Subscribe..
CHAMBERS DOOMED, ST. CATHARINES MAN FACES FIRST HANGING IN 65 YEARS
[Welland Tribune, 8 March 1947]
St. Catharines, March 8-Sidney George Chambers, 34-year old heating engineer, was found guilty of the murder of little Marian Rusnak, here yesterday after the jury deliberated an hour. He was sentenced to be hanged June 6.
“I want to thank the jury,” Chambers said, when the verdict was heard and he was asked if he had anything to say. “They will not see any more of me.”
He thanked his counsel and asked if detective James Anderson and Inspector Charles Woods were in the room. When told they were not in the room, Chambers said: “I would like to say that Anderson and Wood and myself are the only three who know what went on in that room. Someday some other things will come up and then you shall know what happened.”
When he was finished speaking, Mr. Justice G. F. McFarland quickly pronounced the death sentence and ordered Chambers to be hanged on June 6.
For perhaps the first time in the history of Canadian jurisprudence, a conviction for murder was registered although the body of the murder victim was never found. In a confession admitted as evidence, Chambers had told court he disposed of Marian Rusnak’s body in a furnace at the canning factory where he worked. Police sifted the ashes of the furnace but found no identifiable trace of human remains.
The disappearance of nine-year-old Marian Rusnak shocked the whole of the Niagara peninsula at the Christmas season. The child was last seen talking to a “tall thin man” on the afternoon of Dec.23 as she clutched a toy drum, a present for her brother.
During the holiday season, volunteer bans of citizens, assisted by Boy Scouts, searched the St. Catharines area in the most complete man-hunt in the history of the city. A week after the girl vanished, Chambers was taken in custody after having attempted suicide. Police said he made other attempts to dispose of himself, five in all, and he became known as the man who couldn’t kill himself.
It was shortly after his arrest that Chambers confessed the crime, police said. He told them he had taken the girl to his room at the canning factory, and when she ran to a window he strangled her. He told of trying to revive her and of leaving her body under his bed for 24 hours while he thought things out.
The he put the body in the furnace.
If the death sentence is carried out it will be the first execution at St. Catharines in 65 years. One other prisoner, William Munchak, was sentenced to hang in 1937, when the presiding judge was also Mr. Justice McFarland, but this sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
Add A Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.