Hunter Library and is also available online via WebEx.