Transcription
Hi everybody, welcome back to my channel. And if you're new to my channel, hello. My name is Gabby, and welcome. If you've never been here before, never watched any of my videos, have no idea what I do here on my channel, I cover True Crime cases. And all the cases that I cover are a little bit older. They're all basically 20 years or older. So if that's something that you might be interested in, maybe go down below, click that subscribe button, and also make sure to turn on the post notifications to be notified every time that I upload.
Today, I'm back with another hits home case. And if you do not know what a hits home case is, hits home is a series on my channel where I cover a case that directly affects one of you all, one of my subscribers. And that can be affecting one of you all in many different ways. Maybe it's a case that happened in your family, to someone you were close to, or a friend, someone you grew up with, maybe someone you knew through a few different people, or one that just happened in the area that you grew up in, or the area that you moved to, and it's just one that really hits home.
I was going through my emails looking for another one of those cases, and I came across this email that reads, "Hi, my name is Sarah. I was wondering if you could cover the case of Glory Whalen. Glory Whalen was a girl who was murdered in my hometown of Collingwood, Ontario in 1903. I remember hearing a lot about her as a child. There was a small forested area in back of my street with a stone memorial to her. A lot of us as kids would play there and wonder about her life and who killed her. Thank you, Sarah."
Now, I know wholeheartedly how it is to grow up hearing about a local mystery, and as you get older, really wanting to dive into it and find out more. The fact that this case happened so long ago, it will be hitting its 120th anniversary this month, and it still affects this community. That shows how impactful tragedies like this one can be to an area, especially when they're still unsolved today. We're going to be diving into the unsolved murder of Glory Whalen. Quite a few others have done pretty extensive research into this case, and I will have all of my sources, all the other people who have dove into this case, I'll have all of that linked down below if you want to go check that out.
Before I get into this one, I have to say that this case is almost 120 years old. I'm gonna say it's 120 years old. So there will be questions I do not have the answers to, and I am just as frustrated as you are. But with all that being said, let's get right into it.
Bertha Gloria Whalen, nicknamed Glory, was born on Halloween day, October 31st of 1889, to parents James Henry Whalen, who went by the name Henry, and Francis Fannie Reardon. Gloria would end up being the middle child of five children. She had three brothers and one sister. She was described as a very precocious girl, just a sweet girl growing up in a rural area. The family lived on a farm on Poplar Side Road in Collingwood, Ontario, Canada.
On Wednesday, May 27th of 1903, at a little past eight in the morning, Glory started making her way towards school. According to the Toronto Daily Star, she left that morning out the front gate, asking her mother if she thought it would rain. Her mother reassured her that even if it did, she had her umbrella with her. During the coroner's inquest, which is a really important part of this case, a lot of information came out during it. Her mother would say that Glory left that morning with her parasol, a small bag with her lunch, her school bag, her books inside of the school bag, and some change wrapped in her handkerchief, along with some Jacks and the handkerchief as well, that she occasionally brought with her to school so she could play with her classmates during free time.
Glory was headed to Eastward Public School, a school later named Connaught Public School in 1911, that today lies at 300 Peel Street. So she lived on Poplar Side Road down here and was on her way to school up here, and she always took the same way to school, taking these railroad tracks. Railroad tracks that were at the time a part of the Grand Trunk system, but would later be turned into a line for the Canadian National Railway in the year 1923, two decades after this case took place.
Hours passed, and Glory was supposed to be getting home from school, but she never showed up. Their worry increased tremendously when they discovered that she actually never showed up to school that day at all. So the family, they went out searching for her with the help of others. They asked friends of the girl if anyone had seen her that day at all, and no one had. They began following the usual path that she took to school. It would be the next morning of the search that they located her. A search led by her father, the lifeless body of Glory Whalen was found the next morning, a little south of Collins Street, on the east side of the tracks in a thicket of cedar in an area that was described by many newspapers at the time as being swampy.
She was found on her back with her arms folded across her chest, obviously positioned as such. Whoever her killer or killers had been, had to have taken her over the fence that was near the tracks, down a narrow trail, past a cow path, and then to this swampy lake area. It is said that part of the wire of the fence near the tracks had been broken. They were unsure if the wire of the fence had been broken during the incident or possibly before, and the killer or killers could have used it as a quicker way to get her past the fence.
Glory, though, had been found with all of her belongings laying near her. So authorities were thinking that she may have been killed after being taken past the fence and to this swamp-like area. They were wondering why a killer would kill her, say, on the tracks, and then carry her belongings with her body. So it was believed that she may have been taken to this area or lured there by someone, even maybe voluntarily going to that location with somebody, maybe she knew her killer. That's kind of what they were leaning towards. What they would find out later made them wonder if possibly she had been attacked and then the person or people had just grabbed her up with her belongings and taken her to that area where they ultimately took her life.
Glory had been found fully clothed with her handkerchief wrapped around her head. Her cause of death was a gunshot wound. An autopsy would reveal that the bullet had entered behind her right ear, went through her brain in a diagonal direction, and hit the front left side of her skull near her left eye. The bullet was extracted from her skull and would show that it came from a .38 caliber gun. Other than her school bag, which was left open near the body, and her umbrella, they also found a club, which made perfect sense because her autopsy did reveal bruising to the back of her head. It seemed that she had been knocked unconscious by most likely this club and then shot in the back of her head. This bruising was the only injury on her besides the actual gunshot that killed her. There had been no other bruising, scratches, or other markings that would expose an attack took place besides that one bit of bruising, which further pushed the theory that authorities had that she had been killed at the location she was found and not killed at the tracks and then dragged there.
When it came to the crime scene, remember that this was 1903, and authorities at the time everywhere, it didn't matter where they were, had not yet established a set procedure for how they handled an area where a horrific crime took place. Meaning that there was no yellow and black police tape, cones, or markers set up around the area her body was discovered. It was pretty much just left open to anyone, even the public, to walk around, and people did. And this means everyone: people that were hired to actually be there, her family, onlookers, and just curious locals. You didn't know whose footprints belonged to who, and whether any of them left behind could have possibly belonged to her killer or killers. Things were moved around, and fingerprints were left everywhere. It was truly a mess, and obviously today would be handled very different, which, who knows, even all these years later, what they could have obtained from the evidence if the crime scene was controlled at the time and a contrasting manner.
Now, it was time to get into the actual investigating. Authorities went to every and any store that sold guns in the area to see if anyone had sold anyone a .38 caliber recently, but none of the sellers claimed that they sold one recently enough to give authorities any sort of description of the person that they sold it to. Houses in the area surrounding the crime scene were searched for .38 caliber revolvers, but none were located in any of the homes. Which I looked into seeing how many houses they did search in that area, and apparently it was only half a dozen, so it's around six. So they didn't search many homes.
But everyone was thinking the same thing: why would somebody kill this little girl? Was there a motive? Was there some sort of sick, twisted, selfish reason that her killer or killers took her life? That was something authorities, especially the main man put on the case, Detective William Greer, wanted to know. The first theory, of course, being robbery. You have to think, her bag was left open right near her. They were thinking, could a lone peddler in the area with a club had went out about his morning with the sole desire to rob somebody, and he just so happened to come across poor Glory?
Well, in Glory's handkerchief, they found her 35 cents that her mother had given to her, which today would be about twelve dollars and seven cents. So it didn't seem money was the goal with the culprit. They, of course, next considered sexual assault, but the girl had not been sexually assaulted unless that was the killer's goal and the girl began screaming and putting up some sort of a fight. Keep in mind, though, there were no signs of a struggle, and her clothing did not look like it had been tugged at in any way. I do have to mention, though, that according to an article released by The Brantford Weekly Expositor, that it seemed her undercoat clothes, which I guess meant her underwear, had a tiny bit of tearing, but this looked like it had been tearing from before that. It could have occurred maybe while she was playing sometime, and then she just got like a small rip in her clothing. It didn't look like it was a fresh tear.
What about possibly someone having it out for the Whalen family? Just the family in general? The family members were questioned, and it did not seem like they had any known enemies, especially not their daughter. I mean, she was only 13 years old. During the coroner's inquest, it was questioned whether she possibly had a boyfriend or not, someone that possibly had strong emotions towards her. We know that sometimes strong emotions, even at a young age, have ended in extreme violence. According to everyone who knew her, she hadn't discussed having any interest or romantic relations with anyone, with her mother saying she was 13 years and seven months, but she had no boyfriends, no sweethearts.
Authorities questioned people in the area, hoping that maybe someone had seen or heard something the day of the murder. Maybe someone has something to say? Is someone in the area acting suspicious or has maybe a history of similar acts of violence? According to the Winnipeg Tribune, which was published on May 30th, the same day she was laid to rest in Saint Mary's Roman Catholic Cemetery, authorities had detained three different men for further questioning. The article reads, "Detective Greer arrived today to take charge of the case and acting on his instructions, the three men were detained. One was a peddler who had the revolver to the head of Patrick Byron's, an employee of the T. Long Company, two nights ago, and who was secured near Thornberry at Beaton, three miles from Collingwood. A rough-looking man was detained because he had in the hotel there read the story of the murder from the Toronto Evening Paper and said the report was all wrong, proceeding to explain about the finding of the body as it actually happened, although the paper he was reading from did not contain these facts. This was considered suspicious enough to warrant his detention by the authorities. The third man detained was arrested at Denton, nine miles south of here. He is a peddler who called at the Kendall and Whalen Farms on Wednesday night. He was brought into Collingwood tonight and examined by Detective Greer."
This same article highlights another part of the story that gets overlooked a lot online, and it's actually something I have not seen brought up online. It's just something that I came across. A man named Russell Kendall, in his very early 20s, of the Kendall farm that I just mentioned in the article, he was the one who found her body that Thursday morning. Now, what was he doing during the day of the murder? Well, he claimed that he had been transplanting cabbages and was working in a shed about 200 yards from where Glory's body would later be found the next day by him. When he was asked if he heard a gunshot the day of the murder, he said that he could not recall. Now, there is a hill between the farm area where he was working and the area where she was found, so that could have something to do with it. But he also said that many boys go through that area for hunting, and if he heard a gunshot, he probably wouldn't have thought much of it, that it probably wouldn't have stuck out in his head as something to pay attention to.
Authorities, of course, asked Russell if he himself owned a revolver, and he said that he did, and he presented authorities with the one and only one that he claimed that he owned, and it was a .22 caliber. And as we know, the one that killed Glory was a .38 caliber. Could he have possibly been lying about that and also owned a .38 caliber? I don't know. These four men would all check out, though, in the end. Authorities felt none of them had anything to do with the vicious murder that took place that spring morning.
When I was researching into this case, though, and I went down a rabbit hole for sure, I really kept going back to Russell Kendall. It's strange how little they looked into him. He was so close to the area that she was killed, and he would have been somebody that she would have trusted. Maybe they did figure, why would he kill this girl and leave her on basically his own property and then be the one to come across her remains? Why would he make himself stand out that much? Also, it wasn't the same revolver, maybe that's what they were thinking at the time. I'm again, not entirely sure. She did, though, have to be quite familiar with him because according to The Windsor Star, he was even one of her pallbearers at her funeral. In my opinion, just as a researcher, like 120 years later, I think there's a few red flags when it comes to this individual and this case, and I just am very surprised that they did not question him further or at least maybe look around his house to see if he did possibly own a .38 caliber. That, though, was all of the information that I could really find about Russell Kendall.
Well, a few days would go by, and new information would come forward that was originally kept from authorities. A woman named Mrs. Finley, who lived near the scene of the murder, not far from the railroad, confided in her minister that the morning of the murder, she had seen two men wrestling with a girl on the tracks. Another witness claimed that they heard a girl screaming and a gunshot in the area around the time Glory would have been killed. The woman who said that she saw the two men wrestling on the tracks with the young girl stated that they looked like they may have been homeless, that they may have been peddlers, and she gave a very vague description of them. She didn't really say what they were wearing or anything along the lines of that. She just said that one of the men was a white man and one of the men was a black man.
This information was released to the public in the hopes that someone possibly knew who these two men could be, and at the time, it seemed like authorities were pretty sure that these two men had to be the ones responsible for Glory's murder. After the two-week coroner's inquest, the final verdict was that Glory was murdered at the hands of some person or persons unknown, and it was decided that these two men were most likely responsible, which is a little preposterous to me, considering anyone can make up any fabricated or false claim they want. But Mrs. Finley stood in court and told her story, and people believed what she was saying in front of everyone was exactly what happened that morning. When she was talking, though, it really seemed like she was very apologetic for not coming forward sooner with this information. She stated that she didn't originally put the two incidents together, that what she saw that morning was ultimately the murder of Glory Whalen.
There would be a $600 reward posted at the time for any information regarding these two men. Authorities wanted to locate these two men, and when adjusted for inflation, that comes out to $20,683, which is a big chunk of change. As word spread about this reward, tips started of course flooding into the department, and supposed sightings of these two men were ran in local papers, and there were quite a few of these supposed sightings. For instance, I came across an article released by The St. Catherine Standard on June 22nd of 1903, and it highlights a claim that came from a young girl. This young girl, who was actually related to County Crown Attorney Farewell, who he was a renowned, very respected attorney in the area at the time, stated that on June 19th, which was a Saturday, she saw two men, one being a white man and one being a black man, near a Lakeshore Road that she was on in Oshawa, Ontario. She claimed that the white man looked between 35 to 40 years old, and that he appeared to be well-dressed. The girl claimed that the main thing that she noticed about the other man, though, was that he was actually missing a foot, and this was something that kind of frightened her and stuck out to her. But of course, this was something that if these were the two men that Mrs. Finley, never mentioned, she never mentioned somebody missing a foot.
Authorities decided to go to the location that this young girl spotted the men, and it seemed like a lot of the bush was overgrown there, but there had been clothing and blankets left there by somebody or multiple people, so it looked like people had been staying there. Authorities waited to see if anyone came back to the area to get these belongings or possibly go back to this area to camp out another night, and they waited and waited and waited, but nobody came back. Quite a few similar tips came into police about seeing two homeless men matching Mrs. Finley's vague description, but police were never able to bring any two people in for questioning, so this went nowhere.
Then, in November of 1903, a man named William Joseph Carey, some sources claim that his name was William Joseph Curry, but most say Carey, so I'm gonna go with that. A man who was already imprisoned in Manchester attempted to confess to authorities that he was the one who took Glory's life. According to the Montreal Star, they were going to be moving him from Manchester to London to charge him with Glory's murder and then hand him over to the Canadian authorities. According to an article released by The Calgary Albertan years later in 1909, they dismissed this charge completely, claiming they received word from a mysterious stranger that he only confessed so they would send him back to Canada for further questioning. William Joseph Carey was originally from Toronto, and he was only in Britain because he was an ex-soldier of the Royal Rifle Brigade of England and he was sentenced to 14 years behind bars for "crime against the moral laws of Britain," which I'm not entirely sure what that means, but that's kind of the end of the story with that. He had nothing to do with Glory's murder, he just wanted to go back to Canada.
This case was pretty much at a standstill for some time, with the next bit of information actually worth discussing coming up about two years after Glory's murder. According to the Brantford Daily Expositor, coming out of Brantford, Ontario, a man named W. Brislin was being looked at. Now, Brislin was being held at Kingston Penitentiary for a five-year sentence for attempting to shoot a woman named Gertie Jones. Gertie's father, J.M. Jones, stated that the night before Brislin attempted to shoot his daughter Gertie, that Brislin had a lot to say regarding the murder of Glory Whalen. Gertie's father claimed that Brislin said that he had actually been in the area of Collingwood at the time of Glory's murder, that he actually knew Glory personally, and that the murderer, whoever it was, did well to escape. So, yeah, that looks a little bit suspicious.
Brislin had been close to the Jones family, and after Brislin attempted to shoot Gertie, they all started thinking back to other things he had said in the past that made them scratch their heads. For instance, one time at dinner, Brislin told the Jones family that there would be a great doing in the town soon, that he had done this thing once and would do it again. The Jones family genuinely had no idea what he was talking about and kind of just shrugged it off, and I guess they kind of did because he was always saying strange things. I don't know. But he would end up making this same remark the very night that he would try to shoot Gertie. County Constable Levin got a word of this and started looking even more into Brislin's past, and this man had a history. He was wanted in another area for a similar charge. A man fitting his description that had been in Buffalo was wanted for a similar charge, and he had spent time in jail before for again, a similar charge, shooting.
The last article that I could personally find on the situation with Brislin stated that he had been handed over to Detective Greer the day before the article ran. What happened from there, I cannot tell you. But they obviously questioned him and found some reason to point to him not being responsible for Glory's murder because this case is still unsolved, and no updates were given regarding his possible involvement.
The last individual I want to discuss is someone frequently brought up as being a questionable person, and mostly due to their actions after the murder, and that is Glory's father, Henry. About a year after Glory was murdered, Henry completely left the family picture. He separated from his wife and moved to Fort William, which is now known as Thunder Bay in Ontario, an area a little over 800 miles northwest of Collingwood, where some of his family was from. I don't know the situation firsthand, I don't know if he and his wife had any sort of agreement on anything, but most sources make it seem like he just abandoned his family and the farm and just didn't come back. Due to that, Francis, which is Glory's mother, had to take over any debt from the farm that they had, and she would continue living there for about three years until the debt was paid off, and then she and her four children moved to Ohio. Henry would pass away in 1918 from stomach cancer, and his remains would be transported back to Collingwood, where he would be buried near his daughter. Francis passed away in 1933, and her remains would be buried right next to her daughter as well, back in Collingwood.
Reporter Ian Adams did a lot of diving into this case and released an e-book and a write-up on it, which I will all link below. In this write-up, he highlights direct quotes from members of Glory's family down the line, and it seems like Glory's death was not something discussed by her siblings as years went on. Obviously, it was just very hard for them to talk about. Glory's sister, Lana, her granddaughter, Sharon, did not even find out about what happened to Glory until her grandmother Lena passed away. It just wasn't talked about. But Lena did end up naming one of her daughters, Gloria, after Glory. The granddaughter of one of Glory's brothers, Eugene, her name is Kim, stated that she heard about Glory's case from her mother, but it was never talked about in great detail. They never really dove into the theories. It was just said how it was tragic, and kind of the main facts of it, and that it was just so horrible because of how old she was and where it happened. Kim stated that she even questions herself if her great-grandfather Henry was possibly involved in some way, given the circumstances of him leaving. Was he just a grief-stricken father, and he just had to get away from the entire situation? Which I don't see how, considering he had a wife and four children left. But people do deal with situations differently, you never know. Or did he possibly know more? That is really the question when it comes to Henry.
Now, I could not find any information myself on where Henry said he was at the time of the killing. I dove through so many newspaper articles, I could not find that information. According to H. David Buxton, a former local who did a write-up on the case as well, there lies a memorial stone at the location of her murder. It was donated by Rick and Susan Lloyd and written by Christine Cowley, and it reads, "On May 27, 1903, 13-year-old Glory Whalen set out for Connaught Public School from her family's farm on Poplar Side Road, a 30-minute walk. Glory never reached her destination. After an all-night search, Glory's body was discovered in a thicket of cedars just a few yards from the Grand Trunk Railway tracks. This stone marks the location where Glory was found fully clothed, her arms folded across her chest, and her belongings nearby. An autopsy revealed that the cause of death was a gunshot wound. Months of fruitless investigation turned up numerous leads, including bizarre claims of psychic knowledge of the crime. However, no reliable evidence was uncovered as to the identity of Glory's killer or the motive for the crime. The murder of Glory Whalen remains one of the oldest cases in the annals of unsolved crimes in Canada. Glory was interred in Saint Mary's Catholic Church Cemetery."
From my research as well, the exact location of Glory's resting place is unknown. There's no marker there. This case is just overall a very heartbreaking one, but it's also heartwarming in the fact that even though time goes on, people will still try to keep the memory of this girl alive. This girl whose life was so tragically cut short. The monster, and yes, I say monster because if you're gonna do something like this, I don't think I don't categorize you as a human. The monster or monsters who did this to this little girl unfortunately will never face any sort of repercussions legally for what they did to her. But I'm just saying, 120 years later, I hope that they got some bit of karma in their miserable life or lives.
I tried to look into any bit of DNA evidence, anything along those lines, and that's just something I could not come across with this case. Of course, that takes money and having to exhume her remains or look into evidence that they possibly still have on file, and I couldn't find any information regarding any bit of evidence that they may still have. The department, I doubt they do, that's something I can't say for sure, but I couldn't find any bit of information regarding any of that. The last person or people that she saw before her life was taken, at this point, seems like it's going to be remaining a mystery.
So that is the unsolved murder of Glory Whalen, and that is all of the information I have to present to you today regarding the case. Like I said before, I definitely went down a rabbit hole. I could not stop thinking about this case. I genuinely wanted to get on a plane and go to the location that she was found and just be there. That's that's how devoted I was to looking into this case, and I definitely had a bit of eye strain going on when it came to how many fuzzy newspaper articles that I looked at online.
Leave any thoughts or opinions about this case down below in the comments. Of course, like always, leave some love down the comments as well for the family of the victim. If you have any cases that you possibly want me to look into, definitely make sure to send those over to gabulouscaserequests@gmail.com, and I will see you all in the next one.
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