Laura Churchill Duke
In 1896, in Digby, Nova Scotia, someone brutally murdered Annie Kempton, a young woman. Suspicion quickly focussed on Peter Wheeler, who claimed to have been the first to find the body. Local opinion, amplified by newspaper headlines, moved more quickly than legal processes to pin the guilt on Peter. But a Halifax reporter covering the murder and the ensuing trial began to have doubts. Some of the forensic evidence did not seem to line up with witness statements and evidence like lines of footprints in heavy snow. Did Peter Wheeler really do it? Or was he found ’guilty by convenience’?
